Feeling Yellow

I can't believe the surge in popularity of canary Yellow this past year; in fashion, interiors and even graphic design. My personal preference is a more intense, lemon yellow over subtle buttery yellows--(remember this?) 

Whether you "like" the color or not, you'd have to be a total curmudgeon to not feel uplifted by a yellow room .

The ubiquitous combo right now is YELLOW + GREY. We are actually working on, not one, but three yellow and grey spaces. I'm currently finishing up a  buttery yellow and gray project for a happy family in Beverly Hills. They wanted a soft yellow with very light, soothing greys.  Here's our sketch and board with some of our initial finds. I'll be sure to share some of the afters photos and our sources, many of which will be available from the shop.

Next up is a 70's citrusy yellow room with great bright yellow wallpaper and deep charcoals. I'm taking inspiration from her vintage yellow cloisonné ginger jar. I know you'll love it!

Hope you have a sunny weekend!


Sources: Collage, Dilly Dallas; Living Room, Mary MacDonald; bathroom, unknown; Bedroom, Jaime Drake; all others here

Her Office...Apple and Apricot

Just playing around with palettes for a new client's office. She loves green, like her designer. I've gone round and round. So many gorgeous options. I thought Green + Orange + Blue, Pink + Green, Green + White... But this morning I'm loving 

Apple + Apricot

DIY paper flowers

These giant paper flowers are most definitely this weekend's fun with my girls. Thank you, God, for my craft-loving daughters!

Possible textiles for client's office. Mary MacDonald's Fretwork linen as a banded roman shade or maybe run it vertically down the desk chair. Quadrille's Zeze in Apricot for guest chairs. Scalamandre Hand painted strié paper (but in solid, not the stripe). And the Mary MacDonald's Chinois Palais panels framed on the back wall. Very fresh, very feminine, very much like my office, where I just realized I've got a little Apple + Apricot + Chinoiserie thing going myself.

One of a pair of 18th C cloisonné ginger jars in my office

Rustic Schoolhouse and Bathroom

One of the buildings on the Napa Farmhouse project is a stone schoolhouse where my clients will homeschool their kids. Someday it will transition to a beautiful guest apartment. Here was my exterior inspiration photo for the building:

She even looks like a school girl.

The look I'm going for is a rustic, post-industrial, Thomas Edison-esque greenhouse. I plan to fill it with scientific artifacts like old anatomy and botanical prints, natural curiosities, and tons of greenery. Greenery = Science. Greenery is also a must in all my projects. Check out the mood boards:

I've had fun sourcing cool elements to fit my theme, like the antique "serres," which are mini French greenhouses once used to germinate hothouse plants. I got them from Frederick P Victoria and Sons. We had them wired to make the perfect classroom light fixtures. 

Here are the Inspiration Boards for the full bath with walk-in shower:

The whole space will have the feel of a watershed, with crisp, clean accents of bright white enamel and polished nickel.

Faux wood ceramic planks from Ann Sacks will cover the floor and walls. The ceiling will be white plaster with hand hewn beams and the cabinetry is a warm gray (Farrow and Ball Charleston Gray), which brings out the gray tones in the faux wood tile. All of these elements are pulled together with the pebble shower floor.

My rough sketch

Ready for their close-ups..

Ralph Lauren Fulton Sconce

Here is how it will look against that Ann Sacks Rustico tile.

Rohl Faucet. So schoolhouse-chic.

Ann Sacks Bali tile on the shower floor pulls warm grays and browns together.

Ann Sacks Rustico

Burnished steel medicine cabinet with a polished nickel handle.

How amazing is that sink, in the photo with the boys! Because we couldn't do that sort of trough sink, I'm taking a slight risk and having the fabricator bring our white stone countertop up the wall, like a giant backsplash. Sort of a modern take on the trough sink. The faucet will be wall-mounted on the stone. (Fingers crossed.) 

I'll be sure to share when we get a little further past this... 

Have a great weekend!

Design Trends: Sitting Pretty and a Little Brassy

I was just reading through House Beautiful's top 10 trends for 2013 and was elated to see a few 'trends' I've always loved, all of which have been brewing in my current project: A Kitchen and adjacent four season Sitting Porch:

• Brass
• Pretty
• Antiques

Okay, so the husband is still resisting all the brass...but I'm not one to lay down my design sword so easily. These are two spaces in that new construction New England style farmhouse. My clients are a very young family with very traditional taste and a huge appreciation for art and antiques. Bonus: They love Blue + White! So, as you can imagine, I've basically been in Heaven. Oh, and they "love color and pattern." Heaven. (And design trend #5!)

The kitchen will look something like this. 

I love that large scale blue floral. It's Brunschwig and Fils's Kasmiri, a rich, weighty linen printed with various shades of blue. I'd specified those Charles Edwards light fixtures before the lot was even graded. I think I actually dreamt of them in the womb.

Brunschwig and Fils, Kashmiri

Dark walnut floors and woven shades will ground the all white cabinetry and countertops. And of course there's that Perrin and Rowe bridge faucet in English Bronze. I'd pushed for the Inca Brass, but at least the English Bronze is a living finish that will patina to a dark brass over the years. (FYI, if your clients don't want this to happen, Rohl makes a product that helps retain their new finishes. But a living finish is still a living finish, so some 'wear' will occur). 

My sketch of the tile and sink.

