DECORATING Nostalgia leads to retro rec room

An appreciation for '50s fashion has been mixed with modern electronics.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
AKRON -- Claudia Bjerre's youth is just a flight of steps away.
Bjerre has turned her West Akron basement into a rec room authentic enough to match the memories of her 1950s childhood, right down to a sectional sofa just like the one where she used to spot her sisters smooching with their boyfriends.
Of course, those sisters wouldn't have been watching a flat-screen television like the one that tops one of Bjerre's Heywood-Wakefield tables. She wanted a fun room for hanging out, not a museum exhibit, so her basement is a place where today's technology meets midcentury modern style.
Bjerre's impetus for outfitting the room in '50s fashion was part nostalgic and part aesthetic. "When I hit 50, I got a little nostalgic," she said. She longed to surround herself with the furniture and icons of that time, at least in one part of her house.
"The furniture is a lot like [what] I grew up with. I like the clean look of it, and the design and the simplicity of it," she said.
Tastes changed
That's not to say she's always recognized the spare appeal of midcentury modern. She used to have a 1950s-era china cabinet from her parents in her first apartment, but she gave it back. Eventually, though, she came to appreciate the clean-lined cupboard's pedigree as the work of noted designer Paul McCobb, and she reclaimed it.
Apparently, her parents didn't share her newfound appreciation. "They were happy to get it out of the basement," Bjerre said with a smile.
The cupboard became the starting point for the whole rec room, which contains authentic '50s furniture and accessories as well as new pieces that are reminiscent of the era -- all of it mixed with the high-tech video and audio equipment that satisfies Bjerre's movie-watching habit.
The basement room is bright and welcoming, thanks in large part to the can lights that dot the ceiling, the chartreuse walls and the highly reflective floor made from an unexpected material, oriented strand board. OSB, made of wood strands and chips bonded together, is typically used for sheathing and other types of construction applications, but in Bjerre's basement it's been given a glossy finish to resemble the chip-style linoleum that was a fixture in the '50s.
Bjerre had wanted hardwood floors, but those were beyond her budget. As it turned out, however, the OSB wasn't quite the money-saver she'd hoped it would be. The contractor had to sand the floor seven times to rid it of the printing on the boards, she said, and they still bear traces of ink. "But it's a good dance floor," she said -- a rec-room requisite for that era.
Bar and its accessories
One corner of the room is occupied by the bar, two tiers of curved glass on a gray metal base. It came from the contemporary furniture store Ikea, but it owes its inspiration to the outer-space influence of the '50s. On shelves behind the bar, Bjerre displays the '50s barware she has collected, including a cocktail shaker decorated with pink elephants and a set of frosted Tom Collins glasses imprinted with circus animals, just like the glasses her parents owned when she was a kid. The bar also houses one of her prized possessions, her grandfather's bottle opener from the beverage store he frequented.
Some of Bjerre's treasures were eBay finds, such as a collection of pop-art album covers framed on one wall and a cabinet-style stereo she drove all the way to New Jersey to pick up. Some came from antique stores and shops specializing in midcentury furniture, while the bases of two glass-top tables were rescued by a friend from a Dumpster.
A few changes
Bjerre wasn't a stickler about authentic finishes and fabrics. Unlike her parents' sofa, which was orange, hers is covered in a retro fabric with an eggplant-color background and a design that reminds her of sliced, hard-boiled eggs. The Heywood-Wakefield tables she found in run-down condition were refinished not in the original color, but in a deeper tone to match the cabinet that came from her parents.
That cabinet is home to one of the room's most humorous features, a set of mildly racy novelty mugs with handles in the form of women in various states of undress.
They came from a friend whose parents had received them as an engagement present and who, luckily for Bjerre, were conservative enough to have kept them boxed in pristine condition for 50 years.
Bjerre's rec room, which was completed in May, is a place where she loves to entertain. Visitors are often surprised when they see it, she said, especially because it's such a departure from the rest of Bjerre's traditional home.
"It's kind of like me," she explained. "Part of me's traditional; part of me's not traditional."
But she said her friends, and especially her parents, have enjoyed the room as much as she has.
"It brings back memories," she said. "That's the thing."