Same Ol’, Same ...Oh!

Homeowners are giving their interiors complete make-overs without spending money on a new sofa, carpet or even a single candlestick.

Instead, they’re hiring professionals to do what people have always done when they grow bored with their surroundings: Rearrange the furniture.

Interior arrangement, as it is known in home design circles, is a growing field based on the concept that people don’t need more possessions to make their homes beautiful. They just need someone with an eye for color, texture and scale to pull their furnishings together.

Tonya Iribarne and Judy Anderson of Oh My Gosh! Interiors in Mission Viejo specialize in one-day room make-overs, using items clients already have around the home.

“We show people decorative possibilities they just don’t see,” Iribarne said.

Interior arrangers do not simply move around a few knickknacks. They empty rooms completely so that not even a framed photo of the grandkids is left standing. Then they refurnish the rooms by picking and choosing from the existing furniture, art, plants and accessories, transforming a cluttered or claustrophobic space into something out of a home magazine.

They “shop the house” in search of things to incorporate into the interiors. Often they find great items stuffed in corners, hidden in cupboards or even set aside by the homeowner for a future garage sale.

“We’re a combination of detective and set designer,” Iribarne said. “It’s the thrill of the hunt. I once pulled a beautiful antique clock out of a cupboard. The main idea is to use what they have.”

The decorators, accompanied by assistant Becky Berry, recently redecorated the living room, family room and dining area of the Aliso Viejo home of J.C. and Ruth Abusaid. The Abusaids have wonderful rustic pine furniture and art from frequent trips to their native Colombia, but the couple wanted design experts to help them show everything to its best advantage.

Iribarne and Anderson emptied the rooms, grouping all of the accessories by category. Wrought-iron pieces, pottery, wood and silver were spread out on separate blankets. Plants were relegated to the kitchen.

With the furnishings out of the way, they could study the architectural features of the interior, making mental notes of the lines of the walls and ceilings.

“We decide on a focal point and what features we want to enhance,” Iribarne said.

Then they create new seating arrangements by moving in the large furniture. Homeowners have a tendency to shove sofas, love seats, desks and other big items against the walls in a misguided attempt to make rooms appear larger, Iribarne said. Instead, the wasted center space usually makes the room look smaller. She and Anderson pull chairs and couches away from walls, sometimes arranging them asymmetrically to give the room character.

They made the Abusaids’ living room look bigger by breaking up a large L-shaped sectional couch that took up most of the space. They moved two of the sections into the family room, placing them several feet from the walls and perpendicular to the leather couch to create a cozy nook.

They switched the pine coffee tables because the smaller one fit the living room better. They moved a blue dhurrie rug from the dining room to the living room, laying it diagonally beneath the coffee table to contrast with the color of the pine and the beige couch.

“We tend to like things a little unbalanced. It makes the room interesting,” Iribarne said.

She added interest to the dining room simply by moving two chairs away from the table and positioning them in opposite corners at an angle.

“All the chairs don’t have to be around the table,” she said. “A lot of people have beautiful upholstery on the seats and you can’t even see it.”

Decorators Maximized

Home’s Accessories

The Abusaids have the kind of tall, lush plants that interior designers love, but too many of them were crowded into the dining room so they were moved to strategic areas throughout the three rooms. The decorators positioned the plants near windows, drawing the eye naturally to a view of the surrounding canyon and accented them with lighting.

They aimed floor lamps up into the leaves instead of down to make the plants look more dramatic. “A lot of times people don’t have enough lighting,” Anderson said.

The interior arrangers layer the art and accessories last. They usually rehang all of the pictures and tapestries, because people tend to place their art too high (it should be hung close to the furniture to enhance its appearance).

They moved a woven tapestry made by Ruth Abusaid from the living room to the family room, where its red and orange tones became the tie-in for pillows and other accents.

Most people have an avalanche of accessories--throw pillows, candlesticks, photographs, vases--but they don’t know how to display them. “Sometimes it’s a matter of editing,” Iribarne said.

People gravitate toward the same type of objects such as blue and white china, but they don’t realize they’ve got a collection because they’ve spread the pieces around the house instead of grouping them in an eye-catching display.

“We’ll pull them together,” Iribarne said.

The decorators also mix objects of different heights and textures. A basket or a piece of carved wood can complement glass and iron objects. A short stack of books can add height and color contrast to a piece of pottery.

At the Abusaids, they fell in love with an antique statue of Buddha they discovered on an upstairs dresser, and placed it more prominently on the living room coffee table. “We thought he was so beautiful he should be seen,” Iribarne said.

