My Favorite Room In Our Home – His Study

One of my favorite, if not my very favorite, rooms in our home to hang out in is Scott’s study/office.   My lacking photography skills and lack of a wide angle lens, etc don’t give this space justice.  He has the best natural light from the large windows on both sides of the space (not pictured) and the colors are quite soothing.  When he is out seeing customers (like today, as you can tell I had a chance to snap his office sans scattered papers), I often use this space.       I think the reason I love this space so much is because of what it took for me to get it like I had envisioned it from convincing my client (Scott) that stained wood built-ins would be too heavy for this space because of the wood floors and stained beams to designing the built-ins, stripping them of details as they were putting the cabinets in because my vision didn’t quite work and then redesigning again and winging it with the trim guys after the cabinet makers left.  It was quite the ordeal and in the end, it has the masculine details I was looking for while still fitting with the rest of our home.   I chose tone on tone warm gray for the walls and trim because I didn’t want the color palette to compete with the views from his windows.  Most importantly, I love this room because Scott is really happy with it which means a lot to me since he trusted my choices and let me run with it.

He definitely needs a new office chair. It just doesn’t fit the space and one wheel just broke off from rolling it over the jute rug over and over this past week.  I’m thinking a cool vintage brown leather one would be awesome with the gray, but unfortunately they are mucho dinero.  For now, he will have to do with buying a new set of wheels .   If anyone knows of a cool rolling vintage leather office chair for a deal, I’m all ears.   The shelf and desk styling is a work in progress.    Styling shelves is always really intimidating to me!   I wish I had more time to go antiquing.   I always look forward to my trips to Marburger Farms  and the Warrenton Antique Fair and hope to find new treasures this coming April to add for more character.

Thinking About the House

The past few weeks the house has been moving along quick which means I better get to work!

The latest happenings:
The roof is pretty much 80% finished and I really am in love with it. Thank heavens because I’ve been sweating it a lot  since it was custom ordered; we were stuck with it love or hate. I know Scott will never let me forget what it took to get that roof.  The first part of the stucco work is finished so next week I get to go look at Round 2 of color samples. I didn’t realize the mixture would change the actual paint color to make it darker so I’m having to wing it (scary!). However, I’m really glad that the stucco won’t be painted but rather will be mixed into the texture. We are going to do a very smooth skip trowel method. I’m going for a clean look with just a hint of old world texture. I’m anxious to see it when it is finished.

Apparently, I better get on the ball because it is time to order tile selections. Though I know mostly what I want, I keep flip flopping back and forth between two entirely different looks for our kitchen which is causing me to lose sleep at night. The kitchen is the most important to me out of all the rooms. My OCD is coming out! One thing that is for certain….nothing is ever certain when it comes to me choosing things because I change my mind constantly. I do know I want everything to be classic.  I keep falling in love with cool tile (it’s amazing the options that are available now….my favorite is Walker Zanger; that place is overwhelming) but then I have to remind myself that my taste changes like the wind and I’ll probably get tired of it in 2 years. That is what is actually most challenging for me at this stage in the design process. I need to choose materials I will still love in 10 years….hopefully! 

Next week, I’ll try to post a few pictures of some of the house. It is sheetrocked. Yay! I meet with trim guy next week to show him my cabinet designs so they can start on those. From here on out, it should really move along.

My latest project has been trying to design custom arched doors to act as shutters for the arched window over the Master bathtub.   I’m using these doors as my inspiration because I love the architectural detail they add to the room rather than doing curtains.    I also love the bathtub here and had already planned on doing something almost  exactly the same (and everyone looks at me like I’m crazy when I explain to them I want a drop in bathtub paneled out to look stand alone because I love the detail of the panels rather doing an actual standalone) and when I saw this image, I knew that my vision wasn’t so crazy after all.    We currently have a standalone and I do love it but I wanted just a little something extra.

I would love to credit this image but don’t know where I got it anymore.