Adele Beck knows a thing or two about Dynamite Design

By Mikel Kelly

The Times, Feb 4, 2010 (1 Reader comment)

Mikel Kelly / Times Newspapers

Adele Beck

ADVERTISEMENTS

It would be hard to overstate how much Adele Beck knows about interior design – after 40 years in the business, 36 of them with her own firm, and numerous subspecialties – but one thing is for sure: You’ll be able to soak up a lot of it for almost nothing when she brings her four-part “Dynamite Design” class to Tigard this month and next.

“Do you wish that you could change up your home with some new design ideas?” she asks in a flyer about the class that will run every Wednesday evening from Feb. 17 through March 10. “Want a new look but don’t have a lot of extra $$$? Then Dynamite Design is your answer!”

The classes will be held at Tigard Community Friends Church, 15800 S.W. Hall Blvd., for a measly – and no, this is not a typo – $5.

Topics for the class are “Demolition and Design: Working With What You Have”; “Color and Courage”; “Whimsy and Wonder”; and “Supercalifragilistic and Spizzerinctum” (more about that last one later).

At 61, Adele Beck is at that stage where many people are thinking about retirement, but she has no such plans – and she has more enthusiasm and energy than a lot of people in their 30s.

“I am such a broad-spectrum designer,” she says, perched on a stool in her small studio in Southwest Portland that shares a roof (but not an entrance) with her home near PCC’s Sylvania campus. “I don’t just do one category.”

By that she means her work can range from a single bathroom makeover to the $27 million plant and offices design she oversaw for Ore-Ida Foods – “and I did that entire project without actually being there on site.”

Emphasizing hospitality

“I do commercial and residential, and I have an emphasis in doing hospitality, in hotels and restaurants,” she says. “My largest residential remodel was 900,000 square feet, and my largest residential new construction was a $7 million, five-year project.”

Surrounded on all sides by hanging samples of fabric and color swatches and shade materials and sample books, she insists that her best skill is working with people – all kinds of people.

“I really like first-time buyers,” she says. “I like the person who gets to watch their dollars. I am enthusiastic about people who have to work with budgets.”

Though her head is full of ideas, she never loses sight of the real world, she says, which leads us to her pet peeve about the makeover shows on television.

“HGTV drives me crazy because they forget to figure in the labor,” she says, leaving viewers with the impression that these projects can be done for nothing. Not true.

On the other hand, she has an almost chronically positive outlook. No doubt because she’s good at her job. Among her “specialties,” she says, are color expertise, electrical issues, “anything to do with lighting,” including updating, remodeling and new construction. She does structural engineering, analyzing prospective homes for new buyers.