Mastering Car Buying and the Timeless Design Wisdom of Sister Parish

In this episode of 'Home In Progress,' sponsored by RepcoLite Paints and Benjamin Moore, host Dan Hansen embarks on a two-part journey through car buying and interior design. In the first half, Dan welcomes Chris Hardesty, senior advice editor for Cox Automotive, to demystify the stressful and complex process of purchasing a car. They discuss common mistakes people make, the importance of setting a budget, the benefits and drawbacks of leasing versus buying, and practical advice on financing and warranties. In the second half, Dan dives into the legacy of legendary interior designer Sister Parish. He explores how her unique philosophy shaped American interior design and offers practical tips for adding character and comfort to any home. Whether you're in the market for a new car or looking to refresh your living space, this episode offers valuable insights and actionable advice.RESOURCES

• How to Buy a New Car in 10 Steps

CHAPTERS00:00 Welcome to Home In Progress00:29 Diving into Car Buying Experiences01:08 Expert Insights with Chris Hardisty03:12 Common Car Buying Mistakes05:21 Financing and Budgeting Tips13:54 Test Driving and Evaluating Cars26:17 Leasing vs. Buying: Making the Right Choice34:57 Trade-In vs. Selling Your Car39:30 The Importance of Maintenance Records44:04 Extended Warranties: Are They Worth It?47:03 Sister Parrish: A Design Legend58:32 Practical Design Tips from Sister Parrish01:06:19 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, everyone, Welcome to Home in Progress, sponsored by Repholite
Paints and Benjamin Moore. I'm Dan Hansen, and thanks for
joining me today. I've got a fun show lined up
with a couple of really different but equally interesting topics.
In the second half, we're going to take a deep
dive into the life and legacy of legendary interior designer
Sister Parish. We're going to look at her work, her philosophy,

(00:24):
and the lessons that we can borrow to bring beauty
and comfort into our own homes. But first, let's talk cars.
You know, buying a car is a big deal. It's exciting, sure,
but it can also be stressful, confusing, and more than
a little bit overwhelming. Now, I recently went through all
of this with my kid. He was buying his first car.
He wanted to do it on his own, and throughout
the very short process it probably should have been a

(00:48):
lot longer than it turned out to be. But through
that very short process, he kept texting me questions and honestly,
I didn't have really good answers at all. I've bought
cars before in the past, any of them, but I
was a little bit stumped when he was throwing these
questions my way, and of course that sent me down
the research rabbit hole, and I stumbled across a great

(01:10):
article on Kelly Bluebook on KBB dot com. It was
written by Chris Hardesty, the senior advice editor for Cox Automotive.
He creates consumer focused content for Kelly Bluebook and Auto Trader,
and he helps people navigate everything from buying and selling
to safety features and car maintenance, and on and on
and on. Now, before he did all of that, he
spent thirty years in newspapers, leading research departments at The

(01:33):
Mercury News and Newsday. He also served as the how
to Guides editor at Wall Street Journal, wrote practical advice
for the Home Depot, and has judged multiple Emmy Awards
in News and documentary. Well. These days, he's based in
Metro Atlanta with his wife and two kids, so he
knows all about the joys and challenges of family vehicles
and of course that eternal struggle to keep a minivan clean.

(01:56):
While I reached out to Chris, and luckily for us,
he agreed to do me on the show. Chris, welcome
and thanks for being here.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Well, thanks for having me, Dan, I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
All right, let's just start with this. Why is buying
a car so stressful? I mean, there's the obvious thing,
the money. You know, that's a big deal. But is
there more than the money that really, you know, causes
people to get stressed out about this? What's going on?

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Well, there's a whole lot evolved in buying a car,
and you touched on the perhaps the biggest thing, and
that is the money. For most people, buying a car
is the second largest purchase that they'll make, just behind
buying a home. And so anytime you're dealing with money,
that can be stressful. But also, people don't really like change.
And you know, if they've had this car for a

(02:40):
long time, they know how it performs. It might not
be performing well and that's why they're wanting to get
a new one, but it's still it's their car, and
the newness of something can be intimidating to some people.
And with the way the automotive industry evolves, it evolves
pretty quickly and there are so many new features on
cars that people are not familiar with, and so that

(03:03):
adds into the the anxiety of buying this expensive thing
that's new to them and they know nothing about.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Sure, Oh my goodness, so many things. So in your experience,
what's one of the biggest mistakes people make?

Speaker 2 (03:17):
I was spending too much money buying something that they
don't need, you know, paying for paying for features that
they don't need. In the car. Cars are loaded with
all sorts of technology these days, and some of it
is very helpful, and you know, they're safety features that
certainly are beneficial to the driver and to the people

(03:41):
driving next to them and the pedestrians on the road
and that sort of thing. But you don't necessarily need
to have all of these bells and whistles. You know,
if you're buying a big truck, do you need to
have retracting cydeboard steps right right right? You know, No,
you don't. You don't need to have those things retract
necessarily and.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Shorter, Chris, and I kind of need something that will
just boost me up, like a little robot that will
pick me up and put me in the front seat.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Right or a catapult.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah, launched myself into the front seat.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
So buying buying things are paying money for things that
you don't need, is or features that you don't need,
or is one thing but the biggest mistake that many
people make are buying accessories that they don't need.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Okay, what do you mean.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
I mean things like extended warranties in in many cases
those often are not necessary for a variety of reasons.
They don't need to get you know, window etching for
their you know, for the windows to help with theft recovery.
They don't need to have their catalytic converter etched, you know,

(04:52):
those sort of up cells that that dealerships can do,
not not deceptively, but just because hey, here's a product,
We're going to try to sell it to you.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
And so when people fall into that, you know, the
either the excitement or of getting the new car or
just the overwhelmingness of the whole situation being overwhelming and
them saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, I'll take it, you know,
they end up spending more money than they need to.
And then another biggest problem, another large problem rather is

(05:26):
that they finance these automobiles for too long, and.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
Too long try to bring their payments down a little
bit exactly right, is the idea?

Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah, and so you know, if you were to and
this kind of gets into the negotiation aspect of things.
But if you walk into a dealership and say I
want to spend no more than four hundred dollars a month,
they would say, okay, we can have all sorts of
financing options, and so they could sell you this automobile
and stretch out the payments for so long that yeah,

(05:58):
it'll be you know, right up four hundred dollars. But
you're going to be paying for it for eight years,
and you know, and that's that's not a wise financial
decision or a wise decision in any aspect of it.
And again that's not anybody being deceptive towards you. You
you said you wanted to spend that much. You like
this car.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
Here you go there helping you get there.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
But right, but you're going to be paying for it
for for a long time. And you know one of
the you know, a rule of thumb that you know
has been around for a long time is the twenty
four to ten rule, and that is that you put
down twenty percent as a down payment on the car

(06:39):
you finance for no more than four years, and your
total outlay makes up just ten percent of your income.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
Total outlay meaning the car. But like, are you are
you rolling insurance and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah, all the transportation costs, the gasoline, gas, the maintenance,
and and you know any people have to pay for
parking and you know, so, yes, it's the whole kitt kaboodle.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
All of it should come to about ten percent.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yeah, and that you know, that's kind of a that's
an old rule of thumb. Ideally that would be great. Unfortunately,
with the you know, the price of automobiles as what
they are, it's difficult for many people to adhere to
that traditional rule of thumb. You know, the average price
of new cars is upwards of forty nine thousand dollars now,

(07:30):
and for used cars it's like twenty five thousand, five
hundred or something like that. And so it's difficult for
most people with the income that they have to finance
a car for just forty eight months and and be
able to afford that, especially to you know, have it
be within that ten percent of their income. And so now,

(07:53):
you know, even though there's that rule of thumb, the
reality is is that the average length of an auto
loan now for a new car or for any car
is seventy two months. That's a long time.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
And you know, if my kid came home and that
was what he told me. So, like I said, he
wanted to do this all by himself, and he came
home and that's what he has seventy two months.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Yeah, is that on a new car a used car.
It's a used car, and you know, and so now
you know, the average age of an automobile on the
road now is thirteen years. So hopefully he'll be able
to you know, whatever model year that is, it'll you know,
be able to last for a while. But the problem
that a lot of people run into when they do
stretch out these payments, it's longer than the warranty for

(08:39):
a new car, you know, so the typical warranty is
three years, so you know, even at forty eight months,
you're still going over that that threshold. But if you're
going to five years, six years, and even seven years, sometimes,
you know, it's going to be a long time before
you build any equity into that car, so that when
you trade it into get another one, you know you're

(09:02):
not going to have that much money put into it,
and it's going to be a long time before you
even are above water. You know, you're you're underwater with
that loan for so long, and so that's you know, unfortunately,
that's a big mistake that people people make.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
What should people do differently? You know, what can they
do to try to avoid some of these things?

Speaker 2 (09:24):
Well, be systematic about it. The best time to buy
a car is when you don't need to have a car.
And so if you can casually go and do thoroughly research,
you know, all of your options. You know, all the
autombels that you see on the street, and you know
I like that, and you know you can, you know,
look at Kelly Bluebook and read reviews of it and

(09:44):
see if it, you know, would suit your your needs
and evaluate all of your options for what you like.
Then sit down with your budget and see, well, this
is what I can afford. And so now with all
these automobiles that I like, each of them, can I
actually afford and be very realistic about that. You know,

(10:05):
it's not it's not good to put yourself to over
extend your budget for a car. I mean, you know,
your car is just a means to get from point
A to point B and doesn't have to be flashy.
It just has to be reliable. Can it get me
there and get me there safely? And that's all you
really need, but you want this and that and the other.

(10:29):
And so if you're able to sit down and evaluate
what do I need and what do I want? And
of those wants, what can I afford? And how does
that fit in with the you know, my overall financial plan,
that's the you know, the beginnings of your whole shopping
journey for buying a car. And then once you have
that amount of money, or once you've established the amount

(10:54):
of money that you can or want to pay for
the car, because just just because you have the money
doesn't mean you have to spend that much money, you know,
so once you have established that price point, then you
can actually start the whole shopping process.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
There's a line in the article that I thought was
really smart. Article was smart. But remember, as a buyer,
you must be the one in control through the entire
car buying journey. And I know that that's nobody is
doing nefarious things. The people selling me the car, they're
not doing anything bad, but they certainly want to be
in control of that exchange. That's their goal is to

(11:35):
be in control of that exchange. That's how they do better.
And I'm going to do better when I'm in control.
And you started us off. You know, how do we
you know, make better decisions? And right off the bat,
it's start that process. Before the car broke down in
my you know, driveway, and now I need a new car.
I bought a van a week before we were heading

(11:56):
on vacation, and that's when I just when we just
sided the van that we had was normal, it wasn't
safe to take on the trip. So we have three days,
four days to secure everything, find a new vehicle. We
were not in control of that situation at all. We
were at the whim or at the mercy of the
people we shopped with and shopped at, so they took

(12:18):
care of us. But you don't make great decisions when
you're when you're you know, impulse when when you're stuck
with a need or impulse shopping, same kind of thing, right, And.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
It's not an impulse shopping like when you're at the
grocery store and you're in the checkout line, you see
the candy bars and you grab a candy bar, you know,
but when you're kind of not forced into the situation,
but you're you know, you have to get a car
because you're going on vacation. I had that situation when
we moved from New York, my wife got an offer

(12:48):
for a job in Atlanta, and we said, let's do it.
And there's nothing keeping us in New York. So we
left New York. But we didn't have a car. So
if you're moving to suburban Atlanta, you need a car.
So we had to go buy a car. And you know,
they wanted her to start in two weeks. Dah dah,
dah dah. So we had to go buy a car.

(13:09):
And on one hand, it was easier because we didn't
have a trade to make and you know, so there
wasn't that kind of eliminated that component of the whole
car buying process. But figuring out what we needed after
having not not having a car for you know, for
several years, you know, we had to you know, start

(13:31):
from from scratch and scratch there, so right and and
it is you know, you feel that pressure of oh
my gosh, I have to find something, and you know,
and calling around and we're seeing it on the website
and then you get to the dealership and the car,
oh no, it was sold on Tuesday. You know, So
it can be that that kind of just adds to
the whole anxiety and stress of shopping.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
So how do you narrow it down? I mean, what
what are some tips to help us choose the right car?
You know, we talked about people making mistakes and all
of that. How do we you know, work through We've
got our budget, you know, we talked about that. You know,
we've got that going on. But how do we start
to identify this list of critical things versus the you know,
kind of the add ons the actually.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
Well the yeah, the reliability is is is one of
the things. And there's no key thing to look at
with reliability. You know, there are some manufacturers that have
the reputation of being more reliable than others, but there
are other people who have these quote unreliable vehicles and

(14:37):
you know, drive them for one hundred and fifty thousand miles,
as you know I can attest to. You know, so
a lot of it has to do with with feel.
If you know what you if you know how much
money you can spend, and you have narrowed down these
options that you like. You know, you think that oh
I like the way that looks on the road, or
Jane has one of those and she hasn't complained about it.

(15:00):
You go and you test drive them. And that's that's
a really important part of the process. You know, you
can certainly buy cars online and and and that's an
effective way to you know, kind of broaden your your options,
But test driving that car is a big part of
buying the vehicle.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
What am I looking for? Because that that is a
big part of your article right at the end. You
talk about a bunch of different things that we should
be looking for, not just can I see out the window?
Does the seat go high enough so I can see?
Or does it really rev up when I go? But
there were a whole bunch of different things you were
saying to look for.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
Oh yeah, there can you can you can you reach
the radio button? That kind of gets to the to
the short joke?

Speaker 1 (15:44):
Chris, Are you making a short joke or you.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
Just know I might be shorter than you are?

