Renovation of a 1940’s Kitchen

What happens when you’re born to cook, but your kitchen isn’t? That was the case for the woman who hangs her apron in this beautiful Southern California, Spanish Colonial Revival home.

The existing kitchen had vintage 40’s charm—but its style was not in keeping with the home’s architecture or with its rich color palette.

And it was far from convenient for a home chef, even causing her backaches from working at the low countertops.

“The counters were too low for comfort and not deep enough to accommodate a dishwasher, according to Don Hornbeck who accomplished the design for the renovation with his partner, designer Nancy Manning. “The original kitchen had no place for the refrigerator that had to be in the service porch through a doorway behind the main
cooking area.”

Before

and After

Besides a comfortable place to work and appliances befitting a modern cook, the client wanted to “Update and beautify the kitchen, while increasing storage and efficiency
for entertaining.”

Another view Before

and After

For the color palette, the designers pulled colors from the decorative tiles they scored in a local tile shop’s markdown section.

The Malibu Tiles (left) and the countertop granite and cabinet paint color sample (right).

“These Malibu tiles are of the same era as the house, said Manning. “There were so many beautiful colors in the tile that the creative juices were really flowing for us. Also, the tile resonated well with the other fully saturated colors used in the rest of the house.”

Hornbeck and Manning approach their projects while considering a home’s design as a whole. For example, the decision to set kitchen tiles on the diagonal spoke to a bathroom’s decor. “One (very cool as-is) original bathroom has green and black tile set on the diagonal,” said Hornbeck.

Planning the layout for the tiles above the cooktop (left) and for the backsplash (right).

I admired the shift in the predominant color from the warm brown in the main kitchen, to the blues in the breakfast room.

“This is mainly due to the amount of cabinetry in the kitchen, which we painted brown,” said Manning. “We made the decision to keep all the built-in cabinets in the breakfast room the wall color, so you see much more blue-green in that space…We find that the dialogue created by the juxtaposition of complementary colors can really animate a space.”

More photos and a play-by-play of this extensive renovation—including the tweak to get the perfect cabinet paint color—be found at Hornbeck Design Partner’s Facebook page.

Nancy Manning and Don Hornbeck can be reached through their full service design firm, Hornbeck Design Partners in Redondo Beach, California.

Do you think about your home’s design as a whole, or more room by room?

Design Junkies, get your right brains on — it’s time to click and create. This is a Prize Challenge and somebody’s going to up to $350 worth of gorgeous, customized home textiles!

On the Web today with just a few clicks of the mouse, we have incredible design and decorating power to help us produce stylish, individualized spaces.

Case in point? RoomsByYou. It’s a cutting-edge site where you can create rooms full of customized home textiles, from over 90 designer collections of coordinated surface patterns.

Fashion your space, then the folks at RoomsByYou (right here in the San Francisco Bay Area) will print and manufacture your custom textiles on-demand in 14 days. Voila! Fresh and beautiful decor.

RoomsByYou is rolling out its service that it will eventually offer for all rooms in the house. Baby RoomsByYou launched in the fall and today with our Challenge we celebrate the launch of Teen RoomsByYou!

So wake up that groggy teen, text your grandson, email your niece — this Challenge is da bomb.

How to Play:

Have fun and customize one or two Teen rooms using RoomsByYou’s 3D Room Customizer. Before you start, take a look at this quick video tutorial. We are customizing teen rooms and this walks you through step by step how to customize a baby room — but the process is the same.

Ready to Customize? Start here.

1) Select a Teen Room style (Classic or Contemporary)
2) Click the blue button in the bottom right that reads “Click Here to Begin”
3) Follow the steps on the left, and customize your room. (And be sure to zoom out first so you can see the whole room.)

Stick within one designer collection, or be gutsy and try mixing products from different designers and collections. Be sure to paint the walls! Play with colors and patterns and customize as many products as you can:

• Bean Bags
• Curtain Panels
• Decorative Pillows
• Dog Beds
• Duvets
• Lamp Shades
• Pillow Shams
• Storage Bag
• Wall Art

When you’re done:

4) Save your room.
5) Share it (with yourself) by entering your email address in the share dialogue. (This is how you’ll get your finished room image that you’ll later upload to the Challenge.)
6) When you get the email from RoomsByYou, right-click on the image in the email, save it and make note of where. This is the image you’ll upload when you enter the Challenge.
7) Submit your Challenge entry here, where you’ll also describe to us why this would make great room decor for the teen in your life.

If you have any feedback on how to improve the features and functions of the RoomsByYou Customizer, share your feedback with RoomsByYou at this link.”

