Kathy McCleary Column Archive

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Getting Started With Window Treatments
"Several months ago I hung two pairs of sheer, embroidered curtains in my youngest daughter’s bedroom. They’re beautiful, but they’ve never looked quite right to me and I haven’t been able to figure out why. Today I found out: I hung the curtains way too low."
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Building a Home Office
"After six months of scraping old wallpaper, spackling, painting, hanging curtains, buying rugs and rearranging furniture, my favorite room in our new (to us) house is my home office."
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How Kathy Saved Money on her Home Office
"My own home office renovation was not expensive. We stripped the old wallpaper, then primed the wood trim. My husband and I did all the painting ourselves. The pine bookcases, mine since childhood, languished in our old basement for years, but my husband sanded and painted them and they look terrific. ."
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Can You Have a Love Affair With a House?
"Can you have a love affair with a house? I mean truly love it? After all, the kind of nurturing we give our houses isn’t that different from the nurturing we give our children or families."
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A close-up view of the wallpaper and trim in the "world's ugliest bathroom." Click here for a larger view.

Turning Around the World's Ugliest Bathroom
"On the plus side, the upstairs bathroom in our new house is a good size. On the minus side, it features garish plaid wallpaper in intense shades of black, brown, yellow and teal." Read more
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Super Stoves
"My new stove changed my life, and I’m not kidding. After a decade of constant struggle with an ancient Amana range...the final blow came on Thanksgiving." Read more
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Choosing a Chandelier
"The one jarring note in our otherwise simple, seamless dining room gleams brightly over the table.... the ornate brass chandelier, with elaborate curly-cues and a highly polished finish. It’s not just that it’s not my style, it’s not the house's style." Read more
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How Do You Choose A Color Palette?
"It’s one big, gigantic blank slate. Our new home has eight rooms (not including the bathrooms), no unified color scheme (navy blue in the office, green in the bedroom, beige and pink in the dining room, gray in the hallways) and a lot of dark colors that aren’t really my style (hunter green and maroon)."
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Picking the Perfect Area Rug
"When we moved a few months ago from our fairly small, thoroughly carpeted house to our new home, we were thrilled with the lovely old oak floors. But now it’s starting to get cold and it’s definitely time to buy some area rugs." Read more
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Big Sounds, Big Pictures
"I am sitting in a black leather chair watching Finding Nemo, staring at Marlin, Nemo’s dad, and Crush, the surfer dude sea turtle, on a giant 110-inch screen. Marlin’s brilliant orange scales, detailed enough to count individually, glow against hundreds of shades of blue."
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Find more about buying a home theater system and incorporating it into your decor in our special Home Entertainment feature.

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