Written 9 January, 2007
I Get a Career
IV. Decorator Chey
I’m an interior decorator.
And an exterior decorator, I guess.
Several people have been so impressed with the furniture I threw out in the House of 1000 Pleasures that they’ve suggested I make decorating my SL career.
And so I shall.
When I’ve shopped for myself, it’s been with an eye toward not only aesthetics (do I like it?), but style (I’ve been specifically looking for Island and Asian textures and designs), and, of course, prim count and price, and whether it’s copyable or transferable. I sometimes deliberately place discordant and even jarring objects so things don’t get too stuffy, and I have a hard time passing up a bargain in any style, but I definitely shop with a purpose in mind. And when I throw it out in the Zubi house or the House of 1000 pleasures, it just works.
I’ve just been doing what has become habit with me in my first life. Lots of us do the same thing in Second Life. But some of us need a little help.
I know I did. In RL.
I bought my first house in 1989. Until then, the places I’d lived had just been boxes into which to put my stuff. I’d had no coherent purpose in decorating. I just stuck in whatever I had.
Not that my places were ugly, but they did lack that certain je ne sans quoit.
My RL house was built as a one-room cabin in 1936; ground floor rooms and a second floor were added over the years.
It sits on a tiny lot in equally tiny Pine Lake, Georgia, a little lake community that was once a blue-collar resort and still looks like a Girl Scout camp. So it’s no surprise that my home is cottagy.
Before I bought my house, I walked through it with a RL friend and we talked about what the house wanted to be.
She has a fabulous taste for decorating. Her house in Ann Arbor is amazing, and I wanted her input.
I love Southwest decor, and there was a stone fireplace that screamed Southwest, but it was clear to both of us that the house was a cottage and would have to remain so.
And so a cottage it has become.
I did manage to throw in a little of the Southwest in the form of the fabric I chose for the living room furniture, but the rest of the decor is straight out of the first half of the twentieth century: Mission style sofa and chair and an antique library table, blue-and-white kitchen, Tiffany-style light fixtures (and some Asian elements in the form of screens and an old Japanese watercolor). Outside I turned an old stone barbecue grill into a fish pond and built a summerhouse.
And my friend was with me every step of the way. She was my interior design consultant.
The house turned out wonderfully—and I learned a LOT in the process.
It’s not your usual Atlanta yuppie McMansion—I wouldn’t be caught dead in one—just a refurbished funky Pine Lake house. And I love it.
And so I give you Chey the decorator.
-----
Photo 1: Pine Lake (Vintage photo)
I Get a Career
IV. Decorator Chey
I’m an interior decorator.
And an exterior decorator, I guess.
Several people have been so impressed with the furniture I threw out in the House of 1000 Pleasures that they’ve suggested I make decorating my SL career.
And so I shall.
When I’ve shopped for myself, it’s been with an eye toward not only aesthetics (do I like it?), but style (I’ve been specifically looking for Island and Asian textures and designs), and, of course, prim count and price, and whether it’s copyable or transferable. I sometimes deliberately place discordant and even jarring objects so things don’t get too stuffy, and I have a hard time passing up a bargain in any style, but I definitely shop with a purpose in mind. And when I throw it out in the Zubi house or the House of 1000 pleasures, it just works.
I’ve just been doing what has become habit with me in my first life. Lots of us do the same thing in Second Life. But some of us need a little help.
I know I did. In RL.
I bought my first house in 1989. Until then, the places I’d lived had just been boxes into which to put my stuff. I’d had no coherent purpose in decorating. I just stuck in whatever I had.
Not that my places were ugly, but they did lack that certain je ne sans quoit.
My RL house was built as a one-room cabin in 1936; ground floor rooms and a second floor were added over the years.
It sits on a tiny lot in equally tiny Pine Lake, Georgia, a little lake community that was once a blue-collar resort and still looks like a Girl Scout camp. So it’s no surprise that my home is cottagy.
Before I bought my house, I walked through it with a RL friend and we talked about what the house wanted to be.
She has a fabulous taste for decorating. Her house in Ann Arbor is amazing, and I wanted her input.
I love Southwest decor, and there was a stone fireplace that screamed Southwest, but it was clear to both of us that the house was a cottage and would have to remain so.
And so a cottage it has become.
I did manage to throw in a little of the Southwest in the form of the fabric I chose for the living room furniture, but the rest of the decor is straight out of the first half of the twentieth century: Mission style sofa and chair and an antique library table, blue-and-white kitchen, Tiffany-style light fixtures (and some Asian elements in the form of screens and an old Japanese watercolor). Outside I turned an old stone barbecue grill into a fish pond and built a summerhouse.
And my friend was with me every step of the way. She was my interior design consultant.
The house turned out wonderfully—and I learned a LOT in the process.
It’s not your usual Atlanta yuppie McMansion—I wouldn’t be caught dead in one—just a refurbished funky Pine Lake house. And I love it.
And so I give you Chey the decorator.
-----
Photo 1: Pine Lake (Vintage photo)
Photo 2: My house in Pine Lake, outside
Photo 3: My house, inside
Photo 4: My house, inside
Photo 5: Back door, before my little project (in next blog entry)
Photo 6: Back door, after my little project (in next blog entry)
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