Ester, can I do laundry at your house?

Another blogger challenged us to show our mid-century laundry rooms, and I don't have one to share. I have a short hall separating my kitchen from my dining room, and it has the HVAC/water heater closet and pantry on one side and two separate laundry closets on the other side...one for the washer and one for the dryer. I toy from time to time with the idea of taking the wall down between them and turning the space into a really colorful and cheerful laundry alcove, but that's still down at the bottom of my To Do list.

Instead, I live vicariously through my friend Ester, who has one of the brightest, happiest laundry rooms of anyone I know. I've always loved her bold, confident use of color and pattern. So many of you enjoyed seeing other rooms in her house a few weeks ago that I thought I'd share more photos with you. I might not mind laundry day so much if I had a place like this to make me smile:

Photos courtesy Ester Jowett

If you look closely enough, you'll see vintage clocks and a mobile tucked among the more utilitarian objects. Did you spot them? Did you find anything else? I might have missed something.

Wretched Excess

At least that's what my friend Ester Jowett calls the items in her booth at the Heritage Square Antique Mall in Columbus, Ohio. She had the foresight to start collecting mid-century pieces in the 1980s, when everyone else still considered it "old junk," which made it possible for her to buy, literally for pennies, a multitude of things for which collectors now pay top dollar. Eames, Noguchi, Nelson, rare Heywood Wakefield, china collections to swoon over and more...she has it all. I wish I had been so smart.

Her basement was overflowing with amazing furniture and accessories that she wasn't using in her more-than-amazing house, so last July she decided to start selling some of it. Here are a couple of shots of her booth taken last September. It is absolutely brimming with treasures, but she says she wishes she'd remembered to take pictures of all the really good items on display when she first opened. What I'd give to find a cache like this!

Yes, this is what she's getting rid of, so you probably won't be surprised by the beautiful pictures of her home below.

All photos courtesy Ester Jowett.

Booth 152-C at Heritage Square Antique Mall in Columbus, Ohio

More of her "wretched excess"

Ester's living room

Her family room

Her coffee pot collection

One of her bathrooms

Floor of that same bathroom
She hand-cut every single tile in the mosaic border,
which she designed herself, and laid each tile herself, wall and floor.

Ester has an art degree and owns EJowett Studio, a graphic design company. She is absolutely fearless in the use of paint and pattern. I feel like such a coward when I look at how cautiously I play the decorating game, with my all-one-color walls. When I grow up, I want to be just like her!