Want a Powder Room That Pops? Steal This Interior Design Power Move | Kanebridge News
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Want a Powder Room That Pops? Steal This Interior Design Power Move

Use a panoramic wallpaper or immersive mural to turn the runt of restrooms into a stylish retreat. It’s a bit guest-startling and so worth it.

By ELIZABETH YUKO
Wed, Nov 2, 2022 9:17amGrey Clock 2 min

The powder room houses the most public toilet in a private home: the place where guests go to seek retreat—and assess a homeowner’s taste.

Rather than sentencing the runt of restrooms to a strictly practical existence, interior designers like Sherry Shirah, of New Orleans, see the walls as a blank canvas, ripe for a mural. “It’s not a lot of real estate, so [you can let] your imagination go wild.”

Here, some pointers on getting the look right.

The Appeal

To charm visitors to your powder room with an unexpected visual splash, consider scenic wallpapers and murals, a big-move way to elevate an often boring utilitarian space. “They’re instant décor,” said Houston interior designer Chandos Dodson Epley. “Art looks fabulous on top, but you don’t necessarily need it.”

A mural’s theatricality also makes it a great “conversation piece,” said Ms. Shirah—at least once your guests are no longer alone. And given that most people visit powder rooms briefly, the spaces can be a safe place to break out of your design comfort zone, said Ms. Shirah.

The Tips

Opt for a mural that puts people at ease, but keeps them engaged. Many of Ms. Shirah’s clients request scenes inspired by past travels or dream vacations. For a client fond of English rose gardens, Ms. Shirah suggested a rendering of climbing blooms which pairs perfectly with the existing “water feature” (aka toilet).

Ms. Epley cautions that it’s also best to avoid designs in which humans make a cameo. “You’re better off going with a landscape or something abstract, versus anything with eyes,” she said. “People have a hard time with [being watched].”

The Caveats

Depending on size, a custom powder-room mural can run between $10,000 and $20,000—roughly the same, Ms. Shirah noted, as installing high-end hand-painted wallpaper. If clients are leaning toward pricey wallpaper, she often suggests they hire a muralist instead “to create their own design and vibe” for a similar cost.

But you needn’t be flush with cash to get a transporting panorama. Thanks to a proliferation of affordable scenic wallpapers from online retailers like Forest Homes and Rebel Walls, thrifty decorators can perk up a powder room for around $500 to $950—especially if they’re willing to do the installation themselves. Before fixating on a design, make sure it’s a good fit, warned Ms. Epley. Measure carefully, and check that the scene is grand enough to fill your space, yet proportioned so that you’ll see the entire thing.

Those living in humid climates, like New Orleans, are better off with hand-painted murals than wallpaper because the damp can damage delicate papers, said Ms. Shirah. From a resale standpoint, removing wallpaper murals also requires more effort than simply painting over a scene that has worn out its welcome.

Whatever route you choose, know that the process takes patience—particularly when working with an artist. “Giving a muralist the liberty to create a piece of art means being flexible and willing to relinquish some control,” said Ms. Shirah.



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At the World Plogging Championship, contestants have lugged in tires, TVs and at least one Neapolitan coffee maker

By ERIC SYLVERS
Wed, Oct 4, 2023 4 min

GENOA, Italy—Renato Zanelli crossed the finish line with a rusty iron hanging from his neck while pulling 140 pounds of trash on an improvised sled fashioned from a slab of plastic waste.

Zanelli, a retired IT specialist, flashed a tired smile, but he suspected his garbage haul wouldn’t be enough to defend his title as world champion of plogging—a sport that combines running with trash collecting.

A rival had just finished the race with a chair around his neck and dragging three tires, a television and four sacks of trash. Another crossed the line with muscles bulging, towing a large refrigerator. But the strongest challenger was Manuel Jesus Ortega Garcia, a Spanish plumber who arrived at the finish pulling a fridge, a dishwasher, a propane gas tank, a fire extinguisher and a host of other odds and ends.

“The competition is intense this year,” said Zanelli. Now 71, he used his fitness and knack for finding trash to compete against athletes half his age. “I’m here to help the environment, but I also want to win.”

Italy, a land of beauty, is also a land of uncollected trash. The country struggles with chronic littering, inefficient garbage collection in many cities, and illegal dumping in the countryside of everything from washing machines to construction waste. Rome has become an emblem of Italy’s inability to fix its trash problem.

So it was fitting that at the recent World Plogging Championship more than 70 athletes from 16 countries tested their talents in this northern Italian city. During the six hours of the race, contestants collect points by racking up miles and vertical distance, and by carrying as much trash across the finish line as they can. Trash gets scored based on its weight and environmental impact. Batteries and electronic equipment earn the most points.

