Tag Archives: Making Room for More
Mini-Color in the City, Los Angeles
I’m saying mini-color in the city because I made a day trip to Los Angeles for a work meeting and quick visit with my long time friend, Kristi. I had the opportunity to visit Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills, a super retro boutique recently re-designed by Kelly Wearstler.
Even on a chilly day, her monochromatic aqua theme felt fresh and welcoming with quirky artwork and painted details that , of course, made me smile.
These cabanas in the pool area are backed by brick walls painted in this delightful tile pattern! Paint! Graphic pattern! Beautifully executed! mmm, good.
Notice the ceiling treatment? I’m in love.
Kelly Wearstler used mainly color, paint, and pattern (sound familiar?) to put a fresh sparkle on this vintage inn.
And, Action!
Last week was big! I gathered a production crew, wrote a script, and corralled some residential clients to film some testimonial videos for a national client. As of last week, I’m an executive producer and I couldn’t be happier!
We spent two days meeting clients and talking about the impact of choosing new paint colors for their homes.
Here’s the luck of a film crew: as soon as we stepped outside to shoot our homeowner talking about the new exterior color on his house (in a very quiet suburban little pocket neighborhood of San Francisco) a limousine pulled up across the street for a surprise 80′th Birthday party, a taxi pulled up to pick someone up next door, AND AND a Firetruck came up with firefighters jogging up the street carrying hatchets! I’m not kidding!!
Hard to see, but the taxi is leaving, the limo is behind the firetruck, and the firefighters are smiling because everything seemed to be fine- we never found out about the emergency that brought them up the street. But, the homeowner kept saying, “I swear, it’s never this busy in my neighborhood!”
Eventually we got back to business and made our way to five locations in two days with lots of walking and talking along the way to tell the story of my work and the homeowners I get to work with every day. I have to say, I was nervous because this is a new crew I’ve never worked with, I was asking all of these homeowners to do us a big favor filming them and their homes, and I haven’t been on camera in awhile. But at our first stop I remembered why I love working with people in their homes, why I enjoy being on camera, and why I’m so passionate about paint, color, design, art…
Now the editing begins, the production team takes two days of filming, before after photos, and our script and starts creating in their medium. We’ll meet each week as the project develops and debut our product at an annual meeting in January.
Keep your fingers crossed for me and stay tuned…
Play it again, Sam: the life of a piano
Many of you know that my mom taught me how to play the piano…
I grew up plunking away on a Baldwin Acrosonic spinet, the same piano my Mom’s been playing since she was seven years old. It’s still in her living room…
When I moved to San Francisco, a found my own, a little Grand, through a friend of a friend…
I don't know how I scraped together $1300 back then, but having my own piano made San Francisco feel like my real home. I had everything I needed.
Recognize the big mirror in the background? People say I purge a lot, but certain things feel like home no matter where I live.
This is the same apartment where I painted the deep red wall AND my piano for my marketing postcard. The wall behind me in the photo above is the one I painted red adding the first stencil I ever designed…
I painted the words to a soliloquy from the movie, Amadeus, where Salieri first hears young Mozart playing the piano and can’t believe his ears. I kept my piano like this for years because it looked great in all the places I’ve lived after that first apartment in the City.
Notice how the “red wall” vignette inspired this arrangement in my current home?
Of course, now my current home looks like this and my piano gets center stage in my dining room. I think my little Grand has earned that position for sticking with me all these years, don’t you?
And we arrive here. I've had my piano for about 16 years now and it's still one of my favorite pieces. I'm thinking about adding a thin yellow stripe to the chevrons next, but stay tuned- I could end up painting a landscape instead!
Bottom line is this: life, love, and design are all a work in progress. You start somewhere making your rooms look the best they can for your circumstances and let everything grow from there. Don’t just make do, but do appreciate the things you have- no matter how humble or simple- the things that bring you comfort over the years because they speak to something you love- family, music, good memories, vacations… As you love and care for your things, you begin to love and care for yourself and your life. You strip away expectation in favor of experience and eventually, you just breathe…
Find a piece that you love and give it a little TLC today- a photo, a desk, a blanket, some curtains…a piano perhaps? Add new life to an old good thing and see what happens…
Things are Looking Up!
Finally, ‘popcorn’ ceilings of the 70′s are nearly extinguished and recovery from the 80′s white ceilings is slow but sure. I noticed an article about decorative ceilings on Apartment Therapy recently and reflected on some of my favorite ceiling projects from my decorative painting days. The pictures aren’t that great, but hopefully you get the idea…
I stenciled the walls AND this impressive cone shaped ceiling in this girl's room- a 16 year old at the time, she wanted a metallic, moroccan tent feel
I designed the Moroccan star pattern to fall away for a playful twist on the typical tiles domes of Moroccan architecture
Wait, you want this 14 foot tall, 70 foot long ribbed barrel ceiling to look 'Old World'?... no problem...
I found some incredible artists and a really big scaffold to complete this ceiling that ran the length of this modern house in Yountville, California.
Hard to see, but, the designer on this project (my role was strictly decorative painting for this gig) had me paint verticle stripes on about 250 feet of detailed crown molding. See it? She also spec'd the dark green ceiling in the dining area to show off a sparkly gold light fixture.
We had fun too- we created a little laser light show with our laser levels.... maybe you had to be there to appreciate it
By the way, we washed all the walls in dapple lime paint too, brushed a strie pattern on all the baseboards, and added a watercolor finish to the panelled doors and stair railing. Piece of cake- NOT!
Then there's the office I designed and painted for one of my favorite clients. Even with this bold stencil pattern on the walls, the contrasting floral stencils on the ceiling work perfectly in this feminine room.
I painted most of this ceiling in one day with my client feeding me intermittent doses of smoothies and coffee.
This bathroom ceiling was a little easier to tackle. Oddly enough, just the slight arch to the ceiling made the work less back breaking. Still, I'm glad it's done.
Even if all you do is paint your ceiling to match your walls or in a pale blue gray to make your room look taller, consider this major element of every room in your house for a look that’s fresh, modern, and totally unique to you!