They arranged the burgundy-colored statue at a diagonal on the table, then surrounded it with contrasting white candles and a potted ivy set up on a pyramid of books. “We wanted highs and lows and different textures,” Iribarne said. “If everything is the same height, it’s really boring.”

She turned the china cabinet in the dining room into a colorful focal point by filling the shelves with different materials and shapes. While most people use their cabinets exclusively for china and crystal, she brought in silver pitchers and platters, red candles, framed family photographs and a feathery fern to balance the hard metals and glass. Then she left the doors of the cabinet open to show off the display.

Nothing Wrong With Experimenting

The decorators experiment a lot.

Iribarne set a plant atop the china cabinet, then stood back and wrinkled her nose. “That’s not good at all,” she said.

She hunted all over the house for something to use as a centerpiece on the dining room table that would be simple but make a statement. After playing with a platter of gourds, a bowl of fruit, a bottle of wine (“too bad it’s not red”) and other potential centerpieces, she overturned a wrought-iron bowl with cutout leaves and topped it with a large red candle.

“Nothing is what it seems,” she said.

Anderson used three urns of varied sizes to decorate the mantle above the fireplace, replacing a few photographs and an antique iron that were too small to make an impression against the large expanse of white space. She hung a mirror off-center on the wall to balance the group of urns. Then she agonized over whether to add one more vase to the mantle.

“I love this, but I don’t want it to look too cluttered,” she said, and pulled it off.

They worked all day, and after much last-minute tinkering and adjusting of knickknacks, they lit all the candles and the gas logs in the fireplace and invited Ruth Abusaid downstairs to see her new rooms.

They don’t like clients to see the make-overs until they’re finished, so Abusaid stayed upstairs in her home office where she works as a graphic designer. “It can be very distressing to watch your house being ripped apart,” Iribarne said. “And it’s so much fun for them to be surprised.”

Abusaid walked from room to room with her eyes wide open. “It looks like a different home,” she said. “I love how you cut up that L-shaped sofa, and the contrast of the colors. Now the red stands out.”

She spotted a metal table lamp Berry had rescued from the garage: “Oh, you found that old red lamp. I was going to get rid of it, but it looks good,” Abusaid said.

The Abusaids later praised the decorators for finding places for items they’d given up on and grouping accessories to reveal decorative themes they had not detected.

It’s $100 an Hour, With 3-Hour Minimum

Iribarne and Anderson started Oh My Gosh! Interiors last fall, after graduating from the Interior Arrangement and Design Assn. The IADA, based in Dallas, is a professional association whose members are certified in the field of one-day decorating (https://www.interiorarrangement.org).

Oh My Gosh! Interior charges $100 an hour for the service, and there’s a three-hour minimum. Rooms take an average of five to eight hours to make over, depending on their size and furnishings.

The decorators sometimes charge for inexpensive items they bring along that can make a big difference in a display. They liven up a bookcase or shelf with small plants, which they wrap in burlap and tie with strands of raffia when they can’t find a suitable pot.

“I also have lentils and kidney beans. They’re good for centerpieces,” Anderson said.

A bowl filled with apples, which they also have handy, or fresh greenery from the garden, can add needed contrast in a pinch.

Although interior arranging is based on using whatever’s handy, Iribarne and Anderson occasionally recommend a client invest in a new plant or lighting. Most of the time, though, their clients have too many, rather than too few, furnishings, and they can’t use it all.

“Usually, people have leftovers,” Anderson said.

Iribarne and Anderson use the leftovers to fill bare spots they might have created by pulling items from other areas of the house. “We don’t leave other rooms barren,” Iribarne said.

Oh My Gosh! Interiors in Mission Viejo, (949) 215-4674 or (949) 766-4227.

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A Walk Through the Transformation

Decorators Tonya Iribarne and Judy Anderson changed this Aliso Viejo living room in one day without bringing in new items or painting the walls. How they did it:

* Emptied the room.

* Noted its architectural focal points and features.

* Rearranged the large L-shaped sectional couch.

* Replaced a pine coffee table with a smaller one.

* Laid a blue dhurrie rug diagonally beneath the coffee table.

* Positioned tall plants near windows; aimed floor lamps into the leaves to accent them.

* Hung artwork lower to be closer to the furniture.

* Mixed accessories. An antique burgundy-colored statue shares the coffee table with white candles, potted ivy and a pyramid of books.

* Lit candles and the fireplace.