Speaker 1 (15:49):
Oh? Really, we should have a competition. Yeah, okay, so
we'll reach make sure we can reach the radio.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
Yeah, reach the radio. Is it comfortable? Can you you know,
you're sitting there for you know, fifteen minutes in a
test drive, so ask if you can take it home
overnight or take a you know, a longer loop around
the you know, around the city, you know, because you
should be comfortable when you're when you're driving the vehicle.

(16:15):
So if you can reach the pedals and you can
reach the steering roone, you can see over the steering wheel,
and you can reach the radio button. Can you get
in the back seat? Do you have you know, children,
are your car seats going to fit in there? If
you if your children are younger? And you know, what
about your luggage? Can you you know, if you do
take this car on road trips, can you put the
luggage in the back end? Is it you know, is

(16:35):
it too high for you to uh, you know, to
lift the luggage into you know, the luggage that is
loaded up with your week's worth of stuff. You know,
if you go to the grocery store, is stuff going
to roll around in the back? Is there a way
to secure the stuff that you have if you are
the outdoors each person, is there a way to add

(16:56):
a bike crack on the on the back end? You know?
Is there a trailer hitch to pull? Uh? You know
a little trailer if you you know, do weekend yard
sale shopping and looking for dressers to refinish, you know,
those are all little things to consider and and again,
those are things that you preferably are thinking about when
you are thinking about the vehicle that you need in advance.

(17:18):
And those are the kind of things that are often
forgotten about or overlooked when you are in a in
a rush.

Speaker 1 (17:26):
So you see people do that. You see people forget
these things. Some of them seem so obvious. Some of
them you can't forget because they're right there. But you
see people forget these Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
Well I hear of people that, yeah, doing doing that,
And and that's when you uh. One of the questions
that I sometimes get from from readers is can I
return this car? It's this is not what I imagined, right,
this is not what I bargained for. I didn't know
this about this car, and you know, and unfortunately there's

(17:59):
no real return policy for for vehicles. Once you, you know,
sign it, then it's yours, you know, and it could
be that you know, I just cannot see over it.
It's like, well, gosh, well did you not you know,
test drive the.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Thing, my figure get used to it. You know, I'll
get used to how this is and I'll figure it
out and there are still comfortable, right, And.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
There are some things that you you may get used to,
and some things that you might not get used to.
One of the things that is uh becoming more common
in vehicles or touch screens instead of you know, physical
buttons and you know, and having to you know, touch
something to move up the radio or to adjust the

(18:40):
air conditioning or heat and not having any you know,
feedback on that. You know, sometimes you just want to
turn a knob, you know, I just need to crank
up the air. I don't need to touch a button
eight times. I just know how to turn the knob
real quick. And that's something that you know, because buying
a car is not something that people do very often.
Most people don't do it very often. That's one of

(19:03):
the changes that are one of the new things that
people will see once they do get out and start
you know, kicking tires and taking test drives. As you know, Gosh,
how do I turn on this radio? How do I? No?

Speaker 1 (19:17):
I completely get that in because like my truck, it
automatically connects to the phone and it will play whatever
I was last playing. And it is a feature that
I just it's so annoying. Sometimes once in a while,
it's convenient. Most of the time, Look, I didn't want
to listen to this right now, but I wanted to
go listen to the you know, baseball game, and I

(19:38):
don't normally have the radio on in the truck. It
took me forever to figure out where the radio. Even
I know where the radio the thing sits. I know
where I need to push buttons, but I had to
go through four menus, three menus to get to the
point where I literally had a radio option now. And yeah,
I can only imagine what's going to happen when my
parents have that, and how they're going to find the radio.

(19:59):
They're never going to find the radio the t rest
tell them it's been removed from their vehicle. Listen on
your phone, mom.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
Yeah, you know, and you know, and it's the you know,
it's behind the steering wheel, you know, so you're telling
your mom or you know, well, you know, just go
like this and it's well.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
Yeah, it's painful. But I wouldn't think to test that.
When I'm doing my test drive, I'm not looking at
you know, just the normal functions of the car and
how that if I like that, if I feel like
that's going to be fun, and I can see where
that would be disappointing once I'm living with it.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
Well, you know, one of the you're you're talking about
the radio, and there are plenty of audio files around
and and cars have some pretty powerful audio systems, and
not powerful just with you know, just talking about the output,
the wattage and the number of speakers, but there are

(20:52):
a lot of high end cars that have just like these.
You know, you can create a symphony like and in
your automobile. And so if you are one of those people,
then you would want to not just turn on the
radio to know how it turns on and how to
adjust the volume, but to play your favorite music. And

(21:13):
you know, can connect your phone to the vehicle so
that you can play the same song in multiple vehicles,
so that you can see how how it sounds. Because
music or the radio is important to a lot of people,
and especially for those that have long commutes or make
you know, regular long distance trips, you know, they should

(21:36):
you know, enjoy their their stereo.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
So I think that's all really really good stuff, just
stuff I wouldn't think about all of it. So, you know,
we already talked about financing. I wanted to get to that,
but we covered pretty much what I wanted to hit
is I knew there was a kind of a rule
of thumb. Talked about that ten percent, and you talked
about the loane length is probably one of the biggest

(21:59):
thing to try to don't don't get not suckered, but
don't buy in to the let's extend that loan out
forever just to bring the payments down. That's that's dangerous ground.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
It's very dangerous ground because you'll be underwater on that
loan for for quite some time. And the longer you
extend the loan, the higher interest rate you're going to
be paying. So you know, that means that you're going
to be having even more to borrow that money. You know,
sometimes it might not be the best idea to pay
cash for a car, because at least on a new car,

(22:34):
you're missing out on some of the incentives that might
be in play for, you know, for financing, because a
lot of times you might see ads for you know,
from an automaker that says, you know, fifteen hundred cash
back or whatever it is that they're they're.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
Those things come about when I do financing. They don't
get if I would pay.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
Cash, correct, and they only come about when you're financing
through that manufacturer's financing arm. So many of those ads
that say fifteen hundred dollars cash back or you know,
three point nine percent financing for you know, sixty months
or whatever. In that fine print it says if you

(23:16):
use you know, GM's financing arm or Nissan's financing or
Toyota's financing arm, not if you get it through your
local bank, and not if you get it through your
credit union or not if you come in with you know,
cash money, and not cash money like a suitcase full
of money, but you know, with I've.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
Got five of them sitting with me right now, I'm
deciding which car I want to buy cash.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
Well, just make sure you can lift them into the trunk.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
Right I've got a helper. When you've got five suitcases
of money, you've got a helper who can lift it.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
That's ready well, and that that's a good point about
having that much money. So you if you had enough
money to pay forty nine thousand dollars the average transaction
price for a new automobile, then it seems like that
would be you know, the best thing to do. Well, No,
not necessarily, because there might be a zero percent interest
rate going on for people who have the good enough

(24:09):
credit to qualify for that. But there's also you know,
this money that you might get back for you know,
financing it through the automaker. And what you can do
in many cases, and you should certainly read your fine print,
is you know, take out that loan from the automakers

