The Latest Debate over Engineered Wood Floors

Some of Manhattan's pickiest interior designers and architects are choosing engineered flooring over solid wood for home renovations. Yes, layered flooring has risen a few steps above its tacky, plastic reputation and is gracing the floors of some of the city's swankiest homes, reports The New York Times. Read the article if you'd like to hear the pros and cons from these professionals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/garden/engineered-floors-are-getting-serious.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

CHICAGO - ART and ARCHITECTURE

Chicago is one of the most beautiful cities in the world.  I was extremely fortunate to attend Northwestern University in Evanston, and many weekends I took the El into the city to enjoy its artsy offerings.  My favorite place was the Art Institute, of course, and I became a member so I could use the library to study.  I also frequented the Merchandise Mart to study the furniture for my Interior Design major.  This past July, my husband and I re-visited the city.  We go every year to Lake Forest to visit family, but we had not stayed in the city for many years.  This year we did.  WHAT A TREAT!!!!

The picture above is at the entrance to the new Millenium Park.  It opened in 2004, after 5+ years of planning and building.  In the center of the photo is the new Crown Fountain, designed by Plensa.  This wonderful 50' double water column is a magnet for children:

This closeup shows the kids playing in the fountain.  This was 10 am Sunday morning.  By 5 pm, it was 90 degrees outside and there were hundreds of happy children (and adults!) splashing in the water.  Also visible in the closeup is an image on the back fountain.  This is a changing picture on the glass brick, using LED technology.

Right across the street from Millenium Park is the Art Institute.  We sat outside in the sculpture garden until the Museum opened.  There is a red Calder piece in the center of the photo, and a Henry Moore in the right foreground.  I was absolutely ELATED to be back at my favorite museum.

From inside the new Modern Wing of the Art Institute (designed by Renzo Piano), you can see, through the solar screens, another part of Millenium Park:  the Pritzker Pavilion, designed by Frank Gehry.  Giacometti's Three Men is in the foregound.

Here's an outside view of the Pritzker Pavilion, embedded in skyscapers.  I was very tempted to go wild with my camera, shooting all sorts of beautiful juxtapositions, but I had made myself a promise:  I will just ENJOY the day, and not get carried away trying to create art.  There is plenty of art to SEE.  I filled my soul with it!!

Also in Millenium Park is this wonderful creation: the Cloud Gate Sculpture.  It's a 3 story reflective steel structure composed of 168 stainless steel plates welded together, and its highly polished exterior has no visible seams.  Cloud Gate was created by Anish Kapoor, and was inspired by liquid mercury.  The sculpture's surface reflects and distorts the city's skyline and the curved, mirror-like surface provides striking reflections of visitors, the city skyline and the sky. Visitors are able to walk around and under Cloud Gate.

Inside the Art Institute, I didn't take many pictures.  We had only one day for all this, and I wanted to visit many more areas than I could possibly fit in!  The above painting is an early Picasso, in which he experimented with adding sand to the canvas. 

This is one of my all time favorites by Picasso.  It has a new location in the Piano Modern Wing, in a small anteroom before you enter the large, high ceilinged galleries.  It is a small intimate space which invites you to view the picture as if it were in your own home.  Nothing I can say can describe the wonder of being within a few feet of this magnificent painting!

This beautiful piece is quite large.  I can't remember the artist's name, but he is a regular in the modern scene.

My last photo inside the Art I. is this lovely Monet.  The Art I. has one of the most complete collections of Monet's works spanning his whole career. They are all wonderful, but this one captivated me:  I felt like I really was looking out a window at this beautiful French landscape.  I could see, hear, smell and feel this place!

In addition to the new Modern Wing, we explored many other sights in my favorite museum that day, including Chagall's America Windows (made famous by Ferris B.'s Day Off!), the Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room, Indian Art of the Americas, the Paperweight collection, American Decorative Arts from 1920-1970 (mid-century modern), European Decorative Arts,  and the miniature Thorne Rooms (which are so important to me that I will post a separate entry just for them!).

