I write Decorating Our Space from a rented flat in Portland where two rooms get real light and one never will. I measure a room before I decide anything in it, and when a change did not hold, the article says so.
A friend once asked me why her dresser drawers had started sticking after less than a year, while the one she inherited from her mother, decades old, still open
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Matching the hardware to the actual weight of a piece, not a guess, is what keeps art on the wall. A simple…
I measured my own living room with a tape measure last winter, on my hands and knees, because I could not figure…
I painted a small powder room a deep charcoal after years of hearing dark colors shrink small spaces. That advice isn't wrong.…
For two years I lived in a room where my bed was eleven feet from my sofa, close enough that I could…
Most beginner mistakes are not about bad taste. They are about sequence and scale. Here are the ones I made myself and…
I resisted double curtain rods for years because I thought they would make my windows look busy. Then I spent a summer…
My front door has a brass handle gone dark and uneven from twenty years of hands before mine. I could polish it…
My grandmother had a sofa that lasted thirty years. The fabric was reupholstered twice, but the frame never sagged, never creaked, and…
Mirrors are heavier than art, reflect whatever is opposite them, and need their own hanging rules. A few placement mistakes are easy…