An artist’s eye on design

INSIDE INFORMATION: Founded in 2013, Lee Chartier's interior-design business, Inside Style LLC, manages about 20 active clients at any given time. Above, Chartier, left, works with intern Mary Cotter. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
INSIDE INFORMATION: Founded in 2013, Lee Chartier's interior-design business, Inside Style LLC, manages about 20 active clients at any given time. Above, Chartier, left, works with intern Mary Cotter. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

In 2012, veteran high school teacher Lee Chartier, 59, of South Kingstown, who has degrees in art, history and adult education and experience redesigning her own homes, decided to start her own company.

Her business, Inside Style LLC, is an interior-design consulting firm. Consulting constitutes three quarters of the business, while the rest is dedicated to selling an eclectic mix of heirlooms, preowned and new furniture, shutters and blinds from a leased retail shop.

She married her husband, Jack, in 1977, and over the years, the pair successfully redesigned several of the homes they lived in, always selling at a profit.

“I was always really interested in renovation, design, construction and furnishings, so I applied my arts background to that field,” Chartier said.

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In December, she retired from teaching, and today, nearly four years after opening the shop and offering consulting work, saw earnings increase to $398,000 in 2014. She employs three part-timers, has standing business relationships with about nine subcontractors, and also employs an intern.

Chartier charges $150 for a 1½-hour design consult and $75 an hour for her expertise, and attributes the business growth to referrals and repeat business.

“Once in a while you have to take everything out of a room and bring things back in one at a time and decide what’s essential,” she said.

Inside Style has about 20 active clients at any given time. One of her largest projects, a 1,000-square-foot, five-room cottage in South Kingstown with water on three sides, involved adding built-in bunk beds and a banquette in the kitchen.

“We knocked down walls, reconfigured the floor plan, picked the colors, wall textures and lighting,” she recalled, “and furnished it right down to putting sheets on the bed.”

She calls some of what she does, including reinventing furniture with the help of subcontractors, “re-imagining.” For instance, she might take an old cherry china cabinet made in the 1960s, remove the glass doors, paint it, change the hardware and put wine racks in the bottom. Custom designs may be done to order or on spec.

She also sometimes shops with clients, picking out furniture at the Design Center in Warwick and McKay’s Furniture in North Kingstown and then bringing clients there to make final decisions.

Walk-in business and referrals have increased since she opened, she said.

“The clients I’m getting more of are interested in larger projects, not just doing one room or solving one problem, because they repeat; they’re coming back,” she said.

Future growth may include carrying a line of upholstered furniture and becoming “more of a one-stop shop,” she said. •

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