With the popularity of such interior-design shows as TLC's "Trading Spaces" and "Clean Sweep" and the Home & Garden Television (HGTV) channel, homeowners and apartment dwellers are finding inspiration for their own interiors.
But these don't need to be costly, as one University District resident is proving. Barb Weismann, owner of Living Spaces, is helping people around the Puget Sound redecorate their homes using furniture and other items they already have.
"Most people don't think very much about how a room is arranged," Weismann said. "People have a grand capacity for the status quo.
"I'm much more interested in creating functional spaces and livable spaces," she said.
Moving day
Having trained with Carole Talbot, who started the "redesign" trend 15 years ago, Weismann said she focuses on the flow of the room, the ability to walk around it, as well as defining the focal point of the room.
"Most every room can be improved," she said, adding that there hasn't been a room she's come across she can't help.
Before taking on a redesign, Weismann consults with the client, showing her portfolio, surveying the room and learning how the client uses the room and what is desired for the space. Clients often drop clues by mentioning repeatedly what they want during these meetings, though they're not aware of it, she said.
Weismann recommends that clients hire people they like because they'll like the end-product better if they enjoy the designer-client relationship, she said.
Then a half-day session is scheduled, usually for one room. Weis-mann requests that the client be gone during the session because it allows her to focus on the room as opposed to answering questions.
"I'm doing right-brain, creative thinking," the former sculptor and artist said.
She and her assistant, Jessie Tear, then move the furniture out, sometimes with the added help of professional movers the client hires if the furniture is especially heavy and bulky.
With the furniture moved out, "we won't remember where it was before, and we can find new places for things," Weismann said. "We take what is placed happenstance and reorganize it."
While clients are buying an interior designer's sense of style when they hire one, redesigners are helping to accentuate the client's style, she said.
"Clients usually [already] have what we need," she said, adding that people tend to buy "cohesive" things that demonstrate their style.
"It often rather surprises me," she said, "that we use most of the stuff [clients have]. It looks like less stuff [when we're finished]. A room can handle much more stuff if it's arranged properly.
"The room will stand on its own" when the redesign is done, Weismann said, though she will recommend to clients what they need to do next to most enhance the room, whether it's changing the artwork or buying a chair. This gives them "direction about their future purchases for the space, so their purchasing will have more focus," she explained.
However, she cautions that a redesign is never really done as "stuff wanders," she said, and clients change the room over time, adding items.
Functional space
Tear said she has obtained a "different sense of looking at something" during the five sessions she assisted Weismann. "I've learned to not be afraid of color, art," she said. "It's more inviting and gives a sense of fullness."
Weismann's friend and first client, Renton's Ed Oyama, said he learned how to open up a room. "Looking at how it was before, now [the room] is more conducive to conversation," he explained. "Looking at it after, I realize how it was wrong [the way I had it before]"
"I have my own taste in furniture and accessories; I don't know how to place it," he explained. "I have, in the past, moved furniture around, but I just don't have that eye."
But Weismann is encouraging to those considering a redesign, with or without the help of a professional redesigner: "There's no such thing as screwing up a room, but how functional it is for you," she said.[[In-content Ad]]
