ORDER IN THE HOUSE
April, 2006
Designer Lori Dennis makes her small space expand the feng shui feel.
Lori Dennis was destined to be a designer. When more teen she age were heading to the movies or a ballgame with their dates, Lori enticed her suitors with a different approach: Let me pack a picnic lunch and let’s head for the Open Houses, she would urge. All the while she was choreographing her future, a future that would characterize her career as an interior designer who specializes in sustainable (green) design and feng shui.
But what’s an environmentally conscious designer to do when she has a bounty of big ideas but lives in a small space? The answer lied in organization. “Entertaining is a big part of my life but I live in an apartment,” explains Lori. “So one of the space-saving ideas I incorporated in my small dining room was to create a wall-to-wall banquette.” Paired with six slipcovered chairs gathered around a farm table, the 13’x13’ area now easily accommodates a dinner party of twelve.
“By having the banquette against the wall rather than using chairs that you have to walk around, you create a lot more space,” Lori points out. “It just feels real comfortable in there, where you want to sit down and never get up. That’s how I like my dining space to be—a place where people feel at ease to hang out for a long time and eat and talk.”
“Tall, dark (and not so handsome) dreary kitchen cabinets presented Lori with another small space dilemma. Lori’s solution was to remove the doors and paint the cabinets a celadon green. “By taking the doors off, you can have multiple people involved in meal preparation, all reaching for things without getting in each other’s way,” says Lori.
Absolutely no detail escapes Lori’s careful scrutiny