WAS THE NEWSLETTER #87

I’m Paige Wassel. WAS the Newsletter is your weekly dose of design inspiration, where we’d rather beg for forgiveness.

JOHN JACK VINCENT WASSEL

You know how sometimes you walk into a space and think….HEH?????? Yeah, that was the cabinet situation in my brother Jack’s new Chicago apartment. Great location, terrible kitchen cabinets. Layers of paint on not only the doors but also the hinges. No knobs, which is just strange? Idk whats going on with these things but I knew we could upgrade this space EASY.

Out of aesthetic necessity, we decided to upgrade his kitchen and bath space without obtaining prior permission. Zero remorse. You're welcome, Jack's landlord.

IT’S A MOOD

Jack and I have similar taste (well kind of.. sometimes we bicker over interiors, clothes, wine, what we are watching on tv, all the sibling things), so before we started, we made design boards together. Well I made them lol. Sibling bonding really makes our parents hearts flutter. To us, we are just friends who happen to annoy each other. We kept circling back to the color black for the cabinets because it felt neutral and clean. Black cabinets, black steel open shelving, black handles. It was giving.……. well, kind of the only option we had. And even though Jack usually likes less color and I am me, we were somehow aligned.

THE KITCHEN

We (my mom, Jack, and I—but let’s be honest, mainly my mom and me along with jack popping out of his at home office in between meetings) painted all the cabinets. We scrubbed every surface. We ripped off the weird little cabinet over the sink like it had insulted our family. Then I brought in these matte black steel shelves, which I LOVE. And I don’t care what the internet says: open shelving is not dead. How could it be dead? It’s shelving. It’s called displaying your stuff like an adult with taste.

We hung art. We swapped in a better light fixture (it arrived late, so maybe you won’t see it in this newsletter, but trust me, it slaps and you can see in the full video on Sunday). We even prop-styled, like real people who live in real houses with candles and mugs and mini lamps.

But then we were like, “Why stop at the kitchen? Let’s punish ourselves with the bathroom, too.”

ALWAYS DOING THE MOST

His bathroom was giving 1990s Craigslist rental. First step: dark paint. Always. If your bathroom is sad, just paint it dark. I can’t explain the science behind the magic, but it’s real. Dark paint is the secret sauce for an outdated bathroom.

We patched the walls, painted the ceiling (Jack’s ceiling is weirdly tall, which made him the ladder person, TFG), and it was ten million degrees, so we were too hot to get a ton of footage.

I found some good Amazon shelves, added a hook, styled the whole thing with art, and we added a WAS shower curtain. The bathroom is now giving man in his late 20’s, single, stupid, and has taste? Yep, yep.. he does indeed.

SHOW US!!!

The project took two days, but it sort of felt like a lifetime. Yet when it was all done, Jack hosted a little happy hour with the fam, made a little cheese board, and played some Vampire Weekend (which is a band our whole family can agree on, along with Billy Joel, Talking Heads, Khruangbin, and a few more). We’re all so stoked at how it turned out. My mom and brother are similar to me where we love to stare at a project after completion. Again, that interior design high. Now, I don’t want to say the only thing that could have made his new place better would be those old Ralph Lauren prints my mom purged when she sold the Geneva house, but… she doesn’t read the newsletter so I can call her out. Mom… text me if you’re reading this.

Anyway, check out the complete transformation when I drop the full video on my YouTube channel on Sunday!

And I would say go follow Jack on Instagram but he is social media free like that.

xx,
P