RoomFu

If you’re tired of fighting your home’s decor, now’s a good time to tag us in. Room Fu is offering summer savings deals!

10% off IN-HOME CONSULTATIONS
Here’s where the gloves come off. You tell us what’s broken, we suggest ways to fix it. We’ll take on your design demons!

10% off SPACEPLANNING
Let us wrestle your furniture into the perfect arrangement. We can create a bird’s eye view of your space that’s accessible from any Internet connection–even your smartphone–showing you where to place new and old furnishings. Plus, the spaceplan includes dimensions for any new stuff you may need, making it a must-have shopping tool.

15% off MATERIALS SELECTION SERVICES
Choosing the right materials and furnishings is half the battle. Get a designer’s input before you start shelling out the big bucks for sofas, flooring and/or tile! (Furniture selections may require a spaceplan.)

20% off STYLING SERVICES
This is how we really make our clients’ rooms shine. Let our decorating ninjas accessorize and style your space so everything looks tied together. Styling includes expert art installation, finesse with accessories, and arranging bookshelves so they’re visually de-cluttered. We can use your existing accessories, purchase new things, or a combination of both. Styling sessions typically last 3 hours for one room, additional rooms vary. If we need to freshen your look with new purchases, we usually need an additional 3-5 hours, depending on the length of your shopping list. (In-home styling sessions require a $35/hr styling assistant. No discount on styling assistant fees.)

Bookings are subject to availability. Discounts are applied to our current published rates and do not apply to travel fees, merchandise, or styling assistant. Expires June 15th.

Luchador paintings by Stephanie Nance. Buy prints here!

Speaking of HGTV, Room Fu is proud to have designed not one but TWO living rooms featured in this HGTV.com slideshow titled “Living Room Looks We’re Loving!” (Photos #6 and #7.)

Contact us to turn your living room into one that you’ll love!

HGTV Design Star Season 7 finalist Jordan Cappella has my wheels turning in anticipation. This dude werrrrrks. He’s a non-drinking party boy who tried to bag a millionaire husband on Millionaire Matchmaker, got injections all over his face on Nip/Tuck knockoff Pretty Hurts, and now he’s on Design Star.

Jordan's appearance on Millionaire Matchmaker.

Most of Jordan’s portfolio consists of his own uber-tasteful apartment and collaborative work with fellow designer and BFF Vanessa De Vargas, so it seems like he’s been working primarly on furniture design as opposed to a lot of actual design consulting. If you troll his blog, there’s a huge leap in quality and taste level between what he’s done over the past year and what came before. Take his living room for example. His initial design looked like this:

Then he got some sense in his head and eliminated those horrible wallpaper panels. Although the patterns in this room “should” work, the combination above doesn’t feel nearly as refined as this year’s incarnation:

I get a distinct Emily Henderson (DS Season 5 winner) vibe from this room, with all of the navy, brass and vintage-meets-modern. That navy grasscloth is to die for–so elegant!

I’m also happy to see the update he gave his bedroom over the past year. His original design features another jarring combination of prints and wall art that fights with the wallpaper.

Now the space looks infinitely more sophisticated, although I’m still aching for those curtain panels to morph into something more streamlined:

I do love this bedroom he designed for a women’s shelter, full of savvy tricks for stretching a budget:

The way Jordan reworked that laminate vanity is so genius. I am also really digging the thick black border on the plain door–that just screams hotel chic and doesn’t cost squat to pull off. I’m really impressed by this makeover. The other side of the room is really beautiful as well:

Note the budget-friendly headboard decal.

…although I’m bummed to see him repeat his own shower curtain design in the curtain panels above.

Jordan's Venice Beach bathroom.

That kind of repetition is a buzzkill.

Furniture is where Jordan really shines, and his clear passion is lucite. I love this idea of encasing something old, particularly after reading that the vintage trunk belonged to the client’s grandparents:

Jordan’s lucite side table has been featured in a myriad of shelter mags:

There’s more where that came from:

Jordan's lucite ottoman was featured in Sunset magazine, among others.

Jordan's lucite coffee table was featured in Australian Home Beautiful.

