Celebrity designer Lisa LaPorta was looking to find one frustrated family facing a design disaster. And here we were.
The problem project was our bonus room, an eyesore at the end of the upstairs hall. Because my two daughters and I could never agree on how to decorate it, the space looked like a bombed-out army barracks.
I need to back up. Seven years ago, when we moved into this house, I had great plans for this room. I pictured it a haven where the girls would lounge in pajamas on weekends, hang out with friends, watch TV and generally avoid their parents. My first mistake was calling the space a "bonus room." Somehow it turned the space into a holding cell for misfit furniture: the sleeper sofa, an old glider chair, the treadmill, and an ugly but functional folding table.
Every so often I'd take a run at decorating the room, then I'd hit a hard stop. Getting the girls to agree on a design direction was like getting Nancy Pelosi to agree with Rush Limbaugh. One daughter loves horses and barns, the other Chanel and all things Parisian. However, they agreed on this: Anything I liked got nixed.
We needed an intervention.
That's when LaPorta, a designer on HGTV's "Designed to Sell," swooshed in on her magic (hand-knotted 100 percent Persian wool) carpet. She came to see the room and meet my girls. Then she began deftly navigating the personalities and the project.
I met Lisa a couple years ago when she wrote the foreword for my book, "House of Havoc." We became friends. She and I are a perfect team: She gives design advice for TV audiences, I for newspaper readers. She knows what she's doing, and I fake it.
It took seven years, then seven months, to turn my daughters' bonus room into the dream room I imagined. Then, in March, just after we'd painted, hung drapes, and put the last accessory in its perfect place, an irresistible job offer came, and now ... we're moving. Here we go again.
Faced with decorating a room, many people don't know where to start. But Lisa guided us through a design process following a logical sequence that really works, and that I never would have come up with. The process doesn't have to take seven months, but this is a sure-fire formula for pulling a room together:
Month one: Lisa visits to pick up a "vibe" from the girls, which translates into a design scheme and color direction - a look both girls agree on. She takes measurements, and maps out a dozen room layouts. We zero in on one.
Month two: Now that we know what furniture we need, Lisa and I shop online. We spend hours on the phone, surfing the Web late into the night.
Month three: We find furnishings that fit our look, floor plan and budget. We order swatches, then furniture: two faux-suede gray-blue sofas, two distressed wood and metal coffee tables, a coordinating end table and a multicolor area rug made of suede strips. I sell the old sofa and gliding chair. A clean slate.
Month four: We find a company that creates customized art from photographs. The result is personal and fun. We order three, large, stylized images of the girls.
Month five: The furniture arrives, followed by the art. The room is clicking.
Month six. Picking throw pillows turns into a third career. I test-drive dozens. Lisa saves me by explaining that I need pillows to match the art, not the sofa. This revelation ranks up there with discovering a genome. I finally choose solid pillows in yellow and orange, with rectangular pillows bearing turquoise and orange ikats. That move dictates the drapery, which will be burnt orange.
Month seven: Although I've bugged Lisa from the start to pick a wall color, she likes to pick paint last. Her reasoning: You can have any paint color you want, but furniture colors are limited. She wants a strong neutral to balance the bold orange drapes. We pick Kilz Umber Stone. Ta-da! Seven years, and seven months later, we finally have our dream room, if only for a few weeks.
Syndicated columnist and speaker Marni Jameson is the author of "House of Havoc" and "The House Always Wins" (Da Capo Press).
