INTERIOR DESIGN MAKEOVER 2013 "Timeless"

INTERIOR DESIGN MAKEOVER 2013 "Timeless"

INTERIOR DESIGN MAKEOVER 2013 "Timeless"

A bar alcove in a Park Avenue apartment gets a cozy makeover with grass cloth, by Roger Arlington, on the walls. A 1940's Chinese Chippendale shelf holds glassware, opposite: Zuber's Moscova wallpaper was the first thing designer Tom Samet found. The original doors were faux-Sainted to look like cerused oak and dressed up with vintage doorknobs from the Plaza Hotel.

INTERIOR DESIGN MAKEOVER 2013 "Timeless"

INTERIOR DESIGN MAKEOVER 2013 "Timeless"

The charm is in the details, like the metal leaves on the Giacometti-style vintage end tables and the hand-stitched Larsen fabric on the two midcentury modern chairs. Club chairs are covered in a vintage suzani fabric. And most of the furniture is on sliders, so it's easy to push around. Sofa in Cowtan &Tout's Hadley. Love seat in Donghia's Pluscious. Curtains in Clarence House's Damasco. Car-pet by Sherrill Canet for Stark. Paint is Farrow & Ball's Skylight.

INTERIOR DESIGN MAKEOVER 2013 "Timeless"

CHRISTINE PITTEL: The wallpaper people must dance a jig when they see you coming.
TOM samET: I grew up in a 19505 house with a mother who loved wallpaper, and, yes, I love it, too. Here, it was a Zuber wallpaper that started it all. I've always wanted to do Zuber.

I'm generally a very informal decorator. I do country houses. and I'm always telling clients. 'This is not a Park Avenue apartment.' But now I finally had a Park Avenue apartment to decorate, in a Rosario Candela build-ing—with beautiful proportions and nice, big rooms—but it was very bland and run-down.

The client had just bought it. and one day we were in the car. I looked on my phone and found out where Zuber was, and we walked in, because I had this fantasy of a great Zuber paper for the dining room. I'd been living in Palm Beach and was in an aqua phase.

So the salesgirl opened up a book—there are hundreds, as you can imagine—and the first thing she showed us was this wonderful hand-tooled aqua-and-bronze paper. I said, 'That's it! This is going to set the tone for the whole apartment.' If you notice, there's a lot of aqua and bronze all the way through.

But you didn't stop there. I see grass cloth ... 

The Zuber paper was so expensive that I felt it really only needed to be at eye level, so we put bronze-colored grass cloth below the chair rail. The grass cloth continues out through the bar area and leads you into the living room, where the walls are pale aqua, to tie it all in. 

The living room was like a filing cabinet, with windows at just one end. I covered one wall with antique mirror—to suck in the light and reflect the view. The paint also has a sheen. And I found this vinyl wallcovering that was probably meant for a kitchen and put it on the wainscoting. It also had the good fortune of being aqua and taupe. 

I couldn't have plain paint down there! In fact. I didn't use any flat paint in the entire apartment. A long, rectangular room is tricky to furnish. 

What's your solution? 

There are three separate seating areas, plus an old-fashioned games table with chartreuse leather on the chairs. The chartreuse doesn't go with any-thing else, but it's so cool, it works. There's a love scat under the windows to anchor that wall, and a big sofa opposite the fireplace. Then a coffee table with two chairs—I'm not reinventing the wheel here. Andan intimate area in front of the fireplace, with twoclub chairs.