WHAT'S UP! 8.30.12

I have finally started to purchase lighting and tile for the N Street project. I don't know why but I get so nervous to make the first purchase of my investment projects. It's just so permanent and there's always that voice in the back of my mind saying "What if they hate these lights? What if they don't look right in the space."

Buying lighting is hard because it's the first thing you need to buy for a remodel or new build since most lighting takes 6 weeks to get in. At this point the house is just framing. How am I supposed to really know how the lights are going to look? Interior design is not for sissys :)

So I bought these Goodman Lamps from Circa Lighting for the kitchen island lights. They will be the most expensive lights in this house, but they are such a statement piece I think they are worth it.

And we bought the tub and faucet for the master bath. I am so excited for the master bath - we are putting a lot of money into the master so it should look really nice.

BTW - when I was ordering the tub I was talking with some guys on the project and all of them said they never take baths and were strictly shower people, but their wives liked to take baths. I never thought about it - do mostly only women like to take baths?

For my own house I just ordered some yellow velvet (polyester + cotton blend for stain resistance) to make lumbar pillows and add a little more color to my very beige living room. I decided to make lumbars because I am tired of always moving my pillows out of the way.

I am dry-cleaning these pillow covers and will be selling them ($60 for all 3 covers or $100 w/inserts included *SOLD*). If you're interested, send me a quick email!

And I'm trading them in to achieve a little color like in this photo.

The yellow fabric I chose isn't as bright as the yellow in the picture. I'm not as daring as I think I am, and the fabric that I found that bright yellow color was a whopping $40 a yard more...

Also my family was up at Snowbird (ski resort in Utah) all last week. It was BEAUTIFUL! I like going to the ski resorts in the summer more than the winter - go figure!

(and yes we all look like we are going to get blown off the mountain, and yes I do have eyes, I just like to hide them in pictures) 

Hope you have all had a great last week of summer! 

INSET VS. OVERLAY CABINETS

I have two bids for cabinets for one of my projects. One company does full overlay cabinets and the other does inset cabinets. One is more expensive than the other (inset) but does it really matter?

Quick education in cabinets if you aren't familiar...
FULL OVERLAY CABINETS means the door of the cabinets have less than 1/8" between them, or are fully laying over the cabinet so you don't see the cabinet strip between or on the sides of the door.

INSET CABINET DOORS are flush with the front edges of the cabinet boxes. The doors actually shut flush in the cabinet box rather than over like the overlay. (kind of a box within a box)

I have FULL OVERLAY doors in my kitchen.

And in my investment property we did INSET cabinets

 

Can you even tell a difference? I can't really, although I am drawn to kitchens with inset cabinets. They seem to be designer's first choice. However there is a slight difference - inset cabinets, because of the way they are made, have less room in their drawers than full overlay cabinets. If you have a small kitchen, full overlay may be the way to go, but the difference isn't substantial enough to not do inset in my opinion.

With that said here are some pictures of other cabinets with full overlay and inset cabinet doors. Let me know if you have a preference - I am really curious to hear if you think it matters, especially since inset are more usually more expensive...

FULL OVERLAY CABINETS

 

INSET CABINETS

What do you think? Inset or Full Overlay cabinets?
If you still can't decide, the debate goes on HERE.

WHAT'S UP - 8.16.12

The past few weeks have been busy, yet very manageable. I like being a little bit busy. It keeps me motivated without the stress.

I have been looking for fabric for pillows, for clients and myself. This is my personal favorite from Designer's Guild. I want to make lumbar pillows out of this for my couch, but I'm not sure it's the right fabric for that space.

I have some other fabric that I am loving for various projects.

This paisley fabric with the dot background is another favorite. Wouldn't it look great with the wavy stripe and gold fabric? I love the gold fabric for an accent pillow.

I've also been sketching out my plans for N Street. (This is a very rough drawing I did quickly - still in the idea phase)

I was thinking of painting stripes in the main floor half bath, but then I thought that might look a little too young for who might be buying the home. I still want to do something different with the paint so I might paint one very large stripe around the room in a dark navy blue or black. Here are some other striped painting ideas I gathered from Pinterest...

