Cedarwood Project

I was honored to help two of my best friends purchase their first home! We closed a few weeks ago and it was a very happy day! Real estate is a funny thing…you never know what can happen. The ultimate goal is to close and have both parties be happy which I think we succeeded in. It is a beautiful home located in the heart of North Raleigh and is a hop, skip and jump to North Hills. The two story home features hardwood flooring, updated kitchen, built-in’s, updated master bath and HUGE backyard. The new homeowners are interested in blowing out a wall between the formal living room and family room to open it up a bit. We had a contractor check it out and he said if it was built accurately, then he did not think it was load baring but we never know until we tear down the wall. I have started to work on some 3-D models of the space to give my friends an idea of what it would look like opened up (with added beam for support and without). I hope to purchase some rendering plug-ins soon to assist in giving it a realistic look. For now, for space planning purposes, this really helps.

 

Ample Sample

Selecting paint colors can be a very intimidating process, even for experienced designers. Simply taping paint chips to the wall does not cut it in my opinion. Excuse the rotting banana.

Taping samples is a good start but narrow it down and take a trip to the local hardware store to buy a small sample (all brands offer samples nowadays). Purchase some bright, white foam board and paint the sample directly. Once it dries, you can move it around a room and see what it looks like in different lights (natural, incandescent, fluorescent etc). Look at it during different times of day to see if the color changes. A color can look great in the daylight but once the sun goes down and you are relying on that 1980’s framed ceiling light to illuminate the space, you might realize the paint looks like vom. No bueno.

Here is a sample board showing two paint samples I am considering for our living/dining/kitchen (see design board here).

Painting sample boards is something I always recommend. It is a safe, easy, non-committal way to test paint colors. If you are lucky, you live by an Ace Hardware and you can purchase small foam boards for a song.

Happy Painting

70’s Ranch Dressing : Raleigh Ranch Master Bathroom E-Design Board

 Initial e-design board for our master bathroom remodel.

70’s Ranch Dressing : Master Bathroom Remodel in Raleigh

Here are updated Google Sketch Up Renderings for our master bathroom. These are just basics and don’t have all the rendering plugin bells and whistles but it gave a good idea of how it would layout. We are finished with the bathroom except for one glass shower shelf (that will fit into the shower wall recessed shelf). It could not have turned out better! Picture will follow!

Google Sketch Up Renderings of Master Bathroom