Furniture

Q: It's time to spruce up my living room, which has a rather nondescript style. Because I hate the idea of throwing away furniture, my plan is to do-over some upholstered pieces and a couple of fine lamp tables. I would like to create a contemporary look that's also a bit decorative, but I need your help in getting there.A: Sometimes it really is best if some pieces of furniture are thrown away -- or, better yet, sent to the recycling center or local thrift store. Be honest now. Aren't there some items you've never been that crazy about and would be glad to get rid of?

Once a concert pianist, Roe Lenhard turned his artistic skills in a totally new direction some 13 years ago: He became a furniture designer. He created modular furniture that could be customized to individual requirements. "Quasi-custom, high-end case goods," is how he describes it.His bedrooms, dining rooms and wall systems can be tailored to a customer's specifications within six weeks. The choices are wide, including more than 3,000 finishes and many materials -- woods, leathers, laminates and metals.

MY SISTER ANN issued a semi-urgent call. She needed furniture pronto, because come February she expects to deliver twins.The new arrivals will join her 2-year-old son, Paul, and husband, Chris, in a home that is rapidly being expanded to hold this happily enlarging brood.There's always a note of financial practicality in the way my family operates. Usable family possessions get passed down, used and passed down again.This arrangement means we don't throw much away. Take the furniture my sister had her eye on. It was the set my grandmother Lily Rose, and her husband, Edward Jacques -- ever Pop Monaghan to his six grandchildren -- had during the 47 years of their marriage.

Discount-furniture shoppers got a real treat when C-Mart Discount Home Store opened in Joppa last fall. The no-frills store, a spin-off of the original, more clothing-geared C-Mart in Forest Hill, has specialized in selling deep-discount, brand-name furniture, accessories and appliances. Generally, most of the home store's merchandise has come from closeouts and insurance salvages. But this summer, shoppers are in for an added treat. Now through September, the 40,000-square-foot C-Mart Discount Home Store will be displaying and selling more than 30 designer-furniture manufacturers' collections, all bought from the International Home Furnishings Market in High Point, N.C., in April.

The last of the used furniture destined for the needy had not yet been unloaded yesterday when Bea Gaddy began pondering her next move."This is needed. We now have resources for food. We now have resources for furniture. Housing is the next thing we need," said Mrs. Gaddy, who runs a homeless shelter and soup kitchen in East Baltimore.The furniture -- 333 pieces in all -- was donated by the Cross Keys Inn in North Baltimore, loaded onto several trucks and taken to a storage room in Mondawmin Mall.

Clint Eastwood, actor, director and on-screen embodiment of the rugged, enigmatic cowboy-hero, has become an innkeeper and purveyor of furniture.In 1986, he bought Mission Ranch, a farm of more than 40 acres in Carmel, Calif. It is adjacent to the San Carlos Borromeo Mission. He donated 11 acres for a nature preserve and made the rest of the ranch into a resort. Mr. Eastwood asked Edgar Broyhill, a friend who owns Edgar B., a furniture manufacturer in Clemmons, N.C., to design furniture for the ranch.

American consumers are going home again, seeking a safe haven from job worries, street crime and a frenzied lifestyle they're too busy to enjoy.Disillusioned by the excesses of the '80s, these aging boomers are trading in their fancy cars, designer suits and exotic restaurant meals for four-wheel drives, blue jeans and Mom's meatloaf.More than 65,000 furniture manufacturers, retailers, interior designers and media representatives attending the big semiannual International Home Furnishings Market in High Point, earlier last month, heard this lifestyle message again and again as they shopped for the furniture and decorative accessories you'll be seeing soon at local retail outlets.

"It just snaps together?" I asked the salesman, pointing at the floor model of a simple plastic desk, just big enough to hold a computer and keyboard, a cup of coffee, a sweet roll, some note paper and a telephone -- the tools of my trade."Right," the salesman said. "Just snap it together or unsnap it to take it apart.""It doesn't have bolts, screws or anything like that?""Nope. All it has are grooves and tongues. Just slip one part into another and, pop, it fits into place. See, here? Got a nice tray for the keyboard that slides in and out."

Fine arts (painting, sculpture, etc.) and decorative arts (furniture, silverware, etc.) are two branches of the arts with overlapping but not identical functions. Fine arts perform a decorative function and relate to people in a non-physical, humanistic way; that is, they tell us something about ourselves at some level (or they should). Decorative arts perform a decorative function and relate to people in a physical, utilitarian way; that is, we use them in our everyday lives.It's not often that fine arts are utilitarian, unless you consider that filling up wall space satisfies the requirement.

Vincent Hughes Stafford, retired owner and president of Stafford Brothers Furniture Corp., died of cancer Saturday at his Ellicott City home. He was 86. Born in Baltimore and raised in Catonsville, he attended St. Mark's Parochial School and graduated in 1937 from Mount St. Joseph High School. That year, he became a salesman in the business at 1700 W. Pratt St. that had been founded by his father in 1900. After his father's death in 1950, Mr. Stafford took over the business with his two brothers, James Stafford and Francis E. Stafford.