Big Tex Designorama
This week, I was flown to Texas for a design extravaganza of momentous proportions! Hey, nothing is small in Texas, baby. My clients moved into their beautiful Dallas home in the mid 90's. Now that their kids have been out of the house for awhile, it is time for the house to get some attention. A facelift is needed (mere make-up is for sissies). The entire first floor needed to be addressed in some capacity and I had 3 days to make a phase 1 plan....GO! The first thing we did was walk through the home discussing their needs, the quirks of the house and style preferences. They inherited priceless French antiques and other family heirlooms and wanted to incorporate them into the house in a way that respected their authenticity and beauty but was modern and fresh.
Then we "shopped the house" and changed furniture layouts, stealing from other rooms for pieces that had more appropriate style or scale. Because my client loves furniture and used to be an antiques dealer, she had MUCH to choose from. It was incredibly fun to snoop in closets, the garage and other rooms and find the perfect piece already in their home!
Day two was spent running around town searching for fabric, wallpaper, furniture, lighting, rugs, and meeting with a contractor to get all our options on the table. Also we worked almost 20 hours straight that day. Whew (see "extravaganza of momentous proportions" comment above)!
The last day was tying up loose ends and making notes on each room; everything from "raise bathroom mirror 3 inches" to "knock out kitchen wall" to "upholster Louis XVI armchairs in green dragonfly print". In the end, we had a phase one game plan for their kitchen (brown toile with blue accents), family room (layout change, new rug and drum shade ceiling mount), living room (below- refresh everything!), entry (wood floors, ceiling mount lighting), dining room (black walls, gold ceiling), piano room (knock out wall, arc floor lamp, wallpaper), guest room (rearrange furniture, refresh accessories), a bar (paint and paper) and 2 baths (paper and lighting)...and everything in between!
It is going to take months, if not years, for the complete transformation to take place, but at least now we have a plan to go from. What a fun week it has been!
We love turquoise, but in this room, it completely takes over. Time for an update!
Here we lay out our favorite finds and see what looks good together and what needs to change. Looking at this, we decided the pink and green stripe needed to go. (Also, coffee is a MUST).