(24:29):
financing people and take advantage of those discounts and incentives,
and then pay off the loan with that money that
you're having in your five suitcases that you got from Dan. Then,
you know, and then you've been able to take take
advantage of those discounts and incentives but not have to
worry about paying it every month.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
Here's a I don't know, maybe it's a dumb question.
So let's say, Mike, well, my kid has this big
loan or lengthy loan. Is there any way to change that,
like a house, if things go right, I can refinance,
you know, with the interest rates, if that makes sense,
I can have some option. He did the loan through
the dealer. Is there any way around what he's got

(25:10):
or what he's in for.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
Not immediately if he recently bought this vehicle, then probably
not immediately through that lender, But he might be able
to go to his credit union or his bank and say, hey,
you know, I have this loan that I just took out,
and now I see you're advertising these better rates. How
could I know do this? And then they might be
able to refinance that loan at the at the better

(25:35):
uh rate. There is such a thing, as you know,
refinancing car loans, and that's becoming more. You know, rates
are still higher than what most folks would like, but
they're still better than what they could be. But so
some of these higher interest rate loans that people have
taken out, they might be able to refinance them. But

(25:57):
the car has to be worth what you have remaining
on the loan. So that kind of gets back to
that taking out those extended loan. So if you owe
this much money on the loan but the car is
you know, worth, going to have to cough up ten
thousand dollars, then you've got to you know, you got
to come up with a difference, because nobody's going to
loan you more money than the thing's worth.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
All right, So let's talk about lease or buy a minute.
I know this is kind of fast, but there's a
couple options. And if you don't do this on a
regular basis. You kind of it's a toss up, it seems,
how do we navigate that lease or buy? Which is better?

Speaker 2 (26:32):
It's it's better for you or better for this person,
and doesn't mean that it's wrong or which one is
better for everybody. It's because everybody has different circumstances. Typically,
a lease will provide lower monthly payments for people who
are worried about that, and I kind of I don't
need before I talk any more about that. Never shop

(26:54):
for a monthly payment. I mean, we talked about that
right at the very beginning. How don't don't walk into
the place and say, you know, I want to pay
four hundred dollars a month. So never shop on a payment.
Shop on the out the door price of the car.
That's period. Now to talk about lease versus buy. People

(27:14):
have different situations and what's important for them, what's important
to them, and what their needs are. And many people
like to have new cars every couple of years to
keep up with the latest technology, and they just like
that new car smell. I guess, so they can lease
these cars, which typically have lower monthly payments, which is

(27:36):
a benefit for many people. The downside of that of
leasing is that after this relatively short period of you know,
say thirty six months, you have nothing, so you go
turn the car in. So you've been basically renting this
car for three years and you have nothing to show

(28:00):
for it. In addition to that those three years worth
of monthly payments, you also had to put down some
money when you when you got the car, and that
money covers the depreciation of the car over that period.
So you know, the amount do its signing is, you know,
forty nine dollars, and so you got to pay forty
one hundred dollars and then you pay three hundred dollars

(28:22):
a month, which is an attractive thing, but you had
to shell out that, you know, shell out that down payment,
and then at the end of the period you have nothing.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
Now I could potentially buy it correct that point, yes,
sometimes or often that price reflects what I've put into it.

Speaker 2 (28:38):
The residual value of the car is established when you
sign the lease, so the lender, which is the automaker,
is kind of estimating that this car is going to
be worth this much money at the end of the term,
and so in three years, the remaining value this car

(29:00):
will be you know, nineteen thousand dollars. So we'll set
that and what's written down here right here residual value
is or nineteen thousand dollars. So you pay your down payment,
you pay your three years worth of monthly payments, and
then you go to return the car and walk away,
or you buy the car for that price. And so

(29:20):
if the market is good and the you know, loan
rates are favorable, or you have nineteen thousand dollars just
sitting around, you can buy that car for that remaining price.
And there are some advantages to that. You know, know
the vehicle, you know the vehicle, you've been comfortable with it,
you know it's maintenance history, you know it's quirks, you

(29:43):
know it's benefits and so on and so forth. So
that is an option that some people will take, or
like I said, you just turn it in and then
lease the next one. And there's some oftentimes there's incentives
for people returning a lease to get another one, and
if you feel like you need more time, then most

(30:03):
of the time they'll let you tack on some more
months to that lease.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
Now, one of the bigger issues with the lease is
that generally you're maybe always you're limited to your mileage, right,
your mileage. You're allowed a certain amount for.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
A year, yes, and that number is the mileage cap.
And so if you have this car for three years
and the mileage cap is twelve thousand miles, then at
the end of the term, at the end of the lease,
if that a doometer is more than thirty six thousand miles,

(30:41):
then you will pay a certain amount per mile that's
over thirty six thousand. And that that could be, you know,
eighteen cents, it could be twenty cents, and you don't
think that that means much, but if you're talking about
one thousand miles or five thousand miles, and it does
start to add up. And that's part of the whole

(31:03):
budgeting process that we were talking about earlier, is that
even if you're doing a lease, you need to figure
out what your budget is and anticipate that. So one
of the calculations that you should do is how many
miles do I drive? You know, and again be realistic
about it. Nobody's going to penalize you because you drive
so much unless you get into a lease and for

(31:25):
you know, ten thousand miles a year and you drive
eighteen thousand miles a year and then that's really be bad.
So sit down and figure out how much you actually
do drive. So a lease is good for somebody who
does not drive more than ten or twelve thousand miles
a year. It's good for somebody who likes to have

(31:46):
the latest technology and safety features in a car. It's
good for somebody who doesn't like to customize their car,
and they don't want to put in a fancy radio,
fancy stereosystem. They don't want to you know, add you know,
fancy wheels. They don't want to wrap it or paint
it or you know, do any customization to it. They're

(32:09):
not good for people who want to build equity in
their car because you're not going to build equity into it.
They're not good for people who like to put you know,
like big all that customers, big wheels, all the customization.
Leasing is not for me, not because I customize my car,
but because I don't want I want to build equity.

