The Incredible Gurney
BY MARSHALL GORDON
Steve Parker doesn’t take working at his home office desk lying down, although in a pinch, he probably could. “I read in a book where someone had taken a hospital gurney and turned it into a vanity sink for a bathroom. I immediately fell in love with the idea of having a gurney. Plus, anyone that knows me knows I have a fetish for wheels,” says Steve.
His quest for memorable home décor included a desk, one that could easily be moved and would fit into the eclectic ambiance of his home office. “I like things that are contradictions and using things in ways they were never intended for. I really did want a gurney. I’d seen pictures of similar things used in lofts in Soho in New York, or in Chicago, and wanted this space to look and feel like a loft. I felt something edgy like the gurney would give it more of an urban feeling,” he adds.
The gurney, it turns out, is a perfect fit.
He acquired the gurney six years ago while working as the manager of ScreenDoor in Asheville. A dealer called Steve and told him there was a gurney in a thrift store for $30.00. Did he want it? His reply: “Why are we having this conversation?”
But it was not all smooth sailing. Steve’s partner, Chris Slusher, didn’t share Steve’s all-out enthusiasm for incorporating a gurney into their home’s décor. “I was with my mother and stepfather in Saluda on an outing and went into a thrift store. They had two gurneys there. And I thought, I’m not ready to have this come into my house yet. I just had surgery and had spent some time on a gurney and I wasn’t real happy with the idea of having one here, reminding me of all that,” Chris remembers.
“It was there when Chris came home and he literally grabbed his stomach and grimaced when he saw it,” says Steve. I found out later that Chris had seen several gurneys and didn’t tell me about them.”
But their deeply ingrained love of the unusual prevailed and the gurney made the cut.
Steve, a self-described “interior director,” and Chris, who owns a company that designs decorative upholstered folding screens, originally planned to use the gurney also as a dining table. That fit into their master plan of having something flexible that could be easily wheeled around and used where needed. But after some careful thought, they figured that not everyone would feel comfortable breaking bread on a hospital gurney. So its sole function remains a desk.
Accessorizing the office space was easy. They found an oversized light fixture originally from an old tobacco warehouse, and although it doesn’t replicate its original use, it fits right in; the overhead light looks like it belongs in a hospital operating room.
While some may find it odd that Steve and Chris would even consider using a hospital gurney for a desk, the whole idea is part of a design aesthetic that values finding and using contradictory items in home decor. An old kitchen grater combines with a lawn sprinkler to create a wall lamp fixture; old sewer manhole covers serve as garden stepping stones; mop and broom handles are stuck into an old water cooler as a colorful arrangement — each “piece” contributes to the cool beauty of the home.
“This whole house is a blend of many different styles and eras,” says Steve. “We look for things with form and color; we look at their function and then try to integrate all this disparate stuff into something that really says it’s a unified assemblage.”
“If you look at everything in this house — or yours — somebody designed everything. When you look at it in that framework — where someone designed an article to be used a certain way and many years later, when you have different needs or functions necessary for that item — you reinterpret it.”
The gurney was recently modified to enhance its functionality. Steve commissioned Stephen Cooey of Dirty Anvil Inc. to fashion a welded metal top that provides a flat writing surface (Steve had used an old card table before that.). And while Steve’s home office desk has acquired a nicely sculptured look, there’s no mistaking its heritage: it’s still a hospital gurney at heart.
