Anatomy of a Family Room

One of my favorite aspects of my job is the opportunity to create long lasting working relationships with my clients. Often, a client will work on certain rooms in their home, and put others on hold. This was the case for a client of mine whom I have been working with for several years. It was finally time to tackle her Family Room.

I really enjoy working with this client; she has great taste and I feel like I can speak in design "shorthand" because she is quite knowledgeable about it. She also knows what she likes, and is familiar with the fabrics, furniture, and other design elements that are out there (she would probably tell you that this can also be a curse). Since this room had been on hold while her kids were little, she had been collecting ideas and had time to formulate an idea of what she wanted the room to look and feel like.

The room had great bones....lots of windows, lovely wood floors and beautiful molding. It is also long and narrow so it was a challenge to make sure my plan made the most of the space.

This is the how the room looked "before"...



Then came the floor plan. My goal was the maximize the space, and try and use the length of the room since it is longer than wider.

The client wanted an airy, California feeling room. I used Kravet (www.Kravet.com) and Peter Dunham fabrics ( http://peterdunham.com/textiles-peterdunhamdesign.html) as well as Kravet and Lee Industries (www.leeindustries.com) furniture pieces. We are both extremely happy with the results...

When do I get to work on MY house?

It seems like the list of projects for my own home is never ending. All of the things that have to get done leave little time (and money) for the fun stuff. Instead of re-furnishing a room or renovating a bathroom, the pool has to be re-plastered and the stone on the deck replaced. The joys of home ownership.

Recently, I made a change that been 8 years in the making. So, that's one small project I can scratch off the list.

When we moved into our current home, almost nine years ago, we brought with us, a custom built wall unit that had been fabricated to house our television and components as well as provide storage. It was lovely ; walnut with a  beautiful stain and great storage. When my carpenter made this more than ten years ago, televisions weren't just a few inches deep and they didn't hang on your wall. Since our "new" Master Bedroom was quite a bit larger than the one we were moving from, we figured what better way to take up some of the space than to use the wall unit there.

Well, almost nine years have passed and the lovely stain is losing its lustre and the unit has battle scars to show from a few different TV's being dragged in and out of it. Mostly, it just felt bulky and too deep for our thin flat screen television. All of these reasons aside, we hadn't replaced it because it weighs about a ton. When the opportunity came for someone (or five strong movers) to move it out for us, we opted for it to not come back.

This was finally my chance to design for myself!

                                                Below is a picture of the lonely wall...

                                      Then the addition of my lovely new console table.....

Voila, it is finished!

I am so happy with the result. Only a million projects left on my list.

Movie Magic

My house is often used for commercials. Usually, there is some painting involved and my furniture is moved out to make way for the prop furniture. This time however, the house was chosen to be used in a TV pilot. I had no idea how much work would go into this shoot and how the art department would transform certain areas of my house. They turned my closet into a shower, installing a faux bathtub and cladding the walls of the closet with fake wall tile. In addition, the art department constructed fake walls in other parts of my closet to make it appear as a toilet room. Such imagination! 

The photo below on the left is how my hallway usually appears. There is a bathroom at the end, and there is wainscoting on all walls. The photo on the right shows how the space looked after art department made some of their changes.The hall was made to look like it was a second story. They even continued my molding and wainscoting. I love the design of the window, it happens to match a window I actually have at the top of my stairs in the second floor landing.

 

                                               Below is my Daughter's bedroom.

It was transformed into a little boy's bedroom.

There is a lot that goes into restoring the house after it is taken over for something like this, but it is fun to be part of the process and to observe all that goes into a production. I'll let you know if the TV show gets picked up, and then you can check out the end result!