(32:33):
I just don't want to rent the thing. And that's basically. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
It worked out once really well for us. We did
a van and it was the payment thing, you know,
it was we had and it was the most reliable
thing we could get. The price was really good for
the payments, and then they did the you know, they
estimated what we would pay for it in three years,
and that was a really reasonable price because we were

(32:57):
shopping at that point for a used vehicle and we
were finding five year old used vehicles that were around
that same price for way more mileage than what we
thought we'd have at the end of three years. Because
we knew we weren't going to come anywhere close to
that twelve thousand that they wanted. We were at like
six thousand a year. So in the end, that one
worked out really well. I don't think we did it

(33:18):
again after that one. We just bought that van and
we're very happy. But yeah, it was it was tense
because it was not something my family had ever. They
hadn't done the leasing thing, so I was in a
little bit of new territority. I was sure I was
going to, you know, have some unspoken rule that I
missed somewhere, and I was going to get hammered.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
Yeah, and you might have been, but just because you
were unaware that you could, you know, only drive this
far and you actually drove that far. When you return
the car. They'll you know, do an inspection and see
that you've taken care of it, and you know, and
if you know, everybody has their different rules, but you know,
one manufacturer is pretty detailed about what they considered to

(33:58):
be normal wear and tear and what kind of allowance
they will give for damage and if the scrape or
scratch can be covered up with a credit card. But
it's only one of those per body panel, and you know,
so they're very specific about what they consider to be
normal wear and tear. And I don't want to say
that they're you know, really nitpicky, but you know, hey,

(34:21):
they're in there to make money and they want to
be sure that they can you know, refurbish the vehicle
and sell it to somebody.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
Now, I do remember that that was really stressful, that waiting,
you know, as they were going to go over the vehicle,
and you know, we were very careful. We had little kids,
lots of them, five of them, and so I had
a little basket in the back for any boots that
had the slightest bit of you know, we were very careful,
but there was that tense moment of were we careful enough? Yeah,

(34:53):
And it turns out we were all right, but yeah,
I get that. So trade in or sell That's another
big thing that comes up, you know, right as we
get to the end of this, what's the best? I mean,
trading in is so easy, it is, but I'm taking
a hit probably maybe yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
It's maybe maybe a little bit. But you know, your
time and is worth something, and your frustration is worth
something or the absence of frustration, and so sometimes taking
the easy way out is or the quick way out
is the is the best. And again it gets into
the whole timing issue again. If if you have the

(35:31):
time to wait, then you could sell it yourself, you know,
on the open market, and you'll get more money because
you're cutting out the middleman. But it's going to take
time to sell it, and you're going to have to,
you know, wait for somebody who's looking for you know
that that minivan that you know used to tote around
five children, and you know, or you could just go

(35:54):
trade the thing in and and just wipe your hands
clean of it and be on your way, and you know,
any on what the you know, what the model is.
It might be a couple hundred bucks, it might be
one thousand dollars, but at what point do you want
to say, well, this thousand dollars would be the extra
thousand dollars would be great to have, but I don't
have time.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
To well rite selling it, finding a place to put
it where I'm going to be able to sell it easily.
You know, I could put it in my yard, but
nobody's going to go buy fixing it, getting it all
ready and repaired for somebody else. Right, if I'm selling it,
I've kind of got some obligations.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
There, that's right, And you know, and you want to yeah,
you want to have it looking awfully pretty. Uh, you
know it's worth mentioning that. You know, Kelly Bluewoock does
have the Private Sellers Exchange where you know, people do
buy and sell cars from private owners and you know,
and there's you can go to KBB dot com and

(36:51):
read all about it and participate. But even so that
it still is, you know, time consuming for you where
it can be time consuming. And if your car is
paid off, that makes it better. And because that would
mean that you tip, you theoretically would have more time
to wait because you don't you're not making payments on

(37:11):
that car anymore. So if you're going to take new
payments on this. The only thing is that if you
were financing it and you wanted to bring that that
cost down, and that's you know, the benefit of trading
in is that it reduces that cost of the new vehicle.
And if you're financing it, and that means that you're
financing less money, which means that you were buying less money,

(37:33):
and you'll have to not pay interest on that money.
And some states, I'm not even gonna pretend that I
can remember which ones they are, but some states deduct
the amount of the trade in from the taxable amount
of the car sale. So if you're trading in, you're

(37:53):
buying a thirty thousand dollars car, but you're trading in
a ten thousand dollars car, they're going to take that
ten thousand dollars off of the thirty thousand dollars sticker price,
so that you're only taxed on the twenty thousand dollars.
And so that is another benefit in some states that

(38:13):
would push somebody to trade in rather than sell.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
I know, for my kid, he had you know, he
did not he took care of the Yeah, he took
okay care of his vehicle. He did not take care
of the inside. It was very messy. It was very
like riding in a dumpster. And that's what we told him.
And when he's getting ready to do this, you know,
he made this purchase. He did this all like all
of a sudden, he wants a new vehicle, and twenty

(38:40):
four hours later he's got one impulse. But I watched him.
I came home from work and he's emptying this entire
vehicle out onto my driveway. I said, what are you doing.
He says, I'm trading it in. I said, but you
need like a week to clean it. He said no,
They said, just get my stuff out. And I thought,
for his sake, for his situation, thank god, you know,

(39:03):
he was able to just trade that thing in because
I didn't want to be a part of the week
long exorcism that that vehicle needed. And they'll take care
of it for him. And they gave him less money,
but he got enough money that he was happy.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah, And that's the thing. You know. The week that
it would take to clean that car, to put it
into the condition that he would sell it, you know,
on his own, probably is much less than what he are,
much more than what he was able to get from
the dealer. But that brings up another point about buying

(39:35):
used cars is that you know the you know, the
exterior might be dirty, the interior might be dirty, but
that can be clean. What's more challenging is problems with
what's under the hood. And people often wonder when buying
a used car whether the mileage on the odometer is

(39:59):
more important than the vehicle's age, And there's no set
answer for that between those two because the most important
thing is having the maintenance records. Because you can have
a car with one hundred thousand miles on it that
had its oil changed every eight thousand miles and its

(40:20):
tires rotated every five thousand miles, and it has gone
through you know, all of these different routine maintenance procedures
and serviced on time for the past two years. Wait,
I thought you said one hundred one hundred thousand miles. Well,
if it has been taken care of, then it doesn't
matter that it has one hundred thousand miles or if

(40:42):
it's two years old and has eight thousand miles, because
you know, those eight thousand miles, you know could have
you know, not eight let's say thirty thousand miles, and
if it has not been taken care of, then those
thirty thousand miles are far worse than the one hundred
thousand miles of the vehicle that has been serviced regularly.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
So this is a dumb question. Then how do I
like accomplish How do I get those records for my
own vehicle? I don't save every receipt Is there a
vehicle log somewhere that when my mechanic does.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
Something, well, you should save all of your I should.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
Save all my receipts.

Speaker 2 (41:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
What I meant to say was, of course, I've saved
every single thing that's ever been done.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
And they're in that suitcase with all of your money.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
Right, it's probably instead of the money, that's what's weighing
that suitcase down, it's all these repairs.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
Yeah, so I should be saving all of that stuff,
save those and.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
So that you can't.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
If you did sell it on your own, you could
show the potential buyer is, look, I have taken such
good care of this car. Yeah, there's cheerios in those
seat cushions, but I've taken care of it. Here's all
my old changes, here's this, here's that, here's the other,
and then that shows them that you have taken care
of this this car, and it lends creed to the

(42:00):
notion that no, this is going to be a reliable
vehicle and a good purchase for me. But there are
services vehicle history report services like auto check and Carfax,
that when a service center reports it to those vehicle

(42:21):
history report folks, then they're retained there based on the
vehicle identification number. And so it would show you a
log of you know, these oil changes and you know
that have taken place, this service that has taken place,
this recall that was handled. Oh, here's an accident that

(42:43):
you know where the airG air bag was deployed. Here's
an accident with no airbag, here's d D. So it
gives the history of the vehicles.