Jordan admitted on his blog back in February that when his DIY efforts had been tested (vague reference to his Design Star experience before the cast was officially announced), “I was not impressed with my own abilities.” So I’m imagining that what we’ll get from Jordan are either a lot of great ideas that end up sucking when it comes down to execution, or he’ll dumb down his designs to work within the framework of his limited DIY skills. I remain cautiously optimistic but don’t see him as a sure thing to win the title.

HGTV’s seventh season of Design Star premieres May 29th. Stay tuned to Fu For Thought for another year of episodic critiques throughout the season!

HGTV Design Star Season 7 finalist Hilari Younger is from Dallas, so we have another Texan to cheer for! Hilari’s portfolio and web presence is pretty limited. The six photos of her work tell me she’s a designer who understands color. I expect her to put some interesting combinations together and that makes me happy. Her Twitter feed reveals a lady with some spunk, too, so I’m anxious to watch her.

At least a third of Hilari’s portfolio is made up of photos from her own home, which is usually a tip-off that we’re dealing with an amateur. She obviously knows how to work with pattern and color, though, and that goes a long way with me. I love these rooms:

Hilari's daughter's bedroom is a-dor-a-ble.

And then Hilari takes an unexpected detour to Frumpytown:

There are more photos on her Ufunkshen Facebook page, but it’s unclear as to whether these are photos of her own work, or images she admires. Either way, it’s clear that Hilari’s taste level rates right up there, and since she features some DIY skill, I expect her to do pretty well in the competition.

The seventh season of Design Star premieres May 29th on HGTV.

There’s an aloof quality to Design Star Season 7 finalist Danielle Colding that makes her potential as a competitor difficult to nail down. Her Twitter feed is only days old and so far she’s only tweeted impersonal announcements about the show. Likewise with her Facebook page. Once upon a time, she had a design firm named Chandani Design, but that website’s been wiped out. I get the distinct impression that she erased as much of her pre-Design Star Internet presence as she could before the cast announcement, which makes me wonder, why?

This video from a year ago reveals a side to Danielle that is very down to earth. She comes across as someone who can be very sweet and normal in the video, but between the don’t-come-near-me body language of her HGTV cast photo above, and this cold pic of her below and all I can think is, don’t cross the tiger lady.

In terms of her life and her work, Danielle seems to gravitate toward opposite ends of the spectrum. Having an anthropology degree from Stanford says she has a strong intellectual side. Her previous life as a professional dancer and the two weeks she spent on a beach in Brazil contemplating the meaning of her life before pursuing a career in interior design (as she admits in the video) tell me she has a spiritual–and maybe borderline bohemian–quality to her as well.

This dichotomy definitely plays out in her portfolio. Much of her is true to her last name–very cold:

Then there are these little quirky zingers mixed in that reveal a fun side to her personality:

Heart this backsplash!

Not necessarily quirky, but definitely warmer.

The pops of goldenrod in the throw and some accessories warm up this otherwise cold space.

There are overtones of richness and elegance throughout the entirety of Danielle’s work, but there’s this loneliness to her portfolio that I can’t shake–as if the bulk of her clients are Bruce Wayne types who are rich in terms of financial means, but lacking the familial bonds that make life complete.

There’s so much polish to these rooms, I wonder if she can hang with the DIY aspect of the competition. I hope the challenges of tight timeframes and budgets force more of her fun side to come out and play.

HGTV’s seventh season of Design Star premieres May 29th.

Design Star Season 7 cast member Britany Simon is gorgeous–that’s first and foremost. The word bombshell comes to mind. Looking at this picture, I’m expecting a fair amount of baby talk to come out of her mouth:

I just got back from the mall!

But then I see Britany’s audition video–very polished, BTW–and there’s not so much baby talk as there is Valley Speak. So we’re still at the mall, but it’s the one in the high end part of town. She’s owning a lot of authority than I hadn’t previously given her credit for.

Britany’s profile practically writes itself. The girl has serious style, but her portfolio’s like a broken record, repeating the same elements over and over in different scenarios. Take these dining chairs, for instance…

We have them with white seats:

In a black and white awning stripe:

And a trellis print:

That vase above, the one that looks like a tissue holder filled with faux flowers? It sees plenty of action too:

Pretty kitchen, but that rug's a bit bath mat-y.

