Design time

Interior decorator will spruce
up your home while you wait

by CHRIS BARRY

Name: Melissa Kalopedakis

Age: 31

Occupation: Interior decorator

Bio: This lusty Pierrefonds resident who “will be moving downtown or to Westmount soon, it’s just too boring out here for me,” had been working with her ex-husband designing the interiors of zillionaires’ private jets before launching Decormika, her interior design firm, a little over 18 months ago. A talented visual artist whose paintings can be viewed and purchased via her company Web site/blog at www.decormika.blogspot.com, Melissa is proud to offer her “turnkey interior design services for houses, condos and lofts—you walk in and everything is completely ready to go,” for the comparatively bargain rate of “roughly $50 an hour.” A former real estate agent, she also offers “staging” services, where she’ll fix up your dump of a condo/loft/house to better help you get top dollar for it in the marketplace. She drives a modest 2004 Porsche Cayenne.

Is it safe to say she doesn’t fix up too many apartments in the projects? Very safe. “You know who my services are good for? Exchange students, bachelors who’ve just arrived here from other countries to work, people who’ve recently separated from their spouses and want to start fresh. Basically, it’s for people who don’t have the time to go shop and then sit and wait around for their furniture to be delivered. For example, I recently did a complete ‘While you were out’ for one couple—the guy was an engineer and his wife a doctor, and they both had a really hard time picking anything for their house. So when she was gone one weekend, he asked me to take on the project. Over one weekend, I did this huge house in Laval and… oh, I was so alive while doing it! Apparently, when the wife came home and first walked in, she started crying.”

Is Melissa sure these were actually tears of joy? “Oh yeah.”

Do any of her customers feel even just a little bit lame for lacking the creativity to decorate their digs themselves? “Why should they? You can’t be good at everything. For a doctor or an engineer, that’s their passion. And then there are people like me who maybe can’t do any algebra but are really good at putting together an art project, and designing a space is definitely an art project. So why not hire a creative person to do creative work?”

Something unique Melissa will happily sell you for your digs: Her original art pieces.

Why she got out of real estate: The lack of creativity involved in the profession.

Doesn’t constantly lying to both buyers and sellers require a fair amount of creativity to do successfully? “Look, I just wasn’t content in that line of work. I wasn’t giving it my 100 per cent.”

Childhood ambition: To become a fashion designer.

Last book read: Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella.

Musical preferences: Christina Aguilera, Coldplay.

Words of wisdom: “Live one day at a time, because we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, yesterday is gone, and today is the only day we have power over.”

Comments: Dimwit@openface.ca