WHAT A MONDAY LOOKS LIKE FOR AN INTERIOR DESIGNER IN NEW YORK CITY

LOG 11.9.2015

6:45am-The sun is just starting its journey over Central Park and down West 89th Street. Enough light is slipping in between the slit in the curtains to penetrate my thin eyelids and get me moving. I reach for the remote and turn on CBS to catch the weather before the national news starts. Then I swallow the five pills I now take for maintenance issues that I can no longer remember the reason for their necessity
7:00am-I'm up and the bed is made. I'm a creature of habit with a bit of OCD and a big superstition that if I don't get the bed made the whole day will go down from there. I roll out the yoga mat as Charlie and Gayle begin with the ninety-second rundown of the day's top stories
7:15am-It's a tray of ice cubes, a ripe banana, a sprinkling of mini semi-sweet chocolate chips, an extra helping of fat-free, sugar-free vanilla creamer, a couple of cups of 1% milk and a packet of Starbuck's original roast instant coffee into the blender; it's my liquid breakfast
7:23am-I'm at the bathroom sink for a quick shave and shower after which I delude myself with the idea that the eye cream, spot remover and body lotion I smear over my body will in some way halt the inevitable.
7:45am-I'm dressed, respectable clothing today that will need to get me through the gauntlet of varying degrees of respectability and physical punishment I'll have to endure during the rest of the day
8:00am-Time to sit down and go through the collection of emails that have accumulated on my computer during the evening.

8:45am-It's off to the subway to catch the "C" or the "B" downtown which I'll then need to transfer to the "7" so I can make it to the BDNY show at the Javits and get registered before the show opens. The new Hudson Yards station is such a vast improvement over the grimy old stations on the rest of the "7" line. It doesn't quit rival the new Fulton Street station but the mosaic work is still pretty impressive.

9:15am-I make it to the Javits just in time to find a bathroom. The morning blender concoction caught up to me somewhere between getting off the "C" train and hopping on the "7". I get through registration at BDNY and wait for the show to open. This is my first time at the Boutique Design New York show. A show dedicated to the hospitality industry. I didn't know what to expect but the show was much larger than I had thought

9:30-10:30am-I put on my imaginary racing shoes trying to see as much of the show as possible. Note to self (next year give yourself at least a full morning to do the show).

Approximately five miles of aisles of vendors looking to entice designers and hoteliers to pick up their contract worthy products.

As time was running out I ran into the girls from Global Views who accost me for taking pictures of their booth. It wasn't until I presented my credentials and association with Maura and Sharon from the New York showroom that they relented and allowed me take a few pictures. Apparently there's a cadre of Asians who scout the show and then show up two weeks later with reproductions of what they've seen at the show at an inferior quality but with a discount price tag

10:30-11:30am-I'd signed up for a seminar titled Boutique Design's 2015 Up-and-Coming Hoteliers moderated by Mary Scoviak, Executive Editor of Boutique Design with a panel including Brad Wilson of the Ace Hotel Group, Enrique "Kike" (pronounced key-kay) Sarasola of Room Mate Hotels and BeMate.com, and Josh Wyatt of Generator a hostel based hospitality firm. The thrust of the discussion seemed to be about the emerging awareness of the youth travel market. The trend most talked about was the extended experience hotels are offering to a younger traveling market: more in hotel cafes, nightclubs, health clubs and game rooms.

11:45am - A mad dash back to the Hudson Yards station and another multi-layered subway trip first across town and then downtown to 200 Lex, The New York Deign Center. Grabbed a sandwich and brownie cube from Pret-a-Manger to take with me.

12:00-5:00pm-Time to put in this month's office hours at the Access to Design office. We're required to spend five hours of design time to maintain our position as one of the thirty designers represented by the referral agency that is a part of the Design Center. During this time Claire, the new director of Access to Design, and I updated our portfolio, I did a tour of the showrooms to see what was new (this is when I found these rose gold and pink leather dining chairs at Cliff Young that I fell in love with), went over the fifty new emails that had come in between my 8:00am check-in and now,

and had a conversation with Maura at Studio A thanking her for her review of us on HOUZZ and my incident with her co-workers at the BDNY show.

5:00pm-Left NYDC and ran across town to Organic Modernism to check on a dining table replacement for a client.

Then walked to Macy's where the decorations are already going up for Christmas. While standing next to a display of ugly holiday sweaters I took a call from Rick about a perspective client in Hoboken, fingers crossed. Interrupted by a phone call from a client cancelling Tuesday's shopping trip and changing it to Wednesday.

6:00pm-Back on the subway up the Westside to 72nd Street and an event at the Chatsworth Residence sponsored by Domino Magazine, Stark Realty and Theory.
6:15pm- Final spotted a Hunter-Douglas vendor. They were closed but I made a mental note to stop by the following day so I could take care of a client's mother's request to fix her broken vertical blinds

6:30pm-After having turned the wrong way on 72nd Street I backtracked to the West Side and found the Chatsworth at the far end of 72nd. Built in the French Beaux Arts style in 1904 it was one more wedding cake in a series of upscale marriages between the city and its nouveau riche. The building has  undergone a major renovation and many of the units are now for sale.
I had RSVP'd and was on the list for the open house event.

Thinking I'd make an appearance and with luck fall into a conversation with a perspective buyer looking for a designer I picked up a glass of sparkling water and started touring the rooms.

When I turned around from the bar set up in the kitchen island I ran smack dab into Kathrrine Scully and her husband, Dennis. Kathrine is the national home furnishings director for Luxe Interiors + Design and Dennis is the President of Avery Boardman the company responsible for all the upholstered pieces in the apartment and Vice President of Business Development for The Editor at Large. They took hold of me and we toured the four bedroom, $6.5 million dollar condo together bumping into industry friends in every room.

Our favorite hangout and where Katherine and Dennis held court was the master bathroom that was beautiful but had a glass enclosed toilet that none of us could figure out.

8:00pm-Left the Chatsworth with a very impressive goodie bag. Decided on taking the subway at 72nd up to 86th and then walked to D'Agositno's, the local grocery store, to pick up dinner. Buying food in New York is painful now that we live in Madison. I was never one to do a lot of comparison shopping but I can't help it now that the discrepancy between my two extremes is so great.
8:45pm-Made a microwaveable dinner and sat back down with my computer, my emails and writing down notes from the day.

10:00pm-Began research on an upcoming project and prepared a bag of tools for an 8:30am meeting the next morning with another client to develop a strategy for hanging art and mirrors that would be happening the following day
11:30pm- Turned on Steven Colbert as I slipped under the covers my eyes closing sometime before he finished his monologue.

THE GALLERY

New York, 1900
Photographer unknown
Available through Detroit Publishing Company