Bathroom Textiles and Linens

You may have spotted our Q&A on bedroomsandbathsmag.com with Pandora de Balthazar, a master collector and textile expert who’s been sharing with us her expert tips for creating a luxurious bedroom. Curious about her advice for a lavish bathroom? Read on!

B&B: In the bathroom, where people don’t often think of textiles and linens, what are some of your favorite ways to use fabric?

Pandora: Hand towels are in residence daily. They are softer [than paper towels], have many uses and are much more genteel.

B&B: Also much more practical and healthful for the environment.

Pandora: Yes. And in my home, café curtains are de riguer; I can recycle those for use in the bedrooms and as door treatments when necessary. I also make shower curtains or drapes from antique sheets or bedcovers that are too small for today’s large beds. It’s a beautiful and simple look.

By Jickie Torres

We Love: Flour Power

Reuse what you have in romantic ways. Pick up home decorating ideas from items you may already have around the house. Today, we shine a little light on vintage flour sifters for many purposes they fulfill. 

Not only do we love vintage flour sifters for their nostalgic and practical appeal, but they also make colorful utensil holders.

You can find them in an array of designs at antique shops and flea markets.

Display them on your kitchen counter or atop the cabinets and fridge for instant country charm. Then place your cooking utensils inside for a look that will serve you a smile as you reach for the spatula.

Photography by Jacqueline deMontravel

Tips to Take a Look from Work to Home

As a shopkeeper for an antiques store, Sally McNellis employs a few tricks of the trade in her own home. Here are a few of her tried-and-true secrets:

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• Start with the simplicity of white furniture and build from there.

• Use lots of fabric with basic white as the background, then bring in
floral prints to add pop to a room.

• Artwork adds personality to a space. Sally pulls anything from originals to antiques to fill her store.

• Be reasonable about how the item fits in with your lifestyle. Your
furniture and accessories should work for you, not against you.

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By Regan-Elyse Elder
Photography by Jaimee Itagaki
Styled by Jacqueline de Montravel

Shared by Cottages and Bunglaows

How to Enhance a Historic Home

The right architect and contractor will enhance a historic home’s aesthetic integrity.

The true value of the renovation of an old house is not being able to tell that any alterations were made. Architect Carol Tink-Fox chose to put the addition on Kara Kosinski’s garage instead of on the main house to maintain what she calls the “cute cottage character” of the historic home. “By making a separate small building, we kept the new space historically in context,” she says.

Home Cottages

Here is what she did to link the past and the present:

• A steep-pitched roof and attic were added to the flat-roofed garage, which also has a historic designation.
• The home’s exterior color scheme was repeated on the addition and garage.
• Heavy-timber beams along the breezeway with diagonal braces evoke the feel of those of the main house.
• Windows and French doors open the guest room to the beautifully landscaped backyard. Because the garage is on a slab, unlike the house, there are no steps to go down to enter the garden.
• The old swing-style garage doors, which looked like barn doors, were replicated. Contractor Scot Lewis custom built the fully weather-proofed doors using tongue and grove pine with solid brass oil-rubbed bronze hinges.

By Nancy A. Ruhling
Photography by Jaimee Itagaki
Styled by Molly Kosinski and Hillary Black

Shared By Cottages And Bungalows

How to Get Chic Style in a Country Home

Designer Nancy Toon has lived in palaces, estates and posh townhouses but found a way to make her big style shine in a small country house. She shares her tips for getting chic style no matter where you are.

• I like starting out with large-scale furniture. In a large room, it is substantial and provides a good foundation; in small spaces, it creates warmth and coziness.
• Then I like to add textures in the fabrics. I use a lot of linens and white denim because it’s very practical, and neutral backgrounds allow you to change and update your look. I add patterns in pillows, and textures are found in the woods I use and peeling-paint patinas in accessories.
• Working with today’s much simpler palettes, you have to layer, otherwise the look can easily fall flat and feel cold. Use a variety of textures and subtle patterns.
• If you mix new with old you get comfort of newly designed items with the depth of antiques.
• Accessories are what really pull your look together. I like to use metals with great textures. Antique mercury, hand-blown glass candlesticks, natural corals from the beach— these are elements that add unique style and personality.

