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.

DC Design House Process - Butler's Pantry - Part V

DC Design House Process

Butler's Pantry

Part V

We are contining our series on the design development of the Butler's Pantry for the DC Design House, a showhouse which will feature 27 local designers for a month in April and early May.

So with the walls, ceiling and colors figured out, we moved on to the flooring.  Here were some of our ideas:

Home in Potomac, Maryland by Margery Wedderburn Interiors, LLC

We designed the home above and used a Helios style striped rug a few years ago, and I was thinking that this linear quality might be nice for the show house, but in a different colorway.

http://helioscarpet.com/carpet_detail_color_options.aspx?carpetid=565&carpetname=Cote%20D'Azur

Here is another image from the Helios website of this style of carpet, which can be made in to an area rug.

However, we decided to do something more natural in style and feel, and what better than a sisal rug to fit this bill?  Stark Carpets is helping us out here, with the sisal shown below on the bottom.

While the top style is really casual and country farm - ish, we needed the lower one because we are now going to add stenciling to it and tie it in with other elements in the room.

Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out what chandelier to use.  Something fresh, different and unexpected.  See below some of our first considerations:

www.horchow.com

This was one of our first choices, from the Horchow catalog.  We loved the reflective quality of it which would be perfect withe the beautiful light streaming in that window.

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#safe=off&q=dering+hall+lighting

Then I found this utterly amazing Dandelion Chandelier, above, on the Dering Hall website and fell in love.  Have you ever seen anything so beautiful or ethereal?  I tried to get this for our room but it is a brand new light fixture by Remains Lighting in NYC, and they could not meet our deadline for the show house.  So we searched on...

We found this one above which seemed similar to the Dandelion.  This is a beautiful product from Matthew Studios Inc. of NY.  We never could reach them, though.  We left messages but did not hear back.

But then I had an epiphany about what I wanted to do...  See below...

http://www.americaneyewdc.net/Vendors.aspx?ModuleID=3

This is the perfect thing for our Butler's Pantry.  It is from the American Eye showroom in Washington, DC.  And we are going to lacquer it a peacock blue tone.  Should be really pretty.

With this completed, I then decided on the stencil pattern for the area runner, which will be a peacock stencil pattern which mimics the pattern of this chandelier.  Voila!  See below.  Our faux painters are working their magic again with this idea...

Here are our samples.  Which one do you like the best?  We already know what we are doing.

Okay, stay tuned for more very soon.  We are having fun with this and hope you are too.

Best,

Margery

DC Design House - Butler's Pantry Part IV

DC Design House

Butler's Pantry

Part IV

This is our continuing blog and study of the Butler's Pantry that we are designing for the DC Design House, which will be opening in April in McLean, Virginia.

So we had our first inspirations which included the coffee mug, the wallpaper and our main colors, the green of the wallpaper and turquoise, aqua and peacock.  We were ready to move forward.

Mug from Pier One Imports

The ceiling and the flooring were the next steps, and we wanted something to read linear on the ceiling and then an area rug to tie together some of the details.  Here were some inspiring images for us:

Kelly Wearstler Interiors

RE: the image above.  This is not what we are going to do, but I just had to show you this...This is an incredible interior by Kelly Wearstler - a bar area that she designed.  We are also using the cut malechite style for some of our details on her back wall.  But beyond that, check out the ceiling.  This linear style gives so much energy and definition to the space.  Ceilings should always be taken into account and treated too, as they are another surface.  Don't just ignore a ceiling with some white paint.  So while we were not going to paint in blue and white lines like above, we were going to use this linear style for our ceiling, but in another way.  But I just had to show you this bar from Kelly Wearstler because it is bold and completely too cool.

These images represent what we are really going to do.  Our incredible faux painting team, Stacey and Derek Tranter from Twin Diamond Studios, are going to faux paint wallpaper that will be applied to the ceiling.  HOW GREAT IS THAT???  We are so excited to have Twin Diamond on our team for this pantry.  I will be blogging about them in a later piece, but they have a new line of wallpaper coming out, and this will be a debut of one of their wallpapers.  Can't wait to see it installed.

