Donna Childs in her Battery Park City bedroom, which was decorated by Natural Home magazine.
One Battery Park City resident has finally found tranquility, healing, and sanctuary — all in her bedroom.
Donna Childs’ room is featured in the current issue of Natural Home magazine on stands now. Childs was chosen out of more than 200 applicants in May for a total room makeover, and by the end of August, her room had been completely transformed.
“It’s just beautiful,” said Childs who, due to business travel, hasn’t been able to spend much time in her new room yet.
Natural Home’s editor-in-chief, Robyn Lawrence, said the magazine chose Childs for her compelling letter. Childs wrote about how she had to evacuate her apartment after Sept. 11, 2001 and described the damaging effects of the soot and ash that came in her bedroom through window cracks.
“I think she really just struck all of us with how elegantly she put into words how this room reminded her of the most painful thing that had happened to her, and all of us wanted to help her heal,” said Lawrence.
Childs said that the damage to her apartment was less severe than what some of her neighbors experienced. Her apartment faces south, away from the World Trade Center site. She and many of her neighbors had their insurance companies pay for an environmental cleanup.
Childs took it one step further after she read Natural Home and said she felt fortunate to win the magazine’s makeover contest.
The tremor after the towers fell caused the ceiling molding to crack. “I know it is silly,” she wrote, “because it is such a trivial thing in the face of monumental human loss, but the cracked molding reminds me of what happened.”
The Natural Home makeover fixed the molding, but that was only a small part of the complete bedroom overhaul. New York designer Cheryl Terrace of Vital Design, who also writes for Natural Home, worked closely with Childs to create a design that would emphasize the room’s best features. They started with the bedroom’s tremendous Hudson River view.
“I went down there and said, ‘Oh, God, this place needs help,’” Terrace told Downtown Express. “The space was wall-to-wall, white and sterile. The only saving grace was that there’s sweeping views of New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty, lots of greens and blues.”
Terrace emphasized a “green” approach to decorating, which she described as the organic food craze of the design world. She and green builder Robert Politzer used only environmentally-friendly products, such as chemical-free paints, which they say provide a cleaner, more pure living space.
The results seemed to pay off. “The air quality is so much improved,” said Childs, who said she would consider the “green” approach with any future decorating project.
Terrace said this “eco-chic” approach is the future of cutting-edge design. “It’s like eating organic foods, working out or doing yoga. You just know you should be doing it,” she said.
Lawrence said the results convinced the magazine to make the contest an annual event. “The transformation that happened there is just amazing,” she said. “At the end of our photo shoot, I just wanted to stay. It was hard to go back to my room at The Sheraton.”
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