Speaker 1 (42:52):
But not all service centers report that.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
No, and if you were shade Tree mechanic, then you
know they would have no idea that you you know,
routinely change the oil every quarter. Yeah, so that's why
you should save those records because those you know, auto
check and Carfax don't have everything because they only they

(43:15):
only have what is reported to them.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
So even though I haven't, I will start, and that's
better than not.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
Yeah, yeah, and if you if you routinely went to
you know, if you use the dealership for your oil changes, uh,
they would have a record of all of those. If
you used a you know, one of those standalone franchises
like a you know, quick service oil change place, if
you use the same one all the time, then they

(43:43):
probably have those records and could print them out for you.
But the problem really comes from you know, the corner mechanic,
the you know, the service station at the gas station,
you know, or you do it yourself, and there's no real.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
Record, no record. Yeah, right, last little bit here. I've
got a few questions, just just see on's how fast
we go? What about extended warranties? I think you covered it?
Worth it, skip it? Or is it one of those
things It just depends.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
I guess you could say it depends. My wife had
one on her car years ago, and you know, just
because she didn't want to fiddle with it. Hey, if
something breaks, I wanted to be fixed. Well, the you know,
there was only one problem with it with that car,
and it was just some sort of solenoid and it
was a covered repair. But the deductible was more than

(44:35):
what the what the cost of the repair was so
it was a complete waste of money. One of the
mistakes people buy people make when buying a car is
buying an extended warranty for this car that still has
two years of its factory warranty left. Sure, so that's
just you know, wasted money. So in general, there are

(44:59):
two basic types of extended warranties. One is one that
includes these repairs, and others that exclude repairs, and you
would tend to most In most cases, you would want
one that excludes certain things because then you know going
in that this is not going to cover this, that,

(45:20):
and the other period all these other things it will
take care of, whereas these inclusion ones, they'll say, oh,
we'll take care of this, that and the other, and
then you're limited to those those things. Yeah, but most
of the time an extended warranty is not something that
you need to do because most of the time people

(45:41):
don't use them.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
If somebody is gonna remember only one thing of the
all of the things we talked about, what's the one
thing you'd want them to make sure they take to
the bank on this.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
Never over extend your budget for a car. There are
many components that you know that flow into that. But
it is a car that's going to get you to work,
to get you to visit your family, to get you
to the grocery store and so forth. You know, work, school, food,
and family. That's what your car should be for. It

(46:11):
doesn't have to be, you know, the biggest, It doesn't
have to be the flashiest. It doesn't have to have
all of the bells and whistles. It just has to
get you safely from point A to point B and
don't spend too much money on it.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
Well, Chris, I think all of that is really good info.
I'm going to put a link to the article in
the show notes so people can check that out. Do
you have contact information or anything like that places where
they can find more of what you do?

Speaker 2 (46:36):
If they go to that article. Down at the bottom
of the article is a little biobox and if they
click on that, then that will be a link to
all of the other articles that I've written about buying
and owning and selling vehicles for Kelly Blue Buck.

Speaker 1 (46:52):
All right, definitely recommend you check that out. I'll put
a link in the show notes, so look for that.
Chris Hardesty, thanks so much for being here.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
Well, thanks for me, Dan, I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
All right, it's time to shift gears. Sister Parrish was
a legendary interior designer, widely credited with shaping what we
now think of as classic American style. In just a minute,
we're going to take a look at her life, her
design philosophy, and most importantly, we'll pull out some practical
takeaways that you can use to bring that same sense
of comfort and personality into your own home. That's all

(47:22):
coming up right after. This home in progress is brought
to you by Repcolite Paints and Benjamin Moore Top tier
paint expert advice. Your next project is way easier than
you think it's going to be. Well, several years back,
several years back, we hosted what we called color and
Design events. I'm sure some of you remember, you know,

(47:42):
I met a lot of you out there. They were
fun evenings, you know, we had a bunch of good food,
We had a lot of conversation about color and design. Originally,
when we did those, we talked about Benjamin Moore's Color
of the Year. That was kind of how we launched
the Color of the Year. But eventually, as we did
a few of those, we realized there was something bigger
to talk about than just color of the year, and
we started looking at some of the biggest names in

(48:04):
the world of architecture and interior design. I mean, you know,
we hear these names all the time, but we wonder,
or at least I always wondered, what makes them geniuses?
You know, we always hear these names, and we hear
the moniker of genius attached to them, But I always
struggled to figure out why, you know, what do they
do that nobody else thought to do? And most importantly,

(48:27):
you know, the thing that I really wondered about is
what can we as just regular people learn from them
and their work and their process. And so with that
in mind, we started looking at some of these pioneers,
some of these geniuses, and we looked at Frank Lloyd Wright,
we looked at Iris Appful, and then most recently, we
looked at David Lynch and architect Frank Gary. Now, each
one of those events when we focused on those folks,

(48:48):
was an incredibly profound experience for me. I mean, I
learned so much during those events and I'm still living
off of it today. It's still impacting me. It's really
amazing how big a difference that has made in my life.
Well because of that, because it was so much fun,
because there was so much to learn. It makes me
want to do it again. And someday we will get

(49:11):
back to hosting events like we used to. But with
this show, you know right now that I've got I've
got this opportunity to dig into these movers and shakers,
you know, in this world of creative thought in interior
design and architecture, and so I thought, why not do that?
Why not do exactly that? And that's going to be
today the rest of the show. And I'll let you

(49:32):
know right up front, the podcast version of this show
is going to contain this full discussion about this person
that I want to talk about. The radio version, it's
going to be somewhat edited anyway. With that said, I
want to look at one of the most influential interior
designers in American history, somebody whose work didn't just shape

(49:52):
how wealthy, you know, super snob, super rich, super fancy
families decorated their homes, but really the style helped define
what we now think of as American style. You know,
this designer's rooms were comfortable, they were lived in They
were elegant, but they were never cold. They were personal,
they were layered, they were warm. Now, her name was

(50:14):
Sister Parish, and we've got to start by doing some
explaining about the name, because it's a weird name, Sister Parish.
And no, she wasn't a nun, which was my first
thought when I stumbled upon her on the name, I
thought she was a nun. She's not a nun. She
was born Dorothy May Kinnicutt in nineteen ten, right in
the middle of New Jersey's Old Money Horse Country, you know,

(50:37):
an area known for grand estates, you know, fox hunting,
you know, the kind of genteel lifestyle where nobody worked
in the trades. And that made what she did later
all the more surprising. Now her family, getting back to
her name, her family called her sister from the time
she was just a little girl, as in the sister
to her younger brother, and somehow that name just stuck

(51:00):
later on when she got married. She married Henry Parrish
the second at nineteen and there you go, Sister Parish.
And in the design world, that name is absolutely legendary. Now,
she had no formal training, no apprenticeships. She never even
read a book on decorating. At least there's quotes of
her explaining that she never read a book on decorating.