Then we are going to use these items in the space.  And they will be for sale, if you want to come along and buy them.  20% of the proceeds go to the National Children's Hospital, so you are investing in something for yourself while also supporting Children's Hospital.

More on the entire process soon.

Margery

Butler's Pantry at the DC Design House - Part III

Butler's Pantry at the DC Design House 2015 - Part III

Our blog today is a continuation of our work with the DC Design House and the Butler's Pantry.

One of the first things I wanted to do with the DC Design House Butler's Pantry space was to give the two main colors I'd landed on, blue and green, some more definition.  We are using a subtle spring green which is not too bright and not yellowish.  And then I wanted to bring in the peacock blues which are so big now and also the teals. 

Photo courtesy of Thibaut website: www.thibaut.com

 I wanted to use the wallpaper, shown above, because it is so fresh and fun.  It is like a new take on toile but not in a 1990's sort of way but in a new, updated style.  Thibaut has some of the best wallpapers and patterns around at the moment.  But the repeat on this wallpaper is actually huge, and the walls and areas of the Butler's Pantry were not big enough to have this kind of wallpaper on the walls.  So it couldn't be this one.  But I HAVE to use this someday, somewhere else.  Doesn't it make you feel happy and hopeful for Spring?

  
We decided on a Hines wallpaper instead, which had more white but still with the beautiful green vines.  It was not too busy or too loud so that we could add other elements in the space and there would be a nice balance between all elements.  And, lucky for us, this wallpaper just happened to have a matching fabric, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise for us that we did not know about at the time.  We will tell you more about that in our next blog.

We love this fabric and wallpaper from Hines.  See below.

Our next inspiration:  a peacock coffee mug -



 I bought these cups and they were the perfect inspiration for the colors and feeling I wanted for the room.  These will actually be on sale in the space.  And it's funny, because at Bare Bones the other day a lady walked through, looked at my presentation board and said, "These cups were your inspiration weren't they?"  And she was right!  I was going to use these on another project.  Sometimes it happens that way...they can work for more than one project.  I can't get enough of these coffee cups!

Anything and everything peacock is huge in the design world at the moment.  We went to the High Point Furniture Market this past fall, 2014, and there were peacocks in the designs everywhere.  You may have noticed that in the design world we seem to go through stages where some animal is the inspiration for a great deal of design.  In the past few years we have seen frogs, bees, owls ... Quite often the animal goes along with the colors that are big at the moment, and this would be true here since the peacock blue color is big right now.  It will sift on down through everything you see over time.  These trends are fun to watch.  I've always loved peacocks and the peacock blue tones, but it's nice to finally be able to find an extraordinary amount of products with this color and theme.  Makes it easier when designing.

 I love this light fixture above.  This style has been around for awhile, but they have added the peacock coloration now with that peacock eye style.  Beautiful.

 And here is a peacock necklace from Lord & Taylor.  This could be really fun to wear with a black V-neck dress.  What do you think?

And then of course, there is the shower curtain.  How fun is this?

If you Google peacock accessories, you can find much too much out there.  You will be tired of peacocks in about 2 minutes.  So I wouldn't suggest it.  But just a hint of peacock somewhere is particularly enticing. 

Other inspirations for our space just include images, which are always a great way to be inspired, including these below:

Architectural Digest online

Look at the colors here... these tones are so rich and infused with the energy.  This is what I want our Butler's Pantry to feel like... energetic and a bit exotic -- just the tiniest bit exotic.

Archtectural Digest magazine

So when isn't Tory Burch an inspiration?  I've included pictures of her renovated offices in NYC.  Love everything about it.   This was featured in Architectural Digest a few months ago.  You can read the entire article here: http://www.architecturaldigest.com/decor/2014-09/tory-burch-manhattan-office-article.

And then last but not least, an inspiration from an Utterhouse mirror:

Uttermost:  http://www.uttermost.com/c-3-mirrors.aspx

More on our development very soon.