But the worst is that Britany’s never met a chevron pattern she didn’t like. She’d especially like to marry a black and white chevron rug, if her portfolio is any indication:

Britany’s portfolio is every bit as gorgeous as she is. But I know a crutch when I see one…when one third of your portfolio features chevron patterns, it’s time to switch things up a bit! Will she be able to design on the fly without depending on the same patterns over and over?

And will she do something on Design Star that will make me forget I ever saw this boring travertine stuff in her portfolio?

Spendy, but boring.

Ditto.

Stay tuned after the cast critiques for Room Fu’s predictions about the next season of Design Star, premiering May 29th on HGTV.

HGTV announced its new cast lineup for Season 7 of Design Star, and as always, it’s a mixed bag of tricks. Who better to start off our annual cast critique than Bex Hale, from Abilene, Texas!

You have actually “met” Bex before on this blog, without knowing it. Some of you may remember that I saw someone at the casting session here in Austin who was wearing a church lady hat and an icky outfit…then found out through the grapevine that she had progressed to the next level of casting (scroll down to the bottom for visuals)? Well, that was Bex.

Except it wasn’t.

There’s no way I saw her correctly. You just can’t convince me that this gorgeous gal was the frumpy woman I saw at the casting session. Plus, I have searched the Internets far and wide and while I have seen oodles of pictures (and videos) of her in hats, I’ve yet to find one I would describe as frumpy. I’ve confirmed that Bex is indeed the friend of the Donna-Decorates-Dallas-style designer I mentioned in my earlier casting session post, so all I can say is there must have been some sort of across-the-room visual distortion going on.

Bex Hale, a.k.a. Rebecca Allen Hale, has one of those names that sounds manufactured (bEXHALE) but probably wasn’t. Slap on the vintage wardrobe and she’s starting to get very film noir. Originally from Portland, Oregon, Bex and I have a few things in common besides our occupation…red hair, an extensive hat collection (at last count, I had 92, mostly vintage), and we’ve both attended Abilene Christian University and lived to tell the tale.

Shocker, I know. Listen, my parents made me go for one hellish year and then I got the hell out as quickly as possible. My experience is that it was a great place to go if you wanted to be married by the age of 21, but not necessarily so awesome if you were a woman with a brain in your head and an intention to use it. I could bitch about how evil ACU and its ilk are for hours, but that’s not why we gathered here today, so let’s get back to Bex.

Girl has some chops. She’s the longtime owner and lead designer of Relics Home in Abilene, a retail furnishings store featuring many fair trade and recycled products. One of the “Best Stores in Town” according to Shopping Across Texas, the store has some devoted fans.

Relics Home in Abilene, TX.

I don’t love everything in her portfolio, but there’s some good stuff in there.

I’m in love with this composition, with the bright blue wash on these carved church doors:

The wall shelves are beautiful, and although I’d want something comfier in the bedroom, this industrial chair is pretty cool:

I’m still not sure I like this Bex-designed metallic wallpaper, but I applaud the risk-taking and the blue-orange combo. High drama.

And three cheers to anyone who would hang a velvet Elvis in their dining room–I truly love that bit of humor!

Last but not least, I’m a big fan of dark and dramatic bedrooms:

This is all well and good so far, and if we only had these images to go by, you might say we have a winner. Bex seems comfortable on camera, has a uniquely attractive look, and has several beautifully-composed rooms in her portfolio that are shot by professional editorial photographers. But then her portfolio takes on some serious Texas Twang and there’s enough faux finishing and peach paint to choke a longhorn:

Yikes.

Finally, here’s a room that screams, “I’m going to sell these rich yokels as much merch from my store as is humanly possible.”

There’s a lot of potential for this room to be cute, but it’s in need of serious editing. Despite the description on hgtv.com referring to this as a teenager’s bedroom, I’ll wager that what we’re really looking at is an in-store display–which is a whole other animal. I’ll double down and bet you dollars to donuts that all of the photos you see above that do not feature an actual window (curtains without exposed windows don’t count) are also in-store displays. If so, I wish they’d just been labeled as such.

Unfortunately for Bex, I find it highly unlikely that HGTV will follow last year’s winning redheaded retail store owner with another redheaded retail store owner, so I doubt Bex makes it to the end. I do see her making it through the halfway mark though. I suspect she’ll make Texans look good.

The seventh season of Design Star premieres on HGTV, May 29th.

Ugh.

