Kitchen Wrap Up

We have been doing some really exciting work recently involving the renovation of  older homes. I have the best team in the universe. Hands down.

To refresh your memory I am going to share a few of the before pictures from the Union Springs project and then show you where we are to date… almost finished!

breakfast room before

kitchen before-sink wall

This one makes me giggle. It looks like Mark and Marilyn are thinking the exact same thing, “Hmmmm, what in the world is she going to do with this?”

hmmm

We gutted it and started over; Said “bye,bye” to the oppressive green and the 1980’s border; moved the sink under the window where it belonged to take advantage of the wonderful garden view and re-configured the work stations. The orange terra cotta floors tiles were replaced with 2″ oak to match the rest of the house. The tiny wall ovens were replaced with a jaw dropping commercial Wolf.

See what you think so far.

Loving that Carrera going up! Notice the lovely base piece that sets the subways apart.

I think the hood is going to be amazing and I can’t wait to see the pot filler and sconces go up.

Beautiful new hood

The ceiling fan is coming down. Beautiful over-sized lanterns will take its place. One serendipitous thing that happened was that in the process of scraping back to the final layer of paint on the plaster corner units we hit the most lovely shades of blue-greens and yellows that echo the feel and color of the original handpainted murals in the dining room(just behind that closed door). Marilyn and I happened to arrive at work and walk into the room at the same time one morning. The plan had been for her to repaint the cabinet that day. At the same moment we said,”We can’t paint over this.” It is just too great the way it is. Sooooo, instead she just stabilized the paint so that it wouldn’t flake anymore, clean it up a bit and sealed it. We are now building the room around that element.

For instance, look back at the above picture; see how plain the ceiling now appears compared to the rich texture of the cabinet? This spring we will be expanding the size of the veranda that this rooms spills onto and a pergola will be built to provide protection from the hot afternoon sun. Knowing that this was the master plan I began to dream about bringing that outside element into the room. Inspired by a James Sampsel painting that Jeff and I just purchased I asked Marilyn Heard to paint the ceiling to look like a big branch from the oak tree outside  was reaching into the room and offering shelter. The leaf colors would echo those found in the recently discovered palettes from years gone by.

Originally the plan was to do this as eglomise’, a technique which involves reverse painting on glass. We were going to use acrylic mirror as the base since it was a ceiling installations but this did not prove to be practical so in the end we simply painted the ceiling  adding subtle doses of silver leaf and metallic paints to create the  magical effects with light play that the eglomise’ would have offered.

Hopefully, on Monday I will be able to show you everything except for the rugs and new chair seats.

What do you think so far?

If you would like to say, “That was fun!” at the end of your project contact me at

www.cindybarganier.com.

Did You Guess Correctly?

 Whatever made me think that there would be time for posting during move-in??

The next several posts will be re-caps told as though it is in real time. Hopefully you will feel like you are with us… minus the tired part.

So did you follow the clues in the last post and did they lead you to the correct assumptions?

If you guessed COLOR you are correct.

via Dungan-Nequette

If you picked up on simple, clean spaces with vibrant punches of energy …

good for you.

Here’s the 411

The house has a lot of beautiful trim: deep crown moulding, chair rails, wainscoting etc all painted pure white (read expensive to change).

Instead of fighting it, we decided to embrace the direction that we were given and keep the white trim but wipe away all of the heavy gold and green. By painting almost every wall in the house the same shade of white as the trim we will end up with a gallery effect that will allow art to be the star.

I am so moved right now by some of the great contemporary art that is on the scene we decided to let the entire design scheme be driven by art and rugs.

Here are some of the early pieces we considered.

The amazing thing about this project, and the most difficult part, was that I only had access to the house for about 4 hours. The previous owners had small children and in order to honor their wishes that their schedules not be too disputed we literally had to go in, take a lot of pictures, take as many measurements as I could think to take and get out.

I knew that we were doing a total demolition on the existing kitchen so that part was fairly simple and  I arrived with plans in hand for the new layout of the kitchen. That helped tremendously. We then went back to my hotel and said down with the pictures I had loaded on the Ipad and talked through some possible scenarios.

The next day was spent traveling all over Jacksonville with a granite broker. That was a first for me but I liked it. This guy, Roger, had relationships with each of the granite and stone yards in the city and he had a working knowledge of what each of them had in stock so after I explained to him what we were interested in he literally escorted us to 4 or 5 yards and helped us select the best slabs available for our project.

With slabs “in hand” we were able to double back and select tiles for backslash etc and even had time to make all of the plumbing and lighting selections.

I flew home the next day and began to formulate a plan.

A short time later my clients drove to Montgomery and we did an all day presentation.

Can you even believe that we were able to nail down every single decision in a single Saturday.

I am telling you, if you find a designer that you love and trust stick with them for life. Every house/project gets easier and more fun because you know each other so well. It is pure bliss.

I don’t want to give away too much but I will tell you that these fabrics play a leading role in the great room where I have designed a custom banquette in the white leather and that gorgeous blue ikat that will back up to the white, honed granite island on the kitchen end thus becoming the anchor for that space.

The gray flannel covers two sofas that flank the fireplace at the opposite end and the “Chanel” fabric will be on a pair of swivel chairs.

All of this will rest happily on a large custom sisal with a smaller rug on top that repeats the ikat pattern and coloration from the kitchen.

One of the new patterns from my fabric collection has now been dubbed “A….’s Blue Delight” and it will make an appearance as pillows on the sofa.

Is that not the worst name ever!! Help me out here folks. I stink at naming all of these patterns.

Here she is in paper form as I sent her over to the mill:

And this is what showed up on my doorstep yesterday printed on white linen.

(The color is more true than it appears here.)

What do you think? The initial response has been very exciting.

Springboarding off of the gorgeous Mediterranean blues and teals, we moved  to the living and dining areas with these fabrics.

The Chandelier on the left will hang over a  contemporary glass dining table that is 6 ‘ square.

These are for the breakfast room.

Varying textures is so important in the creation of a beautiful room.

The visual roughness of this sisal (though it is soft to the foot) will play off of the different woods while the

marble, lacquered pieces and linens add the sheen.

Another of my fabrics will anchor the tall wall of the foyer.

New pottery will rest on an antique chest from Italy to create the tension that makes a space fun to be in.

Well, that is an appetizer.

The last few items arrive tomorrow. We load the big truck and head out bright and early Monday morning.

It’s about to get exciting.

If you would like to say, “That was fun!” at the end of your project contact me at

www.cindybarganier .com.