Monthly Archives: June 2015

Creating a Comfortable Multipurpose Space

“Trying to figure out how to better use a space in your home? Have a large space but not sure how to divide it up? Read on to get some ideas that can help add function and comfort.”

Ed Johnson & Denise Buck – Dc Metro Realty Team

Interior designer Elena Calabrese took one space and made it a family room, game room, media center and home office. In truth, it was never supposed to be more than a living room. “This was a spec house,” she says. “And this was supposed to be the formal living room — but these clients didn’t need a space like that. What they needed was a multipurpose room.”

Elena Calabrese Design & Decor

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Room at a Glance
Who hangs out here: A professional couple and their 8-year-old son
Interior designer: Elena Calabrese
Big idea: This is a living room that was rethought as a multipurpose space.
Location: Mill Valley, California
Size: 15 by 15 feet (4½ by 4½ meters)

“Before the remodel this was the room that no one went into,” Calabrese says. “But the family needed a spot to hang out together. The parents travel a lot, and when they are home, they like to spend time together with their son.”

One of the central design features is an area for an activity they all enjoy: board games. The designer created this banquette and table expressly for that purpose. “I found the base on the Internet; it’s a vintage Milo Baughman piece. I had a marble top made for it,” Calabrese says. She created the built-in seating with notched backs to break up its linear nature. “I didn’t think about it matching the pattern in the carpet,” she says. That it does may be a happy coincidence, but the choice of a banquette was intentional. “I didn’t want it to read as an eating space, and I feel like that’s how it would appear if I used a table surrounded by chairs,” she says. “This way it looks like an intimate gathering spot.”

Light fixture: Regina Andrew; side table: HD Buttercup

Elena Calabrese Design & Decor

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The large sectional was chosen with one eye toward the television and the other toward the game table. “Because it has a bumper on one end, someone can perch there and chat with people seated around the table or on the window seat,” Calabrese says. “I didn’t want it to be all about the television. I did want it to be cool, modern and lounge-y.”

The coffee table was chosen to work with the carpet. “I love how you can see the carpet pattern through it,” the designer says. “Another wood would have been too heavy.”

Sofa: Dellarobbia; carpet: Stark; coffee table: Z Gallerie

Elena Calabrese Design & Decor

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One of the owners likes to watch sports on television, and the dark gray built-in serves as a media center. “The opening you see in the wall on the right is [to] the dining room,” Calabrese says. “We made the built-in stepped down so that when you look out from the dining room, you see the artwork, not the top of a shelf.”

Elena Calabrese Design & Decor

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The art collection over the sofa is the start of a gallery wall. “The idea is that the owners will add to it over time,” Calabrese says. “One of them collects art on her travels.”

Elena Calabrese Design & Decor

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Between trips that owner can be found perched on the window seat working on her laptop. “When we started the project, the window seat wasn’t there,” the designer says. “When we designed it, we created storage in the bottom for her son’s Legos and toys.”

In Calabrese’s opinion, the room’s success is how it meets many needs. “It’s a multipurpose space, but we worked hard to make it cohesive,” she says. “That’s a design challenge, but in this case, I think it’s a win.”

By Mary Jo Bowling, HOUZZ Editorial Staff

The ABC’s of Arranging Vignettes

“Vignettes are usually small displays, but can have a big impact on a room or entryway. Here are several examples to give you some ideas of how to add just the right touch in your home.”

Denise Buck & Ed Johnson – DC Metro Realty Team

In the world of interior design, a vignette is a small, pleasing picture formed by grouping several objects — think of it as a pocket-size table arrangement that tells a story about you and your home. A vignette is a harmonious tableau made from a variety of items, rather than a large collection of similar articles (for example, clocks or toys), which would require a different display strategy.

Vignettes can easily be reinvented to suit your whims — a change of season, a new find, a gift and a special occasion are all good reasons to refashion your mini displays. There’s a knack to making these small scenes look effortlessly composed and eye catching. So take a look at how to build delightful vignette worlds with this easy lesson.

Digs Design Company

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“A” Is for “Anchor”

Choose an item as the center of interest, the “hero” of your vignette. Pick something you love to see every day and that expresses your personality and that of your home. It will be the first point on which the viewer’s eye rests.

A very small hero would be swamped by other objects in the group, so choose a statement piece with visual weight and height, like this dramatic starburst mirror.

AS you see it!

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The anchor may also be a minigroup of similar things. These three vivid orange vases instantly capture attention.

