The following is from Taking Chances posted in Veranda. View the entire feature HERE. When Danielle Rollins transformed a pedestrian 1970s Georgian in Atlanta into her dream home, it was the beginning of a bold new chapter for both the property and the designer. 'I had just gone through a divorce and lost just about everything,” says Rollins, a lifestyle expert who specializes in both interior design and fashion (she recently launched a clothing and accessories collection). 'When my book Soirée came out a few years ago, I was being asked to give talks on stylish entertaining, even though, at the time, I had moved out of my home and barely even had any paper plates!' Rollins was determined to rebuild her life and set the stage for the future. 'I bought truly the ugliest house, but it was on a great street for a price I could afford,' she says. 'I resolved to turn it into a show-case for everything I wanted to do.' With architect Bill Ingram, Rollins embarked on an ambitious renovation, reconfiguring her new home’s floor plan to include a show stopping living room—40 feet in length—along with a new wing for her parents, who live with the designer and her three children. To ground the dramatic new spaces, she chose a palette of serene blues, with base-boards throughout the house painted pea-cock blue—her favorite color—for continuity. The sprawling living room is enveloped in Pierre Frey’s timeless Toile de Nantes wallpaper, with its stippled vertical scrolls in a bold azure. The ikat-like print also adds dynamism to the art she loves to collect. 'I often tell people, If you have Picassos, then you can have a white wall,' Rollins says. 'Otherwise, the vibrancy of a background color or pattern can make your art come alive.' During the renovation, Rollins also planned extensive service areas, including a butler’s hall with space for flower arranging, a china room, and a breakfast room with cabinets stocked full of silver, linens, and glassware. “You know that old adage, ‘If you buy clothing for a life you want to live, you’re going to live it,’” she says. “I think if you buy the nicer china, you’re going to use it. But you need to have a place for it, too.” Romantic glamour reigns in the designer’s master bedroom, where splashes of apricot, spots of leopard, and floral chintz set off the canopy bed. A set of ice-blue satin curtains—one of the few items she retained from her previous Miles Redd–decorated house—hang at the windows. 'The main thing I learned from Miles is the notion that It’s only decorating,' she says. 'If you don’t like something, you can always change it. And if you buy good pieces that you love, you’re always going to find a place for them.' Meanwhile, a photograph of Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman presides over the master bath, which is furnished, in the tradition of decorating legend and fellow Southerner Nancy Lancaster, as comfortably as any sitting room. The photo is one of the first things Rollins sees each morning, empowering her to put on her virtual everyday power cape. 'I’m so thankful for this house and this project,' she says. 'In the beginning, I focused on what my home needed. But in hindsight, the whole process gave back to me so many of the things that I needed, too.'