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So You Want to Remodel your Kitchen or Bath: Pt. 1

First, Let’s Start With How You Establish the Design

Throughout my career I’ve helped lots of clients through the always exciting, but never fun remodel process. The exciting part is thinking about your new room, but the un-fun part is getting through a project while living in your home. I’ve come up with some ideas that help move the work along while keeping you sane and focused on the end result.

This is my process:
1) Decide on a theme. Do you want a fresh new look, or will your bath need to blend with the established style of your house?
2) Decide what you want to change, meaning, how do you want the room to function?
3) Gather all the magazine pictures and ideas you have and try to settle on one look. Then start to build your design with that “look” in mind.
4) Design 101: First let’s talk about focal points. A focal point can be a painting, or a piece of furniture, or a color scheme already established in a contiguous room. That item or color becomes the focus which will steer you through the decisions. Read more

Spring Brunch Table Setting

Presenting the first table setting arrangement in my brand new showroom! Every month or so I will post a new table design as I introduce myself to the community. All the settings will be in the same room using the same furniture, but with different themes—it will be an interesting challenge to make each one unique! Swing by the showroom and I’ll show you what’s new as we talk about a special table setting for your own home.

My newly installed wallpaper inspired this brunch setting. I am in love with the new geometric patterns in wallpapers that have recently been on the market. They provide an interesting pattern to the background without much commitment.

It’s fun to go shopping through your own things to find new ways to present and decorate. In this design, most of the items on the table belong to me. Exceptions are the yellow plates and water glasses from Crate and Barrel and the pair of birds from Summerwinds Nursery ($6.99 each—so wonderfully affordable). I made the name tags with decorative papers and stickers from Michaels.

My 2 Cents

I’ve been designing forever but I’m the absolute worst at documenting my work, bar none. In this age of Facebook where there are those that archive their every moment, I let my work go for months and years with nary a flash. But now that’s all changed! I’m on the blog train, and I’m so excited to share my thoughts, passions, and experience I’ve gained over the past many years.

I recently opened the front three rooms of my 1924 Italianate home as a showroom. Since one space is my dining room, I thought I’d set a different table every month as a fun way to introduce myself. I’ve always loved setting tables–for me, it’s the very best part of entertaining–and I’ve collected an embarrassing amount of dishware along the way. Now I not only have a place to use my stash, but I get to show off a very favorite form of design. So you’ll see table settings on this blog, but also work in progress and nuggets of wisdom gained over a lifetime of practice. I’m one of the lucky ones who gets to work every day in a field that I love and it’s time to share the secrets.

BTW, did you realize that the sign for cents has been removed from the keyboard? Every time I need it, I’m again surprised that it’s gone (what—every 5 years or so?). It’s probably been missing for years—wait, let me look that up. Oh, it went away in the 1970’s with the advent of personal computers. Obviously a good call!