I have been interested in interior design since high school. I initially thought I would go back to interior design school after I got my bachelor's degree, but then decided to go a different route and go into public health. I probably questioned that decision many, many times.
I often talk about how the things that we bring into our home impact our health, but our mental health is also a part of that. How we feel in our homes often connects with interior design. But not only that, there are sustainable ways to create beautiful designs within your homes. To consider the furniture or maybe even when you're doing a renovation, the kind of materials you bring into your home. How are they going to impact your health? Are they sustainable? How much waste do they create? Are they made in a way that is taking care of the workers in the facilities and the manufacturing process? What's their carbon footprint? How much water are they using all those different things?
Our point of having this interior design focus is not just to talk about, well, we love interior design, do this to make it beautiful, it's really kind of incorporating it all. And bringing in our toxin free perspective into interior design. Thinking about it holistically, a home that is healthy, that makes you feel good impacts your mental health, a place that makes you want to bring your friends and family home that makes you feel comfortable and happy when you're at home. I'm really hoping to combine my two loves of toxin-free living and sustainability, and then also bring in that interior design aspect.
A little bit over a year ago, I was just feeling like I needed more in my life. I wasn't doing my quote unquote, career. I went to dinner with some friends and I told my friend Lara that I was thinking about becoming a substitute teacher. And she looked at me sideways and said, “Are you crazy? You're not gonna have any fun doing that. Just come work for me.” And little did I know that that could be the answer to the question, what is my purpose?
Now that I've been doing this for a little over a year, I truly understand the saying, “Love what you do, and you'll never work a day in your life.” I really feel like it has just made me so happy. And I love the work we're doing. I love how we work together.
So here we are, we're starting with a monthly interior design podcast. So Lara, how long have we known each other?
Lara: I met you when you were dating Drew, your husband. We were both living in Portland at the time. So that would have been probably 2000 ish. We ran into you guys at a pizza place and I had gone to school with Drew. We went to the University of Washington together. He was in the fraternity across the street that I partied with the most and played with the most. And so it was great to see him in Portland, out on this date with this beautiful young lady. So that's like 20 years ago. Where the story gets even funnier, though, is that many years later, I was working in my home decor gift shop in downtown Olympia and we were having Arts Walk. It's a lovely event where people come and shop downtown and try to get information on various artists. Drew and Megan, I saw them across the store, and I just yelled out, “Drew Mikkelsen, what are you doing here?” And there you go. It turns out that you guys had moved from Portland to Olympia just like my husband and I. I felt like that was the most serendipitous moment. The universe is telling us that we need to know each other.
Megan: Yeah, it's so funny, because we had just moved to the Olympia area. And we didn't really know anybody and didn't know anything about Olympia. So we tried to go to as many of the local events as we could to just meet more people and get to know Olympia. And I told him, “Okay, well, this is my favorite store, because they take these unique pieces, and they recreate them.”
You know, the backbone of Red Door were these items that Lara and her mom had found at estate sales and garage sales. And they took them from these kind of dilapidated, ugly pieces that no one had a vision for and then they created these gorgeous pieces. They were repurposing these furniture items and frames and so many different pieces of art. And I loved that because I loved interior design. I also loved repurposing. I love to repurpose. So it was just Kismet that I had said, “We have to go to this store.”
Lara: I saw in your own home, that you had a great eye. That's something somebody with a good eye recognizes in another person. And I love your eclectic style, which is also kind of my happy place. So I knew that you always had that kind of creative part of you. I was actually fascinated when I learned what your career at the time was. In public health. I mean, it completely confused me, I could not put it together, it did not make sense. It didn't resonate with just who you are, and your energy and your love of beauty. And I just could not make heads or tails of it. Then when you made that choice to leave, although I know that was very scary, you know, to have that dependable income and everything, it just made so much sense. I would have asked you to work with me much earlier. I just didn't really know where your strengths were necessarily. And as you mentioned, I've had this business many years, and it's just been me. But my systems were an absolute mess. And that's truly the love story here because you have been the answer to my prayers. To come in, and have that left side of the brain brought into my company and put procedures in place that are going to make me just a more successful, efficient running machine. Now I kind of feel like the winds are at our back and we can do just about anything
Megan: And we get to have a lot of fun.
Lara: We have so much fun. Like Megan said, “Find something that you love and you never work a day in your life”, and that's how it feels. I mean sure there's some days you get bogged down with the have to’s, but overall, it's just a joyful experience. It feels like just the perfect pair of shoes. I mean, it just fits, you and I fit. You read my mind, and vice versa. You speak my erratic ADD language. I mean, you track it and put it into a spreadsheet. I'm just amazed at your ability to understand me and it's pretty cool to be understood on that level.
Megan: So let's talk a little bit more about your history in design and all the incredible things that you've done. But before I do I want to say that, before I started on this podcast, I would say maybe like 15 years ago, I always admired people, especially women, who thought, I can do that. I can open a store, I can start a brand, I can start a podcast. I honestly would see people and I would so admire them. I would always think I could never do that. And I believed those lies that I told myself for way too long. As you know, I now have a podcast. So I decided to stop believing those lies. But Lara is somebody that I truly admired because I saw her having a store and I thought, “Oh, my gosh, how do you do that?” But before Red Door, the store opened, there was Lara, you know, just starting her interior design career. So tell us about that first.
