WAS [the newsletter] #32

Summer Breeze

I’m Paige Wassel. WAS the Newsletter is your weekly dose of design inspiration, blowin’ through the jasmine in my mind.

First, I’m truly grateful to everyone who came to the pop-up and and helped sell out the WAS linen drop. Loved doing this and per your feedback, the feeling was mutual. A million tasteful thanks.

So let’s talk about my new YouTube series. Here’s Part One of Let Me Decorate Your Home:

Thought you all might appreciate some context of how this project came to be. Basically, I wanted to step away from my computer. I used to work on set all the time, styling for interior brands or working for Architectural Digest. It was my job for 9 years! Kinda wild. A good problem to have is that WAS and my YouTube channel are growing, but the downside is that I haven’t been able to get my hands dirty in a while. I wanted to physically put my talents back to work, so I conceived of this idea back in January.

My friend Basma’s bedroom was the perfect place to kick off this new endeavor.

Basma already has great style, so we weren’t starting at zero. Plus, she was open to a full revamp. In designing her room, I set up the process like I would with any client where I worked to discover her taste and mix it with mine. (Full disclosure as you watch: my design boards are a little more professional if I’m doing a formal presentation.)

Thanks to our sponsors Helix, Rugs USA, and Tulip Shades, we had a $4,000 budget. We put everything in a PowerPoint that Basma, Kate, and I added to when we found inspiration and we based our design on the culmination of it all.

The first thing we did was bring in this fantastic cabinet that we found on Facebook Marketplace for $700.

Do you normally want to install a giant-ass piece of furniture before painting? NO, YOU DO NOT. The reality is, we all work so we weren’t going to paint until the weekend. But when you find something on FBMP, you get while the getting is good and just paint around it.

Were there a few mishaps?

Um… yeah. Not only could we not get her chairs in through the regular doorway, we had to use an alternative doorway and take it off the hinges. It was kind of a nightmare, but it was also an object lesson on how older buildings in Los Angeles have surprisingly tight doorways. Measure twice, people. Measure twice.

Next up, we “taste” tested paint colors.

I’m not usually a blue girl, but that’s what Basma wanted. When you see Part Two of the video, you’ll see why it was such a good choice. So, despite what you might think, I am not the arbiter of everything and that’s what made this project such a joy. Putting our 100% together created something that’s 1000%.

Part One was really the design phase of the operation. Kate was also a huge player and it was the three of us putting our heads together and coming up with a plan.

On Sunday, I’m going to drop Part Two. That’s where we had the real fun. I’m excited for you all to see the big reveal. What I like about working on Basma’s bedroom—and what makes it so real—is that we couldn’t do everything because of budget and timing. But for so many of us, that’s the reality when we undertake a redesign. We’re often tasked with figuring out how to reuse what we’ve got and I think we did so brilliantly.

More importantly, so did Basma.