Dressing a pretty window

Sometimes--make that often--plans in design evolve.

The longer you live in a house, the more you spot problems that can be solved by design.

Take my client in NJ with the gorgeous traditional house and fabulous taste.  (Yes, she's reading, but this is also true!)

One of the first things we worked on together were window treatments for her kitchen.  We chose ivory raw silk for roman shades to give texture without competing too much with all the gorgeous elements in the room.  And we trimmed them out in blue velvet ribbon to tie in the color of the range and to take it up a notch in formailty.  You can see progress shots here.

But we left this window bare.

So lovely on its own, yes?

Turns out, for functional reasons, a shade is required.  (Light control and privacy: the big two!)  But what to do?  There's always more than one way to go.  

1. Perhaps the most obvious choice: a roman shade made to match the others.  Nice.  But also, perhaps, a missed opportunity.  It would be nice to coordinate with the original treatments but also play up the difference of this one--the arched shape and those amazing leaded diamond panes!

2.  Cafe curtains.  Pretty, breezy, and leaving the window top free to strut its stuff.  Though not sure this is really solving the problem of light control.

3. A matching roman shade set off by a shaped cornice in a print.  The cornice following the line of the arched window just emphasizes its pretty shape.  I'm thinking of bringing back the print from the barstools.  Fab, yes?

Or going solid and trimmed, with a natural/ grass shade underneath.

I know what has my vote, but I have to say, ANY of these strategies really dresses up the window, plays up its shape, and balances the architecture of the flanking cabinets.  We can't go wrong!

What would you choose?

Fabulous progress on a traditional home

For about a year now I have been working long-distance on a fabulous home in New Jersey.  I love formal traditional style, but most of the homes I have lived in are decidedly more casual, so it has been really fun to pull out the stops with florals, damasks, silks, and trims.  My client has a great eye and sense of what she wants, and this has been one fun and easy collaboration.

She recently sent some update photos, and I thought I would share with you.

Fantastic floral wallpaper in an upstairs bath:

Grasscloth in the study:

Another excellent print (on linen) on the kitchen barstools.  Love the giant nailhead.

Great brass pendants over the island and velvet-trimmed raw silk roman shades

Vintage dining chairs recovered in silver faux-leather (it's hard to see in this picture, but the chairs have a silver-leaf detail outlining all those pretty curves).

We're thinking about this paper for the powder room:

Those fish are like 18" tall!

Next up: recovering a lot of old regency and biedermeier furniture.  Can't wait!

French Provincial (ish) kitchen, three ways

Over the past couple of months, I've been working with a client in New Jersey to help pull together textiles and other details for her gorgeous, formal home, which she has bee steadily renovating.  Her kitchen renovation is beyond beautiful, and while I can't share images of the space for now, I can tell you it has carrara marble slab countertops and backsplash, custom cabinetry in a pale yellow glaze with just the rigth amount of molding and flourish, and one of these.



In basically that color.  Except it has more brass fittings.  Could you die?

The kitchen also has a small breakfast nook with large windows.  My client needed a small table, four chairs, a pair of counter height barstools, pendant lighting over the island, and lots of soft fold roman shades.  We wanted a slightly french vibe and traditional but not too formal. Ready for some choices?

While I did present options for fabric, I'm just going to share the winners.

This for upholstery:



(here's a detail, such a pretty linen, and just the right smidge of blue)



This fabric for soft fold roman blinds



(slightly lighter in real life)

With some beautiful braid trim in blue and mushroom, seen in the boards below.

So.  Furniture.

Options 1: Feminine. 
Love the curvy legs on the chairs, the rush seat and turned leg on the barstools, and the combo of a chandelier over the island with a sweet leafy cage fixture over the pedestal dining table.




Option 2: Masculine.
Okay, not exactly MANLY, but it feels a bit more tavernlike to me, with the iron light fixtures, squared off chairs, and parquet-top table.




Option 3: Classic modern.
Love the simple form of the pendants over the island, and of course we know I love lantern fixtures.  That little pedestal gets a glass top for the table, and the cross-back chairs are classic bistro. (I found a ton of great sources--I'll round 'em up next week.  My client says go for it).


What do you think: have a favorite?