(51:20):
What she did have was taste, She had instinct, and
she had a confidence that was really rare, you know,
a confidence that, oh, man, I wish I had that
kind of confidence, but alas I do not. And I
think sometimes half of genius is just confidence and the
willingness to go ahead, which is why I'm no genius. Anyway.
In the nineteen thirties, during the depression, that's when Sister

(51:44):
Parrish's story really gets moving, you know, at least in
the design into the design world. At this point, you know,
the depression, her father's finances, her husband's finances both are
being hit really hard, you know, and to help things out,
to help everybody out of that pit that they're in,
Sister Parish does something practically unheard of for women in

(52:05):
her social class. She decides to go to work. So
she rents a small fourteen by fourteen room in Far Hills,
New Jersey. She rents it for like thirty five bucks
a month something like that. She furnishes it with a
wicker chair and a desk. That's it, and she hangs
a sign on the door that says missus Henry Parrish.
The second interiors, and that was it. That was the

(52:25):
launch of her design career. And it didn't take long
for word to spread. You know, friends and then friends
of friends started calling. They were really blown away by
what she'd done with her own home. You know, she'd
painted the floor, she'd used ticking fabric for curtains, layered
white on white with pops of bright color, all kinds
of different things like that. It was fresh, yet it
kind of felt familiar. It felt homey, it was traditional,

(52:49):
but it was really personal. It was very very unique,
and they wanted her to do that for them, and
so she started doing that, and as time went by,
word spread and spread and spread. She was taking homes
that it felt like they came out of a catalog.
So they were perfect in that way, and she breathed
a soul into them. You know, sometimes these perfection you know,
these rooms of perfection don't feel to really have a soul.

(53:13):
And that's what she was doing, and that's part of
the genius here. And as she was doing that, just
like that, you know, everything was off and running. Her
reputation just exploded and soon she was designing homes for
some of the wealthiest and most influential families in the country.
You know, names like Astor, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller. Her style stood out.
It was warm, it was refined, it was full of personality.

(53:36):
It was completely different from the stiff formality that was
common at the time. Now she continued her work, and
in the late nineteen fifties, Sister Perrish decorated a Georgetown
townhouse for a young senator name of JFK. John F.
Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline. And when the Kennedys moved
into the White House in nineteen sixty one, Jackie turned
to the one decorator who had already made her feel

(53:58):
at home in her previous space of residence, and Sister
Perrish became the first interior decorator ever hired by a
first Lady, and she went to work on the private
family quarters in the White House, including the famous yellow
Oval Room where JFK would receive foreign dignitaries. Now, when
she arrived on the site to get the work underway,

(54:19):
that space was formal and really cold. It was more
like a stage set, you know, than a sitting room.
But she reimagined it completely, and she had the walls
painted a soft, warm, rich yellow. She brought in delicate
white and gold woodwork, antique French furniture, and her trademark
Chintz Gotta have that. There were framed botanical prints, elegant

(54:40):
lamps with custom shades, and everywhere you look, you know,
go google it. Everywhere you look there are small human touches,
you know, embroidered cushions, delicate fringes, books stacked on side tables,
stuff like that. It wasn't just stylish. She kind of,
you know, made the room feel alive. It felt lived in.
It felt like a room where real people came and
read book books and had conversations and had tea.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
You know.

Speaker 1 (55:02):
It felt like home, way better than that formal, cold
setting that it previously had been. It was graceful and welcoming,
and in the words of one observer, it was quote
a triumph of charm over grandeur. However, while it was
a triumph, the victory lap didn't last that long, because,
according to popular legend, sister was dismissed from that project

(55:23):
after she scolded a young Carolyn Kennedy for putting her
feet on the furniture. Now we don't know if that's
technically the full truth, but even then, I like the story.
It's kind of a story that's lived on, you know,
kind of like urban legend or something. And I like
it because it captures something essential about Sister Parish. You know,
she had standards. She didn't bend them. And whether you

(55:46):
were a society hostess or a part of the First Family,
you were going to abide by the rules or or else.
And in this instance, the or else meant Sister Parish
could take a hike and go find work somewhere else.
And she did. She did just fine. We don't need
to worry about her. That was Sister Parrish in a nutshell.
She would be affectionate at one moment, razor sharp the next.

(56:09):
And speaking of Razor Sharp, here's another story that I love.
She was famous for her custom of wheeling. You know,
she'd come on a job site or a job site,
she's in a home. Somebody has brought her in their
home to help them with their design, to help them
pull the space together. And she had a custom for
bringing this empty tea cart and wheeling it through the
client's homes. You know, at the beginning of this project.

(56:30):
She didn't have a clipboard. She didn't, you know, wander
around quietly pondering and imagining what the space was going
to be. She'd get a little tea cart and she'd
rattle along through the hallways and the rooms, and she'd
remove anything that didn't meet her standard, all of it.
Just pull it out of the space. Trinkets, figurines, lamps, pillows.
If she didn't like it, it's getting yanked. And you

(56:51):
can just picture it. I can picture it anyway. You know,
the very wealthy, nervous people standing there watching Sister Parish
roll that little cart straight towards their little favorite shelf
of porcelain nick knacks, No doubt they were nervous, they
were sweaty, they were freaking out. Because she was ruthless,
she was brutal. She know what she wanted, she know
what she liked, and she made sure that if it

(57:14):
didn't meet those standards, it was on the way out.
That was her. She was witty, she was precise, she
was fearless, and she was always, always, always in control
of the room, both literally and figuratively. You know, she
hated mid century modernism. She called it sterile lifeless. She
believed the room should reflect people and not be these
utterly immaculately you know, pristine, sterile spaces. There's a quote

(57:38):
where she says, quote, there's nothing wrong with a little
clutter keeps you honest. Right, We are as honest as
can be at my house, if that's true. She even
joked that some minimalist houses were so empty that quote,
even ghosts would feel uncomfortable, really hated, you know, that
modernist look. She had a sharp sense of what belonged
in a space, not just what matched. You know, that's important,

(58:01):
what belonged, not just what matched. She wasn't just decorating homes.
She was redefining them, you know, changing how rooms were used,
how they made people feel. She was setting the tone,
you know, the emotional tone of a home in a room,
not just the look of the space. And she made
a home not just a showplace but a reflection, not

(58:22):
just a backdrop for your life, but an expression of
the lives of the people who lived in it. And
her genius and her approach, all of that still hold
up today. So with that in mind, let's look at
just three takeaways from Sister Parrish's playbook. Three things that
you and I can apply right away today in our
own homes and our own designs. And I want to

(58:43):
start with this particular idea because it's such a freeing idea.
The concept is this, contrast creates character. Okay, contrast creates character?
What am I getting at? Sister Parish believed that the
charm of a room, you know, the thing that gives
it its soul or its character, all of that is
found in contrast. She was known to accomplish this by