Margery

DC Design House - Butler's Pantry Design Updates

Butler's Pantry
DC Design House - Updates

So once we had seen the space, measured and taken pictures of the Butler's Pantry, we were ready to begin thinking about what we might want to do in there.  Immediately my thought was to use greens and blues, which (I now realize) is completely consistent with what a lot of other designers are thinking about the house.  The thing is, the stonework is so beautiful and almost sets the tone for what one wants to do with the space.

As crazy as it might sound, houses and spaces "speak" to designers, and we tend to have this immediate sense about what we want to do with a space.  Whether it is a given natural talent or a developed one, most designers just get these feelings about spaces and go with them.  That was certainly the case for me with this space.  I knew what I wanted to do and it was just a matter of finding the things that were already in my head.  And sometimes that is actually the bigger challenge...finding the things that are already in our heads!!

I wanted to find a wallpaper for the walls.  Not something too busy or crazy, because the space didn't need to become all about the wallpaper, but the room needed some movement and some fun.  Basically a Butler's Pantry should be fun.   I want to show you some really wonderful Butler's Pantries just to give you a feel for what is already out there and what you can do with a Butler's Pantry.  I went onto Houzz.com which is the perfect place for ideas.  Here are some of the Butler's Pantries I found on there:



DeGraw and Dehann - from Houzz.com

I love how clean this butler's pantry looks, with the dark wood floors and the view into the dining room.  Lovely.


Gast Architects, from Houzz.com

I love how organized this pantry seems above, from Gast Architects.  Love the drawer pulls and the granite countertops.  It feels casual and comfortable and yet so very organized.

Hendell Homes, from Houzz.com

 The pantry above reminds me of those Italian drugstores... something very old world about it, and it is really nice.  And I love these glass cabinets in the foreground with the glass shelves.  You can display so much here.

Highland Homes, from Houzz.com

 The rooster here is so much fun perched on the counter!

Jamie Gold, from Houzz.com

 The minty green tone in the pantry above is really something special.  You won't see this in too many homes, and it give this house an individual feeling.   If you were working in here you would be quite happy!

Kitchen Chalet, from Houzz.com

 The artwork in the pantry above is spectacular.  Love love these little guys marching along on their horses.  Makes for a very individualistic pantry.

Kathryn Long, ASID, from Houzz.com

 

 I love the combination of the wood shelves and the wainscoting on the back walls in this pantry. 
That wainscoting feels like a country farmhouse pantry in this space and makes you want to go right in there and cook!



Rob Kane - Kitchen Interiors - from Houzz.com
 

 The next one above is nice with the pass-thu space.  You could do a lot with a space like this!
It would be nice to have in any home.

Shiela Off, from Houzz.com
 

I just think the pantry above is beautiful.  Clean, elegant.  Well done!

Swanson, from Houzz.com

 How fun is this pantry with the red cabinets and the tree wallpaper?  What is so much fun about this pantry is that it makes a statement all on its own.  Welcome to the Pantry!  Love it.

Worthington Custom Builder, from Houzz.com
 

 This last one just shows what you can do with a small pantry space and how the lighting in the cabinetry and the glass gives it a more open feeling.  Great way to make the space seem larger.

This is all for now.  Which one was your favorite?

More soon,

Margery

Free Giveaway - Monogrammed Soap Set from Pottery Barn!

Free Giveaway - from Our Blog

and Home Style ...

We are re-doing our website and blog site, and as part of our new design we are going to be giving away a few items over the next few months.  

The first one...

We are giving away a Pottery Barn monogrammed paperwhite soap set!!

All you have to do is sign up for our email Blog over on the right hand side of this page, press the SUBMIT button and then post a comment below so we know you have signed up.  Then we will enter your name into the drawing and notify the lucky person by next week.  Then we will order your own personalized Paperwhite soap set and send it on to you!

Note:  If you have already signed up, then just leave a comment and you will be entered.

Good luck and we hope you win!!