Working at Home

Nancy uses her home as a testing ground for her new projects and merchandise.  “I use my house as a workshop,” she says. “It is very important to me that I only offer my customers things that I would want.”

This rotating array of items also helps to keep her design stimulated and evolving. As things make their way in and out, it helps to keep Nancy in touch with how her clients live and what they would want.

“Being based in the Hamptons, our clients come to their weekend homes to relax with friends and family and so our design is based on their requirements for casual but sophisticated rooms for elegant living and entertaining,” she says.

By Jickie Torres
Photography by Jacqueline deMontravel

Victorian Home Office

In the 19th century, there was no such thing as a home office. Or at least there was no single room that bore that name. In the humblest households, all the work of running the home was done by the woman, and her workspaces were scattered about, often carved out of spare space. She had separate areas for her main tasks—cooking, cleaning, ironing and sewing—but the nerve center of her operations was the Victorian version of the computer: the chatelaine, that brass or silver ornament that held pencil and paper, penknife and scissors, needle and thread handily at her waist.

{Image courtesy of Thinkstock.com}

Her well-heeled sisters didn’t have it much better. They might have a writing desk or escritoire in the bedroom or—later in the century as posh gentlemen’s clubs reared their vainglorious heads—a place to work in the library while the husband of the house was out on the town.

The Victorian library, which sometimes also functioned as a schoolroom, office or study, tended to be decorated in a somber manner befitting its function. Furniture was simple, colors were dark and the prime focus was on the artful and efficient display of books, whether they be rare and beautifully bound collector’s volumes or the popular tomes penned by novelists like Twain and Dickens.

Photo by Jaimee Itagaki

When designing her home office, Marcia Sola wanted, like the Victorians, to balance the artful and the efficient. Two ways she did were selecting the perfect drapes and desk.

The drapes in Marcia Sola’s home office are high on looks and low in cost. For about $300-$430 for the discount fabric and $130 for rods and tiebacks—she turned two plain windows into elegant and opulent focal points.

The drapes get their good looks from the combination of three fabrics that play off the wall colors: a burgundy undercurtain made of shimmering taffeta, a pink-and-white toile and a brown and blush floral.
“I layered the fabrics to get a fuller effect,” she says. “They do actually close, but I never draw them. I use the shades to provide privacy.”

Gathered gracefully in a pocket rod and looped back over rosette-style tiebacks, the draperies look like vintage ballgowns.

The library table remains one of the better choices for an office desk because it is so versatile. Simple and stylish, it is perfect for a laptop or computer because it has a spacious flat top. When it is not being used for office work, it can be used for other more leisure purposes: It makes a great dining table, baking or food prep table (buy a heavy pad to protect its surface) or a buffet sideboard.

Then again, you may actually want to use it for what it was intended: a place to read a book or two—hardback, paperback or even electronic.

by Nancy A. Ruhling
Photography by Jaimee Itagaki

Why I Love Flea Market Decor

I visited a flea market for the first time when I was eighteen years old.

I was eager to feather my first nest, and the deals couldn’t be beat. If my finds weren’t perfect, fixing them up was the fun part.

Even know, all these years later, giving a new home to a cool cast-off is my decorating style of choice. The office in which I write is filled with furniture and accessories from flea markets, antique malls and thrift stores, including a $30 wooden desk and a $45 buffet that were both transformed with paint and elbow grease. Among the mix you also will find an old brass lamp, a collection of cool vintage frames, original flower paintings….the list goes on. So, working on the Flea Market Décor website and print issues is always a labor of love.

Let us introduce you to spaces decorated in a variety of styles—from eclectic, romantic and farmhouse to mid-century modern, French, or a blend of two or more. Peruse our extensive directory of the best flea markets across the country and the world. Check our list of hot collectibles before you head out to search for your next big find. Follow our how-to guide to upcycling the next vintage piece you bring home with a horrid finish and beautiful bones.

Whatever you need, if you love flea market décor like me, we’ve got you covered.

Enjoy!

By Rebecca Ittner

Source : Flea Market Decor