Michelle Anderson has used her 1,100 square-foot space to put the bounty of magazine clips, show ideas and advice into motion to create a perfect living space.
Michelle Anderson, a dentist with Carilion Pediatric Dental Clinic, has an avocation as strong as her profession. She loves interior design, and that is obvious in her 1,100-square-foot apartment at The Cotton Mill in downtown Roanoke.
Anderson is devoted to home makeover shows, home staging shows and decorating magazines such as Dwell. Through the years, she has collected decorating advice she put into action, starting with the apartment’s entrance.
The long, narrow foyer provides a perfect gallery for photographs she bought at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A shelf added underneath one of the photographs serves as a repository for keys so they will always be close at hand.
Michelle, a native of Toronto, moved to Roanoke from Boston after completing her residency in pediatric dentistry through Tufts School of Dental Medicine and New England Medical Center. She received her dental degree from Tufts School of Dental Medicine in Boston and has two undergraduate degrees from universities in New York. Because she was used to urban living, she was attracted to The Cotton Mill, a restored sewing factory across from the Jefferson Center.
The building was still being renovated when she put on a hard hat to see it and view a model of what the apartment space would look like.
“It was exciting,” she says. “It had a cosmopolitan feel.”
Anderson was one of the building’s first residents, arriving with a mattress, a chair, her laptop computer and some accessories she had collected over the years. She lived out of boxes for a month, until her mother arrived from Toronto and accompanied her on a shopping trip. But it was Anderson, not Mom, who made the decisions.
Although she is drawn to contemporary design in furnishings, her first purchase was a reproduction of an antique vanity, part of Lane Furniture’s National Geographic Collection. She ordered it through Grand Home Furnishings.
“I always wanted one antique,” she says. She didn’t like the ornate knobs on the drawer, however, so she switched them for a cleaner-looking knob found at Home Depot.
The vanity serves as a computer desk. A large ottoman is tucked underneath as seating. The spot can just as easily be used for dining, which is part of its appeal. Although the kitchen bar that separates the food preparation area from the living room has seating, Anderson prefers to eat at a table.
At the far end of the living area, a television unit with side bookcases houses a 55-inch television. Framed postcards from Ghana add interest in the shelving on one side of the TV while a display of differently shaped white vases draws the eye to the top of shelving on the other side.
Anderson clips and files decorating tips, such as: “Display vases in odd numbers and shapes to draw the eye’s attention to subtle details.”
The apartment has bright hardwood floors, which she complemented in the living area with a beige rug found as a remnant at a carpet store. The living room coffee table with curved glass top was the next purchase, but its lines blend perfectly with the sectional sofa, complete with chaise, ordered from Crate & Barrel. End tables for the couch were once part of a bedroom suite she spotted while shopping.
A contemporary leather chair from La-Z-Boy completes the living area furnishings.
Her apartment also includes a loft, reached by stairs along the left wall of the living room. The loft was intended to be a study or a den, but Anderson made it a second bedroom so that family members have their own spot when visiting.
“I wanted a hotel feel to it,” she explains. Anderson travels to continuing education courses and liked the arrangements of some of the hotel rooms she has enjoyed. Opposite the queen-size bed in the loft stand a table, a bit fanciful in design, and two chairs, covered in fabric she selected. Two slip-covered chairs from Crate & Barrel finish out the setting.
The master bedroom contrasts with the guest quarters. “It has a feminine flare, but it’s not overly done,” Anderson says.
The bedroom, located to the left of the apartment entrance, contains a high-back upholstered bed found at Haverty’s. It fits perfectly with the apartment’s 20-foot ceilings and has been teamed with an espresso-color dresser. A tulip canvas from Walmart adds interest over the bed.
Drawing on another decorating tip she read – to mix designs for bedside tables – Anderson chose a square table for one side and a petite round one with a lower shelf, found at Target, for the other. One more touch in this room – indicative of her attention to detail – is a slim mirror that covers the electrical panel access to the right of the room’s entrance.