Where did we stay in the city?  In the Palmer House, which has been taken over by Hilton and restored to its initial grandeur....A truly magnificent hotel, worth a stop on your tourist agenda.  When I was in college, I used to go downtown and spend an hour or 2 in the Palmer House just for fun.  Sometimes I would study there.  Then when I was in the jewelry business, we rented a room during the Chicago Gift Show to display our work.  In those days, the Palmer House was part of the Gift Show circuit:  vendors with valuable displays showed in the PH, because we could stay with our work.  The above photo was our view from the 19th floor.

And what's this?  It's a long story!  Our room was an enlarged room, which had once been 2 rooms.  So we had one large room with 2 bathrooms.  (That was fun - we each had our own bathroom.)  I was fascinated by the thought that this portion of the hotel was originally built in 1925.  So I was wondering what the fixtures would have been at that time, and how many times things had been updated in the last 85 years.  I discovered in my bathroom that the water pipes to the sink were on the side wall, rather than right below the sink.  You can see that the cold water service actually sticks out further than the new marble facing.  So that means that the sink used to be on that wall.  I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what the original layout had been.  Only a designer or an architect would be so obsessed!!

For more pictures and info on Millenium Park and the Palmer House, see wikipedia.  Stay tuned for my next post on the Thorne Rooms!

SAN FRANCISCO KITCHEN - WEEK 2

I'm a Designer.  I NEVER pick anything without seeing all the samples.  This goes for paint colors, fabrics, tile, flooring, EVERYTHING. 

Week 2 brought the selection of the soapstone.  The original soapstone we had selected in 2008 was longer available (probably because everyone heard that Martha Stewart has soapstone in HER kitchen).  So we had to scour around for a slab with minimum veining and deep enough  black color once it was oiled.  Doug found a great company in Roseville:  http://teresinasoapstone.com/    Carrie was very helpful, and sent us photos of the possibilities.  I called her and arranged for samples to be sent to Doug and myself, so we could test the color with the rest of the kitchen samples - the red Ikea door, the black granite mosaic backsplash, and the espresso oak for the Dining Room bank of drawers.  Above is the sample we chose:  Black Minas.

Next, we had to select which slabs we wanted to purchase.  Carrie sent photos again, with the areas marked off in the sizes that we would need.  We completed the purchase and Doug's contractor picked it up in Roseville and began to cut!  For more information on soapstone as a countertop, visit teresina's website.  Doug loves it!

Now for the COLOR!

As you can see in the above photo - the COLOR is starting to emerge in this kitchen!  The red filler strips and the granite mosaic have been installed by Paul, a member of the team at Victory Construction, Inc.  Doug is extremely pleased with this team.  Their website states:  "Based on our deep spiritual and moral belief in the 'golden rule' of treating others with honesty and integrity, we strive to run our business in this manner."  And that is precisely how they operate.  Check them out at http://www.victorybuild.com/

Here's a close-up of the soapstone (not yet oiled) and the granite mosaic.

The whole team at Victory are from the Ukraine (yes, they speak Russian.  Doug is trying to learn some before the project is finished!)  The above photo shows the meticulous attention to detail that Paul puts into his work.  He was a surgeon in the Ukraine, and his beautiful craftsmanship shows it.

This photo shows what the Ikea cabinets look like before the red doors go on.

Here we have the bank of drawers in the Dining Room, with the granite mosaic and the not-yet-oiled soapstone.  You can catch a tiny bit of the espresso trim at the side of the cabinets.

Below:  a photo of the hood that is going to be installed this week.  Stay tuned for more progress soon!

The American Institute of Architects - Architect Barbie Makes Her Debut

Check out this recent edition of the AIA newsletter, which I have excerpted here:

Mattel is spotlighting architecture as its ‘’Career of the Year’’ for Barbie and hopes to educate and encourage girls to consider the field when thinking about what their jobs could be when they become adults.


With the launch of Architect Barbie by the AIA and Mattel comes a chance for architects to design a Dream House that meets her guidelines, including room for an office, open living and dining areas, and plenty of room for her five pets, including her giraffe.


The competition began on May 16. The AIA and Mattel will announce five finalists on July 12 and the public will be able to vote for their favorites between July 12 and August 1. The winner will be announced by the AIA on August 2.

‘’For more than a century, women have chosen to become architects to express and give form to new ways of living. Yet some still consider architecture an unusual profession for a woman. Architect Barbie salutes the many generations of women architects and encourages young girls to imagine a better world they can design and build,'' said Despina Stratigakos, Assoc. AIA and Professor of Architectural History at the University at Buffalo.


