A Slow Home Project

We believe that artful curation can offer a new perspective on how to develop sustainable, artistic rentals amid the wasteful trend of fast furniture.

In recent years, roughly half of active Airbnb listings were added, leading to a surge of uninspiring spaces filled with bland, fast furniture. Companies like Sonder bought up thousands of properties in an attempt to scale to high valuations.

After staying in many of these rentals during the pandemic, we realized that there must be a better, more sustainable way to create spaces that feel like a home where you want to slow down and savor. However, we never intended on doing it ourselves.

We stumbled across this house two years ago, and it was in disrepair. The front of the building was so water-damaged that you could cut into the wood pillars with a butter knife. Nevertheless, we bought it and spent the next two years restoring and sourcing for it.

Artful Curation

Is a thrifty practice of sourcing vintage furniture, crafty restoration, supporting local artists and the occasional splurge on brand-spanking-new items for a more sustainable yet expressive end aesthetic.

This is not radically efficient and perhaps that is the point. It requires a lot of hunting on auction sites such as Live Auctioneers, Facebook Marketplace, and visits to local vintage furniture stores. It means getting to know local artists and craftsmen. But the end result is well worth the time, guests appreciate the extra touch more than ever.

One example is the set of Vico Magistretti Gaudi chairs in the Lime Ricky apartment. We found the set on Facebook Marketplace, they were extremely damaged and spray painted. You’d never know that now because we had them painstakingly restored locally.

Us

We are Kasra Saidi and Lizzy Szabo, a couple who fell in love with New Orleans’ craftiness, community and creativity.

Here we put our personalities and professional sensibilities to work for Henry Guest House. Lizzy is curator by profession at Spotify, she also grew up being thrown into antique shops and emerging with that one thing everyone wishes they had the eye to buy. Kasra works in branding and sustainability.

It is quite the balanced pairing but to answer the question yes, we still debate the small things like what shade of off-yellow a room should be, or if that hardware compliments the color of the backsplash.