A few rules:

1. Absolutely have your teen jump in and help design the room if you like — but an adult 18+ must be the one actually entering the challenge by submitting the entries.
2. Enter up to two rooms.
3. Do not use the Pre-Customized Rooms in the TeenRooms Design Portfolio.
4. Employees of RoomsByYou, and of HomeWorkshop.com are not eligible.

Meet our distinguished judges:

Jon Leafstedt, founder of RoomsByYou and in the past, part of leadership teams at Williams-Sonoma, NIKE, Esprit, Oilily and Liz Claiborne.

Leona Gaita, HomeWorkshop.com Interior Design Contributor and specialist in space planning, color and fabric selection and full-scale interior design and renovation through Larchmont, NY’s Gaita Interiors. Leona pens the Gaita Interiors blog.

Sonu Mathew, Senior Interior Designer and leader of a team of color experts at Benjamin Moore Paints, author of the blog Living In Color With Sonu, and co-producer with HomeWorkshop.com of our recent special event, ten.

Time now to dig in and create, Design Junkies. RoomsByYou says, it “covets creativity” and that it “embraces your ability to imagine.” Us too. Show us your stuff!

by Regina Garay

Today let’s talk color with our Decorative Painting and Surface Design Expert, and Contributor Regina Garay. Regina blogs about her creative work and inspiration
at Fauxology.

—

You would think that since color is such a personal choice for many of us, that the yearly color trends would not make a ripple at all.  We like what we like, correct? 

However, color is a monumental business — it cycles in many industries: fashion, home and merchandising, to name a few. The continual cycle of color throughout our lives keeps things fresh and our souls nourished. But how exactly do these trends come about?

There are color experts who predict, years in advance, what hues will make the most impact in a given year.  Fashion starts off the process that then influences home design.  The colors you see in a fashion designer’s collection starts to seep into the visual merchandising of the shelter stores and design magazines. 

Three leading organizations outline these color palettes, and when tempered with our personal color leanings, they continually inspire us to create uplifting surroundings.  What could be better?  Let’s take a look at color schemes making an impact this year:

PANTONE

Pantone is a world-renowned authority on color.  This year, it chose Turquoise as its color of the year and says that “the inviting, luminous hue inspires thoughts of soothing tropical water and is a comforting escape from the everyday troubles of the world.” 

Pantone also adds that turquose is “universally flattering, with both men and women reacting to it positively”. 

On its site you’ll find a bit more explanation about Pantone’s choice.

 
COLOR MARKETING GROUP

The Color Marketing Group (CMG) is the association for color design professionals.  Its main focus is to identify the direction of color and design trends.  In fact, if you’d like to read about how exactly color is forecasted, read the explanation of its process here.  For 2010, CMG’s color of choice is Grape — specifically, “Mardi Grape.”. 

It’s a color that is “a sophisticated crossover of purple, brown and gray”.  James Martin, CMG President, says “Purple has been with us for a while now, but the big story today is that we’re seeing purple as a neutral for the very first time. This purple is browner and grayer, a neutral we can love long-term.”

PAINT QUALITY INSTITUTE

Now we move beyond a single color and into color schemes. The Paint Quality Institute has one goal: to educate consumers and professionals about the use of paints and coatings.  This year, it notes that due to social and economic influences, more and more homeowners are taking on the tasks of simple home projects and improving their current space. 

To this end, it chose three color schemes:

1. Good Morning consists of hues that are fresh, clean and comfortable.  These include honey-like hues, corals, yellows and mineral grays;
2. Good Night touches upon the trend of including the fifth wall (the ceiling) into your design to create a fuller, softer space.  These hues include midnight blues, eggplant or wine and even pastels; and
3. Good Bye embraces the home staging necessary to create an inviting space — one that you say hello to (when buying) or farewell to (when selling). These colors include khakis, mid-toned blues, off white and black.

The Paint Quality Institute also regularly uploads videos about colors and paints at its YouTube channel.

I hope this has proved informative. I always think it’s fun to keep an eye out for the design magazines and see how the color trend predictions unfold throughout the year.  Leading paint companies and others also make their trend predictions.

Whatever color you choose for your home, make sure that it’s one you love — that’s one trend that never goes away.  Until next time!

Regina Garay is an accomplished artisan with creativity and energy to spare. A specialist at all manner of decorative painting techniques, she shares with us tips, how-to’s and trends in surface design, as well as inspiration from the design of public spaces.

Owner and Creative Director for Orlando, Florida’s Garay Artisans, Regina also pens the popular Fauxology blog.