I want to like this show. I really, really want to like this show. But if you were one of the network execs and you were debuting a new show on television that doesn’t depend on airing the episodes in any particular sequence, you’d pick the end-all-be-all episode to use as your premiere, right? If that was in fact the case with White Room Challenge, then this is probably the last time I’ll take the time to write about it. A spin-off from Design Star, I’m gearing up for WRC to follow in DS’s footsteps–a show that falls short of its incredible potential.

Having interviewed WRC host David Bromstad a couple of weeks ago for the Williams-Sonoma Designer Marketplace blog (link to come, when it goes live) and heard from the horse’s mouth that these rooms are “stronger than what you see on Design Star,” I had a certain level of expectation.

What a huge disappointment.

Normally, the designers shop in some genre of store that is not normally associated with home decor. The idea is to repurpose this odd assortment of goods and use them in unexpected ways. That kind of challenge inspires creativity, and since the room is not meant to be functional, the space tends to be much like an artistic installation. The designers in this episode shopped at a floral market and were required to incorporate 1,500 stems into their design. Unfortunately, only one designer dipped his toe into the repurposing waters. The remaining three designers held a death grip on literal uses for the plant material.

If I were going to title it, I’d call this episode White Room Challenge: Gluing Flowers to Stuff.

Saadia Kibriya channels her inner Crafting Queen.

There were just two innovative ideas in the whole episode, and they were both created by the same designer, so let’s start the critique with him.

DAVID FONT
Parkland, FL

David Font's colorful living room design.

David Font is a landscape architect who claims he’s “never touched a flower in his life.” Okay, we get that you’re a big, strong man and all, but really? Seems far fetched. The second I heard that, I knew the producers were setting him up as the underdog and that he was probably the winner. (I was right.) Anyway, the two things David does that are worth noting are his pressed-flower coffee table and the bamboo effect he creates on the back wall with discarded flower stems. Other than that, there’s just too much going on. We’re striping walls for the hell of it instead of creating some sense with them. We’re also just throwing a lot of flowers in pots and planters. As much as I love the colors and appreciate the idea behind the coffee table, I don’t want to linger on this room…my eyes need a rest.

MATTHEW BEES
Charleston, SC

Matthew Bees' chic but standard keeping room.

The visual peace I’m seeking is found in the “keeping room” design created by Matthew Bees. Matthew describes a keeping room as a place to stash people that you want to welcome into your home but you don’t necessarily want to let them “in” in. Matthew’s room is beautiful, there’s no question about that. Everything is tastefully done, well-proportioned, and as far as face value goes, my only beef is the odd color of green on the two chairs. While the room is pleasing to the eye, it’s too safe, too expected. The closest things to innovative are the “sconces” he creates with ivy on the side walls. There’s no element of surprise. But considering how gawd-awful the remaining two designs are, I’m shocked that Matthew falls into third place.

CARISSA MARSON
Auburn, GA

Carissa Marson's floral bistro design.

Carissa Marson’s “floral bistro” features nice pops of color, but other than that, I’m kind of horrified. The outer perimeter of the space is fairly clean, but it looks like Colin Cowie threw up in the middle. I’m also not digging the wedding-esque usage of petals on the floor. How cheesy can you get? When you draw in for a close-up view, it gets even worse:

Yikes.

Double yikes.

What the hell?

During the evaluation segment, judges Bromstad, Jamie Durie and Chris Lambton kept going on and on about how gorgeous Carissa’s room was. “Are you kidding me?” my seven-year old asked. “That’s the worst one ever. It looks like she just threw a bunch of flowers in there.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

SAADIA KIBRIYA
Orange County, CA

Saadia Kibriya's living room design.

“I’m the youngest designer here,” 26-year old Saadia Kibriya cries to the camera. Well, boo-effing-hoo. You can see her wheels turning the whole time. I know what! I’ll glue some rose petals to the couch, and then I’ll glue flowers to the wall, and then I’ll glue up a little rug and, well, I guess I’ll just throw the bookcase on the wall like Matthew did. Then I’ll glue flowers to it!

Blerg.

