Remember this, that if you wish to be great at all, you must begin where you are and what you are.
—RUSSELL HERMAN CONWELL
Leanne
People ask me how I got into design. Honestly, it’s all because of one pretty little bathroom.
Let me backtrack a little. In 2010, I moved back to Pittsburgh and found an amazing old schoolhouse, the one I talked about earlier, located about thirty minutes outside of the city. It was a run-down place and needed a lot of work, but I was inspired because I had been dying to rip down some walls and reconfigure a space. When you really own something, you can do that. You don’t have to ask a landlord for approval.
Fashion was still my bread and butter. I had been styling people for years at this point. When I bought my schoolhouse, I knew the renovation would be a challenge, but I had no idea how inspired I’d be by decorating. All of a sudden, I had a vision, and I had a blank canvas.
One of the bigger visions and harder to-dos was to renovate the upstairs bathroom. It was a tiny little bathroom, which started out as nothing special at all. There was a slanted roof. There was a tiny window that looked bad from the inside and outside; you know—a dinky little shower window with no natural light. It was bad. But the biggest problem I had to figure out was where to fit a bathtub. This was my A-number-one priority. I was definitely putting a bathtub in that room. No was not an option. I take a bath every day—sometimes twice, if I’m lucky!
Up to this point, my then husband, my friends, my family, and I had done everything ourselves. But we were exhausted, so I decided to do it the “real” way: I called a contractor. Someone came in from a large contracting company. I told him my idea: I wanted white subway tiles. A big open shower with no curtains. No glass. An octagon-tiled floor and a tub underneath the slanted roof, right there in the shower.
“You can’t do that. I’ve never seen that.”
Now, you know I don’t take no for an answer. I’ve been this way since I was ten years old and painting Mom’s refrigerator.
So I spoke to two more contractors. They all said the same thing: “You can’t do that, I’ve never seen that before.”
I can’t tell you how frustrating that was. I had a vision. The vision was clear. And I had spent so many years implementing my vision in the fashion world. Now here were these three people telling me I couldn’t do it, just because they said they’d never seen it before. Please.
So I was going to figure it out without them. That’s when I called Steve.
Steve
And I took the job. Because, you know, the price was right and she needed help. So I called my friends and made them come over and figured it out. We worked, but it felt more like a party. It was a fun job.
Leanne
Yeah, I paid them in beer, pretty much. I always had beer and tequila there—drinks upon arrival for Steve and his friends. When they’d leave after working on my house, they’d say “Thanks. We had a great time!” Or they’d say after a long day’s work, “We got to go home soon, Leanne,” and I would hand them another drink, and they’d stay there for another couple of hours. I’m no fool!
But basically, Steve didn’t have a choice. No one else would work on it.
Steve
I’m not going to lie: I felt the same way that the contractors felt. I stepped into that house and I thought, How are we going to do this?
The space was tricky. It was an old house. Everything was a little bit iffy. Everything was outdated, and it needed a ton of work. But anything that Leanne wants is a little trickier than what your average human being wants. It’s a little more of a MacGyver situation. But in the end, it’s always a little better and more interesting her way.
It’s that little tweak that Leanne puts on something. It’s that push that she takes to make it jump to the next level. I really respect that about her.
Leanne
I’m going to have to remind you that you wrote that, Steve, when you’re mad at me during the process. I’ll just show you this book the next time you complain about my ideas. Because it’s no fail: every single time I have an idea on the show, he complains about it. And then, like clockwork, every time we do a reveal, he says, “This actually looks really good.”
I have an idea, Steve. What if we take out that in-between, where you’re complaining, and it’s just a nice, lovely experience?
Steve
Here’s the thing: my thought process is probably a lot like Dad’s. Remember the time Leanne and Mom painted the avocado refrigerator white? I’m sure Dad liked it once it was done, but his first instinct was to mull it over, or just right off the bat say no. Because who paints a refrigerator?
Dad was a cautious guy. And even though it might not seem like I’m careful because of all the extreme sports I dive into, I’m actually supercautious about my decision-making. I don’t want it to seem like I’m complaining or shutting Leanne down while we’re working on the shot—because obviously Leanne has amazing ideas!—but I just need a little time to figure it all out. Unfortunately, when we’re shooting the television show, the pace is so fast. We have to make decisions, like, boom-boom-boom. I could probably use a little more time to allow that mental process to happen.
