Monday, August 16th, 2010
My passion for all things domestic was fueled in my teen and college years by the infamous Martha Stewart. Back then no other magazines had multi-page spreads on the amazing creations possible with a variety of cake pipping tips or gorgeous photograph composites of bowls of spices. I even started a Martha Stewart fan club in college (really an activity group to do crafts together) to get my fix of craftiness. I’m pretty sure I had the only dorm room with cafe curtains made from vintage napkins picked up at an estate sale and trimmed with ribbons.
So even though I don’t read every issue of MSL anymore, her annual Home Issue is a favorite of mine. And when I saw it mentioned on one of my favorite blogger’s blog (she was featured in ”100 Great Finds for Every Room of the House”) I popped out to Barnes & Noble to pick it up. It’s not my favorite home issue to date, but it still has plenty of useful tips and good photography.
While I enjoy beautiful gardens, I leave the gardening work to my husband and mother. However, I do have favorites in the garden, and sedum is a key one. I love the diversity of colors, textures and shapes sedum is available in. They are often a key component in the mix of plants used on green roofs (roofs covered in plantings to absorb rainwater and minimize runoff).
I liked this layout with its mix of natural materials and clean lines. The brackets for the shelf would look too fussy if they weren’t paired with that rustic wood shelf.
Now this article filled with Martha’s advice on kitchen design and organization takes me to my happy place. Drawers neatly organized by function. Cute containers to achieve proper containment and separation. AND kitchen tools?! (My love of kitchen tools and gadgets comes from my mother. Do YOU have an angel food cake cutter? I do.) It’s too much goodness in one place. I just wish I had that many drawers to begin with!
This party layout is at the end of an article about the condo of Kevin Sharkey, the executive editorial director of decorating. The decorating of his condo has been chronicled in previous issues, and this is the grand culmination showcasing how it all came together. It looks nice, but I actually loved the party photos best. They have a great energy and lightheartedness that’s not often found in MSL party articles. An oreo cookie “cake”? Ping pong is a condo filled with expensive furniture and large mirrors? A faux frame drawn on a mirror? Love it. The balloons photo reminds me of the end of the movie 13 Going on 30. (There’s a large scale photo shoot for a magazine with balloons and good looking people smiling and having a good time.)
Besides these articles there are also a number of helpful articles that you should be sure to check out. There’s a great feature on how to layout a large wall installation of personal photographs, with step by step instructions, “Walls That Talk.” If finding the right product to clean and repair all the different surfaces in your home is a struggle, be sure to read “Furniture First Aid.”
Enjoy!
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Tags: bookshelf, curtains, drawer, garden, Kitchen, oreo, organization, party, sedum, tools, Wood
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Thursday, July 8th, 2010
So this weekend I was re-reading a favorite book for bookgroup, “Cooking for Mr. Latte” by Amanda Hesser. Amanda was a food writer for the NY Times for years, and the book chronicles her adventures in cooking, eating and relationships. Thank goodness she includes many of the recipes she describes at the end of each chapter or I would be a very hungry and frustrated reader!
What I love about this book is that all the recipes have a story behind them, which I think is true of some of the best recipes. Like the lemon bars my family makes that come from a cookbook my brother’s middle school put together of each kid’s favorite recipe. Fred Natkins will forever live on in our lives for his contribution of his mom’s lemon bar recipe. We never refer to them as simply Lemon Bars. Oh no, they are Fred Natkin’s Lemon Bars. I’m sure you all have similar stories about favorite dishes. And you remember who you served them to and how they fed the soul and stomach (if done right).
So what does that have to do with design? Well, it got me thinking about shared experiences, travel, and the objects we pick up along the way. When I travel I prefer to buy an interesting object for my home that I can look at and remember the trip. I’m not talking about “insert destination here” sweatshirts, spoons, shot glasses or fridge magnets. Though if that’s your thing, enjoy!
No I’m talking about that wall hanging I found in the little shop in the Gion district of Kyoto that has a giesha and a temple on it. And after I bought it we passed two maiko, apprentice gieshas, on the street.
Seeing the object pulls you right back into a moment, a story, a feeling. Or the 1890s German scientific print of different types of mushrooms I found in a vintage shop in Austin, Texas, that fits in perfectly on the wall of mushroom photos in my living room.
The mushroom photos always elicit lots of questions from visitors. It gives us the chance to tell them about our love of hiking and mushroom hunting, where I was inspired by the variety of mushrooms and colors and textures in the woods. Then we can show them our bags of dehydrated mushrooms as proof that I’m not just making this up.