On top of this giant Rose Bowl Fail, we don’t have a feminine voice on the judging panel, and one of the men they do have doesn’t belong. Who the H is Chris Lambton? The Bachelor? Give me a break. Dude shows up in some fugly plaid shirt that looks like it’s been hanging in the back of his closet for fifteen years. He’s a landscape guy by trade and has a new show coming out on HGTV–which is a mystery itself–but if we have Jamie, we already have the landscaping quotient covered.

How I yearn for a WOW moment.

Interviewing HGTV fave Kim Myles for Williams-Sonoma’s Designer Marketplace was like catching up with an old girlfriend–even though we’ve never met. She has a refreshing perspective on…well, many things, actually. When our convo was over, I was inspired to chillax a little, and maybe you will be too. Read the main interview on the WSDM blog, and enjoy these bits that I reserved for Fu For Thought:

I was really impressed that Kim never said anything bad about anybody while she was competing on Design Star (admittedly not my forte)—even out of self defense. She was very accepting of everyone, regardless of their personality issues.

Well you know what, it’s a big wide world out there and I didn’t trash talk because I don’t believe in it– I think its just intrinsically unfair. I really believe you should do unto others as you hope they do unto you. I’m human and gossip with my girlfriends but I’m not going to get on camera and trash somebody’s work or trash somebody’s personality. I have not walked in their shoes and I don’t know why they are the way that they are. I may not like the way that they are and trust me there were a couple of people that fell into that category, but I felt like you know what, who am I to judge, honestly? I hope that that’s the kind of love and compassion that I am afforded if I’m ever having an off day. My hope is that someone takes a breath and says wow, I don’t know what happened to Kim this morning but I’m going to give her a pass. If I put enough of that out there, I’m going to receive that back and you know what, it’s actually made my life very easy to navigate. I don’t have to watch my back. I don’t have to worry about what I said here or there. It’s just about being, having integrity, and avoiding negative energy that I don’t  want to engage in, because I don’t think that’s effective.  Like I say, I’m no saint and if you are with me and my girlfriends on a Friday night with a bottle of wine you’ll hear some stuff, but you’ll never hear that on television!

Kim had this to say about the difference between designing for reality and designing for TV:

Although I personally tend toward minimalism in my own life, that does not work for television. What I will do for a client in life is very different from what I will do on TV. The aesthetic is the same, but as far as how you fill a space for TV, the camera flattens everything. Good Lord—it  flattens and widens your hips and your belly and the room and everything! It’s very unkind! A three foot wall in life looks like six feet on camera. It stretches, so you have to know how to work with that.

Room Fu Decorologist, Claire Patrick, is one of Kim’s biggest fans. She told me she’d read somewhere that Kim used to design hats–something I used to do myself—so of course I wanted to hear about that!

I would like to say that my hats were the coolest, but they weren’t. They were very “Blossom.”  Of their time, but not the hippest. I made one for Easter when I was 14 or 15, and my Grandfather just loved it, so I made it a bit of a tradition. Each Easter, a random felt hat. What I wouldn’t give for pictures of that!

Uhh, me  too!

Kim blogged about an upcoming move on her website. I asked her what she has planned for her new home’s décor.

I will never repeat a look because I’m kind of a design schizophrenic—I’m not a monogamist when it comes to décor! A new space is an opportunity to do something totally different. We’re selling our house and I’ll be back in a rental for a bit, which is close to my heart since I grew up in them. I love the creative freedom that comes with not owing or being married to a space forever. We’re planning on having an “HGTV Designer” estate sale—we’ll keep all of our basics, but sell off a TON of the décor and furniture that I’ve amassed over the years, so we can start fresh. It’s very exciting!

Read the rest of my interview with Kim Myles at Williams-Sonoma Designer Marketplace! Fans will also want to check out Kim’s new Global Glam stencil line from Cutting Edge Stencils, and don’t miss her website/blog!

Design Star fans will delight in my upcoming series of interviews with HGTV faves for Williams-Sonoma’s Designer Marketplace, starting with this chat with Season 3 runner-up Matt Locke! As most of you know (since I blab it every chance I get), Matt’s become a close friend of mine over the years, and there was no one I’d rather kick off this new series than him. Matt’s been celebrated as both a designer and an accomplished artist, and is currently finishing up the job of his dreams.

