Sette Design: The Princess and the Firemen

Palazzo from the 1400's

Yesterday I wrote about my crazy romantic perspective of life – what’s the harm I asked? Then later I thought about an incident that happened this summer that was completely the cause of my stupid, dreamy, romantic mind. I was working in a beautiful Medieval Palazzo, the one you see above. I had brought my Italian girlfriend by to see the space. She has a furniture store that I paint furniture for and she has great style and we love to talk about colors and process. While looking at the apartment we stepped outside into the inner courtyard to look and I stood at the top of this staircase and said, hundreds of years ago I could have been a princess standing on the top of these stairs, descending them in a flowing gown.

princess staircase

SLAM – the wind blew the apartment door closed. We had a good laugh for a few moments until the reality dawned on me. I was now locked outside of work, my cell phone, purse and even keys to my house were inside. Now in this world of cell phones, nobody in Italy even has landlines to look up a number in the phone book. I couldn’t call the owners of the apartment. I felt pretty bad because they had trusted me with their keys and I was not working and instead pretending to be a princess.

Hours later I got the fireman to come and open the door. They brought the huge fire truck right into the center of town. The fireman were not mad and scolding me for wasting their time. They were distracted by the beauty of the Palazzo, proud of this hidden treasure, of their Italian culture. They opened the door in seconds, mouths hanging open in awe, laughing and good spirited and maybe quietly, secretly standing on top of that staircase, for a split second imagining they were noblemen descending the stairs with swords resting on their hips. Firemen all over the world are cuties it seems.

The project came out well. The clients were really happy.

I apologize for my low technology camera and basically simple knowledge of all computer stuff. It is a small miracle that this blog is even up and running. Today I am taking a huge leap to even try to put up a video. I hope it works.

It is interesting to note that the crown moldings and ceiling panels are all fake, Styrofoam with real gold leaf on the panels. I didn’t do any of that work. I just painted the space. The question of if it is correct to put Styrofoam into a Medieval Palazzo, you can answer in your own mind. The job did get completed in a very fast time frame.

A before shot

Before

Here is a photograph of the finishes. Pearl dragged kitchen, pale grey blue living room, second living room taupe (that changes from mocha to lavender with the light) and a pale grey bedroom with rich sky blue ceiling (not shown).