Six steps that will transform your space on a budget.

Declutter your living space.  “Less is more” and that it often true in design.  You might start with the closets. Get rid of anything you have used in 2 years. Make some space for the things that you use, albeit infrequently and then move those things into your closets and cabinets. They will be handy but out of sight.

What’s Not There matters as much as what is there. Take a little mental inventory of your living space, noting anything with a plastic surface or overtly shabby appearance. Think of things which could be swapped for the plastic. For example, many of us have plastic trash cans that could easily be replaced by something more pleasing to the eye. A small plastic trash can could be replaced by that seldom used wine bucket. You can still use it for wine when the need arises but the rest of the time it can function as a stylish trash can.

Dishwashing liquids can go into pump containers or those glass bottles that include their own stopper and gasket.

Picking a wall paint color can be a real challenge in designing interior spaces but there are some basic methods that nearly guarantee your space will look magazine ready:
– Use lightly tinted paints, earth tones and the off-whites look great and set off whatever you put in the room. A very limited and light palette for the walls is more flexible, less dominant than walls that are saturated colors.
– There is a temptation to paint the walls your favorite color — don’t do it. Use a background color that will showcase the things you have that ARE your favorite color.

Paint wall surfaces that need it. Start with a touch up for door and floor trim, probably that means a quart of white semi gloss latex and a decent $10+ paint brush. Great value and quick way to refresh the space as you start transitioning to your new design.

Collect Swatches and Pictures. As you pick your paint, fabrics and other surfaces, collect samples of them in a form that you can take with you when shopping for subsequent items.  When you have your paint open for the touch ups, paint on a sheet of paper or the cover of the swatch binder itself. Do the real paint in your can, not the chip on the little cards in the store.

Add pieces of any fabrics you already have or close accurate pictures of them. With a smartphone, check to see that your shot on screen matches whatever you just took a picture of.  Put the phone screen right next to the item, if it isn’t accurate color matching, try different lightsources — direct sunlight, indirect, flash, no flash, etc.

Wall Hangings. Look among your personal treasures for things that could be wall hangings. Replace or expand from framed art to include items that both look interesting and relate to you and your journey.  If you plan to hang items in clusters lay them out on the floor first. Try different spacing and configurations. Shoot pictures of the ones that seem to work then pick from the pictures.
Personal treasures would include anything that is not a frame-able item. Long items work well — canes, golf clubs, skis, boat oars, kayaks, reclaimed boards, and rope.  Collections can used to invigorate forgotten spaces but you have to create a pattern with them and mount them to the wall minimally so that your eye goes to the pieces and not the mounting, for example shelves would invalidate the concept. It has to be a collection of similarly sized things — Matchbox cars, lunch boxes, Pez dispensers, — or you risk re-cluttering what you uncluttered 5 steps ago.

This year’s Chili fest will be held on Saturday Oct 10th from Noon to 4pm. Admission is $10. Cider and Cheese are part of the mix this year.

http://www.hudsonvalleybounty.com/

Tim Burton had just made “Batman” and “Beetlejuice” and Fox wanted in on his next hit so they did “Edward Scissorhands” as part of the deal to get Burton. They had done something similar with Director Chris Columbus and that was about to pay off big.  But Burton was hot as a pistol in 1989. He was delivering stylish, eye-candy fantasy movies that filled seats. That’s what the studio and the money people ultimately want but the brightness that you see in Tim Burton films made after “Beetlejuice” seems first unleashed in “Edward Scissorhands”. The screen world of Batman and Beetlejuice is cloudy or in a cave but the locations for Scissorhands were shot in a real suburb in Florida.  Pastel houses, big hair, poodles.

Zanuck Theatre

Booker walked me into Zanuck and he showed me the case upstairs, the Oscars. In the old days they used to give the Oscar to the studio, not to the actress, writer, etc. Only to the studio so the studio still had them and there they were. Statue upon statue, rows of golden capsules of immortality floating on glass shelves. They called out in ghostly echoes of a multi-layered past, movies like  “How Green Was My Valley”and  “The Grapes of Wrath”

We went into the booth which was as wide as the theater itself and had two beds and a fridge. “Scissorhands” was done in 70mm so the room has got this quadrupple-sized movie film going back and forth overhead off of enormous reels.  The scale of the film makes me feel like I should be 2 feet tall.  Each frame is like a postcard, like looking at panes of stained glass.

I dizzy’ed myself with the thought that I was in the theater where they did the final mix on “Star Wars” and “Jedi.”  This was the ‘Abbey Road’ of “Star Wars.”  The room where they first created and heard the final version of “The Sound of Music” that went on to become one of the most beloved films of all time.  Sound gets locked after the picture track is locked so on every film pretty much, this is the room where the sound mix and therefore the final cut of the film that gets duped and becomes the one we all see and hear, was given birth to!

The film was great. The music and style really pulled it together. As much as I liked it, I understood much better after seeing the film itself, what the challenge was. How do you get people to say yes or no to the quirky charm on this film if you can’t get that quirky charm across to them in 30 seconds or less?  The film just doesn’t sit in a nice neat box like “Batman” did. On top of that, the film really isn’t for everyone.  Not everyone wants to pluck down $10 for a quirky fairytale. Again I liked the film from the get go but I got that part of the challenge.

I think the studio wanted to sell it as a date film. It was definitely skewing female and that was another change from the Tim Burton of “Batman.”   Johnny Depp was at that time only well known to people who watched “21 Jump Street” the TV series he had done for the 3 years prior. Depp was not an A-list star then despite his fine work in Oliver Stone’s 1986 movie “Platoon” or even  in 1984’s  runaway hit “Nightmare on Elm Street.”  After “Scissorhands” Depp’s next feature was another Freddie film which only added to the confusion around “Scissorhands.”

Depp had prepared for the character in part by studying Charlie Chaplin and Marcel Marceau, mostly Chaplin. The bit with the sheep dog and he cuts its bangs is pure Chaplin.  Depp was happy to work with Vincent Price and Price is eerily well cast as this was the last film he made.   (more…)