interior paint colors: 2008-05-18

Alidad and Chelsea Editions

Close up photograph of an Alidad designed room.

Chelsea Editions, the England based fabric and furniture company recently announced that both Robert Kime and Alidad were joining their ranks with a new line of embroidered fabrics. While no mention of the Robert Kime partnership has yet made it onto Chelsea Edition's web site, the Alidad association is now online to be viewed.

The one name Alidad, Persian born and London based, is known for his classic, opulent, and sometimes over the top interiors. He started his career as head of Sotheby's Islamic Works of Art department before turning his energies to interior design. Alidad quickly became famous for his richly decorated rooms, which often have a masculine leaning. Always gorgeous, his interiors are laden with luxurious fabrics and textiles and layers upon layers of richly textured patterns. Minimalism is not a term that Alidad has any knowledge of. Every surface in an Alidad designed room is addressed and is either fauxed, papered, or upholstered. Only the most fortunate few can afford the sumptious luxury of an Alidad interior.

As such, Alidad's association with Chelsea Editions comes as somewhat of a surprise. Chelsea Editions is famous for their soothing toned checks and stripes and their extensive collection of Indian hand embroidered fabrics with butterflies, flowers, and vines stitched in mostly muted tones. Hardly the stuff of the velvet damasks and silk brocades that Alidad prefers to use. But, being a Persian, Alidad has remained true to his roots and his obvious love of Ottoman design, art, and textiles. This love influenced his fabric range for Chelsea Editions. Called "Bosphorous" - his embroidered fabrics have been scaled down for today's interiors, and their colors are muted so as to mix with antique textiles. Additionally, Alidad placed the patterns between stripes - perfect for wallcoverings a la Michael Smith's famous Urban Outfitter's Indian Bedspread Room. With names like Goli, Layla, Cyprus, and Naz, the influence of the Ottoman empire on the fabrics is hard to ignore. Here's a sneak peak at a few of the new Alidad designed Chelsea fabrics. Hopefully - we'll get a glimpse of Robert Kime's new collection soon:

Saz

A close up look of the embroidered detail of the Saz fabric.

Shayla:

Pari:

An Alidad designed drawing room: layers upon layers of opulent excess.

The same drawing room - with a view to the fireplace and bookcases.

An antique suzani from the 19th century was used for a skirted table. In just this small corner, it's interesting to see how many patterns and textiles Alidad used. Every square inch is touched by his hand.

In this famous Alidad dining room, he illuminated Verre églomisé panels on the walls to give the room a romantic candle lit effect.

For a gentleman's bedroom retreat, Alidad used hand tooled leather panels on the walls.

For this paneled library, the wooden walls were too plain for Alidad so he designed faux painted panels to simulate an inlaid effect.

A closeup of the same library's fireplace: Alidad placed a painting over an antique mirror. Layers upon layers are always used to achieve the lush richness of his interiors.

For this listed estate, Buscot Park, Alidad was hired for his knowledge of history and the sensitivity he brought to the project.

Beside Chelsea Editions, Alidad has designed a line of fabrics for Pierre Frey. Here, a multi patterned fabric is laden with the typical Alidad attention to detail and luxury.

Another Pierre Frey fabric by Alidad.

Additionally, Alidad has designed a line of velvet covered furniture for Thomas Messel. Here - a bookcase covered in red velvet and nailheads, with black paw feet.

A candle lit sconce in red velvet.

And, lastly, a round hall table with the same details as above.

Of course, he also designs wall coverings - here a close up of a leather panel called Pomegranate.

A dining room, with the Pomegranate wall covering.

And finally - the man of the hour: Alidad, handsome with just an air of bemused confidence. Notice his red velvet hall table to the left of the sofa. The other two tables are also Alidad designed.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do!!!!

My courtyard with spring flowers going crazy.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my landscaping, bragging really, about how pretty all my flowers were this spring - you can read my braggadocious column here. I also wrote about how, when close to twenty years ago, we were looking for a lot to build our house on and we specifically chose this one because of a beautiful, huge, old water oak that was growing smack in the middle of the front yard. The tree's age and girth even affected the size of our house. In drawing up the floor plans, we shaved approximately five feet off of our front living room - so as not to be forced to cut any of the tree's roots. And then, we flipped our floor plan - putting the garage on the right as opposed to how it was originally drawn on the left, so that we could, of course, showcase the oak tree. As I wrote last April, our tree has been fruitful: one acorn from it produced a baby water oak at the edge of our yard. To save Baby Water Oak, when pouring our concrete driveway, we narrowed it from two lanes to one, a solution that hasn't been very successful - a few visitors have lost their rear view mirrors negotiating the narrow drive and the ominous tree trunk.

