The 2010 Decorator’s Showhouse may have already come and gone (April 17 – May 2, 2010), but the memories earned there will never be forgotten. We had a great group of girls this year .. we had some tough times and some mishaps .. but all in all it was a lot of fun!!!
(front row, L2R) Stefanie Russell, Karen Beck, Alicia Hughes
(back row, L2R) Randi Kierce, Rachael Eden, Jennie Lowery, Leigh Upton-Carmichael
For the last 30 years Southern Institute School of Interior Design @ Virginia college has decorated a room during the Decorator’s Showhouse; thus giving a lucky group of Interior Design students the opportunity to let their creativity shine. This year I happened to be one of those lucky few, and this year was no different.
The Ready Suite was also featured in the July edition of Birmingham Home and Garden Magazine!
The Ready Suite was also featured in the July edition of Birmingham Home and Garden Magazine!
The house for 2010 might have come with a bit of stigma to it (ala Richard Scrushy), but none of the designers let that stop them from turning it into an absolute masterpiece. From a beautifully organized wrapping room, to a 200 year old clock face .. the house was full of wonder around every corner (or should I say up & down every staircase lol).
12 lucky, fabulous finds were picked out of thousands, from all over the Showhouse (18,000 sq ft to be exact), and found their way into a Birmingham News article entitled the “Top 12 Don’t Miss Items When Visiting the 2010 Decorator’s Showhouse”. One of our rooms (the Ready Suite) actually happened to contain #9 on that list!
A 3pc storage bench that Jennie Lowery designed in 3d AutoCAD, and had her Dad.
Needlesss to say, we were rather excited (and my Jennie's Dad seemed a little embarrassed lol) to see something one of our members designed come to fruition .. and get noticed for it, among so many other awesome items!
But enough about that .. let’s talk about our room(s)!
All in all we did 4 rooms. We had a Powder Room that was situated (rather oddly I might add) underneath a staircase (one of like 10, no .. I’m not kidding there really were 10 lol), and a Ready Suite consisting of 3 rooms (a locker room, a bathroom, and a playroom, which we turned into a sitting room).
Let’s start with the Powder Room.
It was just plain AWFUL. Well, more like the fixtures in the room were awful. Inside was a toilet anyone’s Great Grand-Mother would die for (with pink flowers, ivey, and bone china coloring) .. complete with the matching pedestal sink!
There was also a HUGE, gaudy, heavily ornate, brass mirror that was flanked by a pair of, just as gaudy, (differently colored) brass sconces. What made this room even better was the pink marble, tile flooring and the super contemporary wallpaper (which we actually loved believe it or not). The room was a complete mismatch!
Since we actually liked the wallpaper, and since it was so contemporary, we decided to keep with that and designed our space to be sleek & modern. We ended up having the floating vanity made for us; because the one we originally wanted was way out of our budget. To be honest, I like the one we had made better than the one we originally wanted .. because it fit OUR space the way WE wanted it to fit
.The vanity really got its “look” from the sink & faucet; that was donated to us by our friends at V & W Supply in Birmingham, AL. Without that sink and faucet .. I really just don’t think it would have looked nearly as nice as it turned out. We’ll be forever grateful to V & W!
We also replaced that rediculous toilet with a new one (A Kohler slim-line, dual flush model, then Persuade ). That slim-line toilet really helped the room feel more spacious; since it wasn’t filled up with a big ole, honkin, ugly toilet anymore lol.
The Ready Suite was a really big challenge for us.
From the circus print tack board (that was firmly mounted to the wall)
to the dirty, electric green, red, yellow, & blue VCT flooring .. we had our work cut out for us.
The closet looked like a homeless person had been living in it. We were really shocked at how dirty & nasty it was.
The shelf (which was padded) on the wall was hiding a big surprise .. a huge hole in the wall (big kudos to Rachael for patching that!) plus .. 2 outlets that were situated halfway up the wall .. YIKES!
There were also some of the ugliest, laminate, chipped (here we see the only time I bet Rachael didn’t like something that was “chippy”) falling apart, lockers in the “mud room”.
On the ceiling were these red, stained glass (what we lovingly started referring to as the candy bowls) light fixtures, and who could forget all the anodized gold fixtures everywhere (door pulls , faucets, shower doors .. ugh).
Some of our favorite items included the 1906 window chalkboard that Rachael & Jennie made,
the super cute pet bed (thanks again Kim for the pillow!),
the idea to put to the birds nest inside the side table (thanks to our instructor, Perry Umphrey, was probably the thing I heard most people comment on, as they passed through our spaces on the tour,
and the awesome job Karen did recovering the padded (once circus print engulfed) snap-board.
All-in-all, the unique things we included throughout our space really paid off.
Throughout our Decorator Showhouse experience we encountered several hurdles.
The first big road bump was when our tile people backed out on us (holy moley, are you serious batman); so we had to regroup, reorganize, and rethink our design.
Then we had a light fixture shipped 13 states over & get lost in transition somewhere; so we had to figure out what to do about that the week before Showhouse opened.
We may have had a bumpy road, on our way to Showhouseville, but in the end we managed to pull it off (right in the nick of time, literally ... the day before Showhouse opened lol).
Showhouse was a lot of work, and even though we might have moaned and groaned and lost a lot of hours of work (and sleep) because of it .. the entire group really did enjoy every minute of it (except for maybe when people asked us 42 bah-gillion times, while hosting our room during the tour "how many bathrooms were in the house" or said, “aww look it’s the dog’s room” .. lol).