(59:05):
pairing things like a delicate antique side table with a
simple wicker chair, or hanging an ornate chandelier over a
rag rug. You know, the rooms didn't look like they
came or were ordered straight out of a catalog. They
look like they had kind of evolved over time. She
once said, quote to be perfect, the perfect must be imperfect.
And it's a little bit of a confusing quote, especially

(59:27):
when you're just hearing it, but here's the point. She's saying.
If a room has too much polished, or if it
matches too well, if it's just too perfect, the space
stops feeling real. You know, it starts to feel staged,
like a hotel lobby or maybe a magazine spread or
an Instagram photo shoot. But when you bring in something worn,
something handmade, something with a little age, something imperfect, that

(59:50):
piece or those pieces begin to ground everything else in
the space and it brings humanity into the room. So
when we layer the old and the new, the shining
and the worn, we're creating character. And that's what makes
a space memorable. It's really important. That's the piece that
makes a space memorable. So how do you do that. Well,
that antique dresser from your grandma, you keep it, you
paint it, or maybe you don't paint it. Whatever, you

(01:00:13):
just make sure you use it, you know, bring it
into your space. Mix in a modern lamp, hang a
new mirror above it. If you've got a matching dining
room set, swap out a couple of the chairs, find
something vintage or upholster that you can put in their place.
You can do this with textures too, Pair shiny brass
with weathered wood. You can hang modern art over old paneling.

(01:00:34):
You know, the list goes on and on. The point
isn't really to give you a rundown of things to do.
The bigger point is to just make the concept clear.
Let opposites play together. You know, that's where life is.
That's where the soul of the room comes about. The
contrasts really create the character. You know, that's where the
room starts to feel like you. Now. The second big

(01:00:54):
takeaway from Sister Parish is this, and it's right along
those lines. You want to fill your space with the
things that matter to you. You know, she wasn't interested
in rooms that looked like they came straight off a
showroom floor. You know, those were way too perfect, they
were too matched. They were lifeless soulss. She called those
kinds of spaces unstudied and unconvincing. Her own rooms, the

(01:01:16):
rooms that she created, they were anything, but you know,
they had texture, they had story, they had soul. You'd
walk into one and you'd kind of feel like it
had grown around the people who lived there, not been
installed overnight by a design team on a deadline. Basically,
everywhere you look she had something interesting set around. There
was something to discover. Books, need a point, pillows, botanical prints,

(01:01:38):
painted floors, crocheted throws, white wickers. She had a lot
of that. Dog portraits, quilts, handmade lampshades, you name it,
lots and lots of chintz you know, lots and lots
of chintz. Nobody brought a room to life with chintz
quite like Sister Parrish did. So she did all of that,
but none of those items that she's grabbing and throwing

(01:01:59):
into that I shouldn't even use the word throwing. None
of it was random, None of it was just thrown
in there. None of it was just stuff that she
got just to fill space. Each of these items were
personal and they were layered in very carefully, each one
telling a part of a story. So how do we
do that in our own home? Well, I think we
start by thinking of decorating less like styling a space

(01:02:21):
and more like storytelling. I think there's a lot of
power in thinking about decorating as if it were storytelling,
and don't feel like you need to tell this story
all at once. Sister Parrish often said that a room
should feel collected over time. That's what it should feel like,
and that's giving you permission to wait, to go slow,
to let your space evolve, you know, to live in

(01:02:42):
it and let it take shape. So let the room speak,
let the pieces speak. And I know that sounds crazy
to a lot of you, but they really will it's
really unusual, but they really will. And I'm not saying
that they're speaking with voices, you know, because maybe you
were thinking that that's what I'm hearing our voices, because

(01:03:03):
you know, you've known me over the years, and you
maybe think that seems par for the course. I'm not
hearing literal voices. But the pieces do tell me. You know,
what the room needs and where it needs to go,
and a lot of the times it's not what I
was initially thinking. You know, I start putting a room
together with a very clear vision of where I want
to go. And as I've done this, I've collected pieces

(01:03:25):
over time, pieces that really speak to me, and I
found that the room has gone in way different directions
than I ever would have thought. You know. Initially, the
room spoke and the room pushed me in another direction,
and it's a way better direction. So give yourself time.
The pieces will speak to you, the room will speak
to you. And another thing that will help with this
is if you ignore the pressure to follow anyone's style.

(01:03:46):
You know, if you are landlocked by a style that
you're trying to stay within, it's very tough to stretch
outside of that and to find these pieces that matter
to you because you've got to find pieces that matter
that fit within your style. Throw that idea style out
the window, you know, just try that once. It's so
absolutely freeing. You're gonna have the freedom to collect anything.

(01:04:07):
You know, whatever you love can fit into the space.
And it sounds like it wouldn't work, it absolutely does work.
And over time, as you're bringing those pieces in, the
space that takes shape is deeply personal and it becomes
deeply meaningful. And when you're decorating with things that matter,
it really starts to feel like home, even if it
doesn't look perfect, you know, it feels like the space

(01:04:28):
you want it to be. And there's so much power
in that all right, last thing, Sister Parish believed that
homes should be lived in, so comfort over perfection. That's
the third big concept, you know, a home should be
lived in, not admired from a distance, not guarded like
a museum, but used, enjoyed, relaxed in. And that's something
that we need to hear today. We're surrounded by images

(01:04:49):
of impossibly perfect rooms, you know, curated stage, filtered images
on Instagram, social media, you name it. But Sister Parish
reminds us. Real homes aren't about impressing it anyone. They're
about living well in your space. You know, I've got
this old desk that's a really good reminder of this
for me. It's an antique oak desk, beautifully grained, but
it's marked up with a couple of dark rings and

(01:05:11):
what looks like an ink spill, you know, something from
a long time ago. When I bought it, I fully
intended to refinish it. But the longer I lived with it,
the more I came to love all of those old imperfections.
You know, those old marks, the rings, the stains, all
of that. They told a story, and I really as
time went by, I realized I didn't want to erase that.
You know, the desk spoke to me, The peace spoke

(01:05:32):
to me and told me what really should be done
with it, and I was listening, and so I left it.
Now people think I'm nuts. People come and see the desk.
First thing they ask is why haven't I fixed it yet?
Or did I know I could do that? And yeah,
I gotta tell them, I know I can. I've chosen
not to because of all these reasons. And when I
tell them, they kind of look at me like I'm nuts,
but I don't care. Piece works in my space and

(01:05:55):
I like it, and that's really all we're after. You know,
That's what we all want with our home. We want
the home to work for us. We want the rooms
to feel welcoming, we want our space to feel like
our space. So think about your space, think about Sister Parish,
think about those concepts and see what you can apply
today to help you get where you want to go

(01:06:16):
when it comes to putting your room together. And that's
going to do it. For today's episode of Home in
Progress brought to you by repcoll Light Paints and Benjamin Moore.
Big thanks to Chris Hardesty for joining us and sharing
such helpful advice on car buying, and thanks to you
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(01:06:38):
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All right, we'll be back next week with more stories,

(01:06:59):
more dips, more advice, all of that. Until then, I'm
Dan Hansen. Thanks for listening.