The layout with different size and shape frames in an asymmetrical arrangement is more dynamic and allows us to add to the collection easily over the years. In fact, we’ll probably change out the mushroom photos for pictures from our trip to Japan next. That will provide new stories to tell, and different memories to enjoy. And when we tire of those photos, we will have other photos from other adventures with which we can replace them.
I think using objects and photos from your travels and adventures (even if they are local) is one of the best ways to ensure that your home is a reflection of you and your life. Grandma’s hope chest or the lamp from your childhood bedroom can also serve as mementos (not to be confused with Mentos, the freshmaker).
What objects do you have that have special meaning and history behind them? Where did you find them or who passed them down to you? Do they have pride of place in your home or are they mixed in and require exploration to notice?
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Tags: cooking, Cooking for Mr. Latte, japan, mushroom, photos, travel, vintage, white
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Thursday, June 17th, 2010
For the past year or so I’ve been loving all the new wood finishes that have a more matte, greyed tone. It’s the rustic, well-worn Belgian farmhouse floor in a waxed finish. Let’s call it: rustic sophistication.
It’s the classic Alex Vervoordt room that features his perfect blend of Belgium antiques and soft wall finishes that makes you want to exhale slowly and luxuriate in the calmness.
Or a classic white kitchen with mile long wide floor boards in a bleached finish. Even though it gives it a well-worn, lived in look, it still feels fresh and modern.
But why limit your use of this beautiful material to the floor?! This living room definitely isn’t your typical ’70s panelled rec room! What a great way to add interest and bring in strong horizontal lines in a room that looks like it has higher than average ceilings. The large scale color block art on the wall would be easy to recreate as a quick DIY project in your favorite color palette.
This grey barn board style wall treatment, which also works as a really high headboard in this narrow room, makes my heart skip a beat. The brown, white and grey of the bedding is a warm but low key balance to all that color and texture variation on that wall. It may be a bit much for the typical bedroom, but why not go bold in a guest bedroom where no one will be living with it for long periods of time? It’s like the powder room principal – go bold because this small and infrequently used space can handle the excitement.
Or if the light wood beams is a bit too rustic for you, what about this amazing wood wall that functions as a banquette on the dining room side….
And as the wall and headboard on the bedroom side of the wall. The area under the bench in the dining room was even utilized as storage for the bedroom! Brilliant! Impressive that this was all done by the homeowner (though it did take a long time to complete the whole project… definitely not a quick weekend DIY!) And don’t forget the great end cut wood dining room table he made (in the first photo).
And now that I have a client who is interested in using reclaimed wood for their kitchen, I have an excuse to delve even deeper into the range of gorgeous wood finishes available. Take wood beyond the floor and typical applications.
See this stunning example from Dwell magazine that inspired us:
These were made from a single tree. LOVE LOVE LOVE!!! You wouldn’t believe my excitement when they showed me this photo as their dream, since I’d been drooling over it ever since my husband brought home the magazine for me. (It’s a kitchen special issue so he knew I’d love it.)
Now the question is: how do we want to recreate this feel without copying it directly? The ideas are swimming around and around.
Can you see this new (resurrected) style of wood in your home? Maybe as a table top? That’s another obsession of mine that we’ll have to save for another post.
Image sources:
1. Axel Vervoordt: Timeless Interiors
5 & 6. Apartment Therapy Presents: Real Homes, Real People, Hundreds of Design Solutions
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Tags: Axel Vervoordt, bedroom, chocolate brown, dining room, Grey, Kitchen, living room, texture, white, Wood
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Friday, June 4th, 2010
What’s a bigger business for convincing people to spend lots of money on the latest MUST HAVE: weddings or babies? Maybe once you’ve done the big fabulous wedding with the fancy favors, dessert bar, and photo booth, it’s seems logical to invest in the fancy European stroller system, the designer crib set, and all the thousands of items babies seem to require.
Really, I’m not jaded or bitter, I just see the gap between the big fancy versions and the basics of what’s necessary in each situation: a justice of the peace at the court house and a witness or two will legalize a marriage, and a crib and a diaper changing mat are probably the barest of essentials for a baby. But obviously the extremes aren’t for everyone, so there are always options in the middle.
So how can you transform a space into a functional and inviting nursery with spending a small fortune? After all, there’s a college fund to get started on ASAP.
Here are some fun solutions I’ve run across recently.
Starting point: the basic white crib that’s sturdy enough that you aren’t going to go mad trying to lift the front up and down time after time.
Graco Lauren Classic Convertible Crib from Target $160
Then you need some storage and a surface to change diapers on. Though I know moms who have never used a changing table for any of their kids, prefering to just use a mat on the floor. This certainly gives you flexibility.