Mattel held a convention for girls to explore the ideas.  Here is a window into that event:
‘’One of my favorite floor plans, created by a seven-year-old girl, included a room for monsters; by acknowledging their presence and giving them their own space, the rest of the house would remain monster-free - a design solution to an eternal childhood problem that would have put Freud out of business,’’ said Stratigakos.


To read the whole article and view the convention, click here:
http://www.aia.org/practicing/AIAB090142

To view the fabulous designs, and vote, click here!!

http://info.aia.org/aia/architect-barbie.cfm

And now I have to reveal something....My profile on my website states that I have been an interior designer since the age of twelve, when I drew my first architectural plan for a doll house.  Yep, it was a Barbie house!   My parents had just completed a design/build home project with a local architect in Louisiana, and I had seen the plans and watched the construction.  That was my first exposure to architecture.  When I enrolled at Northwestern University I entered their Interior Architecture and Design program.

Here is a photo of the house that my parents built, and we lived in so happily for many years:

I've heard is said that "you can't go back".  But I did....this past June I visited my family in Louisana, and when I drove past the house it was FOR SALE.  So I got out of the car and took a walk around.  All the memories were still there, and have filled me with a deep peace.

WEEK 1 - Demolition and Building Walls

What a mess!!  This week the contractor took out all the old cabinets and the wall between the kitchen and dining room. Time to start over!  They also assembled all the Ikea cabinets.  Ikea is well built, but you have to assemble them yourselves.  If you don't have experience, then be sure to get a contractor to do that.  The price for an Ikea kitchen is very reasonable, but you have to allow for assembly in your budget.

Here's the wall where the frig goes...note the new dedicated elec box for the frig on the left (no more hanging cord!)....

....the new half wall between the kitchen and dining room.

....the frames for the dining room cabinets in front of the wall.  These cabinets will be a bank of drawers in a beautiful brown-black finish on horizontal oak.   They relate well to the new bathroom cabinet just around the corner.  In the back of this photo you can see the new black frig peaking out from under a canvas drop-cloth.

From inside the kitchen - the view out to the living/dining area.

Inside the kitchen....the center cabinet is for the oven, the 2 side cabinets will be doors and drawers in high gloss RED....Stay tuned for the progress....hopefully we will make new strides this week, and have more to show next week!

RED KITCHENS

 

I ADORE red kitchens!  They have so much life and an expectation of something really COOL just about to happen.  (BTW, it's possible to have a red kitchen and still have it be cool.  Red does not always have to be warm.  However, a red kitchen is never COLD.  How's that for contradictory color theory?  Designers are allowed to do that!)  

My first personal remodel was updating a 1960s modern house to be current for the 80s.  We tore out the old kitchen and put in a modern white German kitchen (by Alno).  The walls were - you guessed it! - RED.  I cut my teeth on that project:  I had to layout the design in centimeters!  And my husband and I did all the installation ourselves. But that's a blot post for another day....Moving on with Doug's kitchen:

I had seen this red kitchen from Ikea on line and loved it, and I had read in shelter magazines about architects that were using Ikea for their own NYC apartment remodels.  If architects were using it, the quality would probably be OK.  And the price was right:  for an apartment, we didn't want to spend all our budget on Italian cabinets...there had to be some money left for art, since that is Doug's passion.

Doug and I visited the Ikea showroom in Palo Alto to check out the quality, and decided to go with it.  We started this project in 2007, long before I got my new Interior Design software, so I used Ikea's software to lay out the floor plan, import the cabinets and do the elevations.

The design developed as we went along, as design so often does!  The original design was for the microwave to be hidden behind doors, but Doug wanted to consider ease of access, so I laid out this elevation (above), showing the new black frig and dishwasher, with the existing microwave installed in an open cabinet. Neither of us liked this, so we went back to the original, with the microwave behind the doors.

This sketch is hand drawn onto the Ikea wall elevation of the back wall of the kitchen.  It shows the view from the Dining Room, with the new hood vent, the Dining Room drawers from Ikea, granite mosaic backsplash, and soapstone counters.  Doug loves soapstone - he had it in his Santa Barbara house and is hooked on soapstone!