Baby Water Oak, grown from an acorn off the huge oak tree on our yard. It creates an obstacle course for visitors. Healthy and growing, no stress for this water oak.

Another acorn from our prolific old tree was taken by Mary, my mother in law, seventeen years ago, right about the time my daughter was born. And grow - they both did. Elisabeth's Tree, as it is known in the family, towers over Mary's yard, letting little sunlight filter in for grass to grow underneath it's branches. As you can surmise, we cherish our tree and nurture it. It's our responsibility. We prune it and feed it and schedule an annual preventive care regimen given by the tree care man. Yet, basically, we leave our tree alone to do what trees do: to shade us, give haven to the squirrels and a nesting home for the birds. People who visit often remark on the tree's beauty and we always agree, exclaiming our deep and profound appreciation for all that our beautiful water oak has added to our lives and our home.

Better days: last summer - lots of dark green leaves.

So, imagine, our horror at discovering that despite all our good intentions, we were killing our beloved tree. When I posted the picture of it last April, I wrote "it's just now getting it's leaves back after winter" - but in truth, the water oak never goes completely bald and by April, the tree should already have had all its new leaves, dark green and shiny. A few days ago, I really opened my eyes to the situation and realized, it's almost June, where are all the new leaves? Why are these leaves so tiny and so light colored? A rush of dread bubbled up as my mind raced - something is seriously wrong here and I placed a frantic call to the tree care man who assured me he would come by the next morning to take a look.

Stressed out tree - reduced canopy with smaller leaves.

The next morning, Ted, the tree man, proclaimed that yes, the tree was definitely stressed out, so stressed out that the leaf canopy was not what is should be. Most distressing of all was his news that we had caused it. You see, last year we added outdoor lights to the house and did some basic upkeep landscaping. Not much grass ever grew underneath the oak, so we decided to add a large flowerbed under the tree. We had it professionally installed by a landscaper. But the design perfectionist in me was never happy aesthetically with the flowerbed, and I had our yard man fix it up, move plants around, add more plants, add mulch, raise the bed, you know - just make it better. But instead, the yard man, not having a degree in Landscape Design or Forestry from Texas A&M raised the bed too high. About a foot too high to be exact. A tree needs its root collar to be exposed to breathe - who knew? Otherwise it suffocates and goes into stress and dies. Hopefully, we may be able to save it at this point, "as long as mushrooms don't start growing on the trunk," the tree man said. Huh???? Today a crew of those pesky illegal aliens showed up to take away all the gorgeous hydrangeas and ferns and begonias. What they left me with was a huge circle of dirt in the middle of my yard, and little holes all over, deep in the ground for "aeration."

The tree men starting their dirty work - I moved the ferns to the back yard.

Eeek - what I'm left with, an empty flowerbed and lots of holes in the ground.

The tree man pulls back the remaining layer of earth around the root collar to show how thick and dense the compacted dirt had become, actually suffocating the tree. You can see a line around the base where the soil came up to - almost over a foot too high.

And so, tonight, I'm left with the barren bed and an almost bare tree. It's all as ugly as can be, but hopefully, along with a regimen of medicine, our tree will start breathing again and will flourish. Hopefully. Otherwise, we're in the market for a either a new tree or a new home. Learn from our mistake: don't build up soil around the base of any tree. The soil should be level or even below level around the root collar. We were told we could plant ivy on the barren circle, as long as we don't add any soil. We'll see. We're going to give it time to just breathe. Do we think just removing the dirt will cure the stress? At this point, it's hard to believe - we're just going to have to wait it out.

If the tree does die, we're moving. It will be too hard to live here without it. We'll be in the market for a house like this, somewhere in the south of France. It's best to always look on the bright side, I've been told.

Anyone who knows me can tell you that I am very particular about the photos I post on my blog. So, it pains me to see the "before" photos of my friend's bachelor pad posted before I have any "after" photos to share. But everyone has been asking for them so I thought I might as well go for it since I have updates to the project to tell you about.

