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Remodel or Relocate?

February 9, 2018

Almost every homeowner will face this decision at one point in their lives: remodel or relocate? Whether your house is a recently empty nest, is outdated, or you desire to make the house fit your aesthetic taste and lifestyle a little better the decision to remodel or relocate should be evaluated very carefully so you make the wisest choice for you and your family – both financially and emotionally.

Should We Remodel or Relocate?

Here are some of the things to consider when deciding whether or not to remodel or relocate.

Know You’ll Rarely Make Your Money Back. There is rarely a remodel that will earn 100% of your money back. In fact, Remodeling Magazine’s annual Cost vs. Value Report for 2014 cites energy efficient front doors as the wisest replacement item, gaining just shy of 97% of their value back in resale. Hm. Front doors are important when it comes to curb appeal, but they certainly aren’t the reason why you’re remodeling, right?

After the front door, the average ROI on typical remodeling and renovation projects are as follows:

Wood Deck Addition: 87%
Attic Bedroom Addition: 84%
Minor Kitchen Remodel: 83%
Master Suite Addition: 66%
Bathroom Addition: 60%

So, there are some of the official numbers. However, what those ROI figures don’t take into consideration is the enjoyment a remodel provides while you’re living in the home – those factors are priceless. Plus, homes that are updated with timeless design elements are much quicker to sell, another major bonus.

Are You Looking to Downsize? If your home is simply too big for you, a common occurrence when the last of your little birds flees the nest, you may be better off relocating and using a remodel to make your new home more decidedly yours. There is nothing that remodeling can do to shrink your home. However, I will say that with the rising costs of long-term healthcare for seniors, many couples are starting to think about remodeling an area of their home into a studio or one-bedroom suite. These make wonderful guest spaces when family and friends come to visit and can transition into a caregiver’s living space down the road so couples can affordably age in place.

Remodels Are Typically More Affordable Than Buying a New Home. If you are simply exasperated with your current home and feel like moving is the only way to get what you want, consider that moving is more expensive when you analyze dollars spent per square foot. It can be hard for homeowners to see the potential in a home they have lived in for years – or decades. I recommend scheduling a consultation with an interior designer or three to see what they have to say. You may find your “Wish List” is largely attainable with a well-designed and executed remodel.

Moving Often Means Remodeling Anyway. Keep in mind that it’s very rare that you’ll find a home that is completely turn-key. In most cases, you are going to need some new coats of paint, new flooring in all or some of the house or there will be bathroom and/or kitchen fixtures you’ll want to replace. If you decide not to remodel your own home, going through the hassle of selling or renting your house, buying a home and then remodeling anyway may mean you were better off staying put in the first place.

Modern & Neutral

February 8, 2018

While modern interiors are certainly trending right now, the adjectives that describe them aren’t always very attractive: sleek, streamlined, lines, cold, hard, glossy. They don’t necessarily make you feel warm and fuzzy inside, and modern interiors are often criticized for not being comfortable or inviting.

I have found, however, that the key to designing a comfortable, inviting and soothing modern interior design is to keep neutrality at the core of it all.

Use a neutral mantra when creating a modern design

Here is how to keep a neutral mantra running through the core of your modern design, so it’s pleasing to the eye and welcoming to the heart.

Opt for a monochromatic look with warmer tones

There is a huge difference between an all-white or an all-cream interior, and the same holds true between a chocolate brown and a black interior. All of the above are considered “neutral” and yet the cream or chocolate brown versions are almost always going to have a more warm and welcoming energy – especially when paired with other modern design elements. Grays also work as a neutral, monochromatic theme that can create an intimate and cozy atmosphere.

And, did you know that almost all color hues can become “neutral” in their expression when they’re pared down to their softest and most subtle shades? If you like color but are looking for more graceful and discreet ways to express them in your home design, consider exploring the use of soft, pale shades as your monochromatic backdrop or as your secondary color theme.

The low profile mid-century modern couch

The look of a low profile, mid-century modern couch works in just about any home – including traditional ones, believe it or not. Sure, you can go with some of the bolder and swankier colors that the 1950s and early-60s were known for, like burnt orange, marigold, greens and reds – but you can just as easily choose your couch in a paler color that blends in – or stands out slightly – from the rest of your neutral décor.

Add a bit of shimmer, shine, and reflection

Look for textiles, fixtures, and finishes that have a little shimmer, shine, and reflection. Those who are interested in a neutral décor won’t be attracted to standard, reflective metallic finishes. However, you can find brushed or satin versions in golds, bronzes, and silvers that have a much softer approach and land more like a soft bell than a piercing chime.

Do use mirrors to capitalize on this effect, and mirrored furniture offers another way to magnify existing décor or to enhance light play in a modern and neutral design.

Think about elemental variation

Enhance your neutral and modern design motif by varying the elements used in each room. Consider the basic elements – stone, wood, metal – and then see if all three are represented in each space. Hardwood floors or beautiful wood trim may be all you need in the wood department, an exposed brick wall or naturally finished pottery or ceramics can cover the stone department – as does a stone hearth or stone tiles on the floor or around the perimeter of the floor. Metal is easy to incorporate via drawer and door pulls, mirrors, and the metallic accents we discussed above.