Williams-Sonoma has been kind enough to allow me some irreverence in the posts I’ve contributed in the past, but as it is geared toward the trade, a certain level of professionalism must prevail in their blog content. Not so here! I saved a bit of dish for Fu For Thought…what follows are some bonus nuggets from our conversation:

Sometimes what a client wants and what they actually need are opposite things. Once a client feels married to a design direction, it can be hard to dissuade them…as Matt reveals in this anecdote:

I lost a job designing January Jones’ kitchen. We had a mutual contact and I was brought in to bid for a remodel. She wanted Carrera white marble countertops and these country blue cabinets. I worked with my sister, who’s my draftsman, and we came up with several spaceplans. I made a recommendation to her, please not to use Carrera marble, because no matter how well you seal it, it stains. If you spill red wine on it or olive oil, or get anything hot on it, you’ll see that for the rest of the lifespan of the countertop—it only looks good for the first couple of months. The feedback that I got through her manager was, “Why is this guy not doing what we asked? We just want him to draw up the floorplan that we asked for, with the finishes we already know we want.” So another designer came in who works with big-time celebrities, did a beautiful presentation with all of the things that she wanted and got the job. She got the white marble countertops she wanted. Sometimes the clients just want what they want.

I said, Carerra. CA-RER-RA! (Photo courtesy of Snark Food)

We talked a little bit about Design Star.

What happened on Design Star for me was a little boot camp. I liked being on that show a lot, but especially because I learned from my fellow designers, especially Stephanie Cook and Trish Beaudet—how to add soft touches to a room. As a builder and an architect and engineer at heart, those things were not my priority (before DS). I was much more interested in making the space clean, functional and useful. They taught me how to make it pretty and appealing on top of that. I have incorporated those principles in my design across the board, and I’m really thankful for that experience because I notice those things now.

Matt has a very modern design style and I wondered how that played in his home state of Colorado.

I presented work for a juried show in Colorado called the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, and it’s one of the best-attended arts festivals in the entire country. They get between 300,000-400,000 people through there on July 4^th weekend. Some artists make their living—or at least a big chunk of their annual revenue—at that one show. I was one one of eight selected for their inaugural Emerging Artists program and I worked like a dog to create a series of functional sculptures. I exhibited them at the festival and nothing sold. It was after that that I decided to move. There are modern things in Denver, of course, but something about what I made didn’t click. My house in Palmer Lake, CO was very controversial and I heard lots of people in my little town talk about how much they hated my house. The exterior was a very earthy adobe and the interior featured an updated Deco design. I like that contrast between having a very finished interior and an unassuming exterior. I remember some neighbors came over, looked around and sort of scowled and said, “This looks like our cousin’s place in San Francisco. He’s an architect and makes really modern things like this and when he came into our house, he told us it was schlocky.” I had been in their house and it was schlocky! When I moved out to LA and people saw my Palmer Lake house and my functional sculptures, they all liked it. I realized how important it was to find the market that fits your style.

Every artist is inspired by different things. For Matt, minutiae’s the thing.

What’s funny is the reaction I get when I show (my New York Subway piece) to other creative people. When they see what I did to make this map and the tedious level of detail it took to trace over all of New York City’s streets in Adobe Illustrator, they glaze over and say things like, “That looks like torture. I would never want to have to do that.” For me, it was a sheer delight. There was a whole month where I sat in front of my computer and did nothing but that. I had my routine… I put on old movies that I’ve watched a million times and I would click-click-click. I got a huge knot in my back and all sorts of symptoms of repetitive stress disorder in my arm but I didn’t care. I did nothing but click and go to the gym—it was paradise! As I sit and click and manipulate things on my monitor, I am in seventh heaven. It makes me realize it’s what I’m here for. That’s what I’m supposed to do, because it’s work, obviously, but it’s work that is deeply satisfying to me.

I’ve always liked to hang maps on my wall, or look at maps and look at the atlas, I love woodworking, I love modern architecture, and all those things have come together in this project. There are so many ways to express the same idea. There are so many cities and so many expressions of maps and architecture and this intersection of materials and the subway is such a fantastic way to do that. It’s really been the best job I’ve ever had.

There’s a lot more Q&A with Matt where this came from over at WSDM, so be sure and check out the rest of my interview with him! Fans of Matt can also see more examples of his work at mattlocke.com, and I highly encourage you to follow him on Facebook. The creative exercises he posts there are really amazing.