When Pilot Financial Advisors (PFA) asked local interior designer Lori Gray to transform a former downtown rental property into a corporate apartment that visiting executives would find “cool, urban, and funky,” Gray says she knew she had her hands full. When she realized they wanted it all on a “shoestring budget,” she knew exactly what to fill her hands with — found objects.

A seasoned designer, Gray knew that shoestring budgets sometimes produce unexpected surprises and, by definition, give credence to the time-honored maxim that necessity is the mother of invention. After all, Gray — an inventor at heart — is an intuitive designer who uses her hands as deftly as her head, repeatedly fashioning chic accessories out of discarded objects many would consider trash.

A saver, if not a savior, of all things deemed disposable, Gray routinely resurrects objects in her interior-design projects and occasionally elevates them to the role of art. From her endless collections of vintage beer cans, commercial signs, backyard water spigots, industrial doodads, and recycled furniture, Gray envisioned a series of rooms for her client that would celebrate Greensboro’s downtown and architectural history.

The designer wanted each and every room to have its own identity, its own design, and its own experience.

“I wanted to create spaces that would be edgy, memorable, and unique,” she recalls. 

“We gave Lori a blank canvas,” says Al Capps — co-owner of PFA. “What we asked for was a place our advisors could stay overnight, a nice retreat that was fully appointed.” An added bonus is the apartment’s location — cradled in historic College Hill within walking distance of the Tate Street business district, convenient to the rest of Greensboro’s downtown.

It’s that idea of the city as a memorable and unique destination that informed Gray’s design choices for the apartment. Highlighting Greensboro’s architectural landmarks, each room takes on a life of its own. Sepia-toned photography of the city’s historic train station and found objects along the downtown railroad tracks decorate one room, while architectural studies of the Jefferson Pilot building and Empire Revival cabinets dominate another. Likewise, tracings taken from apartment buildings in the College Hill area give a new bathroom a vintage look, while a celebration of the legendary Carolina Theatre takes center stage in the master bedroom.

At the heart of the apartment in the original galley kitchen, Gray assembled a potpourri of pots and pans from kitchens past that culminate in a veritable kaleidoscope of culinary colors.  The space is galvanized, magnetized, and revitalized with the inventive spirit of a designer who seems to have a magic touch.

For example, an obsolete cornhusker, equipped with a circular chopping block, may find new life as a mobile workstation. Or Gray may pair a set of galvanized watering troughs to serve as a kitchen table.

Famed Greensboro locales like College Hill Sundries and Yum-Yum Better Ice Cream are also celebrated throughout the décor, which includes chicken feeders and vintage soda crates in all manner of innovative applications.

When the project was complete, it was no surprise that Capps and his family fell so in love with what Gray had created that they decided to use it as a home-away-from-home to stage their downtown activities. “It’s a great place to take friends and family after a night on the town and just relax,” he says, giving flattering praise to Gray, who created yet another interior that celebrates the beauty in all things.