SR HOME

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An “A” Formation

Assemble your pieces and then superimpose an imaginary “A” or triangle over them. Use this visual structure to prevent a long skyline effect, which would scatter focus, and to carry interest around the frame. Positioning the shortest objects toward the outer edges will help form your “A” shape.

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A dear little “A” for a bedside table.

Salt Interiors

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Despite breaking the “A” rule, linear arrangements can work beautifully if there is a strong relationship between the objects and some contrast.

The serpentine curves of the women in these photographs are duplicated in the central sculpture and contrast the precise angles of the frames, while the heights of the pieces differ and black and white has been carried throughout.

Highgate House

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Asymmetry

Sorry, all you neatness nuts, you may have to loosen up. Pairs placed symmetrically give the impression of an altar and can look very stilted and formal. We want the opposite: an unstudied gathering (only you know you have been to ABC vignette class!) that moves the eye around the articles. Deconstruct a too-tight structure by moving the items of a pair closer together or taking one of them away.

This arrangement avoids the symmetry trap through the use of two paintings above the sideboard that, although similar in style, are still different. Underneath, smaller pieces have been placed at differing heights: three clear jars varying in size at one end and a lower stylish dish at the other.

Highgate House

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“B” Is for “Background”

Your display’s backdrop is a vital part of it. Complicated wallpaper can cause visual chaos behind intricately patterned objects. And a vignette featuring, say, orange, may pick an argument with a red or green wall. Backgrounds act in a positive way when they unify the vignette.

Here a white wall and linear moldings echo colors in the collection and the credenza’s horizontal detail.

Martha O’Hara Interiors

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Mirrors make an effective background and animate a vignette by creating depth and perspective while also magnifying color and light. In this corner the features of the reflected room enter the vignette.

Garrison Hullinger Interior Design Inc.

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The surface under your vignette is part of its background, too. Elaborate marquetry or grained timber can detract from a display with lots of detail. Try not to overload a distinctive surface; keep shapes and colors unfussy.

The gorgeous cabinet in this photo holds a simple yet elegant and clean-cut array of objects while showing off its stunning timberwork.

Ethos Interiors

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Balance

Several objects of similar height or color placed at one end of a table or bench create an unbalanced look. A lopsided placement needs variety within it and visual connection to the rest of the surface. Balance it with a tall central object, such as a painting or sketch, and a secondary grouping opposite. This picture shows how.

AS you see it!

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“C” Is for “Commonality”

Give the members of your vignette a reason to be together. Relate them by color, texture, theme, shape and/or pattern. When one or more of these elements is repeated, the eye travels enjoyably around the vignette.

This is one of my favorite vignettes — a picture in green, white and natural wood. I love how the floral theme is made intriguing by the scale of the close-up in the background. It makes me want to lean in for a closer look.

RoomService 360

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Contrast

Play with contrasts. Think of fresh flowers highlighting the patina of an antique bronze bell, or a delicate woven basket beside a heavy glass bowl.

The unexpected bonsai, crystal lamp and sharp modern table offset this distressed Italianate wall finish with its bold flourishes.

Lavender Hill Interiors

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A tiny burst of contrasting apple green enlivens an uncluttered blue and white bedside vignette.

Massimo Interiors

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Coziness

Pieces spaced evenly over the whole surface lose their connection to one another and may end up looking as if they are set out for a garage sale. Snuggle them up to one another and let some of them touch.

If your vignette is on a central table, check it out from all angles and tweak anything that looks awkward.

Newhook Design

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Keep articles visually linked. Hang a painting or mirror low enough so some of your objects encroach on it but don’t hide it. It will then be a cohesive part of the arrangement.

Jennie Hunt

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I love this fine Oriental-style table and great wall texture, but I’d like to bring these charming objects closer together.

Tip: When you are happy with your vignette, take a photo, so if you have to rearrange it for cleaning, you can replace everything easily.

Sweet William

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Cost

Vignettes are a wonderful way to give every room character, and they need not cost the earth. Collect flowers from your garden, a vintage shoe, pretty glass bottles or an attractive feather, or reframe old photographs or wallpaper offcuts. Hunt through your house and see what treasures you can find.

Studio 511

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By Janet Dunn, HOUZZ and Lifestyle magazine contributor

6 Ideas to Make the Most of Your Garage

“Garages fulfill so many different needs beyond parking a car. If you’ve been wondering how to make better use of your garage, this article might just be the inspiration you need.”

