Welcome back to Make It Nice, Defector's best interior design advice column. Today, we have an unused spare room, a crowded gallery wall, and a (partial) resolution to my ugly bathroom sink.
Sean asks:
We just de-Christmased the front room of our 125-year old bungalow in Denver and are kinda stuck on how to make it more useful for us. It's main non-Christmas season use is for the dogs to bark at delivery people between drooling and farting on two chairs we found on FB Marketplace. I totally get that back in the day people greeted guests and probably sat by the fire and read the newspaper on Sunday mornings in these rooms, but what do people do with them now? Any guests we have end up around the kitchen counter and sometime between the ’70s and 2000s the fireplace/chimney was used as a furnace vent, so it's inoperable.
We already have a den with a sectional and a TV, so my partner would prefer not to replicate that in this room since there's only a dining room and no doors between them. We already have a workout space and our offices elsewhere in the house so those aren't appealing options either. Two cats joined our pack in the last year so all the plants/hanging vines have been relocated or downsized, so we have a lot of flexibility but no good direction. Got any ideas on how to make this more functional in 2026? Tax return season is almost upon us so want to start considering/pricing out some options.
You could put a daybed centered in front of the window. This gives your dogs a long uninterrupted perch to lie on and surveil the street, and you get a place to sit down and take your shoes off when you come home, assuming you don’t have a place to do that in the entryway.
Look for something in leather or velvet—both are pet-friendly and generally not fabrics that cats like to scratch (although, as I’m sure I will hear in the comments, every cat is different!). Add a rug and anchor it to the daybed. Measure your space to be fully sure, but taking a guess at the dimensions of the room based on your photos, I think a 5x8 or 6x9 rug would work great. Unless you limit yourself to what’s available on Facebook Marketplace, you will likely spend more time choosing the rug than doing anything else. I think Etsy is a really good resource for this. I currently have this one saved, feel free to steal.
This upgrades what you currently have without over-complicating the room. You still have space for the plant cabinet and the Christmas tree. And, most importantly, your dogs can sit together, fart freely, and judge passersby in comfort. Honestly, what more could anyone want?
Shane asks:
Any interior decorator suggestions for the Art Wall in my house? I’m content with it as is but just curious if you have any suggestions.
Your mix of art and frame styles is good. It’s really the ideal situation for a gallery wall. But right now, everything is packed in so tightly that your eye doesn’t know where to land.
I used AI to clear the space so that I could start from scratch. The mockup below is basically a reset:
The first thing you’ll notice is that there’s less art. This is on purpose. A good gallery wall is less about maximizing surface coverage and more about variety. You’ll want variety in frame styles, sizes, and, ideally, shapes.
At the moment, you’ve got a lot of large pieces sitting very close together, which can flatten everything out. Pick your three favorite big pieces and build around them. From there, mix in smaller pieces and objects with rounded or irregular edges. This can be a textile, a clock, or anything that isn’t just a rectangle.
If you do want a denser, more crowded look, that can work, but only if you commit to mixing scales and shapes. Big next to tiny, round next to sharp, etc. Here’s a great example of that.
For FUN, I also rethought the furniture situation. I like the idea of one long work surface with storage on either end. It’s clean but gives you space to be ~eclectically messy~ and stack some books around your keyboard, leave your notebooks out, etc. Because of its length, this desk would need to be wall-supported, but you’d end up with a really cool built-in look.
Next and last, here’s an update on my sink situation.
As I mentioned last month, I gave myself a $500 budget to replace my black and gold bathroom sink, which may have been the ugliest sink ever manufactured. I managed to get all the necessary parts for around $300.
We decided to DIY the install and, for the most part, it went smoothly. Right up until the very end, when we accidentally cracked the hot water shutoff valve while attaching the hose. The valve needs to be replaced, which unfortunately requires soldering. Neither of us has any interest in learning how to do that under pressure so we hired a plumber to come fix it. There goes the DIY savings!
The good news is the bathroom looks much better. Carrying the old sink to the curb was deeply, deeply satisfying.
I still don’t love vessel sinks, but this will do until we have enough saved to redo the bathroom. I’ll just need to write this column for [REDACTED] more years.
Want my help with your space? Send your questions and photos to makeitnice@defector.com. Floor plans and measurements are not required but always appreciated!
