How to Use Metrie’s Architectural Mouldings in Your Home

I doubt #BlogTourKBIS sponsor, Metrie,  was planning it, but as I approached their booth at #KBIS2017, I began to feel a sense of home.

Their “vestibule”, with its wide horizontal siding, island blue door, individual coat hooks and country-style bar cart could have been lifted from a beach cottage on the Cape or Islands. (Can spring come any sooner, please???)

The feeling continued as I stepped inside their booth and immediately began to see potential applications of their trim in the older and historic homes Sally and I work on regularly. I LOVED the dramatic dark blue with black trim paint scheme! Perfect for a small cozy and intimate library or living room. No room for a real fireplace? How about a mantel with an array of candles inside ? Simple and easy!

Often beautiful on the outside, over time, the older homes here in Boston and surrounding areas, often suffer through a series of poorly conceived renovations and improvements and we are asked to recapture the original spirit of the home as part of the scope of our interior design and renovation work.

Sometimes, there are sufficient clues so we can accurately recreate and match the original trim and details. Often times, though, there are not – and we are asked to recreate the spirit of the period.

Conversely, we also receive calls from homeowners who have purchased newer homes whose interior architecture lacks grace and charm.  After much closer inspection, I think I have found a reliable source of architectural moulding and trim for these types of projects, Official Metrie.

As an example, I will use a past project in which our client wanted their new library to have a French influence, as my sample sketch below,  illustrates.

Metrie’s trim would have fit this project like a glove,  as you can see in the image below where, from top left moving clockwise, you can see their crown, panel trim, baseboard and door casing architectural mouldings and trims.

As I walked around other vignettes in their display, I was delighted to discover clues as to how I could utilize their mouldings to echo period New England Colonial Style paneling.

Or Boston’s Back Bay mouldings and trims, whose architectural detailing is slightly heavier than earlier Colonial Period profiles.

Several of these architectural moulding profiles form Metrie’s *Pretty Simple* collection are perfect for a fully paneled living room we designed  a year ago.

Or for this proposed colonial style living room paneling, shown below and inspired by Winterthur, in a colonial period reproduction home we are designing now, located on Boston’s North Shore.

Looking up, while wandering through their display, I was reminded that we can use traditional trim profiles in new and exciting ways, and that we shouldn’t always be so serious.

I don’t think I’ll ever look at a coat hanger rod the same way! Given the opportunity, I’ve been inspired to play more with the shape and form of panel moulding. And, as we often share with our clients, the ceiling is the forgotten *fifth wall* in a room and here they can have some fun with wallpaper or – possibly – Metrie’s crown moulding and trim.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my brief virtual tour of Metrie’s KBIS display and have been inspired to look at your home from a different perspective. Maybe that living room and dining room DOES need that cosmetic facelift.

Should that be the case, Sally and I would love to have the opportunity to help you  successfully turn your vision into a lasting and beautiful *in home* experience. Please don’t hesitate to contact us via the contact form on our new website, here:

www.wilsonkelseydesign.com/contact

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Thank you!