Leanne
If I’m the MacGyver of design, Steve is the MacGyver of construction. His problem is he figures it out. If he didn’t figure it out, I wouldn’t keep asking him to do weird stuff. Poor guy.
Which is what happened with my bathroom. He—along with an amazing crew of guys—helped me figure it out.
Right next to the existing bathroom was a crawl space and a massive closet taking up space. That was all I needed. I wanted it all gone so I had extra room to play with.
I think the reason that I am good at design is because I see it differently. Steve actually said this once, which I loved: “Leanne doesn’t just think outside the box; she rips the box down.” I start over. I see the potential in everything, which was a problem in dating, but great in renovating houses.
So we did it: we broke into the crawl space and lost the massive bathroom closet. We put the bathtub under the slanted roof, which was another “problem,” according to contractors. “You won’t be able to stand up in your bathtub,” they said.
“Who needs to stand up in their bathtub?” I replied.
To deal with the light, I put this massive full-size window in the shower. Another “no-can-do” from the contractors I spoke to.
“You can’t put a window in your shower that big,” they said. That’s a privacy issue.
To solve that problem, I hung outdoor shutters on the inside of the shower. They are, after all, meant to be completely weatherproof. It was perfect because I could close them when I needed privacy and open them up when I wanted natural light.
Steve
Most people’s brains don’t work the way our brains work. Genetically, our brains are similar, which is great in a lot of ways, especially when we’re working together. (It can also be terrible in a lot of ways.) Yesterday, for instance, we walked in and told the clients, “The bathroom has to move from one side of the house to the other.” It was a no-brainer. But the clients were stunned. Move a bathroom?
Just because a house was built a particular way doesn’t mean it’s the right way. And it also doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.
Leanne had other thoughts for changes to her schoolhouse. She wanted to expose the beams in her kitchen. She knew that her ceiling had to go, so she would take a hammer to it and try to knock things down on her own. She’s determined, but you’ve probably figured that out already.
Her bathroom was a fun, challenging project. It was fun because it was Leanne’s, and it did feel in a way like we were playing, like making forts again. Except this time, I was helping Leanne build her own fort. (Me and a crew of people and friends. Of course, you cannot do this kind of work by yourself, no matter how it looks on television.) She was busy running around the country, working on her styling jobs, and I would FaceTime her as I was tearing the ceiling out.
“Are you sure this is what you want, Leanne?”
“Yes, tear it out!”
She was a great client, actually, when I look back at it. That’s right; I saw her as a client. I did what she wanted, but she also gave me a little room and trusted me, so I got to do a few things I wanted.
Working with Leanne is challenging, yes, but it’s the opposite of boring. It’s the opposite of hanging drywall; it’s more creative. With Leanne, it’s all about texture. I could understand her vision, and it was fun to make it happen.
You know how you go into a restaurant and there’s a vibe? It’s the same thing with homes. When you walk into a house Leanne’s decorated, it has a life of its own. I like to be part of that creative process.
Also, I really respected that when Leanne decided to design her own home, she couldn’t care less what people thought about it.
“I’m gonna make this house look like this. Because that’s what I want it to look like. I don’t need everyone to like it; I need to do what I love for it,” she said. That was really her motto.
Obviously when we’re taking on clients, that’s different. We cater to what the client wants.
Leanne
Yes, because as a designer, my most important thing is to make the client happy.
But this time, I was the client. I was my first client, in fact.
Renovating the bathroom was definitely hard, but now I had this gorgeous bathroom. If I designed within the couldn’t-shouldn’t-wouldn’t, nobody’s ever done it mentality, then none of these designs would exist. Neither would my newest career path.
We worked on this house for two years. My first husband did most of the labor with Steve and his friends, which I will forever appreciate. But the aesthetics were really mine. (I had designed everywhere I’ve lived since I was ten years old.) Lose a wall here; lose a ceiling; redo the layout. It was my first time, a total learning experience.
Around that time, I started writing a blog about my house and the bathroom. I’m pretty sure the only person who read the blog was Mom. Well, Mom and Jordan Barnes. Jordan, a friend of mine I worked with at a magazine, showed the blog to the editor of Country Living, my favorite magazine. And they called! I couldn’t believe it. They wanted to shoot my house and that bathroom.
