I love my work and my clients. I enjoy collaborating and coming up with ideas for others so much, but sometimes I just want or, to be honest, NEED my own project to be able to have free reign on creativity in style, ideas in function and openly enough: where and what I allocate my budget.
I am so excited to have this project and to be able to share my process with you.
Planning
Making a plan for a room renovation is daunting, let alone a whole house renovation! This is one of my favorite parts of the process and I wanted to share the realities of it. Pulling from my all of my past renovation experiences prior to me going back to college for my degree in Interior design and, in spite of the degree, the same realities still remain true even today! Planning, Function and Budget don’t go away when you are trained to make things “look” great. My value comes from considering each of these while making things look great.
For me, seeing an empty house is looking at a blank canvas. The ideas and possibilities are endless. It comes with this huge build up of excitement knowing that I can do anything I want with the space and truly make it a reflection of my artistic ability. But then the reality of time and money creep into the equation and it forces me to go into a period of pulling back the reins so to speak.
I am also a HUGE believer in functional design, which in my opinion, everyone should be. It can look fantastic but spending time in a space that doesn’t function well will soon lead to not wanting to be in it at all.
Functional Design
Designing a space to be used by others isn’t always an easy task. There are the normal guidelines to follow, traffic path dimensioning, counter heights, etc. but people organize themselves and use space differently from one another. Truly taking the time to consider this is one of the keys to great design that a homeowner will love you for at the end of the project.
What side of the sink works best for the dishwasher? Can you live with a stackable laundry situation to give you more floor space or is that to high or low for you? Where is the trash pull out best located for how you move around a kitchen? Where do you keep electronics at night? Where do you make your coffee and take your vitamins in the morning? You can effectively plan for these things when your remodeling and not have all of these items sitting on a haphazard counter somewhere. I can’t close my eyes and envision you doing these things, collaboration is huge here.
And, Believe me..It’s worth the overthinking!
In the end Money Drives the bus!
There is no getting around the fact that EVERYONE has a budget to stick to. It’s a rare thing that I can just choose finishes without considering the final cost. Small budgets can work, but, they are much more work and compromise, and thought and exploring materials options, etc.
A big part of my goal with re-loving this house is to keep all of the character in tact and we are lucky enough to have that in every room with the gorgeous wood trim and original floors, etc.
I wanted to talk about how you don’t need a huge budget to have great design. In fact, we are designing and implementing that design strategy with this property.
Designing Broke
My assistant, Miriah, said to me during the beginning part of this process just “Design Broke”. It resonated with me and I knew she was right.
One day when I was overly stressed about making this project work she broke out one of her well spoken reminder speeches of how I should follow my own advice. She reminded me that I have a gift and ability to put together creative ideas for everyone I work for, and I needed to just do that for myself within a smaller budget than I was used to working with on personal projects.
It was a refreshing reminder to get off the “I need a ton of money to make this work” train. So now, when it comes to this project I have resigned myself to use and implement that method. Thankfully, our conversation was just the “kick in the pants” that I needed!
We will be starting with some not so fun sweat equity chores such as removing wallpaper, sanding, patching and priming all of the old plaster walls and then we will get down to the nitty gritty of things bringing this space to life in a functional way. But, That’s another days post!