I have to say, I'm having SO much fun working on this project, especially since the style is so different from my own house.  My family always jokes about me wanting it both ways, and if I had another life, I would totally do a gorgeous, formal, traditional house like this one.  I'm so jealous of the damask-printed grasscloth wallpaper in the living room, just to name one thing.

Have a great weekend, and don't forget to come back Monday to check out the fabulous jewelry I'll be giving away!

And the Living Room layout is....

Yesterday I shared three space plans for a tricky living room in New Jersey.  Interestingly, of the Facebook commenters I don't think anyone chose the layout the clients did (which was my favorite for them, too):  Number 1.

The one with the pair of loveseats and the little reading area.

In terms of the look and feel, the clients wanted something rustic modern.  They wanted to keep their warm clay wall color (Behr's "Suntan Glow")

and a cool old trunk they use as a coffee table, but everything else was fair game.

Here are the looks I came up with, one a little more modern and one a little more rustic.

Look 1:

With a detail of the TV room side:

And look 2, with the upholstered pieces, curtains, and key accessories swapped out.

What do you think?  Do you have a favorite?  I know grey seems a little counter-intuitive with clay walls and copper radiators, but the fabrics are quite a green-gray that looks beautiful with the warm tones.  Plus, brown (the more obvious neutral) would have gotten real muddy real fast.  All the reds run to the rust end of the scale to bring the scheme to life, and all the white keeps things airy (together with the leggy furniture).

Speaking of white: white rugs in a room that's meant to be kid friendly?  Makes me think of Secrets from a Stylist, when Emily covered all the furniture in white linen and then jokingly asked the (mom) homeowner "oh, you have kids?"  But hear me out.  Hide is incredibly forgiving--just wipe a spill down, like any kind of leather.  And the other rug is a super deep shag with lots of different fibers, perfect for hiding anything but grape juice or red wine.

It will be fun to see this room come together.  Being a big fan of COLOR and PATTERN, it was really fun for me to do something that derives its interest more from texture and finishes.  I know the clients are already busy painting the walls (the suntan had been on two walls, they added it to the others), and priming the fireplace to paint out the brick white.  I know they're planning to do this in bits and pieces over the course of a year, but it will be fun to see the status along the way!

Space Planning

I'm just wrapping up a long-distance project with a client in New Jersey, and I thought I would share a few of the challenges of the project with you.  (Or as we used to say in my life as an Arts Administrator, "opportunities").

The big issue: this living room is twice as long as it is wide, literally 12 x 25.  To add to the intrigue, there is a 5-foot-wide entrance on one side (where those circles are indicating the columns), which is OFF CENTER from everything.  The opposiet wall has a centered fireplace, flanked by exposed TALL radiators, flanked by a pair of double french doors.  See all the opportunities?  Because the husband is a gamer, the TV was an important component of the layout, and without mounting the TV above the frieplace ( a look I hate anyway), it wasn't possible to center a seating arrangement on the fireplace.

I gave them three options:

Option one offers a little sitting area when you enter the room, with a pair of comfy chairs, a side table fro drinks, a pair of wall sconces for light, and a tall bookcase.  The TV area has a pair of small-scale loveseats with low arms and a pair of X-benches in front of the french doors, to offer seating while leaving the unused doors at least visually open.  A pretty, leggy desk backs the loveseat in the center, and the chair at the desk can be positioned to be a part of either seating area.

Option 2 puts a long built in bench along the wall where the pair of chairs was, with storage underneath and upholstered cushions on top.  A round library table and two upholstered dining chairs complete the area.  The room is divided by a wide low daybed to keep the feeling open, and a full size couch  ground the far end of the room.  Fewer, bigger pieces fill the space.

Option 3 expands the TV area to take up 2/3 of the room, using a full size couch and a pair of armchairs, with a coffee table and ottoman breaking up the large rug.  An additional occasional chair could sit in front of the french doors.  The second area is a pretty office space, with a big desk, upholstered chair, and tall bookcase, with a tree in the corner to bring the outside in.

I know floor plans aren't super sexy, but nailing the space planning was such a huge part of this job, I thought I'd throw it out there to the world.

I'm curious:  what would you have done?  Would one of these layouts work for you?  I'll tell you what they picked, and share design boards, tomorrow.