Use area rugs

Don’t forget to use area rugs to anchor your spaces, add color or pattern where needed or to provide a richer, textural component. Since modern designs tend to lean towards harder and glossier, softer or woven textiles – including throw rugs – can be a great way to soften things up. Plus, they’re easy to move or replace as tastes or styles evolve over time.

One of my favorite things about neutral and modern decors is that they are timeless. I have clients who’ve inherited their modern couches and furniture from grandparents or great grandparents and -when well-made, or reupholstered – these pieces look right at home in their contemporary homes.

Preparing For Thanksgiving

January 31, 2018

preparing-for-thanksgiving

Hosting beloved family and friends at your home on Thanksgiving has such a wonderful, idyllic and dreamy quality to it – until the date is visible on the current calendar page and you realize all of the little bits and bobs that need to come together to make that golden-lit fantasy come true.

7 Tips For the Loveliest Thanksgiving Ever

Never fear, my friends. While a well-set table and beautiful fall decor is a bonus, your guests are primarily focused on the joy of being together (possibly accompanied by a little stress) as well as all that scrumptious food.

The following 7 tips will help to make your upcoming Thanksgiving the loveliest yet – and I vow to make it as stress-free as possible.

Flavor your house with fall. If you’ve yet to decorate for fall, no worries. There are easy ways to add a little fall color to your home in under an hour and without spending very much at all. Colorful pumpkins and gourds abound this time of year and you can add a few autumn-hued pillar and votive candles to the mix as well. They can be used to adorn table tops as centerpieces, the mantel and virtually any surface that needs a little pick me up. Just tuck all the other tchochkes away so your fall harvest decor is the star of the show. Read Taking Your Interiors From Summer to Fall for additional, practical tips.
Do use place settings. Sometimes guests on the Thanksgiving invite list don’t blend together as well as your traditional recipe ingredients do. For this reason, I highly recommend taking 15-minutes out of your life to create a seating arrangement.Plus, there’s something about place cards that makes the event seem a bit more special. Try to balance personalities, interests and the people who make excellent personality buffers (the ones that don’t mind great-aunt Sally telling the same story over and over or who can listen peacefully, unruffled by vehement political/religious views). Place cards can be as simple as a pre-cut, black cardstock rectangles with names written in gold or white script, to whatever clever place card idea you want to incorporate.
Rearrange the furniture. You might find a temporary furniture arrangement makes more sense than your everyday setup. Take the kids play area out of the family room for the day so there’s more space for additional seating (or, perhaps you should add a kids’ play corner to accommodate visiting guests). Think about conversation and body movement, removing any furniture that is superfluous or impedes flow – and adding additional seating from elsewhere in the house if needed.
Remove breakables. The last thing you want is to stress out about heirloom and valuable collector’s’ pieces. Even if they enhance your decor, it’s better to remove them than lose them. With a crowd of house guests, odds are they wouldn’t have been noticed anyway – except by the person who accidentally knocked them over and broke them…
Purchase the non-essentials (or the essentials!). If cooking isn’t your forte, or if you have to work directly before and after the holiday, give yourself a break and fill in the food gaps using pre-made versions from the store, a local bakery, or a restaurant that offers Thanksgiving meal items to order. The turkey and stuffing are easy – and once they’re in the oven – you can enjoy the guests. So consider buying some of the sides and pie (or make the day a potluck) to remove a significant layer of stress.
Sweep the chimney. Here in the Bay Area, fireplaces are often more for looks than use – but it’s so nice to have a fire on Thanksgiving if it’s cool enough. Just make sure you’ve had it looked at – and swept, if need be – so you don’t smoke the guests out of the house.
Set up a Make-Your-Own bar. If your home doesn’t have a bar, use a tea cart, a serving cart or a couple of sturdy TV trays and set up a DIY bar with all the ingredients the typical drinks require. You can use a metal bucket or cooler (draped with a linen table cloth to hide the metal/plastic if you like) filled with ice to chill sodas, white wines, champagne and the like. No need for you to play bartender…and it adds a social flair.
Set the table a couple of days before. If you have a formal dining room, I highly recommend setting the table at least one full day before Thanksgiving. People will tease, but you know what? You won’t care. By having all of your place settings in place ahead of time and the servingware cleaned and ready to go – you’ll save yourself hours of last-minute running around the night before or the day of the meal.

Thanksgiving is a time for practicing gratitude for the abundance in our lives – and that’s much easier to do when things unfold as stress-free and pleasant as possible.

Choosing A Headboard To Match Your Style

January 19, 2018

While the bed frame plays a part in your bed’s style – the headboard is the star of the show. There are as many headboards to choose from as there are mattresses on the planet, it seems like, so choosing the right one for your bedroom can get confusing pretty quickly.

Have you identified your design style? This is one of the simplest ways to narrow your bed design options. If you’re a modernist, you’ll typically be attracted to a different set of headboards than if you’re a traditionalist.