Above is a view of the living room. It's not terrible but it's not great. The walls are a pale sage and the furniture is a mix of mid-century and country. I realized after talking to my friend's step-mother that anything decent in the apartment came from her including the C&B Italia sofa from 1973, the glass and chrome coffee table, and the window blinds. More on her and the fab furniture in a later post! My friend bought the rug and likes it so I'm incorporating it into the design. Of course, I had to get it cleaned and order a rug pad. I slid on the darned thing every time I crossed the room. At one point, I thought I was going to take a header into the coffee table. The walls in the living/office/dining area will be painted Benjamin Moore Collingwood, a pale taupe color.

The audio/visual wall is also due for an update and will be getting a snazzy new console to hide all the stereo/tv ephemera. The business meeting notes taped to the wall will be getting a very professional looking easel and will be relegated to the "office" area. The kitchen is behind the television wall and boy is it lovely.

You're lucky I didn't post the photo the showed the hideous florescent light fixture. The institutional yellow is bad enough but then there are those weird curved "wall splashes" (I don't know what else to call them) on each side wall that are killing me. My original plan was to paint the kitchen dark brown a la Ron Marvin, and install mercury glass back splashes but since it's a rental, I didn't want to tear those things off and create a bigger mess. So now the kitchen will be painted Benjamin Moore Dove Wing and I pray that it makes those things less noticeable. We're also taking off the "swinging door" which is completely useless since it runs into the stove which juts out too far. Gotta love it.

This is the view to the front door with the other kitchen door open and one of the two entry closet doors visible. There are a lot of doors in this place with not so nice trim so I am planning to just paint the entire entry including the trim and doors Benjamin Moore Middlebury Brown so they hopefully all blend in and disappear. I am also going to take page out of my friend Maison21's rule book and install a dimmer on the entry light. You can never underestimate the power of mood lighting.

This cheap monstrosity of a book case will be one piece of furniture that will not be staying. In it's place will be a large console table topped with a pair of lamps and a mirror to reflect the light from the wall of windows in the living room. I also would like to flank it with a pair of chairs but we'll have to see how far the budget takes us. I practically had to pry the credit card out of my friend's hand today in order to buy the paint so I don't think I'm going to be getting any more money for this job. Oh, did I mention I'm not even getting paid? We'll discuss that later. Moving on...

Are we in a fishing lodge or a New York apartment? Hard to tell huh? All of that is going, needless to say. It's too bad my friend doesn't have a country house. We could relocate everything to it and kill two birds with one stone. I might have to work with the dining table but the pale blue ladder back chairs will be replaced with something more modern. Not sure what yet. The unfortunate light will also be replaced.

As I mentioned earlier, the blinds are actually nice so they are staying. One less thing for me to worry about! Funny there is a bike in the dining room considering all the empty closet space. That and the fact that I can't actually see my friend riding it!

The bedroom isn't that bad actually. We're keeping the wood sleigh bed but replacing the mattress. I've also picked out two vintage bedside tables with drawers. It's hard to tell from this photo but there is a lot of floor space so I'd love to add a pair of chairs by the window and move the brass Cedric Hartman looking reading lamps next to them. I also found a great double dresser with leather handles from Ralph Lauren that I would love to add to the wall across from the foot of the bed but it's $7,000 price tag is a little steep for our budget.

I'm planing to paint the walls Benjamin Moore Horizon, a pale grey blue. The plastering has already begun and the painters are hopefully starting on Tuesday. My friend said his apartment looked like a flop house last night which made me laugh. I think he was a bit naive as to the amount of work that goes into even the smallest design project. But in the end, it will all be worth it. I just hope I get invited over to enjoy all my hard work!

CUBRECAMAS DE COLORES PARA NIÑAS CON DISEÑOS DE BARBIE - DISNEY

Todos estos diseños, modelos de cubrecamas, colchas, mantas, edredones son de la empresa Tienda Textil que esta ubicado en España. Son edredones y cubrecamas con figuras de Barbie - Disney, excelente para las niñas. Todos los modelos y diseños tienen colores variados entre rosados, blancos, rojos, lilas, etc.

Imágenes: tiendatextil.com

LINDAS Y COLORIDAS CUBRECAMAS, EDREDONES INFANTILES PARA NIÑOS Y NIÑAS

Cubrecamas, edredones coloridos para los engreidos de la casa. Perfecto para combinar con mas detalles. Para las niñas es mucho más que edredones color rosado y bellas flores: ellas quieren edredones con princesas, colchas con estampado floral, coloridos juegos de edredones, ropa de cama con estampado de camuflaje en rosa, juegos de edredones con estampado animal y elegante ropa de cama, con princesas para las camas con dosel. Ademas de ello se presentan articulos combinables con el edredon, cubrecama, sabanas, etc.