Lawrence Bill sent me a link last Sunday to a New York Times story about staying neutral with your decor - especially the very basic, expensive stuff. In the very broadest sense, I tend to agree. A basic rule is, the more expensive the thing is - the more conservative your choice should be. Go crazy and trendy with accessories and stuff that’s relatively easy to switch out.

That said, I do not think that all-white bathroom tiles, as one example, are your only option. In fact, that scares me. For your retro renovation, you can be confident in picking a nice colored tile - a soft blue, green, yellow, beige, aqua or yes, even BW Tile pink. Trim your 4×4 ‘field tiles’ with white 2×6’s, add a white tile floor (AO Chloe, one of the new Daltile mosaics, or maybe you can find something excellent locally.) Voila — you have a pretty, timeless backdrop that any one of many accessory color combinations would bring right over the top easily! And you know that means wallpaper, too.

And how about the 1957 Armstrong kitchen above. Wood cabinets. Black countertop. White walls. Pretty neutral, huh. But then how about that punch of chartreuse, the shapely dinnerware, the daisies - even the cutting board? Makes it a work of art. Decorating is so much fun.

Renovation Tips

THERE’S no doubt about it: Peeling kitchen cabinets do little to set off that come-hither Wolf range. Unfortunately, wood-veneered cabinetry (versus the pricier solid-wood variety) can start to look chintzy in less than a year. And cabinetry is not the only material with a short half-life.

Resale-savvy renovators should also avoid using prefinished floors, which can be refinished only once or twice before they need to replaced. A three-quarter-inch-thick solid-wood floor, by contrast, can often take six or seven sandings.

(A wood-floor expert is usually needed to determine how many lives a floor has left, but if it has really reached the last one, that is easier to ascertain: Exposed nailheads are one giveaway, said Stephen Estrin, vice president of I. J. Peiser’s Sons, a Manhattan wood-floor installer and refurbisher. Cracks and gaps where the planks meet are another.)

Countertops should also be chosen with an eye toward durability. Certain materials in vogue today may turn shoddy performances. “Soapstone is kind of big and it requires so much maintenance and care that I can’t believe people are putting it in, because it won’t look good over time,” said Victoria Voytek, a Manhattan interior designer.

She suggested avoiding concrete counters as well. Concrete is prone to cracking, and not everyone likes that effect.

Meanwhile, the porous nature of white Carrera marble (an increasingly ubiquitous countertop in new construction) may be its downfall.

“The bottom line is it stains,” said Marjorie Hilton, a Manhattan interior designer. “One spill of red wine and you’ll have a permanent circle of red.”

Usually more maddening, said Mark Shedrofsky, vice president of the Stone Source, a Manhattan importer, distributor and fabricator of natural stone products and tiles, acidic foods literally gnaw away at the surface of marble countertops, which require rehoning to restore. (Smarter stone choices for resale-ready owners include quartzite, basalt, schist or nonporous granite, he said. Engineered stones like Silestone also hold up nicely over time.)

Also posing a maintenance challenge are the popular backsplashes made of tiny glass tiles: their narrow and numerous grout lines are tough to keep clean, said Thomas Falls, an agent at Warburg Realty. (He recommended a larger 8-inch-by-8-inch tile like Cementi.)

Similarly, said Deanna Kory, a senior vice president at the Corcoran Group, the “wonderful mosaic tiles on the floor of shower stalls rarely last time-wise. They look kind of grungy and leachy. I would do a four-inch ceramic tile, so you won’t feel bad about having to rip it up and replace it down the line.”

For complete coverage go here to the NYT.

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