Not quite sure where you fall on the “Design Style o’ Meter?” Read, What’s Your Interior Design Style, and you’ll be pointed in the right direction. Once you’ve determined what you like – and what you aren’t as fond of – it will be easier to do online searches for bed frame images.

Start searching images. Once you’ve narrowed down your preferred style, start using Google images, Houzz or other online interior design platforms to view images of beds with those keywords attached to them. Print out, bookmark or use an online design idea book to save images you like. This will help you to continue whittling the choices.
Think about your bedroom. Often, the size of your bedroom dictates the type of bed frame that will work. If you have a large bedroom, the world is your oyster. However, medium- to smaller-sized bedrooms will want to think about proportion. For example, you may be a traditionalist who loves four-poster beds, but that bed will take over a small room. Then again, this might be something to work with, creating a magical bedroom where the bed is the focus – furnished with comfortable accent pillows, chiffon drapes, etc. – truly a boudoir effect.
How tall are your ceilings? This is Part 2 to Number 2. Using the four-poster example again…a tall headboard will make a low ceiling feel even lower. If you have ceilings that are the standard 8-feet, an interior designer would say to choose a lower-profile headboard. If you are drawn to taller headboards, use other tricks to add height – like mounting window curtains closer to the ceiling so floor-length drapes give the illusion of height.
Think about wear and tear. I once had a lovely wooden headboard with a large rattan insert. It was gorgeous…until about the 10^th time my elbow punched the back while readjusting my reading position. It formed an unmistakable hole that was difficult to hide, even with the pillows set just right. That was an expensive repair, but it was necessary to preserve the look of the headboard. Think about how you use your bed. If you only sleep there – a higher-maintenance material will be fine. If you read or work in bed, propped up on pillows, consider that when choosing the headboard’s materials. For example, upholstered headboards are lovely, and comfortable – but you might need to invest in a steam cleaner to remove oils from hair and hair products that will build up over time.
Comfort level. Continuing with the comfort theme, wrought iron beds are a versatile option, but they aren’t all that comfortable when you want to read or work on your laptop. So that way the headboard will feel when it comes in contact with your head, a hand or an errant arm is definitely a consideration, even if it isn’t a driving force while making your selection.
Is it a feature? Do you want your headboard to be a feature in the room, adding texture, color or depth? Or would you prefer the bedrame to fade into the background, blending with surrounding colors and features? Some headboards are barely there while others scream, “look at me!”

Choosing A Backsplash

January 16, 2018

Backsplashes are more than just an extra layer of protection for your kitchen walls. They are also the means for some serious design impact. Color, mosaic work, continual expanses of natural stone – whatever your tastes, choosing a backsplash for a kitchen remodel should not be a last minute decision.

Standard Backsplash or The Whole Shebang? What Makes the Most Sense?

One of the decisions you’ll have to make in regards to your kitchen backsplash is whether or not you should tile the entire wall or go with a standard height version. Typically, a “standard” backsplash is about 4-inches high, although you are free to go a little higher. Often, clients who opt for this style will use 6-inch or 8-inch high options, so keep those heights in mind when reading “standard” or “partial” in the considerations listed below.

There are a few considerations that come into play when choosing a full or partial backsplash for your kitchen remodel:

Budget. Not surprisingly, the more materials you use in a remodel, the higher the price tag. Thus, a full backsplash will cost more than a partial version. If you have splurged on your cabinet and countertop materials and want to save a little, choosing a partial backsplash will help, especially if you want to match your backsplash to expensive countertop materials. You can meet a little in the middle by putting a full backsplash in a section or two and leaving the rest at standard height (more on that below).

Aesthetics. What look at your going for? If you have a formal kitchen design, or a very modern kitchen design, a full backsplash might be the best look for your overall presentation. It creates a very regal and clean aesthetic, streamlining the finished design.

Kitchen wear and tear. How much do you use your kitchen? Who uses the kitchen and what’s their cooking style? If you have a busy kitchen, filled with boisterous chefs and/or assistants who aren’t always careful about where the sauces, dish water, pot splatter, etc., lands, a full backsplash might be in order – particularly behind the stove top. You will appreciate cleaning last night’s dried marinara sauce off of smooth tile surface rather than a textured wall surface. Plus, you’ll mitigate potential long-term damage to the wall, which may eventually need to be resurfaced or replaced if cumulative damage causes dents or a cave-in.

You can have both! Keep in mind that you don’t have to pick one or the other. In some households, full backsplash areas are installed behind the stove, sink or any major food prep areas where food or liquids are more likely to infiltrate the permeable wall surface. The remainder of the kitchen can have a standard backsplash height.

How often do you change your color palette? This can be an important factor. If you are someone who really enjoys changing your interior color scheme every few years or so, I recommend going with a standard backsplash height. That will allow you the freedom to paint, paper, stencil or generally get creative on the wall space between the countertop and upper cabinetry. This is much, much simpler, not to mention more cost efficient, than ripping out and reinstalling new tile work. It is also preferable to living with tile work you wish you could change.

Working with an professional interior designer ensures you think about every aspect of your interior design – even the seemingly insignificant details – so you can enjoy a completed remodel that balances function and aesthetics for your household.