While I was waiting for the Country Living spread to come out, my friend Alexandra, who owns a jewelry line called Sabika with her family, happened to open new offices and asked me to design them for her.
“I have never done this before,” I told Alexandra. “But I’ll do it if you’re okay with me practicing on you. You know I’ll be making it up as I go along.”
She and her family were the greatest clients. They let me try out different design ideas; I got to see what worked and what didn’t—and in the end, they were so happy.
“I give people the tour and walk them around,” Alexandra told me. “People tell us, ‘This is so Sabika. This place is so you.’ And we just wink,” she said. That’s still one of my favorite design compliments.
About a year later, when the Country Living article came out, the phone calls started coming in. People wanted to hire me. One of my first clients from the Country Living spread was a woman named Kelly. She knew I was local. She knew I was a newbie. And she wanted me to design her house.
I was completely overwhelmed.
“I’ll call you right back,” I said to her.
I called one of my favorite friends since childhood, Danny Mazzarini, who lives and works in New York. “How do I become an interior designer? What do I do? How much do I charge? How do I translate my brain and design ideas to a finished product?”
Danny spent about two hours on the phone with me, going through every detail. That was my schooling. He told me what to charge, what I should present to the client. He told me that I could create a design board just the way I would when I was styling for someone. He told me where to get furniture. It would be an easy transition, because the truth is, there are so many similarities between fashion and design.
I could do it.
I called her back and said, “I’ll do it!”
The budget was nothing. We did Kelly’s whole first floor and kitchen for $20,000. We painted the cabinets and reused as much as we could. We built shelves instead of uppers. I went to IKEA and sample sales. Steve and Ed helped on that job. Kelly was living there through all of the work, yet, ironically enough, she asked me to do a reveal for her.
“Let’s pretend this is like an HGTV show,” she said. So she left for the day as I installed the furniture and made the finishing touches.
When she came home and saw it, she cried.
She was so thrilled. The redesign just breathed new life into her house.
Now she’s really into design, and she takes risks. She always moves her furniture around. It literally changed her life, having a home she loved. She’s still a friend and one of my biggest supporters.
And it all started from my little bathroom, the bathroom that no one wanted to renovate.
At the same time, my career as a stylist had evolved as the years had gone by, and I was being brought in by clothing companies to help with creative direction. I was in charge of the photo shoots for many large brands, which meant I would pitch them the vision of the shoot, pick the photographer and crew that would best translate the vision, find the location, choose the models, style the looks, and so on. On set I would give directions of where to shoot which model for which look. This work required me to use so many different parts of my brain and the instincts that I had developed over the years. The details are what make the image—or in my case now, the room—or whatever you are working on special. I applied my taste for looks that are slightly undone to my work as a creative director, just as I apply those instincts to the work I do now designing homes with a casual, lived-in feel.
My life as a creative director took me all over the world. It was the perfect job for me at a perfect time in my career. I was fulfilled creatively, I made my own schedule, and I was able to travel to places I would have never seen otherwise. My five years of work in the field gave me the financial security to buy that little schoolhouse and then the little farmhouse that I fixed up in Pittsburgh, which was featured in Domino magazine.
Going from fashion to interiors was an amazing transition that I couldn’t have planned if I wanted to. But my creative brain was starting to get confused. I would be on set in some exotic location, trying to help a client decide between the two light fixtures I was pitching to them. I was overextending myself, and it was time for me to make a decision about the direction of my career: Do I stay with what I know or do I leave a successful career to dive headfirst into a new career that isn’t guaranteed?
I had to consciously let go of what I knew worked for me to head off into the unknown. But you know what? It wasn’t even a contest for me. Interior design was inspiring and exciting and renewing, and it was calling loud and clear. It was time to answer the phone.
It’s an amazing thing about the universe: when you say, “Here I am; this is what I am doing,” and you stop dipping your toes in the water and jump, it works. The people around you see your intentions, and they want to help you. Most people are loving and supportive, and they want you to do well and excel.
Once I told people I was doing interior design, the world opened up to me. People passed my name on to friends, they passed my work on to editors, and those people are why you are reading this book right now. What a beautiful thing.
WORKING ON PROGRESS
Who do you know who is trying to pursue a new passion? How can you encourage them? Help them? Who can you introduce them to? You have no idea the snowball effect you could be giving someone with a simple word of encouragement or connection.