The Chaise Lounge is kicking off some fresh ideas for the weekly podcast including a format change.  This week you get not one interview, but two different interviews with two very different design firms. We want to try to get you, as a listener, the absolute most content to you as possible, and with so many interviews coming up we’ve made sure to include the most important advice from each interviewee, and to edit out any unnecessary tangents that we can easily find ourselves on when speaking with successful designers! That said, we have two fantastic interviews for you today, Gil Walsh of Gil Walsh Interiors and Architect Chip von Weise of von Weise Associates. Listen in for some great advice from varying perspectives in today’s podcast!

 

Gil Walsh, founder of Gil Walsh Interiors is based out of West Palm Beach, Florida though she also has a second office and home out of Martha’s Vineyard. Interior design has been in Gil’s bloodline for many generations, her interest as a child was piqued by her families large collection of antique furniture, from there Gil took pursued many forms of design as a career from a fashion designer to a theatrical stage set designer. Gil has found that the basic principles she learned through those careers have helped her interior design business immensely.

Nick questions Gil about the most important things she learned through her design education, to which she answers, “The use of color, the use of fabric and texture, the use of scale and the use of layering.” Gil continues to highlight layering as the most important key to a dimensional room. Nick and Gil discuss the long educational road she took before becoming a licensed professional interior designer and the difficulties she faced through that process. Upon graduation, Gil apprenticed for some great designers based out of Ohio and before starting her own business, she worked primarily for large firms for more than 25 years. Gil talks to Nick about the tremendous amount of on the job training she received while in those positions.

When Gil started her own business, she had a total of three people including herself who “wore many hats.” Within a year, Gil recognized how fast her company was growing and the need to hire more staff and find a larger space. Today the business has 16 employees and is growing. Her staff is comprised of a variety of roles including project managers, project assistants, interior architects and marketing and PR personnel. At any given time Gil Walsh Interiors will have 10 large jobs going on, with many waiting in the pipeline.

Nick and Gil discuss how her business handles their marketing through social media. Gil discusses how hiring a professional to handle the social media aspect has been very successful for her company. Gil is excited about a very prestigious opportunity that her firm has recently received, designing a room at The Kips Bay Decorator Show House, which benefits the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club, a NYC organization that serves over 10,000 children in the Bronx, which Gil equates to receiving an Oscar in the design world. Gil is also proud to announce the arrival of her very first book, which will be available in September of this year!

 

 

In the second segment of our show, Nick has the privilege of interviewing Chip von Weise out of Chicago, Illinois. Chip is a professionally trained architect who grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. Chip’s early interest in architecture was through family members who worked in architecture and also carpentry and boat building. Studying Fine Arts in college at a small liberal arts school in Massachusetts, Chip was not originally intending to pursue a career in Architecture. After his schooling, Chip moved to Chicago and took a job in Advertising for a well-known firm. After about three years working for the firm,