My adventure at The Dump

Friday morning was the grand opening of The Dump in Atlanta. Since there was so much buzz, and I had been watching this thing come together (it's less than 2 miles from my house) I thought I'd pop over for a quick visit. Three hours later I returned home with 2 good purchases (one for me, one for a client) and some tired feet.

This place is big! I read on their website that it's five acres of furniture. It's a warehouse setting, with low overhead and they are only open on Friday, Saturday and Sunday - which saves them money. The sales pitch is that they pass those savings along to the customer. They also buy in bulk, buy overstocks and close-outs and again they say there is no middle man, so the savings are passed along.

This is not high end furniture - it's middle of the road. They do have interesting home dec accessories in the front (when you walk in the front doors, head left and stay towards the front), they are very inexpensive. This was my favorite area. To the left of this home dec section, are the tv's and large leather sofas and chairs. Rugs are in the far left corner of the warehouse.

The middle area of the store contains lots and lots of sectional sofas, 3 seat sofas, love seats, chairs and leather ottomans - mostly very casual. To the right of the seating area are dining tables and chairs and behind them are the mattresses and other bedding. At the far right end of the store are large furniture pieces - armoires, entertainment centers etc. Mirrors and 'art' hang on the walls.

The sales people were very helpful and friendly and they even put a piece on hold for me while I called my client. The most difficult part of the process was the checkout. The computers were slow and they have to create an account for each client (but once you're in, you're in for good). Then you have to sign a bunch of paperwork and head over to the pick up area. I was told there would be a 30 minute wait for my purchase and it was at least that. They give you a buzzer just like you get at a restaurant. Once your buzzer goes off you drive to the pick up bays and they load up your car.

I would go back, but only maybe once a month. The prices seem pretty good. One last hint, they were expecting 15,000 people to walk through the doors over this opening weekend. Unless you need something right now, I would wait a week or two to check out The Dump.

Here are a couple of things that caught my eye.

Remember how much I like ottomans? These are $77






This 4 panel screen below was quite striking in person (photo is bad).
Coming tomorrow...what I did with my dump finds!

Stylish Living - Jewelry Designer Janet Gregg

This photograph is from Cottage Living, of my great friend jewelry designer Janet Gregg, in her super stylish Charleston cottage. Janet's amazing design sense is so evident in her decorating. She creates her look with color, texture and things she has acquired through the years and makes it uniquely her own.

Beacham Series Giveaway

Blayne over at This Photographer's Life has a fantastic giveaway going on! The winner will receive a quarter page ad in the upcoming Beacham Series magazine (and if you don't have ad copy the advertising department will help you). What a great opportunity for small businesses (like ours) who don't have much of an advertising budget. It will be fun to see who wins - we entered! The contest ends on March 8. Go HERE to check out the details.

Cover image courtesy of Beacham and Co. and Blayne Beacham

Consultation Service

click on the image to enlarge

We are excited to offer a fantastic consultation service. We will spend up to four hours in your house, room by room, evaluating what you have, where we see the room going, and how to get there. After the consultation we present you with a written plan for your house in a nice package. We can execute the plan for the client or the client can do that independently. Please contact us for pricing and more details.

Whitehaven
Jane Douglas Reynolds - jdreynolds@me.com
Helen Young - hdraperyoung@gmail.com

Decorate with what you love

I was thinking about what makes my house a home. To me, it is having things around me that I love. And most of the things I love in my house were not really bought with decorating in mind. I bought them because I loved them and then found a place for them...(which can sometimes be tricky...!). I found these awesome 1940's lamps at Gramercy Home in Atlanta. First, I had to have them...then I figured out where to put them! And my husband did the same thing with the Carolyn Carr painting over the fireplace. We moved many things around to find the perfect spot.

Creative problem solving

When building our house, one of the most time consuming choices for us was light fixtures. Our architect drew our house as a "new old house" and so there are very few can lights (they are only in the basement playroom). So, we had to pick out lights for the entire house - it was a lot of lights. I spent hours on websites and even more hours at lighting showrooms - but I loved every minute of it!

One of the things that jumped out at me immediately and in fact I asked every lighting salesperson I met how to solve this problem - was what to do about the ugly fake wax candle sleeves(often with really drippy fake wax, like Disney world - yucky). I began to notice the ugly ones everywhere - in showrooms, in my own house, in magazines, online. One salesperson referred me to Lamp Arts on Howell Mill, they sell fake beeswax covers that look better than the drippy wax ones. I even googled candle covers and didn't get much of a result (this was in 2007).

What I don't like:


And then one day in the Fall of 2008 my google search revealed a treasure - Kaarskoker. Created by April Pride Allison, Kaarskoker means candle cover in Dutch. The next month I read about them in House Beautiful magazine. It was the answer to my candle sleeve problem.

Please check out the website (warning, I spend hours on this site looking at all of the choices!)for all of the options and many photos, even before and after. Here are some teasers:

from the kaarskoker website:





From my own house:









Couldn't resist this last one from the kaarskoker website:


What a great way to add a punch of color, or a touch of whimsy!

Great Lady Decorators

I can't wait for this beautiful, new book to be released on April 6, 2010. Below is the summary of the book:

Mixing gorgeous interiors with sparkling social history, this is the first book on the visionary women whose work gave us the timeless, essential principles of modern interior decorating.

In 1904, Elsie de Wolfe was given a contract to design the interiors of the Colony Club. Their success launched de Wolfe’s career and the entire field of professional interior decoration. Soon other women followed, known collectively (for their privileged backgrounds) as the Lady Decorators. This book focuses on the extraordinary, glamorous interiors of these influential designers, as well as their decorating theory and maxims, from Rose Cumming’s electric color combinations ("Parrots are blue and green. Why shouldn’t fabric be?") to Nancy Lancaster’s refined English-country-house look ("She liked for the sun to get to . . . materials. She wanted them to go shabby and live a life of their own."). A witty and readable treatise on the principles of decorating, as well as a luxurious visual resource, this book will be an essential addition to every decorating library. Also including: Dorothy Draper, Elsie Cobb Wilson, Ruby Ross Wood, Frances Elkins, Eleanor Brown, Sister Parish, Syrie Maugham, Madeleine Castaing.

About the Author
Adam Lewis is an interior designer and the author of Van Day Truex: The Man Who Defined Twentieth-Century Taste and Style and Albert Hadley: America’s Preeminent Interior Designer. Jeremiah Goodman is America’s master illustrator of rooms. His work is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Bunny Williams is a world-renowned interior designer, author, and garden expert.

My favorite Atlanta house is featured too!