Apartment décor rides creative wave

“Outside the Box,” reads the sign – a repurposed vintage door that hangs, like a work of art, on Tasha Gordon’s living room wall. Painted in her signature color – green – the words exemplify the 24-year-old artist’s approach to her work: clever, eclectic and always pushing her own boundaries.

“I don’t want to limit what I do,” Gordon says of her creativity, which includes painting, photography and redesigning old furniture and other found objects. “I get bored doing the same thing.”

Gordon says she started buying and revamping old furniture while attending University High.

“I sold stuff at a consignment shop in the Valley,” she says, though she quit after enrolling at Spokane Falls Community College. Gordon dabbled in a variety of creative mediums at different schools – photography, painting, interior design – but graduated from Eastern Washington University with a degree in recreation management.

Today Gordon works at her parents’ store – Embroidered Sportswear Inc. in Spokane Valley. But her true passion has always been art.

“I’ve been trying to get back to painting,” she says, adding that she’d like to capitalize on her creativity and start her own business. “I just like to find old stuff and turn it into something.”

In the meantime, the Browne’s Addition apartment she shares with her husband, David, functions as her personal art and furniture showroom.

In the main living area, a pair of grass-green club chairs from Value Village – the kind you might find in Archie Bunker’s family room – have been re-stuffed and fitted with new wooden legs. They now flank the couple’s TV, which rests on an antique vanity table.

Throw pillows that Gordon fashioned from vintage fabrics found at yard sales add color and character to the room. Antique windows from an old farm in Oakesdale, Wash., hang above a bright red couch, visually separating the living/dining room combo.

Nearby is a colorful caricature painting of the Gordons on their wedding day, framed by hand-written sentiments from guests. Tasha has plans for additional paintings.

In the kitchen, an old cabinet, its white paint worn with age, boasts new wooden doors faced with chicken wire. Hanging opposite the stove and sink, the cabinet now holds the Gordon’s barware.

Nearby, an antique clothes dresser was refashioned into a wine bar by removing the bottom two drawers and lining the opening with beadboard. They are two of Tasha’s favorite pieces, both salvaged from her grandparents’ farm in Oakesdale.

Outside on a deck overlooking the Spokane River is a rustic old farm table on which the Gordons encourage guests to make their mark by carving into the distressed wood top with a knife.

At the back of the deck, hanging on an exposed brick wall, a couple of antique mirrors reflect the vacant lot across the river that will one day house the new Kendall Yards development.

For now, Tasha says she is content with a day job that “pays the bills.” But eventually, she hopes the words painted on an old cupboard door in her living room will one day hang above the entrance to her own art and furniture gallery.

Gesturing around the deck at a handful of furniture and other objects that await transformation she says, “I always go back to this.”