DC Design House Part XI - Butler's Pantry

DC Design House Part XI

 - Butler's Pantry

We are now working on the strie wallpaper by my faux painter, Stacey Tranter of Twin Diamond Studios.  We met at the house to look at her fauxed wallpaper samples for the back walls of the closets.  What do you think?

I didn't want to just paint the walls one flat color for the backs of the shelves.  While I do stries all the time in the interiors we design, I wanted something more fun and lively for the backs of these shelves.  We will place lots of items on the shelves, and the items will need a dynamic background.

We decided to bring the darker stripe tones closer together so there is more of a repeat between the various colors.  Wait till you see the real thing installed.

Here is a closeup of the actual wallpaper.  It has these tiny flecks of gold in it which you can't relaly see in the pictures but it's fantastic.

Above:  You can see a bit of the window treatment fabric stripe underneath the wallpaper sample at this moment.  All ties together like we'd hoped for.

Here is our chandelier going from a champagne tone (which is an exceptionally beautiful finish.  You can still see a bit of that finish on the candelbra portion of the chandelier).  This cchandelier is through American Eye at the DC Design Center.

And here is our wallpaper, a work in progress.  Realistic, isn't it??

Stacey Tranter, our faux painter, is also adding the stenciling to the sisal area runner.  Here are our samples which I showed you before, but this one above is our favorite, which not only has variation in the size of the circle from top to the bottom, but the coloration changes as well.  They will make each circle a bit thicker for the actual rug but keep these same proportions.

Above: Faux samples of the sisal runner for us to select.  I prefer the sample on the bottom.  How about you?

 Above:  Here is Michael DiGuiseppe helping install the ceiling wallpaper.  Michael is amazing.  Best.Wallpaper.Installer.Ever.  We love him.  He is actually installing the Hines wallpaper on the 3 walls for our Butler's Pantry.  And he's installing wallpaper for several other designers in the show house.  Michael will install the wallpaper on the walls after the ceiling work is complete.

So... what do you think of the ceiling wallpaper here??  Doesn't it look like real wood?  Stacey Tranter of Twin Diamond Studios is amazing.  This is a special custom wallpaper that she made for our space.  Love how it turned out!

And now she is on to adding the closet wallpaper...Isn't it cool?  Love the strie lines. And the colors.  We pulled it all together using our palette of spring green, peacock, aqua and turquoise.  We're getting there!

Above:  Here is our wallpaper installed on the 3 walls.  Michael, our wallpaper installer, is finished.  SO!  Wallpaper is complete, chandelier is installed and we have added some plates.  More to come very soon as we continue our work this week.  And this is crunch week .  All spaces must be complete by Friday, March 27th.  Lots to do.

Margery

DC Design House 2015 - Butler's Pantry - Part IX

DC Design House 2015

 - Butler's Pantry - Part IX

So with our rendering in place, we are moving forward.  I just wanted to share some fun photos of our meetings at the Design House and other details here.

Perspective art by Maria Morga, www.MorgaStudios.com

Picture from DC Design House Facebook Page

You can see all the presentation boards submitted for the various rooms by designers for the Design House.  I believe there were over 80 designers submitting for the 27 spaces.

from the Facebook page for DC Design House

This just demonstrate the cold and wet days leading up to Bare Bones day at the DC Design House.  Pretty photo.  This is in front of the fountain which is located in the front yard of the home.

from Facebook page of DC Design House

The first meeting of the DC Design House designers and committee staff.  Note all the wine... are we all that stressed out???  So funny.

Facebook page of DC Design House

Another picture above of that first meeting after the designers had been selected and before the house was even complete.

DC Design House Facebook Page

Here is another picture.  Note everyone is in their coats.  No power in the house yet and it was our coldest January on record!!

Our fearless leaders - Randi Reilley, Taylor Wells and Karen Bailey

On Bare Bones Day, a few of us met in the Master Bathroom while touring around.  This picture includes Jeff Akseizer, Skip Sroka, Christopher Patrick and me.  Bare Bones Day was really fun.

Can't wait to see everyone's finished rooms!!

Margery

DC Design House - Butler's Pantry - Part VIII

DC Design House 2015 

- Butler's Pantry - Part VIII

With our finalized design in place, we are ready to go.

Rendering sketch by Maria Morga, www.MorgaStudio.com

 The presentation board is complete and we are working with the utterly amazing and talented Maria Morga, who is doing this beautiful rendering of the space.  We send her all measurements, details, colors, fabrics.  Literally everything we can.  And then she begins her work to create a perspective that is fantastic.  Here is her first sketch of the space above.  Did I tell you she was talented??  I will do a detailed blog just about Maria in a few weeks.  I love her butler walking through the space.  He's fun.

And... After many more emails, communications and phone calls, here is Maria's final rendering of the space:

Color rendering by Maria Morga, www.MorgaStudios.com

Her work is lovely, isn't it?  I can't even believe how talented she is!  We are thrilled with her work.  And this rendering (or really, piece of art) will be shown on the website for the DC Design House and it will also be featured in the program for the house.  I just hope our space can look somewhere near as nice as her perspective.

More to come... And thanks for reading.

Best,

Margery

DC Design House 2015 - Butler's Pantry Part VII

DC Design House 2015

Butler's Pantry 

Design Process Part VII

As we talked about the other day, we had a new dilemma to work out with the mirrored tile backsplash.  At first we started down a completely new design path, with fun fabrics that would work with the tiles.  We would still try to hide a bit of the tile somehow, but we would incorporate it into the entire design.

Here was the tile we were suddenly working with on the main wall of the Butler's Pantry below:

We re-selected a new window treatment fabric and then the new design was ON!  There is nothing more fun than starting this process.  And a designer's mind is then all over the place thinking of the new direction and all the possibilities and the details. So below was our new fabric selection.  What do you think?  It goes with the tile wall.

And the natural woven wallcovering from Maya Romanoff would be like the one pictured in a home we designed a few years ago.

Dining Room in Vienna, Virginia by Margery Wedderburn Interiors, LLC

Maya Romanoff wallpaper - closeup

Look where we would take the entire design with the funky vases and cool colors, above.  
And then for the ceiling, check out these photos of Leonardo DiCaprio's new home in Palm Springs.  Instead of the fauxed ceiling in pine, we would still do the faux wallpaper ceiling, but it would be in a highly lacquered style, such as the ceiling shown here in these pictures featured in American Luxury online magazine (- http://www.amlu.com/2015/03/12/rent-leonardo-dicaprios-palm-springs-home-for-4-5knight/?utm_source=MailingList&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2015-03-nltr5)

www.AMLU.com

www.AMLU.com

So much fun to figure out!  Now this is FUN.

Back to the Original ...
But then, we really wanted to go with our original design,and so we had to find a way to safely cover that tile wall and remove it all at the end of the Design House.  We brought in Knightsbridge Interiors, an amazing window treatment and fabricator company in the area, and decided to do fabricated wall panels.  See pictures of examples of them below.  

Back side of pre-fabricated board

Front side of board.  Our fabric will be the Hines white one with green vines.

They are pre-fabricated and then installed, and the back side is like a gypsum board...very soft.  It will not be nailed in place, but, rather, it will be site measured and then pressed into place.  Very tricky.  We are so grateful to Knightsbridge Interiors for working with us in great detail on this.  We will blog on them in the future.

And so with that in mind, we added a marble backsplash, thanks to R. Bratti (www.rbratti.com), the 4th generation stone contractors in Alexandria, VA.  And now we are ready for the pre-fabricated walls!!  They will be site measuring for them later this week.

More very soon!

Margery

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.