At an age when most of her peers were riding bikes and playing dress-up, Laura Riedel was decorating. As a third grader, she kept a notebook full of design ideas, and she remembers the moment she walked into a friend's house whose living room was decorated "just right."
In her own house, she didn't have it as easy. When her mother told her she could choose the carpet for her bedroom, Laura requested a specific yellow hue, "but when I came home from school, the carpet was gold, and I really had a fit."
"I painted the walls apple green anyway, but it really mattered to me that the carpet wasn't the right color, and that my mother wouldn't replace it," she says. "I guess that should have been a clue that this was going to be a longtime hobby."
At 52, Laura's canvases are bigger. She designs with her husband, Ralph, 54, and their three adult children in mind, but her quest for good design is a constant.
Sometimes, it's an easy fix - she'll even rearrange the furniture in a hotel room or a rented condo if it doesn't feel right. Other times, it's more of a challenge.
When they first looked at a house for sale on a quiet lane in Radnor in early 2006, it was "really awful," Laura says. Built in the 1950s, it looked very institutional, with flat lines, a hip roof, and plain windows. An angled wrought-iron railing fractured the natural lines of the house, magnified by the flat garage roof and unadorned windows.