Ed Johnson & Denise Buck – DC Metro Realty Team

Your garage might be a scary, junk-filled spot that you’d rather forget about. But, you’re missing out on some prime room real estate there. To up its appeal — and its utility — consider these ideas.

1. Paint It a Cheerful Color
Designer Annie Selke turned her mundane garage into a reflection of her. “Why feel like a cave dweller,” she says. “You can have a girly garage.” She applied stripes to the walls with leftover paint from the other rooms in her house. Courtesy of Annie Selke

2. Fake a Mudroom
If you spend more time coming through the garage than your front door, set up a central spot to store shoes and hang coats. For her garage “mudroom,” Toni at A Bowl Full of Lemons built a wall organizer, added wall and shoe baskets, and accessorized with a large wall clock. See the rest of the makeover here. Courtesy of A Bowl Full of Lemons

3. Don’t Forget About the Floors
Your floors don’t have to be a dull gray. Experiment with patterns or different hues, like A Beautiful Mess’s Elsie Larson did in this space. (We also love her hyper-organized, super-colorful utility wall.) Tour her organized garage. Courtesy Elsie Larson/A Beautiful Mess

4. Turn It Into a Craft Studio
This may not work for most people, but blogger Rachel Mae Smith didn’t own a car, so she created a crafting retreat out of the run-down garage joining her San Francisco apartment. See more of the transformation here. Courtesy of Design Sponge

5. And Remember to Look Up
Since floor space is, well, for the cars mostly, install overhead storage. Jen of I Heart Organizing built custom upper cabinets that are 4-feet deep to stash large storage bins and other miscellaneous items. To style the space, she added beadboard panels, painted the doors blue, and installed pendant lighting. Tour her garage. Courtesy of I Heart Organizing

6. Set Up a Garden Station
No garden shed? Ashli of Mini Manor reserved a small spot in her garage for a mini gardening command center. Take a look at the rest of her house. Courtesy of Mini Manor/6th Street Design School

Originally Published on Yahoo Makers, By Sarah Yang

Ideas for Easygoing Summer Parties

“It’s Summertime, so move your party outside! It’s not as hard as you might think if you just plan a little bit. Here are some great ideas to get started.”

Ed Johnson & Denise Buck – DC Metro Realty Team

Summertime calls for a distinctly unfussy approach to entertaining, and thankfully so — because who wants to sweat over planning a summer soiree? Make things easier on yourself by hosting outdoors instead of in, getting guests to pitch in and embracing low-key, budget-friendly decor. From DIY flowers and quick extra tables to a beachy outdoor bar, these 20 ideas will make your party planning easier.

Corynne Pless

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1. Whip up an extra table with sawhorses. Short on outdoor dining space? Hunt down a few sawhorses and top them with a length of board as big as you want your table to be. You can paint the board, cover it with a cloth or butcher paper, or leave it as is.

Corynne Pless

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2. Fashion a wooden crate into a drinks container. If you line it with plastic, any old crate can be a rustic-chic open-top cooler for keeping soda and beer on ice. It won’t keep it cold as long as a real cooler, but it should do the trick at a party.

3. No crate? Use whatever you’ve got. An old wheelbarrow, a garden cart, an enamel bucket or even a toy dump truck can be lined with trash bags and filled with ice to make an impromptu drinks cooler.

Cezign

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4. Give your outdoor bar a tiki makeover with a palapa roof. Search for “palm leaf thatch panels” to find a source and tack a few lengths of the grassy stuff to the roof of your outdoor bar or shed to give it some tiki bar style.

Celia Bedilia

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5. Dress up candles with woodsy details. Curl a wide green leaf and drop it into a glass jar —then fill the jar with water and float a tea light on top. Or use lengths of birch bark (available at craft stores) to wrap the outside of a jar or candleholder, and fasten them with twine.

6. Make beachy candles with mason jars and sand. Filled partway with sand, a mason jar of any size can easily become a chic candleholder. To make hanging lanterns, wrap the mouth of the jar with flexible wire and hang the jar from the branches of a tree. For safety, use battery-operated candles for hanging.

Atlantic Archives, Inc.

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7. Use soda bottles as vases. A row of tall, slender soda bottles lined up in the middle of a table makes a pretty (and supereasy) centerpiece. Just plunk one bloom in each vase, and you’re done! Try gerbera daisies, cosmos or sunflowers.

Soapstone Werks

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8. Involve your guests. Have them help squeeze lemons for fresh lemonade, let them take a turn cranking an old-fashioned ice cream maker or send them into your garden with clippers to pick a bouquet for the table.

