Home, Again

For many of us, the idea of hiring a decorator is about as appealing as a root canal. The very word conjures images of pushy design pros storming through a house crying, “No, no, no this just won’t do.”

“Typically, people purchase items because they like them,” says Gina Pierantozzi, one of two local women hoping to change the face of interior design. “Sometimes they just can’t get them in the right location to accent the pieces and make a nice cohesive environment.”

That’s where Pierantozzi, 37, and her partner Doreen Naughton, 35, come in. The two former next–door neighbors and longtime friends recently took their hobby, home design, and turned it into a business, The Redecorators. But the pair aren’t your average strip-it-bare, start-from-scratch decorators. Pierantozzi and Naughton will redo a room or an entire house using their client’s existing belongings.

“Everyone kept saying, ‘Can you come over and decorate my house?’” Pierantozzi recalls on a sunny afternoon sitting with Naughton in her impeccably appointed Queen Village backyard, with her ever-present dog Stanze snoozing peacefully on the bench beside her. “So we said, ‘You know what, everyone asks us to do this, we should just make it into a business.’”

Pierantozzi came from a package-design and sales background, and Naughton had formerly run a publishing company and had done graphic-design work. The two have always had what Pierantozzi calls a “passion” for decorating and redecorating their homes. In fact, two visits to Pierantozzi’s home in two days revealed two completely different looks for her living room -- Pierantozzi says she has all of her furniture on easy-slide tabs for quick rearranging. And Naughton admits that she is so dedicated to rearranging spaces to her liking, she has found herself reworking hotel rooms she’s stayed in. “People have great furniture, great stuff,” Pierantozzi says. “Move it around!” Naughton cracks up. “Gina is amazing at how many ways she can configure a space.”

Their business is about a year old, and they are working with a handful of clients on projects ranging from entire houses to a client’s daughter’s dorm room. The Redecorators do full design, with paint and carpet and the whole shebang, but their niche is, as Naughton puts it, “working with what you’ve got.” Pierantozzi says a lot of their work is “de-tchotchke-izing” homes. “If you have too many items in your home,” she says, “you lose focus, you don’t realize how nice some of the items are. So by paring down the items and rotating your items seasonally, you really can emphasize a piece, and when [another] piece comes out of storage you’re like, ‘Wow! I never realized how nice that was, I couldn’t see it through everything else on the mantel.’”

Besides losing the clutter, Pierantozzi and Naughton have two other major no-nos they see in decorating. “Fear of color” frustrates Pierantozzi. “People are petrified of color. Painting is the quickest, most inexpensive change you can ever make to your house.” The other faux pas is failing to create furniture arrangements suitable for conversations. “Pull your furniture away from the wall!” Naughton says enthusiastically. “Yeah,” Pierantozzi reiterates, “they have a sofa against this wall, two chairs over there [gestures across the room], and they wonder why noboby’s sitting and talking to anybody.”

As a challenge question, I throw out the example of my apartment, a rental (so no painting) with lots of big, boring white walls. What do I do, I ask, if I can’t afford to buy amazing pieces of art to cover them? Both women immediately pop out different suggestions. “Hang fabric to cover the wall,” Naughton says. “That can give you your color and it can be fun, too, once you get a tension rod up there, so there’s no hardware involved, you could do sari fabrics in the summer or some really bright patterns, depending on what you like.”

Pierantozzi jumps on the no-money-for-art point and says, “Do you like contemporary art? Get a big canvas, take a piece of [art] you like, photocopy it on a piece of acetate, get one of those overhead projectors, project onto the canvas, sketch it out with a pencil and go to Pearl and get some paint. That’s about a $50 solution to your big, white wall.”

Pierantozzi also suggests taking Naughton’s fabric advice and adding a large mirror to the equation, saying it’s easy to find a less expensive mirror at flea markets or discount stores. “We shop at all price [ranges],” Naughton chips in. “We might find a great fabric at the design marketplace, or we might find it on Fabric Row. We go to Target, we go to Ross, we go to Home Depot.”

“Marshalls Mega Store! We love it,” Pierantozzi adds enthusiastically. “You can look through my house and see what I’ve spent on enormous chandeliers, and there’ll be sconces right next to it that I bought at the Pier 1 outlet for $2.50 each. Don’t write that,” she laughs, as if she’s revealing bargain-hunting secrets. “Oh, you can write it, I don’t care.”

The Redecorators stress practical and functional decorating. “If you’re going to sit down and have a few drinks, you want a place to put your drink,” Naughton says. “It has to look pretty, but it has to be functional. The chair has to be comfortable, the sofa has to be comfortable. You know, we’re not gonna choose something just because it has great lines if no one’s going to sit in it. We think people should live in their houses. Use your rooms!”

To that end, the partners have developed a questionnaire about the way their clients use their rooms, to help assess each person’s needs during an initial free consultation. “Where does your stuff pile up when you walk in the house?” Naughton asks. “What is the traffic flow and how do you use the rooms? Some people, you know, maybe they never use their dining room, and it might be better to put bookshelves on the walls and make it into a library.”

The ladies are also there to help couples and roommates communicate about how to best use their space. “Sometimes it’s hard for people to articulate certain styles,” Naughton says. “One person’s contemporary is not another person’s contemporary.” “Oh, that’s a whole different situation,” Pierantozzi interjects. “One person’s red is not another person’s red,” adds Naughton.

The Redecorators hope to build their company over the next few years, and they’ve toyed with the idea of putting out a book. “I’d like to have my own TV show, like Trading Spaces,” Pierantozzi says, laughing. “I love that show.” Makes sense, but Pierantozzi also adds that she loves The Osbournes. But of course, it all comes back to home and design. “They’ve got a great kitchen. Have you seen that kitchen?”

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