Lara: So I graduated with my degree in 2000 and we moved to Portland, and I actually didn't have a job that was in interior design. I worked with the architects and designers in the Portland area. I was the rep for these Hayworth products that are office furniture and equipment. I knew I didn't want to do that. But this is also still before, I mean, I was young. I was not even 30 yet. I didn't even realize how this whole thing worked. I always knew I wanted to be in design, but it was a very scary thing. Where I finally just opened up my own business was because I didn't necessarily see how I could get a job in it. To tell you the truth, it's really difficult to be employed as an interior designer. I'm an action person, just like you are Megan. And I didn't see the jobs available so I kind of just made my own. So that's opening up the store and having that for many years with my mom. We did that because I had young children at the time and I didn't want to put them in daycare. If I was at the store, my mom would watch the boys and if she was at the store, I had the boys and it just was a lovely arrangement that worked for many years. But when the boys were old enough my ambitions were kind of brimming and I knew there was much more out there for me. So that was when I decided to sell the shop and just open up my interior design business full time. And because of my reputation with the store, I had clients right away, which was really a blessing. I didn't realize that all of those years of working at the store were gonna put the groundwork together for the design business. So anyway, starting up the design business, really full time about eight years ago, and hitting it hard. And growing. It was just me, it's a one pony show. I subbed out my digital drafting, but everything else was all me. I would say the first two to three years were getting up to date with product knowledge. There was so much that I needed to get up to speed on since I got the degree in 2000. So there was a huge learning curve to begin with. I got more and more experience and just got more and more confident and working with trades people and learning about how things really are built and all the ins and outs, I just feel like right now at my age, I'm ready to just conquer the world. I feel like I've got it all. Not that there aren't always questions that come up in design. That's actually the beauty of it. I love that you can never have the answers for everything but I can definitely get with the right person that's going to tell me the best way to do something. That's what brings me to today in 2023. And Megan being a big part of the team and really now kind of transitioning from design where I did a lot of remodels and kitchens and baths, now we're playing around more with decor related things. Furnishings, artwork, decor. Kind of the cherry on top for design. It's kind of been an interesting thing to delve into that New Frontier, if you will. It's a lot harder than actual design work for kitchen and bath and remodel. I actually think it’s a lot harder.
Megan: There's just so many moving parts.
Lara: Tastes and trying to hit the mark.
Megan: One of the things I love about working with Lara is just her creative mind is so incredible. And while I feel like I have some creativity, I definitely second guess myself. I mean, I don't have as many years in design as Lara has and I don't have a degree. But I love just being around her and soaking up the knowledge. One thing that I absolutely love about the designs, and how we work with our clients is just how we pull personality out of our clients and make that personality really shine in their homes. Like we create these really soulful designs that are truly them. And often they come to us and they say, “Well, I don't have a style. What's your design style? I want to be what a designer’s style is.”
Lara: And we say “Hey, I'm here for you. I need to design for you.” So I claim I don't have a necessary aesthetic. Sure, there's things that are my favorites. But I'm going to design for you and what's involved in that very involved process of getting to know the client, very intimately and knowing their interests, what drives them, you know, their favorite place to travel, what their family life is like. There's just a lot to delve into to finally land at that place. Because I am such a believer that our happiness is impacted by our surroundings and our homes. I don't know what the percentage of our lives are spent at home, but it's a lot. The question that I ask them is, how do you want to feel when you come home? How do you want to feel when you walk into your bedroom? Do you want it to be the sanctuary you dig? Or do you want it to really focus on sleep? Do you want it to be activity driven? There's just a lot of questions that go into it. You mentioned the soul of a space, and this is where Megan and I can really geek out about design because we can go on and on about how our surroundings affect us and my experience in design and using the elements of design in an informed way. We make miracles happen.
Megan:That's basically what you're gonna find on this monthly episode focused on interior design for Toxin-Free Talk. Before we end I do want to have you chat a little bit about RD Shady and your invention. So another thing that I really admired about Lara was that she has an invention and has a patent. And she's had a lot of trials and tribulations with this. She was so close to being on Shark Tank and it just didn't happen. But I can't let it go because it is something that you still think about. You think I'm just done with it but then sometimes it comes back up.
Megan: The universe brings it back to me when I want to turn the page because I think at the end of the day, I came up with a really great idea. And so RD Shady, the RD is for Red Door, the name of my design business and the shady because it's all related to lampshades. But I designed and patented a lampshade cover that goes over top of just a basic lamp shade shell.
It can zip on and off or it can Velcro on and off. But you can change it out seasonally. So you can have tinsel and metallics in the holidays or you can have spider webs for Halloween. Or you can support your favorite team. I mean, it's just a fun way to add life to your lamp. So it was something that had the design but then yes, I learned how to get it patented. Then I had to learn the cost of manufacturing it and then I traveled around the US to different trade shows trying to sell it to people. It was a long, long journey. Blood sweat and tears for this and at the end of the day it never took. It almost happened and the universe did not want it to happen. I haven't given up and actually have a second patent that is a variation of the first and I still have dreams for it. I know that it's time will come. And and maybe now that Megan's on the team, I have the power and ability to actually sound the right alarms and get the right people in front of it to make it work. I fell in love with the concept of designing products and making people's lives fun, whatever it may be. And I learned that I had that skill, I didn't even know I had it. But I really do have the ability to look at a problem and go, oh, I think I have a solution for that.
Megan: Which is what you really do. The typical person will say, “Oh, I have this weird space under the stairs, and I don't know what to do with it.” And we come up with solutions. Or they have a weird layout for a family room. It's too big, or it's too small. We really troubleshoot that and really find the perfect flow for a space.
If you want to check out our interior design page it's www.reddoorolympia.com. I honestly love your questions about interior design. If you want me to focus on something specific about interior design for the podcast, you can email me at megan@detox.design. And I will be focusing more on interior design products in the regular episodes of Toxin-Free Talk too. If you have a certain item that you're like, “I'm buying new wood floors, I don't know what to get.” Then email and I'll try to find those solutions for you.