Malm Dresser - IKEA $70
Koppang Dresser - IKEA $100
For those who prefer a super clean modern style, the Malm dresser from IKEA is a great value. For those who prefer a little more detail without being ornate, the Koppang dresser is another great option.
Put a changing tray top on top of either dresser now, and when the kid(s) become potty trained (yippee!) you can remove it and use the dresser for years to come.
Here’s an example of a changing tray that you can set on top of the dresser. The dresser in this photo is wider and offers a mix of open and closed storage, which I prefer to all open storage. Easy to grab a diaper or creams from a basket while changing the baby, but you don’t always want to see all the items that need to be stored.
Changing Tray in White - The Land of Nod $129
Now let’s have some fun and inject color, pattern and personality!
Wall decals are a great option because they are easily removable as kids grow up and start developing their own interests that they’ll want to express in their room. But until then, the parents get to decorate!
Night Owls by Amy Ruppel from Blik $65
Some of my favorite artists are doing special collections for wall decal companies. Amy Ruppel does amazing encaustic art pieces (I have a print of one of her pieces in my bathroom art gallery), and I think it’s great that she’s branching out into other medium as well, making it very affordable to get a bit of her art.
Branches by Amy Ruppel from Blik
Or, if you are less into the nature theme, there are hundreds of other options, ranging from city skylines to graphic patterns.
I’m a big fan of bubbles, dots, circles, whatever you want to call them.
Here are a couple nice examples.
Classic Open Dots from Blik $25
This pattern is available in multiple colors so you could easily coordinate with bedding or any other elements in the room.
Sweet 16 Dots from Blik $40
This pattern totally reminds me of the classic contemporary painting I see featured over and over again in design magazines.
Other design solutions include using the upper part of the room to create visual interest, particularly for a baby lying in a crib trying to fall asleep.
Wouldn’t you love to look up at colorful ball shaped clouds?
These can be found for cheap at many locations locally and online. You don’t need to put a light source inside them, but it might be fun to have light inside one in the middle so light filters out through the rest.
Or perhaps a set of homemade flags strung across the room would be more your style? This is a fun way to inject both color and pattern in a small dose.
Finally, remember that a nursery can be a sophisticated and calm place for both baby and parents. Here is a nursery with a soft gray and nature theme that seems restful for all.
Does that begin the inspiration process for you? Do these seem like affordable, interesting, attractive AND practical solutions for a nursery? Just like a wedding, there are a million and one ways to spend your budget (big or small) and inject your personality (loud or soft) in any room of a home, and in this case, a nursery. I hope I’ve got your brain spinning. Now don’t get me started on kids’ bedrooms and playrooms… that’s a whole other topic!
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Thursday, May 27th, 2010
Rather than move to a new home, more and more people are investing in their current homes. The classic conundrum is whether to design with a neutral palette to make sure that when the client is ready to sell it won’t scare off potential buyers, or to design without thought to a future owner and just do what makes you happy.
I’ve always subscribed to the philosophy that it’s YOUR home NOW, so enjoy it while you live in it!
If a future homeowner doesn’t like your style, they can change it. Frankly, often the potential buyers don’t like the overly neutral spaces that are devoid of personality, and they’ll want to change it up when they move in anyway. Certainly it’s possible to go overboard and make a home so custom that it will be a challenge to find a buyer that fits it as well. But there is a lot of ground in between these extremes.
Products that are installed in a home tend to make people especially cautious. But injecting personality doesn’t have to overwhelm a space if there is a good balance established between pattern and solids.
For example, this is a bathroom shower that I worked on with Mercury Mosaics recently that achieves that balance well.
Here is the Before condition. They have since ripped out all the tile and tub (the previous tile installation was bad and the walls are falling apart behind it) and built a new shower in the same location.
We started with elevations in AutoCAD for each wall and surface in the shower to show the client how the tile would work around the existing glass block window.
But let’s be honest. With a shower as complex as this, it’s hard for most people to visualize how all these pieces would look put together.
So we created a special perspective rendering of the shower in SketchUp so we could show the client what the shower would look like from several angles.
Now isn’t that easier to understand?!
We even did a version with the glass walls and shower door so that they could see where the glass would be placed in relation to the tile design on the top of the knee wall.
Now comes the fun part where you see how pattern vs. solids, colors vs. neutrals plays out.
Here are some shots of the tiles laid out and ready for the tile installer to pick up. All the mosaics are mesh mounted for easy installation.
