Fresh & Fabulous Home Office

If you're one of the lucky ones who gets to work from home, why not have an office space that is conducive to actually working?! It's amazing how many people I know stick a desk in the corner and call it a day.

Surround yourself with things you love, colors that inspire you, and of course - plenty of storage. In many cases, the home office doubles as a guest room. So, if your guests are going to be staying in your office, integrate it seamlessly so that they don't feel they're intruding, rather they feel welcome and comfortable.

Here's a photo of a home office where I had to do just that. To see more photos, click here.

Breathe in... color!

Color-Infused After

Dark and Drab Before

This family room looked old, grey and unwelcoming. It needed life, it needed zest, well duh! It needed color! And that's what I do best (if I do say so myself!). Talk about brightening the joint up a bit. I added pops of color in the furniture and accents and kept the backdrop soft and sophisticated. Plus, the bar area needed a major pick-me-up, so - well, I did! What do you think?

Bar Before

Bar After

Red Fish, Blue Fish, Kitchen Wish, Be Newish!

Proposed Layout

Current Kitchen - ewwww!

What do we all want in a home? Yes, good light, yes, curb appeal, yes, a funky doggie door (oh, is that just me?). But really - what we all want, what we all dream for - is a new kitchen! I'm working with a client right now who just bought a new house. The kitchen had recently been remodeled, or at least - that's what they were told. It appears the old homeowners went to Home Depot or some big box store, bought a bunch of stock cabinets and pieced them together like a puzzle - a mismatched and not very aesthetically pleasing puzzle. They knew it wasn't working but weren't sure how to fix it.

Ha, yes. This is where Huh? came swooping in with my flowing cape (in my mind it was red). The first step was for an ergonomic flow, a nice design and appliances that would work for the way they used the kitchen. I went over yesterday to show them my preliminary design proposal and they LOVED it! That's right, toot, toot. Here's the new layout and a photo of the current yucky kitchen. I'll keep you updated on how this progresses. It's going to be a Tuscan Transformation!

Upcoming feature in First Magazine

New Blue Glass Mosaic Coffee Table

Old Beat-Up Coffee Table (okay, before we totally beat it up, but this was it...)

I'm very excited! I have an upcoming feature in First Magazine! It should hit newsstands on 10/5/09! The writer had a follow-up question today which, as I was answering it, I thought it was quite funny about what inspires me to make my furniture! Here's her question and how I answered it. It's funny how you don't think about why you do things until someone actually asks you to elaborate.

Question: What exactly did you dislike about your old coffee table (the one you replaced with the tile mosaic table)--that it was always cluttered with stuff, that you didn't like the way it looked, that you couldn't afford a style you truly wanted....?

Answer:

My old coffee table was cool, after all – I built it! But it was also the dancing stage for my boys and I. We’d turn up our music really loud some nights and take turns dancing on the table, lip-synching and jumping off with our air guitars. So needless to say, it took a lot of beatings – and it showed. (Photo of it before being trashed above). When I’d sit and watch TV, I’d noticed the nicks, the loose molding on the edges and the dents around the base, which was made from aluminum roof vents – crazy, I know. It looked it’s age and after living with it for many years, I wanted something that was a bit lower to put my feet on, a bit wider to cover more space and be accessible from more seating areas, and something with drawers to get the multitudes of remote controls off the surface – I swear, you need one for everything these days. Plus, I wanted to infuse a pop of blue into the room. I had used blue glass stones in the entertainment center and wanted to call that color and texture out elsewhere in the room so this was the perfect time. That, and the fact that I had about 20 sheets of blue glass mosaic tiles left over from a kitchen renovation that I did and I had to use them somewhere in my house, they were just too pretty to sit in a box in the garage. So with a little brainstorming, I found a photo of a leather coffee table with the wood slats and decided that I’d do something similar but would use the tiles instead of leather – and of course, make all my own custom modifications. Voila! Born is my new and lovely coffee table that makes the living room sparkle and is one of the first things people see when they enter my house!