Can I Mix Colored Eggshell And White Satin Paint
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The dining allowance in this Mercer Island home is abounding with antiques.
The dining allowance in this Mercer Island home is abounding with antiques.
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This 18th-century home was congenital by Quakers, who afar by gender, consistent in two doors arch to the active room. Its autogenous architecture is by Houston built-in Laura Bohn.
This 18th-century home was congenital by Quakers, who afar by gender, consistent in two doors arch to the active room. Its autogenous architecture is by Houston built-in Laura Bohn.
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This 18th-century home was congenital by Quakers, who afar by gender, consistent in two doors arch to the active room. Its autogenous architecture is by Houston built-in Laura Bohn.
This 18th-century home was congenital by Quakers, who afar by gender, consistent in two doors arch to the active room. Its autogenous architecture is by Houston built-in Laura Bohn.
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Laura Bohn's country home in Bucks County already was a alternation of aphotic accommodation and low ceilings. The active breadth now has a double-height beam and account wiindows. Furnishings are a mix of textures.
Laura Bohn's country home in Bucks County already was a alternation of aphotic accommodation and low ceilings. The active breadth now has a double-height beam and account wiindows. Furnishings are a mix of textures.
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Bohn corrective this bedchamber an acute purple, again bass it bottomward with whitewash.
Bohn corrective this bedchamber an acute purple, again bass it bottomward with whitewash.
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This New York loft's active breadth has sofas in a mix of fabrics and accumulated with bandy pillows.
This New York loft's active breadth has sofas in a mix of fabrics and accumulated with bandy pillows.
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The alluring bath is Art Deco aggressive with book-matched marble, LeFroy Brooks accouterments and a bottle aperture that is both a battery aperture and entryway.
The alluring bath is Art Deco aggressive with book-matched marble, LeFroy Brooks accouterments and a bottle aperture that is both a battery aperture and entryway.
Maven of avant-garde showcases neutrals that wow
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There's a buried balustrade with adept lighting accessories blind from the beam and six midcentury-modern chairs nestled about a big table in Laura Bohn's country home in Pennsylvania. Potted plants accomplish the amplitude as outdoorsy as what's above the big awning windows and slatted walls.
But what she's aflame about appropriate now are its floors. They're ceramics asphalt that looks like wood, and the built-in Houstonian who's been an autogenous artist for about 40 years is all-embracing what's new appropriate now.
"I'm not such a trends person, but I accede all the new materials. I do a lot of research. I adulation Pinterest and attending at every journal - annihilation for new materials," said Bohn, who has lived in New York for years. "You can buy attractive things at Home Depot for about no money. The ceramics tiles that attending like copse are incredible."
Bohn, whose new book, "Laura Bohn: Ways of Seeing," was afresh published, will be in Houston on Tuesday for continuing apprenticeship courses at the Houston Architecture Center and a book signing at River Oaks Bookstore.
Pointed Leaf Press
192 pages, $65
Meet the author
Design Center of Houston: 11 a.m. Tuesday keynote at Alkusari Stone, Suite 229; apex book signing followed by 1:30 p.m. console altercation with Laura Bohn and others on French design, at Architecture House, Suite 115. Showrooms are at the Houston Architecture Center, 7026 Old Katy Road. Events are free; RSVP at thehoustondesigncenter.com.
River Oaks Bookstore: book signing, 5-7 p.m. Tuesday 3270 Westheimer
Her father, Dale Cooper, was an engineer, and amid his abounding projects was branch up assignment on the heating, cooling and electrical systems for the Astrodome. Her mother, Jean Cooper, had been a appearance illustrator at what is now the ArtCenter Academy of Architecture in Pasadena, Calif.
From them she abstruse to apprehend architectural and engineering affairs as able-bodied as assignment up autogenous architecture for homes, absolute or imagined.
She action as she talks about the avant-garde way her mother busy their Memorial Park home compared to their actual acceptable neighbors.
"Our abode was altered from everybody else's, and it took me a continued time to apprehend how it afflicted me. We had commercial-grade carpeting and a hot-pink sofa. It was appealing funny," she said. "We had ache cabinets in the den with chartreuse acrylic on them. There were things that crept into my arch that I didn't accede until a lot later, and they came from Houston."
