If you’re what the home building industry calls a “move-up,” you’re buying a new home that’s bigger than the one you live in now. You’ll need more furnishings, but unless you inherit a truck load from relatives or friends who are “move-downs” — people moving from a larger house to a smaller one — you’ll have to buy them yourself.
If you’re like a great many new home buyers though, you’ve spent your last dollar on options and upgrades. Are there ways to avoid living in a half-empty house until your bank balance recovers?
Amy Zuppas of Rockville, Md., and Lita Dirks of Englewood, Colo., two interior designers and space merchandisers who between them furnish about 110 model homes a year, have devised ingenious solutions to stretch dollars and avoid the “naked look.”
The first need that most buyers of bigger houses face is more furniture.
Dirks’ advice: “Put what you have in the spaces you will use the most and realize that it will take awhile to fill up the rest of the house — have patience, perseverance and check stuff out.”
That doesn’t have to mean going without, however.
Five or six 24- to 30-inch floor pillows can go a long way in a family room. For furniture, both Dirks and Zuppas recommend garage and estate sales. As any used furniture maven knows, you can get great bargains and “used items will have a character,” Dirks noted.
If you can afford to get a few new pieces, she suggests an “eclectic” look, mixing garage sale and auction house items with new purchases from stores like IKEA, Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel. Though much of the merchandise in these national chains is trendy and may soon look dated, they do have classic, old stand-bys such as rolled-arm skirted sofas and chairs. They also sell ready-made slip covers to fit several styles that may work with used pieces you get.
Furniture is only the first step to furnishing a house, however, and not even where our two experts would start. For light and privacy concerns, Dirks would begin with the windows. The quickest and cheapest solution is one-inch mini-blinds.
“They don’t make you feel like you’re camping out, they don’t fade, and they’re easy to install,” Dirks said. “Even better, blinds can buy some time to create window treatments.”
The cheapest mini-blinds are white, but you can jazz up a few rooms and add color accents by getting more expensive colored ones, Zuppas said. Pul-down shades, plain or pleated, are another possibility, she added.
When you’re ready, the next step with windows is drapery. Custom-made dradraperies can cost hundreds of dollars a window, but there are alternatives. The easiest and cheapest approach, which Dirks describes as “a major trend,” is a simple iron bar rod with rings that is hung above the window. The draperies attach to the rings and fall to the floor.
Zuppas adds: “The rods are like jewelry. They add more sparkle and make this economical look appear to be more expensive than it actually is.”
If you’ve already put in blinds, Zuppas suggests a narrow drapery that’s not functional; it simply dresses up the window. She frequently does this in models “where you don’t need blinds and you don’t want to hide the windows.”
Zuppas uses the rod and rings with both an eight or a nine-foot ceiling height and places the rod about six inches above the window.
In the remaining space between the rod and the ceiling she suggested hanging plates that she gets at inexpensive home furnishing stores like Pier One Imports or at flea markets or antique shops. A lot of different plate styles, shapes and colors adds interest; it also means you can buy odd lots and get a better price she added.
The simplest way to give your new house a more established look is with a few cans of paint and wall moldings, Zuppas said. Although your house will already be painted, many home builders use the same color throughout the entire house. This can be an advantage since it visually ties the spaces together and often makes the house feel larger, but adding color accents to individual rooms will add character she said.
She suggested painting one entire wall in a color that complements the furnishings for that particular room.
For more formal areas, Zuppas likes to add a second wall color below a chair rail or between a crown molding at the ceiling and an ogee molding placed 3 to 4 inches below it. Ogee, wainscoting, crown moldings and chair rails are not hard to install, even for the novice, though patience is required she said.
Wallpaper borders are another easy and inexpensive way to add character Zuppas said. Ceiling borders should not exceed six inches in width and the colors should be light unless the walls are dark. A dark border with a light wall tends to bring the ceiling down and make the room feel smaller she said.
A 20-inch wide border works well at the floor level and can be effective in children’s’ rooms when they are young enough to play on the floor and don’t have much furniture. If you have a lot of furniture in a room, a border at the base of the wall won’t show, Zuppas noted.
Borders or painted stencils around windows also are a quick way to give a more furnished, finished look. Dirks suggested this as a quick fix if draperies are a long way into your future.
While you will be understandably eager to furnish your new home, Dirks cautioned against doing this too fast and losing your own personality in the process. “You don’t want to loose your home to fashion trends. By putting in time, having the perseverance to find things you like, and waiting until things really click for you, you will bring out the `you’ in your home far more. To achieve this, it’s worth putting up with a partially empty house for awhile.”
