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Faced With a Lack of Style, Invent It
Chris Torres, right, owner of Reincarnations Furnishings, and Frank Bauman, the store's general manager, move a mirror to the basement showroom.
(Susan Biddle - Twp)
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Have an unfinished basement -- really unfinished? Take inspiration from Reincarnations' basement showroom, where rough brick meets cinderblock, and pipes and wires and coils of this and that drop down below sooty exposed rafters. Not that you'd notice.
Bring in enough fabulous furniture, accessories in punch-drunk colors and great lighting and you have the makings of a subterranean "loft."
"It's always a mistake to try to hide something. The best thing to do is to distract from it," Torres said.
Example? The electrical closet is down there. It's about five feet square, "with the fire sprinkler system, the . . . security system, the phone wires and a big ugly box hanging there. I took the doors off the closet, and put in a table and chairs and a cool chandelier. They don't even notice the boxes," he said.
"The thermostat's in the wrong place? Work it into a collage of stuff. I don't hide it. Put it right out there. Weirdly placed window? Ignore it. I love weird rooms."
Torres said that we had walked right past the electrical meter, centered on one (artfully) crumbling cement wall, "big and clunky with pipes coming out of it," he said.
No one notices.
"It's hanging there above a sofa, flanked by a pair of great contemporary lamps. It comes across as art," he said.
"Don't fight it, take the eye away from it. It's like makeup. The more you try to cover a blemish the more it shows. Go over the top and they'll never see it."