Bruce Clodfelter and Associates

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9. Seat everyone at one big table. Who wouldn’t love coming into a backyard set up like this? Put two or three tables together if you have to — the dramatic effect will be worth the effort.

Corynne Pless

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10. Use old crates as trays and servers. Vintage wooden soda crates make the perfect receptacle for toting glasses, vases, napkins and other essentials out to the garden. Or use one to dole out flatware, standing utensils upright in simple mason jars.

Cassie Daughtrey Realogics Sotheby’s Realty

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11. Boost ambience with lanterns and signs. Flank the entrance to your party area with a pair of big lanterns and lean a sign nearby — it can announce the menu or simply say, “Welcome!”

Cassie Daughtrey Realogics Sotheby’s Realty

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12. Greet visitors with a pretty porch for the Fourth. A great big galvanized tub of red geraniums and a waving flag make a cheerful entrance to this home. Keep the patriotic spirit going with Americana-style cushions on a classic porch swing.

Beckwith Interiors

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13. Give guests a healthy option with fresh flavored waters. Fill a big drink dispenser with ice water, flavored with fresh ingredients for a healthy thirst quencher on hot days. Try lemon, lime or orange slices; fresh mint leaves; cucumber rounds; or berries.

Cassie Daughtrey Realogics Sotheby’s Realty

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14. Place your table in the shade. There’s nothing worse than trying to enjoy a lovely meal al fresco when the sun is beating down on you! Keep your guests comfortable by pulling the tables under the shade of a tree or awning, or invest in some umbrellas.

Cottage Home, Inc.

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15. Make a plan to keep bugs at bay. If you have a water feature, make sure you regularly treat it or skim it to keep mosquitoes from breeding there. If the bugs are bad in your area, plan your event for a less buggy time of day or hold it on a screened-in porch, where your guests can enjoy a fresh breeze without getting bitten.

Brunelleschi Construction

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16. Create activity zones to keep large parties moving. Setting up several distinct areas can help a large gathering feel more manageable, as your guests will naturally be drawn into smaller groups. For instance, you could set up a dining table, a fire pit circle, a porch lounge and an outdoor bar.

Buckets of Burlap

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17. Collect thrifty party supplies. Avoid last-minute stress by keeping an entertaining cupboard well stocked with mason jars, florist’s buckets, table linens, candles and serving containers. Many times you don’t even need to buy these things — save pretty old jars to use as glasses, washed-out tin cans to use as flower containers and even old bedsheets to use as outdoor tablecloths.

Celia Bedilia

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18. Go wild with your arrangements. Plucking flowers and foliage from your own backyard is cheaper than buying them, and it can be more fun, too! Push yourself to look at your garden anew and clip a little something unexpected to tuck into your bouquet. Dandelions look charming in mason jars, flowering chives are utterly romantic, and an artichoke would make a dramatic centerpiece in a mixed floral bouquet.

19. Hang flowers from a tree. Use a drill to punch two holes in a washed-out tin can and thread wire through the holes to make a hanger. Fill your cans with cut flowers and hang them from a tree around your outdoor dining table. Leave the cans plain or dress them up by tying on strips of pretty fabric.

Thom Filicia Inc.

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20. Consider the arc of your evening. Moving your guests from place to place is a great way to keep the evening moving along — and keep folks talking. Start with appetizers and drinks on the porch, move into the backyard for dinner, gather around the fire pit for dessert, and carry mugs of coffee on a postdessert walk to the water or somewhere equally pretty.

Originally published on HOUZZ

Modern Edible Garden Styles

“It’s always nice if you can add some edible plants to your yard, deck or garden. We usually have a few herbs ready to go that we can use while cooking. These ideas take it to a whole new level, so you may get some new and different ideas.”

Denise Buck & Ed Johnson – DC Metro Realty Team

Clean unadorned lines and an open, spacious feel are the hallmarks of modernist garden design. Food gardens —with their exuberant growth and chaotic medley of species that can go from tiny seedlings to an overgrown jungle to half dead and decrepit looking over a six-month period — seem like a contradiction to the contemporary look that is so prevalent in landscape design today. But that need not be the case. With careful plant selection and the right hardscape materials, incorporating edibles into your modernist landscape is easier than you might imagine.

Whether you’re designing a landscape for a backyard in Southern California or a rooftop in Manhattan, the same concepts apply: Place sprawling vegetable gardens in contemporary containers and leave lots of empty space around them so the eye has a place to rest.

sustainable garden design perth

Consider metal planters. Cor-Ten steel planters, like the circular ones pictured here, have become widely available in recent years and are a contemporary alternative to the traditional wood box planter.