What colors are currently inspiring you? Do you find your tastes changing over the years, and what do you think drives that?

by GraceAnn Simoni

Here’s some great home organizing advice and a dash of “how to” motivation from Contributor GraceAnn Simoni, Interior Redesign and Staging Specialist and Instructor from the Chicagoland area. GraceAnn shares budget tips and advice for decorating with your existing furniture and accessories.

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How are those New Year’s resolutions coming along??? Like most of you I resolved to become more organized. My office is always the ongoing challenge but the rest of the house could use some ‘editing’ as well.

My objective to live with only things I love and to let go of the rest.

As a redesigner I work with the furniture, art and accessories that clients already have, to give the room a new look. But I still help them do some editing.

Here is how I plan to tackle the rest of the house (The office may take a professional!)

You can’t decorate with you current items unless you can look at them objectively.

“The love it or leave it exercise,” as Lynette Jennings calls it.

We all have things in our homes for a reason; perhaps it is all we can afford and that is nothing to be ashamed of. We may have inherited items—things we may or may not love—from family or in-laws who come to visit often. We may also have things in our homes that tell our family’s ’story’ and are more meaningful possibly than attractive.

The bottom line is you should only keep in sight things that make you feel good or hold a memory. Keep those ‘given’ items nearby for when the giver comes to visit and then put them out. Why look at them all the time?

The ’stuff’ we keep is not what is normally seen in the decorating magazines, books or on TV, right? (Wonder where it was stashed for the photo shoot?)

However, if we no longer feel connected to the stuff, then let it go. Give it to a resale shop–someone will love it. Donate furniture items to a shelter or Goodwill. Haven’t we all found things (great deals to us) from those same types of stores?

So in my quest to ‘edit’ I have started really looking at my spaces. I begin by moving in a clockwise fashion around one room at a time and setting a block of time to do so—for example, one hour a day.

I remove to a pile all those things that I really haven’t truly ’seen’ in a while. They may have been in the same place forever and only the cleaning lady really sees them when see dusts!

I keep one good sized box and two large garbage bags nearby. The box is for items that still speak to me, but I am not sure about, they may find another place in the house. One of the bags is for things I will definitely donate and of course the second bag is for the junk, broken, damaged or just paper clutter I find. That one can fill quickly if I am in the right mindset.

When the timer goes off (remember I set a definite time limit) I then take the trash bag to the garage, the donate bag gets marked and if not full goes to the garage for the next day. When it is full or reaching the weight limit, I place it in my car, and the next time I am out I make sure to run by the Goodwill and drop it off.

So far I have been doing fairly well. There are days that get passed me, but just like a diet we do slip, but the key is to keep trying.

I will try to keep you posted on my progress. Perhaps having someone to report to will keep my motivation going! Wish me Luck!

(In a future article I will tell you how I used what I loved in different ways or did something to update the look.)

GraceAnn Simoni of Yours Redesigned Naperville, IL, is a Redesign and Staging Specialist and Instructor, and a member of Interior Redesign Industry Specialists (I.R.I.S.).

If you need help getting the The Home You Want With the House You Have™ visit www.yoursredesigned.com.

 
 
Do your rooms need a good editing about now? How do you manage the “stuff” in your spaces?

Social Furniture — It’s Here!

Yesterday marked the U.S. launch of Berlin, Germany’s Fashion4Home, and the stateside beginning of “social furniture.”

One of Fashion4Home’s exclusive designers, Logan Komorowski, with a model from his line of furniture from sustainable bamboo.

Sure, Fashion4Home is an online-only furniture retailer that says it offers products at “50-70% less than traditional retail prices,” but that’s not the coolest thing about it.

Here it is: We the people have a say in what Fashion4Home produces.

We are on the design team.

Through Fashion4Home’s Voting area, we help it decide which designs to manufacture, which collections should be extended, and which designers should be treasured.

Crowdsourcing comes home.

According to Fashion4Home, “Shoppers vote and comment on product sketches from world-renowned furniture designers…This creates an open innovation environment for…furniture designers to share their ideas directly with consumers, gain immediate feedback and speed up product design.”

Fashion4Home.com claims to be the world’s first hub for furniture designers and consumers to interact directly. Click to vote for those products you want Fashion4Home to produce, and add your comment like:

“Hey nice chair, but how about you swap the white and black colors, and go with a satin finished base.”

Today 27 products are available for voting, including contemporary furntiture and artwork. More are planned soon.

I came across Fashion4Home last fall when it first launched in Europe and I thought, ‘This is going to be a hit–can’t wait ’till it comes here.’

The wait is over.

First social media, now social furniture. What do you think will be next?