Here is the tile which will run over the top and down the front of the knee wall. The gap in the middle is where the two planes of the wall will meet, so they were about to add edge glazed tiles to the end of the top surface where they would be exposed.
Here are the three sections of Bubbles that will wrap around the main walls of the shower. Don’t you love that bold mix of colors that wind like a river through the riverbed of darker tiles?!
And a detail of the bullnose half Bubbles created for the ends of the walls to correspond to the bullnose edged field tiles that will surround the band.
Here is a shot of two pieces of cove base molding with edge glazing for the bottom front corner of the knee wall. This is the color of the main field tile in the shower. This is the level of detail required on a project like this to make it really work smoothly for everyone involved (especially the installer).
Excited to see the final installation shots? So are we! Once we get photos I’ll be sure to share with you.
Now the final question to mull over is: is this design bold enough in personality to make the homeowner thrilled without being so overdone that it would scare away potential buyers if they ever decide to sell? (But why would they want to sell with a bathroom like this?!)
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Tags: Bathroom, Bubbles, color palette, Mercury Mosaics, shower, white
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Thursday, April 15th, 2010
Now that we’ve explored the changes to the lower level, let’s move on up to the main floor of this home. As I mentioned previously, we were inspired by the lessons in Sarah Susanka’s “Not So Big House” books. In total there were 21 principles we incorporated into the home, ranging from spacial defining principles such as Entry, Shelter around Activity, and Sequence of Places to the light and sightline related principles Inside Outside, Connecting Views, and Light to Walk Toward. You will see many of these principles put into practice on the first floor.
We strengthened the entry to make it a space in its own right. Since storage for coats, mittens, boots, etc. was not in the original plan for the entry, I designed a tall built-in piece that has both hanging space and shelves where baskets can be placed to hold loose items. Under the window on the opposite wall there will be a mat for wet shoe storage (always a necessity in snowy Minnesota!)
Another significant addition was the storage towers designed to wrap around each of the support columns that run down the middle of the first floor. Storage is always a necessity in any home, and with such an open floor plan it can be a challenge to find places to put both things you want to display and things you want to have out of sight. From books and pretty vases to stereo equipment and party platters, these new storage towers accommodate it all. I’ve even incorporated a laundry chute that connects the 2nd & 1st floors to the laundry room in the lower level, perfect for quickly throwing those dirty kitchen towels into the “laundry basket” without running up and down the stairs.
To further enhance the functionality of the entry, the first column has a bench incorporated into the end that faces the front door. This serves as the perfect spot to sit down and take off or put on shoes. Plus storage for dog food is cleverly concealed under the flip-up lid (the dog’s kennel will be located in the entry next to the powder room.) Art or hooks can be placed above the bench. Art would provide a focal point and spot for the eye to rest before it continues to look down the vista through the house to the backyard through the sliding glass doors on the end of the kitchen (Connecting Views & Light to Walk Towards.)
The other two columns offer a mixture of open and closed storage. The column closed to the kitchen serves as storage space for pantry items and larger plates and platters.
In the kitchen I changed the layout significantly to add more work surfaces as well as help define the boundaries between the kitchen and living room.
This view is looking towards the sliding doors on the front of the house across the raised bar counter. You can see the pantry storage on the column on the right side of the view with both glass doors and large drawers.
Looking at the kitchen from the dining room. Here you can see the main work zone with a built-in refrigerator and range.
Here is the four views of the kitchen island. There is open space on the dining room end where stools can be tucked underneath. False doors on the ends of the cabinets are mixed in with functional narrow drawers on the sides of the island to create a uniform aesthetic.
Even the dining room is improved with the addition of a low built-in. Rather than doing a standard height set of cabinets along this wall, I did a low slung version with a mixture of doors and drawers (if you look back to the inspiration images you can find the idea that inspired this choice.) It’s great to have room for placemats, napkins, the silver chest, and other dining room related items within easy reach. Plus this offers a great ledge for informally displaying artwork – vases and platters mixed with framed art leaning casually against the wall looks just right. Hanging sconces on either side of the windows helps frame the view as well as offer options for different lighting levels – always important in a dining room.
So those are the highlights of the first floor! What’s your favorite part? It’s a lot of information, so I didn’t want to overwhelm you with details. Are there parts you’d like explained more? Stay tuned for the third floor – see how the three bedrooms and two bathrooms offer livable private spaces for this home.
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Tags: bench, built-ins, columns, dining room, entry, Kitchen, living room, Not So Big House, storage
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Colleen Fox Slack | email: colleen@colleenfoxinteriors.com | phone: 612.868.0348
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