What'll make your house a special place for your guests? A wonderful stay at someone’s home involves many things: Relaxed hosts, pleasant activities, enjoying the regions beauty and a comfy room to retire to. However, most importantly…is being the perfect house guest!
We all want to be outsideas much as we can but we also love our creature comforts. One cozy way we could tweal out more time in our gardens, porches and pool area's is to introduce fire!...
Whether it's the wood for your fireplace, outdoor fire-pit or the bar-b-que you have to be creative - and safe - when storing it. There's important factors to consider like bugs, termites, flying sparks and dirt...
A color that needs to be used with restraint! If I hear another decorator say they're painting a room "Hermes orange" I will totally barf all over their Goyard bag. Orange is fresh, bright and cheerful - use it as an accent with white, neutrals or other equally bright colors (lime, turquoise, etc...)
The new design wave spreading across the insiders design world is a softer, well-edited, less plastic'y look. Warmth is handled with an occasional antique, the walls are frequently white and very, very few tsotchke's. Gen-X is very grounded and concerned, they're not sentimental, they don't put value on representational objects...
Most people think of mud rooms as an "extra luxury" when building or remodeling a house, but anyone with a life knows it's a logical necessity - not a luxury...unless you actually like the dorm look. When planning a mud room, first identify how you will use your mud room, not by what you see at other peoples houses...
“A place for everything and everything in its place”. Determine where everything is supposed to be kept, if you don't have a place, create one - it keeps clutter down, the house tidy, and when you want something you know exactly where to find it...
For years designers have known to consider all aspects of the spaces they're designing. For novice designers one of the largest surfaces in the space is often forgotten about... the ceiling. One of my favorite materials on a ceiling is wood, whether heavy beams, thin "strapping," or just a plain plank ceiling.
The pool tables for the average home, and the rooms they inhabit have evolved; no longer a wood-grain laminate and emerald-green felt hideosity kept in the basement. They can be fabricated from exotic woods with custom-colored felts and kept right in the living room, or made of weatherproof, color-coordinated materials and used poolside, on a rooftop or even on the beach!
This is what we think of as a basic pergola; simple to build and easy to maintain as its not painted. A romantic spot to enjoy al fresco meals or entertain in! Yeah baby, break out the candles and some Dean Martin tunes!
The Dutch had crudely fabricated but beautifully hand-painted portraits painted on wall-hung plates; the Moors had rustic multi-colored plates with intricate geometric patterns on their walls while Europeans displayed finely detailed China and porcelain plates on their walls. That was then, this is now!
Awnings can provide you with a certain gorgeousity regardless of the style of your home! Create another 'layer' with awnings implying relaxation and softness - which paint or architecture can't do. The best ones are complementary to the house, not some "attention-grabbing" fabric extravaganzas...