This elevation is a study I did for Doug about hanging his new Wusthof knives on a magnetic knife rail on the granite mosaic backsplash.  I imported the Ikea elevation into my new software and imported the picture of the Wusthof knives from the internet, and correctly scaled it to see if it would fit properly.  We're going with it!   Stay tuned for tomorrow's post: Week 1- Demolition and Wall Construction....

SAN FRANCISCO KITCHEN REMODEL - BEFORE Pictures

REMEMBER THIS VIEW?
We are finally nearing completion of this very fun apartment remodel in San Francisco.  To get a little background on the project and to see the first 2 posts on the bathroom remodel, go to the label column on the lower right and click on "Bachelor". 

When I first arrived in San Francisco to help my client with this project (2007!  ...There have been some delays, but those of you who know Doug know that it's not his fault!), this was what I saw:

A VERY small closed-off kitchen.  With the 10-story view to my back, this boxy cave to the front definitely didn't live up to its potential.

Inside the cave, the suspended microwave with exposed electrical connections for the microwave and frig made this apartment look like it was located in a different part of the city than Pacific Heights!  Also, all the finish materials were completely utilitarian - like a kitchen galley in an office building.

So we began to develop a design concept that would open up this space and add some luxurious finishes.  You can see in the photo above that we experimented with red for the kitchen color:  there is a red napkin taped to the frig, with a piece of aluminum foil, to give us an idea of the balance of red and stainless.  There is a paint color fan deck on the table opened to red colors.  (Click on any of the photos to enlarge.) 

Guess what!!!  We decided on RED.  Check out the next post to see how the design progressed, and to see the pictures from WEEK 1 of demolition. 

WHAT'S A NICE VACATION AFTER WORKING IN SAN FRANCISCO?

NORTH CAROLINA - OF COURSE !!

A few days after my return from the San Francisco projects, my husband and I headed over to the mountains of North Carolina, one of our most FAVORITE places to be. Our first stop was Asheville, to re-visit the Biltmore Estate, during their annual Festival of Flowers. If you haven't been to the Biltmore lately, it's worth a trip. They've added a whole new section called Antler Hill Village, with outdoor activities, and you can visit their farm and winery as well. Next time we go, we are going to make it a 2-day pass, since there is so much to see. The second day is really a bargain. Check it out on http://www.biltmore.com/

Also an enhancement to your next visit:  watch the new British Masterpiece Classic: Downton Abbey, a 2010 seven part series on aristocratic and servant life.  This made the Biltmore come alive for us!

The gardens were wonderful, as usual, and we hit this beautiful section just in time to take advantage of the dramatic lighting on these outdoor sculptures. After we had walked down to the lake and back, the light had totally changed, and I was so glad I had snapped these photos at the perfect time. It was a gorgeous cool day in mid-May, with Carolina Blue sky.

One of the most impressive things going on at the Biltmore, from the interior designer's perspective, is the current work in historic preservation. There is now a section on the second floor of the main house that details the process for restoring some of the previously closed off rooms. Some of these rooms are now open on the tour, and others are currently undergoing transformation , to be opened in the near future.

This educational area on the second floor is worth reading every line in each of the kiosks. They have written explanations, films showing the processes, and actual examples of the materials that you can see, and in some cases feel. For example: learn how they discover what the wallpaper looked like in the original room, and then how they track down the company in France that can re-create that original pattern. Watch how the French artists hand color the paper, and hand block the designs. Another example: learn the same information regarding the handmade velvet fabric that covers the walls in Mrs. Vanderbilt's room at the front of the house, where she bore her children; and feel the velvet. See how they restore the old furniture and porcelain. Allow at least a whole hour for this section of the house. It's fascinating to trace the magnificent work they are doing. Also be sure to watch the film by the descendants of the Vanderbilts. This is a family home that they are sharing with us all. It's a great privilege to visit!!

Also, if you are interested in high quality fabrics from different periods, be sure to check out this site:
http://www.rentmeister-manufaktur.de/       This family owned business produces exquisite fabrics to order, and his client list includes european nobility, movie stars, the latest Harry Potter film, and ordinary people like us!..........

After our wonderful visit to the Biltmore, and a few quiet days at Chetola in Blowing Rock, we returned to interior design in Cary, refreshed by the beauty of the North Carolina mountains!