Bohn doesn't anamnesis what she advised at the University of Texas, but she'll acquaint you beeline up that she flunked out.
"I fabricated all 'D's' and one 'F'. Whatever it was I studied, I wasn't actual absorbed in it," she said.
She was alpine and abuse thin, so at 19 - it was 1959 - she larboard Houston for New York and formed as a abode archetypal for Seventh Avenue accouterment manufacturers. From there she confused to Paris, breadth she modeled admirable couture by Nina Ricci.
Her clay career lasted added than a decade, and she alternate to New York and fabricated new friends. They were all able women, and one day they collapsed with her.
"I was still active about on the aerodrome … accomplishing bristles or six shows a day and active about with a backpack of shoes. Someone said, 'You absolutely charge to go aback to academy and get on with your life. Get it together,' " she recalled.
To apprehend this commodity in one of Houston's most-spoken languages, bang on the button below.
She'd consistently admired cartoon home affairs - which her mother had consistently critiqued - so back she was 32 years old, she enrolled at the Pratt Institute's Academy of Design.
"I saw a presentation of ecology architecture and went, 'Oh, my God, this is it, it's what I appetite to do.' I was absolutely absorbed and still am. It was absolutely because (my friends) confronted me, and I became a straight-A student," she said.
She was afflicted by Joseph D'Urso, a abecedary at Pratt and the artist of minimalism. Out of college, though, she was assassin by John Saladino - D'Urso's adverse - and she begin herself in a apple steeped in over-the-top luxury.
It was there that she met artist Joseph Lembo, and the two of them headed off on their own, accepting residential and bartering projects all over the world. They created sets for "The Year of the Dragon" cine and adapted abrasive automated spaces in New York into residential lofts.
In 1996, she founded Laura Bohn Architecture Associates and acclimatized into her own aesthetic: simple interiors, avant-garde yet archetypal appearance and affluence of ablaze gray and anemic neutrals.
Her book abstracts some of her best.
There's the 1907 Beaux-Arts coffer architecture inNew York's Meatpacking District that she and her accepted husband, Richard Fiore, bought and adapted into condos. For a while, they lived in its penthouse, with terrazzo asphalt floors and a broiler affected in laser-cut steel. Its kitchen is a mix of stainless animate and ribbed wood, and accustomed ablaze pours in through behemothic windows all around.
In a seven-bedroom two-story in the Hamptons, Bohn played with color; aphotic walnut floors are brightened with pale-gray walls and a white beam in a glassy accomplishment to reflect light. Its kitchen is a bendable aggregate of Carrara marble, pale-gray walls and putty-colored cabinets for a added abatement look.
Tackling a big home on Mercer Island in the Seattle area, Bohn ripped out walls to actualize added accessible spaces and kept the family's barn abounding of antiques from activity too airless by abacus in clean-lined, abreast furniture.
And she abounding a home in Colorado's Elk Mountains with adequate appliance in a ambit of textures - mohair, velvet, tweed - and sculptural lighting. Since the home was in a admirable ambience and advised by a accomplished architect, Bohn capital her choices to comedy off its already accustomed and comfortable materials.
Gray is a connected affair in her work, now and aboriginal in her career. It's her go-to blush - appropriate now she loves Sherwin-Williams Repose Gray, Aloof Gray and Dorian Gray - for its adeptness to be invisible.
"It's additionally a blush no one remembers. You don't bethink the gray walls, but you bethink aggregate abroad that's in the room," she said. "I like the blush to abandon except back I accomplish it absolutely arise and I'm in ascendancy of it."
Bohn said she gets active every decade or so and needs to move. "I consistently say, 'When it's time to paint, it's time to move.' If you're activity to paint, why not aloof get a new apartment?" she asked. She's afraid now.
She and her bedmate of 34 years are affairs their New York home and are advancing for a new phase: activity in a 19th-century alcazar in France's Loire Valley.
"I accept one best out, and we'll see it at Christmas. It's big. Nobody wants these houses, that's the absorbing part," she said, acquainted that she was fatigued to its blueprint and huge windows. "My bedmate and I do aggregate together. We assignment calm and body together."
