Is it expensive or from a garage sale?
It's a design goal these days: Mix finds from garage sales with treasures from the Merchandise Mart. And seeing it done well is always fun and instructive.
Anne Honan, the mother of five daughters, a grandmother, a world traveler and yes, a designer, showed us how her eclectic look came together in her Bartlett home.
Like many designers, Honan charges clients an hourly rate, so they can take advantage of any savvy deals she finds.
Her dining room decor is the most complex in the home.
Honan's pride and joy is the vintage walnut Henredon table and gilt-trimmed, Art Deco-influenced chairs. She found them at The Perfect Thing, a Wheaton consignment shop, for $2,500. For years she had used a $10 garage sale Duncan Phyfe drop-leaf table that now stands against a wall in her living room.
"I'm picky about dining room stuff," said Honan. "I found a set I liked at the Merchandise Mart for $25,000, but my husband didn't think that was a good idea."
The visitor immediately notices the many pictures on the dining room walls. This from a woman who labels tchotzkes "stuffy."
"I don't consider paintings tchotzkes," responded the designer. "That's the church my husband and I were married in in Rome. It was 33 years ago. I was in school, he was in the military.
"There's a reason why we have a lot of pictures in this room. Lots of homes in England put tons of pictures on the wall with no real rhyme or reason. We entertain a lot. This is our conversation room - politics, religion, we talk about our kids. The artwork is conversation pieces."
All this - including a yards-long picture of St. Peter's in Rome, a large mirror from T.J. Maxx and a $400 Murray Feiss chandelier with prisms and crystal beads on its metal scrolly arms - shows off against flat chocolate brown walls and under a ceiling faux painted with gold and brown clouds. The chocolate whets appetites, and the stormy, twilight clouds are more interesting than fluffy white on a blue sky, said the designer.
Here are Honan's tips:
Surprise
In the living room the relatively sedate leopard print brings a different look to the sofa Honan has owned for 15 years.
"It's really a classic camelback, but I didn't want to do classic," she said. "How boring is that? I'm not a boring person, I'm a little crazy."
In front of it sits a Ralph Lauren coffee table with inlaid brass she spent $650 for at a Merchandise Mart sample sale, rather than the $4,500 retail.
Bravery
In perhaps her most shocking move in the 1960s house, Honan painted the oak fireplace mantel that she hated.
"It was a really grainy oak, orangy yellowy. The wall above the mantel was painted lemon yellow. It looked too heavy for the wall space. I wanted the room to flow, not be cut up. It tends to be an overkill of a focal point and distracting. It didn't add to the room."
Flanked by matching bookcases, the mantel painted semi-gloss in Benjamin Moore White Dove, almost a true white, makes a classy wall in the family room.
Discount stores
The striking, well-lighted medallion over the fireplace was a Hobby Lobby find that Honan painted the shade she wanted.
An inexpensive way she frames pictures is buying pieces at T.J. Maxx and putting her artwork over the original.
"You have to cherry pick at stores like that. I put it all in the cart and go around the store for a while, and then I look at it and make sure it's OK."
Neutral
Keep the drapes simple like the striped cream and gold ones in the living room, which harmonize with the beige walls painted with gold diamonds or trellis dotted with silver at the points.
"The paint treatment adds a 1940s look, and simple drapes don't get dated as fast," she said.
Silk
Most of the drapes in her home look like silk, but they are man-made materials because silk disintegrates in the sun.
"The life span of silk drapes is four or five years," she said.
Personal touches
An American flag in the family room is from Blake Weitzel, fiance of Anne and Steve Honan's daughter Megan. Weitzel is in the Air Force and will start his third tour in Iraq in August.
The antique-looking tray hanging on a wall in the kitchen is an inexpensive souvenir from England purchased just because Anne Honan likes it.
Custom
Of course, one reason Honan makes all this look easy is her access to craftsmen who recover her furniture, make her window treatments and faux paint her walls.
"It's very eclectic," she said. "It works well with my personality and lifestyle, with my kids and grandson."