A mobile app ensures runners stay within the race’s permitted area, approximately 12 square miles. Athletes have to pass through checkpoints in the rugged, hilly park. They are issued gloves and four plastic bags to fill with garbage, and are also allowed to carry up to three bulky finds, such as tires or TVs.

Genoa, a gritty industrial port city in the country’s mountainous northwest, has a trash problem that gets worse the further one gets away from its relatively clean historic core. The park that hosted the plogging championship has long been plagued by garbage big and small.

“It’s ironic to have the World Plogging Championship in a country that’s not always as clean as it could be. But maybe it will help bring awareness and things will improve,” said Francesco Carcioffo, chief executive of Acea Pinerolese Industriale, an energy and recycling company that’s been involved in sponsoring and organizing the race since its first edition in 2021. All three world championships so far have been held in Italy.

Events that combine running and trash-collecting go back to at least 2010. The sport gained traction about seven years ago when a Swede, Erik Ahlström, coined the name plogging, a mashup of plocka upp, Swedish for “pick up,” and jogging.

“If you don’t have a catchy name you might as well not exist,” said Roberto Cavallo, an Italian environmental consultant and longtime plogger, who is on the world championship organizing committee together with Ahlström.

Saturday’s event brought together a mix of wiry trail runners and environmental activists, some of whom looked less like elite athletes.

“We like plogging because it makes us feel a little less guilty about the way things are going with the environment,” said Elena Canuto, 29, as she warmed up before the start. She came in first in the women’s ranking two years ago. “This year I’m taking it a bit easier because I’m three months pregnant.”

Around two-thirds of the contestants were Italians. The rest came from other European countries, as well as Japan, Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, Algeria, Ghana and Senegal.

“I hope to win so people in Senegal get enthusiastic about plogging,” said Issa Ba, a 30-year-old Senegalese-born factory worker who has lived in Italy for eight years.

“Three, two, one, go,” Cavallo shouted over a loudspeaker, and the athletes sprinted off in different directions. Some stopped 20 yards from the starting line to collect their first trash. Others took off to be the first to exploit richer pickings on wooded hilltops, where batteries and home appliances lay waiting.

As the hours went by, the athletes crisscrossed trails and roads, their bags became heavier. They tagged their bulky items and left them at roadsides for later collection. Contestants gathered at refreshment points, discussing what they had found as they fueled up on cookies and juice. Some contestants had brought their own reusable cups.

With 30 minutes left in the race, athletes were gathering so much trash that the organisers decided to tweak the rules: in addition to their four plastic bags, contestants could carry six bulky objects over the finish line rather than three.

“I know it’s like changing the rules halfway through a game of Monopoly, but I know I can rely on your comprehension,” Cavallo announced over the PA as the athletes braced for their final push to the finish line.

The rule change meant some contestants could almost double the weight of their trash, but others smelled a rat.

“That’s fantastic that people found so much stuff, but it’s not really fair to change the rules at the last minute,” said Paul Waye, a Dutch plogging evangelist who had passed up on some bulky trash because of the three-item rule.

Senegal will have to wait at least a year to have a plogging champion. Two hours after the end of Saturday’s race, Ba still hadn’t arrived at the finish line.

“My phone ran out of battery and I got lost,” Ba said later at the awards ceremony. “I’ll be back next year, but with a better phone.”

The race went better for Canuto. She used an abandoned shopping cart to wheel in her loot. It included a baby stroller, which the mother-to-be took as a good omen. Her total haul weighed a relatively modest 100 pounds, but was heavy on electronic equipment, which was enough for her to score her second triumph.

“I don’t know if I’ll be back next year to defend my title. The baby will be six or seven months old,” she said.

In the men’s ranking, Ortega, the Spanish plumber, brought in 310 pounds of waste, racked up more than 16 miles and climbed 7,300 feet to run away with the title.

Zanelli, the defending champion, didn’t make it onto the podium. He said he would take solace from the nearly new Neapolitan coffee maker he found during the first championship two years ago. “I’ll always have my victory and the coffee maker, which I polished and now display in my home,” he said.

Contestants collected more than 6,600 pounds of trash. The haul included fridges, bikes, dozens of tires, baby seats, mattresses, lead pipes, stoves, chairs, TVs, 1980s-era boomboxes with cassettes still inside, motorcycle helmets, electric fans, traffic cones, air rifles, a toilet and a soccer goal.

“This park hasn’t been this clean since the 15 century,” said Genoa’s ambassador for sport, Roberto Giordano.

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