Note the clean lines around the garden made with edging, a wide pea gravel path and the cool-toned painted fence in the background. These all maintain the modernist look in a yard that features a sprawling vegetable garden front and center.

Exteriorscapes llc

One of the wonderful things about Cor-Ten steel is its ability to bend. Modernist design often juxtaposes straight lines and fluid, organic shapes in interesting ways to create an overall design that is abstract but visually compelling.

Farmscape

Corrugated steel containers also fit the modernist aesthetic well. Livestock watering troughs, which come in many shapes and sizes, can be almost-sinstant vegetable planter — just drill ¾-inch drain holes every 12 inches or so in the bottom, fill with planting soil and you’re ready to go.

Here, the long lines of the oval containers create a striking futuristic design on this Los Angeles rooftop. Again, minimalism is key — the designer used nothing but the containers and cool, neutral-toned hardscape materials to create a clean, orderly feel.

NATALIE SERDIUK

Modernism has nothing against symmetry, but “orderly randomness” is also frequently used. This fenced-in vegetable garden in Berkeley, California, becomes an abstract work of art when viewed from above.

Clean Cut Landscape

Get creative with wood. Wooden vegetable planters will also work in a modernist garden if designed in the right way. One simple key is to avoid using ones with a lip that extends over the top edge of the planter. The lips are the horizontal wooden boards that often cap the vertical wooden sides of wood planters, but they go against the modernist emphasis on clean, unadorned lines.

This design includes a lip, but the lip is set over the inside of the planter to maintain the clean outer line of the cubes. The lip serves a practical purpose as a place to sit or rest tools on, which is helpful in an edible garden.

ModernBackyard

Use glazed pots. Traditional terra-cotta pots go great in a Mediterranean edible garden but are a poor choice for a contemporary garden. Glazed pots, especially those with a tall, thin profile, fit the modernist look much better. Use them for herbs, vegetables or berry bushes.

See how to grow a patio-perfect berry bush

Rosangela Photography

Don’t forget fruit trees. Fruit trees often give off an old-fashioned vibe, but there are ways of getting around that. These pleached apple trees (Malus domesctica, USDA zones 3 to 9; find your zone) are a great example.

Pleaching simply means to train a row of trees or shrubs into a flat shape by tying and interlacing their branches together. It is similar to espaliering, in which individual plants are trained to grow on a flat plane, usually a wall. Pleaching and espaliering are high-maintenance approaches, but they’re a sure bet for getting fruit trees — as well as edible vines and shrubs — to conform to a contemporary design.

Jocelyn H. Chilvers

Choose edible species carefully. Clutter is the enemy of modernist landscapes and the reason that edibles, especially vegetables, are not often included in them. Even the most unkempt vegetables, liketomatoes, can fit the part if surrounded by the right hardscape elements, but another approach is to choose edibles that match the contemporary aesthetic.

Asparagus, for example (which is a perennial vegetable for USDA zones 3 to 10), has a tidy appearance, with wispy fronds that are reminiscent of ornamental grasses and other species often used by modernist designers. Eggplant is also a tidy plant, and its smooth, oblong fruits look fantastic in a glossy, glazed container.

The Romanesco cauliflower and red chard pictured here are an example of the abstract artistry found in some vegetable combinations, which are quite stunning when incorporated in an edible modernist garden.

AMS Landscape Design Studios, Inc.

A good rule of thumb for modernist design is that at least half of the garden be devoted to static architectural shapes, such as hardscaping, cropped turf and neatly clipped shrubs, as opposed to plants that change significantly throughout the seasons (like perennial flower borders).

In that vein, you may want to limit your use of edibles in a modernist landscape to a small portion of the nonarchitectural part of the design. That way the food plants will form a counterpoint in a balanced larger picture, as the bright yellow lemons do on the left side of this garden.

Originally appearing on HOUZZ

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Monthly Archives: June 2015

Creating a Comfortable Multipurpose Space

The ABC’s of Arranging Vignettes

6 Ideas to Make the Most of Your Garage

Ideas for Easygoing Summer Parties

Modern Edible Garden Styles

Creating a Comfortable Multipurpose Space

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The ABC’s of Arranging Vignettes

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6 Ideas to Make the Most of Your Garage

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Ideas for Easygoing Summer Parties

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Modern Edible Garden Styles

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