DORÉ

I never thought I would ever hire a decorator for my house. I know my tastes (more or less!!!), I love thrifting, and I like to do things on my own, not like all these Americans who hire a consultant for every little thing, pffff…

But here we are in the photo – me and Sarah, my decorator, in her studio in Venice.

So, what happened? I bought a house, and then I started to realize what a big task I had taken on, and that I’d never, ever manage all alone, so I put away my ego right away. Way too many things to do for one person alone…

1/ Time. I realized very, very quickly that decorating is a whole job. Especially when you’re starting from scratch like I was. After moving so many times, I didn’t have much left. I like leaving things behind, too.

So last May (yes, it’s already been a year, don’t ask me why it took so long, that would be a whole post) when we started unpacking in our new house, we barely had anything to put in it.

2/ Thrifting. It can be nice from time to time. But thrifting to fill a whole house is way too much pressure!

3/ The scope. Not only is the house big and new, but on top of it all, I want to have some work done, because of course, nothing is exactly like I want it to be and I have very specific (probably impossible) ideas about everything. Can we put a window there? Can we move the kitchen somewhere else? What about the garage?

4/ But I’m lazy I don’t have time to do it all.

5/ Plus, and I’ll tell you more about this in another post (yes, we’re going to do a series of posts about this house – I have to tell you a little bit about my troubles, after all!) the house is great, but it’s new and lacks personality. We need to give it some charm.

6/ VERY IMPORTANT FOR UNDERSTANDING WHY I CHOSE A DECORATOR: When you’re doing renovations a) you need to know how to talk about CONSTRUCTION (I have no idea – I’ve always rented apartments) and b) know where to source everything – bathroom faucets and, uh… I don’t know, all the things I never thought about.

7/ Chris couldn’t care less about décor. Which is very liberating, but I feel a little bit alone when it comes to brainstorming.

8/ Sarah!

9/ I was a little bit afraid of meeting decorators because I was afraid the budget would get wayyyy out of hand. Before I met Sarah, I had coffee with a potential (well known) decorator (who does very beautiful work) (but à) she told me we needed to change all the windows in the house right away and completely redo the exterior. Ummmm, excuse me? How much is that going to cost?

10/ Sarah!

11/ I was already following Sarah on Instagram, and I decided to call her just to see. I really like her work, but I already had lots of ideas in mind and I was worried it would be annoying for her to adapt to them. It was also super important for me for me the style to still be mine in the end: I’ve always been afraid of decorators who just duplicate the same style from one project to another.

12/ I was also afraid she wouldn’t have time for me. I know she’s very sought after, and pregnant, and working on lots of amazing projects, one of which was Mandy Moore’s sublime mid-century house. So I was worried my much simpler project wouldn’t interest her very much.

13/ We met, and I liked her right away because a) she’s funny (so important!!!) b) she knows how to be budget conscious and c) she listens, and she adapts. In the meantime, I also met the team from Domino magazine, which I love.

So we agreed we could all work on this project together…

14/ A little while later, she pitched some ideas to me, and I loved them.

I’ll tell you the rest in the next post… I can’t wait to show it to you!!!!

Translated by Andrea Perdue