Claiming a tiny but tasteful dining nook
Q. I grew up in a house with a breakfast nook and would kill to have one in our new house. The problem is space. I'm willing to give up some base cabinets in my kitchen. Do you have any suggestions on how best to fit in a small table and four chairs?
A. Take a leaf from designer and author Chris Madden's handsome book "The Soul of a House," an "autobiography" of the early-20th-century carriage house she and husband Kevin reclaimed in upstate New York.
Also dealing with a space shortage, Madden pulled out a decrepit radiator to gain room under the window for the banquette that now embraces the space. Dressed in a classic French country toile and paired with slipper chairs - armless, lightweight and easily accessible - the banquette maxes seating room and transforms the small area into a cozy gathering space.
In this photo, it's centered with an antique pine table large enough to accommodate guests. For family only, a smaller round table takes pride of place. The message: When space is at a premium, be flexible. Rethinking your furniture arrangements to fit the occasion lets you maximize every square inch.
Two other highly stealable ideas from this little nook: the small lamp, which adds a special cozy glow, and the wall of framed menus, autographed by the chefs at the Maddens' fave restaurants around the world. No piker in the kitchen herself, Madden practically launched her career writing cookbooks, plus her perennial best-seller, "Kitchens."
She's also been host of her own TV shows on HGTV, Oprah's first design correspondent, and decorator to such other stars as Katie Couric and Toni Morrison. Her latest book is an inside look, quite literally, at how to evoke "the soul of a house."
Q. What's next for the American home?
A. Just back from the world's largest furniture market in High Point, North Carolina, we have three key words to report: metallics, grays and individuality.
• Metallics. Forget "brown furniture." We'll be living with furnishings that glint and gleam, including fabrics, even leathers, that are metallicized, pearlized and iridescentized. They fairly hum with visual energy, discreetly adding a new dimension to any room.
• Grays. Countering traditional wisdom that gloomy economic times inspire quiet colors and vice versa, gray continues to gain ground despite the brightening economic forecast.
Warm, cool, blued and steely, gray was all over the furniture market. Taylor King devoted its upfront galleries to furniture in a medley of grays, some gleaming with metallic embroidery, others in metallicized leathers.
Aptly named furniture-maker Thomas & Gray rethought Gustavian designs, the gray-painted 18th-century neoclassical style, which traces back to when Swedish King Gustavus III visited French King Louis XVI's court and fell in love with his furniture style.
Bernhardt furniture greeted market shoppers with gray sofas in its showroom lobby, punched up with iridescent yellow pillows.
• Individuality. Here's where things got truly colorful. Room-maker pieces, exotic influences and bright colors, often in eccentric combinations, definitely signal the era of the individual.
As John Loecke, half of the Madcap Cottage team, puts it, anything goes, as long as you, the individual, love it. (See how he and partner Jason Oliver Nixon mix it up madly and merrily at www.madcapcottage.com.)
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