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Novel Decor: Books Add To Looks

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By KAREN HAYMON LONG

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 12, 2008

When a St. Petersburg couple hired an interior designer for help redecorating their vast living room, he looked around at their floor-to-ceiling bookcases and declared: "Get rid of the books!"

Of course, they didn't.

Not all designers consider books the boat anchors of decor. Decorator Janna Walker of Tampa, who owns J.D.W. Interiors Inc., finds ways to integrate them into homes so her clients don't feel overwhelmed by them.

A big reader herself, she says, "I usually just work with what they have. I'd hate to tell people to get rid of books."

Here are some ways Walker actually beautifies homes with books.

In her own South Tampa home, Walker adds framed family photographs and a decorative plate to the gardening books on a built-in case in her family room.

On another shelf, she stacks books horizontally and surrounds them with seashells. And on another, she tucks a large glass jar of shells next to books.

On an end table by a couch, she places a blooming orchid in a terra-cotta pot on top of two books — "Darkly Dreaming Dexter" and "Cross Current" — and places an inviting bowl of chocolates alongside the Arrangements.

Walker says when she decorates other people's homes, she usually uses what they have to create a mix of books, keepsakes and photos "so it's not just boring straight books."

Like books, slews of magazines can challenge decorators. Walker tucks them away in pretty baskets under coffee tables.

Bookcases flank a picturesque cabinet that hides the TV set in the Walker twins' study. The square shapes are offset by a globe and miniature dressmaker's dummy atop the cabinet.

The bookcases are filled with children's and teen books, Harry Potter hardbacks, Plant High yearbooks, dictionaries and study manuals. Walker arranges them by size and subject and adds photos of the kids to help relieve the lineup.

Don't feel like you have to fill all the shelves with books, and don't stack them all vertically, she says. Notice how she stacks some horizontally on some of the shelves.

When the Walkers remodeled their kitchen, they added a bookcase just for cookbooks so they would be handy when Walker and her three daughters bake. She spiced up the shelves with pictures of the family through the years and figurines of a bird's nest and a carrot.

Robert and Sadie Pariseaux, friends and South Tampa neighbors of Walker and her husband, Harold, have a formal library. The floor-to-ceiling bookcases are filled with art and travel books and novels, as well as photographs, glass bowls, antique vases and plates, and other family treasures.

The walls are azure. The wood floor is covered with an antique Oriental rug. The comfortable leather couch is perfect for curling up to read.

When Chuck and Elizabeth Harris, Walker's friends and clients, added on to their 1925 Davis Islands home, they had a bookcase with glass doors built along one wall upstairs, outside the master bedroom. The dark wood blends with the Mediterranean style of their home, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Big readers often have hordes of books in their bedrooms. Janna Walker says it's not unusual for her clients to stack lots of books on nightstands next to their beds. When she redecorates, she asks them to decide what they are reading and to put away the others.

Big readers often have hordes of books in their bedrooms. Janna Walker says it's not unusual for her clients to stack lots of books on nightstands next to their beds. When she redecorates, she asks them to decide what they are reading and to put away the others.

Janna Walker's love of reading speaks volumes as she finds ways to blend books into any interior so they look charming instead of overwhelming. Some rest horizontally; others share shelves with mementos.

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