I've also been looking at fireplace and built-ins on Pinterest for the N Street project. Here are my current favorites.

If you have a definite favorite of the 3 fireplaces, please let me know. Your help is SO appreciated.

I've also been trying to keep this messy kid from destroying my house! She is so cute right now and super funny, but seriously the messiest kid I know!! (Doesn't she look amazing?! Just trying to keep it real. This is what we all look like in the morning at my house).

And that's what's up!

MY LOGO FABRIC ARRIVED!

Look what came in the mail today!

My custom fabric from Spoonflower! I ordered a swatch for $5. My design is based on my White + Gold logo. I think I will go bolder with the pluses, but I really liked how it turned out. It will make a fun pillow for my office. And I'm really glad I ordered the swatch and didn't go ahead and print a yard.

 The quality is really good and the color was right on. I'm very impressed with Spoonflower and will be making some more custom fabric and ordering from my favorite Spoonflower designer.

BEFORE + AFTERS: C STREET PROJECT II

This house is my favorite of the two because it has these wood grid windows that are beautiful and would be SO expensive to recreate (one of the pluses of owning a home built in 1901). It also has a European feel to it. It's just a charming home.

I hope I did this house justice :)

                                          457 C STREET                                        

Do you see those great windows? And how sad that they had dry walled over the fireplace - so bizarre.

I decided to make this a more traditional home than the other home. We chose oak floors with a dark stain and did wainscot on the walls. The sconces are Robert Abbey and the fireplace surround is a crema marfil marble remnant.

Again, we removed the radiant heat (although I thought these heaters were super cool and underneath the silver paint they were a beautiful brass color).

This was the dining room just off the main room. We tore out the wall and made the dining room the new kitchen. I love those doors leading to the deck!

The beautiful windows in the dining area.

The old kitchen that became the new dining room.

The new kitchen! The cabinets are painted BM Dove White and the hardware is a brushed brass. The island light is the Axis Double Light from Robert Abbey (ignore the plastic still on it). The countertops are quartz countertops made by Cambria, (the color is Torquay) that I mentioned in this post. I was happy with the way they turned out, but they definitely aren't the same as marble.

I love the little square cabinets above the window - perfect for storing the pretty plates and bowls.

I did the same tile from Emser in both houses for the laundry/1/2 bath room.

Same carpet on these stairs as the other home. I like that this staircase has the wainscot on the side.

The upstairs 3/4 bath has the same configuration as the other home. Nothing too exciting to work with.

I did the same 3x6 Desert Gray subway tile from Dal Tile but the flooring is different - it's the octagon and dot in Desert Gray from Dal.

This close-up is a better representation of the true color of the tiles.

The master bedroom was similar to the other home in that it was long and narrow so we divided it up and made one half of the room the master bath.

I LOVE this bathroom. The vanity turned out so great. We had a narrow space between the vanity and the shower wall so I didn't want to do lower cabinets and we did a shelf for storage instead. All of the drawers are functional, but we also added a tall storage cabinet on the side for extra storage.

The sconces are from Circa Lighting and the floor tile is this limestone from Dal Tile that I am obsessed with. It is by far my favorite bathroom floor tile. Another client put it in her home and it looks great there too.

The storage cabinet we added. These cabinets were also painted BM Dove White and have the Cambria Torquay countertops that are in the kitchen.

The master shower. I had spent most of my tile budget for this bathroom on the limestone floor tile so I needed to do white subway in the shower. My original plan was to do chair rail squares to mimic wainscotting but to save money we just decided to break up the subway tile with bands of tile going vertical instead of horizontal. Plan A would have looked better, but I'm liking Plan B.

For some unknown reason I didn't take as many pictures of this house for the before or after - sorry no pics of the bedrooms (although unfurnished bedrooms aren't ever very exciting). 

Overall I am happy with the way both of these homes turned out, but I'm also excited to take what I learned on this project and do it even better on the next one. I think one thing is for sure - I have learned how to stretch a dollar and get a lot of style out of a small budget.

On to the next one...!