The question became, How would we segue from a totally blue and white kitchen to the adjacent green and white sitting porch my clients wanted? We all wanted a fresh, green porch, with the feel of treillage, but architecturally the spaces were so connected I couldn't turn my back on the kitchen's blue antique delft chandelier and Country Floors tiles. 

So I decided to do a blue and green porch. I still had to find a fabric that incorporated cobalt and grass green. This proved to be nearly impossible. Until my brilliant Kravet rep, Cheryl, sent me this Brunschwig Bellary print! Then she threw me this awesome Bamboo Trellis. Champagne for your efforts, love!

Below is an inspiration board for the sitting porch. Blue and Green with lots of neutral beiges, sisals and woven grass blinds. I envision them spilling into this room after Saturday pancakes. Here mom and dad can finish the papers, possibly a third cup of coffee. (Those of us with young kids know how elusive that sort of leisurely morning actually is).

Some of the fabrics have changed. We've moved that Collen and Company light fixture to another part of the house, and I'd never bore you with the actual tear sheets -- but you get the gist here. (Shameless plug: All of these fabrics and fixtures are available through our website contact.)

These gorgeous George III bergères, c. 1790, came from G. Sergeant Antiques. Can't wait to see them on the porch. And so grateful my clients had the good taste to retain their very aged green leather!

Even though they'll be far away from each other, I was so happy with how beautifully the tile went with the porch fabric. Here's that Brunschwig Bellary Cotton (Don't tell my Anglophile clients it's French):

That wool knotted rug became a Celerie Kemble sisal.


This Charles Edwards fixture will look almost exactly like this, but I've customized it to be scaled down and the pewter becomes an antique, unlacquered brass that will patina with time.

These are the Country Floors tiles, which I've been wanting for myself, house after house, for about 17 years now... Died when I spotted them floor to ceiling in this month's Veranda. It was Carolyn Roehm's old house. Gorgeous!

Veranda

In 2000, we redid a house in Encino. I got so far as an antique brass faucet, a blue enamel Morice stove (the poor man's La Cornue), and my walnut countertops. As  I said, I never did get to finish the space with my Country Floors tile. But this is why I love my job. I get to live vicariously through my clients.

Hope you like it. Hope they love it. I'll share pics when it's all done, though we're looking at an occupancy date sometime in 2014. But I'll be sharing more rooms when I have time.

Happy Weekend!

Room for Baby

Nothing makes you more aware of how quickly time flies than watching your children grow. I cannot believe my oldest enters high school this fall. All this lamenting had me thinking of the first days with him in our lives, our home and his little nest. (I just might post picture of that little nest one day.) It also had me thinking of a space I did for a client's baby boy, who is now turning TWO. I feel like I did it yesterday. So here it is.

My client had fallen in love with a vintage cowboy fabric. I died when she showed me the swatch; it was the same exact fabric I'd used in my son's room 13 years earlier, but in aqua instead of navy. Somehow updating a fabric I'd personally grown tired of was a challenge. But I actually loved it all over again. It definitely had that "classic baby boy feel" she wanted. I decided to freshen it up with some Jonathan Adler accessories and lighter colors.

So I spent a long day shopping on Montana Ave. in Santa Monica, one of my favorite streets for fab finds and great lunches. I ducked into Jonathan Adler's boutique and here's what I found...

Loved this!! But the price tag and impracticality of it would eventually lose to a solid wood table and chairs.

Loved this witty little guy too... But didn't feel he had the legs to get to the teen years.

Ageless, timeless, and totally chic. Wrap it up so I can trim it with aqua French grosgrain please.

This took some convincing. But sometimes a designer has to fight the good fight. I did it in this beautiful soft blue (below). Worth the lead time and every penny.

Then I found a few items to give it that "classic/vintage" baby feel I knew my client wanted.

 

I found all these inexpensive prints, unframed, in a vintage illustrations shop. I thought I'd use a collection over the crib (fitted with acrylic and hard screwed into the wall studs!) and the music sheets would be perfect for the bathroom.

Befores

Here's the bath, with it's odd mirror configuration, 'honey oak' cabinets and Xanadu light. The countertops were fine and the cabinetry was good quality. It just needed a fresh coat of lacquer and new hardware.

The plantation shutters and chocolate brown carpet were brand new, so both had to stay. Since the carpet was 100% wool and a dark color, it was both baby-heathy and baby-proof. The only other stipulation my clients had was that space be "very classic, yet updated, definitely not at all trendy." They also asked me to squeeze whatever I could from the budget to freshen up the bathroom--much needed! (Check out those corner medicine cabinets. I'm dumfounded that such hideous things are mass-produced.)

I got to work proposing, scheduling, sketching and finally ordering. (It always seems so seamlessly easy in a blog post, doesn't it!)

Here's my board

and my sketches

And here are the lovely Afters...

With new hardware, lighting and medicine cabinets (all Restoration Hardware), as well as some white lacquer and fresh wall color, we gave the bath a much need facelift. 

These music book illustrations were much appreciated by the musical father and older brother. More importantly, their parchment background blended with the warm countertop, making a finish I hated look rich and intentional! Love that when you're on a tight budget.

Can't believe that little guy is now brushing his teeth at this very sink. It definitely flies by. All we can do is give them roots and wings, and hopefully a nice little nest they'll always call home.