Thursday, March 12, 2015

DC Design House Part VI - Butler's Pantry

DC Design House Part VI - Butler's Pantry

First, a big congratulations to Paula Daniels who is our winner of the Pottery Barn monogrammed soaps.  They are being monogrammed as we speak and will ship off to Paula.  Stay tuned for more giveaways in the weeks to come as we unveil our newly updated website and blog.

DC Design House, still under construction

Butler's Pantry, DC Design House 2015
Our presentation board for the Butler's Pantry is below.  These boards are important to show to the DC Design House committee our ideas and how we are going to implement them.

In our case, we were giving an interpretation of the country home with the traditional aspects and yet with some updated and hip accessories.  All in all, just a fresh approach to design today.
Presentation Board by Margery Wedderburn Interiors, LLC
Our ideas were approved, and we were ready to move forward.

However ...

We wondered what the backsplash tile would look like but no one seemed to know.  We assumed it would be similar to kitchen tile and detailing.  See the pictures below of the kitchen.




Subtle, beautiful tile in the kitchen.  This is what we expected for the pantry.  But then they did tile the pantry and...

Not what we were expecting or banking on...Beautiful in certain applications...


We were quite surprised to see what backsplash was selected and installed in the space!  This is a mirrored tile.  There are black mirror tiles, antique mirror tiles and regular mirror tiles.  A few pictures below can show it up close.  It's a great tile, but just didn't fit with what we were planning to do in the there.  This herringbone style tile would be beautiful in a NYC kitchen or bathroom, or in a contemporary style house in DC, or in a Las Vegas restaurant.  It is a very cool tile.  It just didn't go with everything we had already presented to the DC Design House committee!  Aacckk!  What to do?




In this shot above you can see how much it reflects.  And since the tile spans the entire wall, there would be no way to attach or hang anything on it.  Our entire design direction was going to have to change.  This is what makes participating in show houses around the country such an adventure.  You just never know what you will encounter!

We thought about covering the wall with a light gypsum board and then wallpapering it, but as you can see from the picture above, the process of cutting a board around the window trim (not to mention the cabinets) would be extremely difficult.  One contractor wanted to attach a wall board directly into the brand new cabinets with nails, saying we could patch later.  PATCH LATER??  Absolutely not!  We have to protect the brand new cabinets and the very expensive wall.  This home is for sale!!

Our design suddenly veered to this possibility below.  This would be the window treatment fabric and we would use a natural woven wallpaper for the walls.  It would take us in a completely different direction, as we couldn't ignore the tile wall!  See below.



This fabric is absolutely beautiful.  This is the crazy thing about design.  Once you have a new direction, you mind just runs with it, and suddenly we were going in this new direction and really having fun with it.  We could use these beautiful teals and the periwinkle and navy, shown in teh fabric above.  We would use a natural woven wallcovering, like one featured below.



Dining Room in a Vienna, Virginia home designed by Margery Wedderburn Interiors, LLC
Our favorite idea was to use the wallcovering featured here in a dining room that Margery Wedderburn Interiors designed a couple of years ago.  A whole new direction!

But then, we really loved our original direction, and so we HAD to find a way to do it but to protect that wall.

We found Knightsbridge Interiors, a drapery and wall paneling company in the DC area, and they are going to add these pre-fabricated wall panels to the walls with the same fabric as our favorite Hines wallpaper from our original presentation board, and voila!  Now it is all going to work out.  Phew.