NEW POST SERIES: OUR NEW HOUSE

 

 

Announcement Time!!!!

 

I had told you all, many weeks ago, that I would be working with a designer/blogger friend in exploring the color possibilities for our new house. I really didn't mean to make you wait this long...our trip, and life in general, sort of interrupted the train of thought/flow of information etc. on this project! I am working with.......!!!!!!!.....

Kelly Berg of ArteStyling

Here is Kelly's Website

and

Here is her blog

Take a look at her site and you will agree that she has energy, a wonderful style and great sense of color. Thank you Kelly!

Kelly has very graciously and kindly agreed to work with me on this project and help with the color work involved. Yes, I DO work with color, and, as you have seen in my present house up North, I've done a pretty good job! But, this new house is so different. The light is different, the layout, the space, the contours, the openness of the rooms, the flow; even the age of the house makes it so very different: seventeen years young versus ninety years old. Here, every step we take is heard througout the house: all the floors creak, none of the doors shut really tightly. It's quirky, you might say. Well, the new house is just the opposite: silent floors, doors that glide shut quietly, cabinets that click shut easily and, in fact, kitchen drawers that look almost new and without tiny traces of many layers of contac paper!

Kelly lives in California; I am on the East Coast. So yes, this is a challenge. I am going out there in a few weeks so we will actually have a chance to sit and work together: I look forward to that!  In the meantime, I have sent her many pictures and I made two videos of different areas of the house. But for this blog I am going to focus on specific areas, either as we work on them, or just because I want to show you!

First up: the lavatory! My "signature" lav is painted a dark, glossy green.

I know, you can see the little bleeps in the surface of the wall. Well, it's almost 100 years old, for goodness sake! But isn't that the cutest, most antiquated sink? The provencal skirt is missing here: sorry! Wish I had a picture of this room as it was when we moved in: the floor (beautiful hardwood) was covered in small purple and lavender ceramic tile and the walls were purple. Yikes!

Here's a shot of our new lav:

Plain Jane.

The towel bar and paper holder were anchored with tons of these 4" screws and metal mollies: what were they going to do: chin ups on the towel bar?

I tried to remove them but couldn't. Our contractor has agreed to take everything out, fill the holes, and smooth out the wall.

That faucet has got to go!

So, I was all set to paint it the same dark, glossy green. And then...well...after Kelly included some blue in her color palette for me (not knowing I am not a fan of blue...), I began thinking. Then I went to the Benjamin Moore paint section at my very nearby Ace Hardware and began looking at dark, very dark blues.

Voila! "Mysterious" from the Affinity line.

It's hard to tell here and in fact, it looks almost black. But it's not. It's spectacular with white woodwork. I'm excited and energized now to really be changing up the colors. Maybe the green has outstayed its welcome; and it just doesn't seem as contemporary as the blue.

Dare I ask for comments?

(and yes, I DO need suggestions for that wooden "skirt" around the new sink...)

 

FOR THE BIRDS

If I was a bird I just might want to eat from one of these!

oh the colors

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Aren't they great? They're the Bird Feeder collection,  from Joe Papendick. 

do you think they're squirrel-proof?

SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH CLAUDE

The park being the one and only

Bois de Boulogne

Just days before this we had finally made phone contact with Claude. Claude is a very good friend of our very good friends from the Hudson Valley. They met and got to know him when they all lived in San Francisco, several lives ago!

Quoi dire? Claude is a true Parisian; born and bred. He lived in San Francisco where he was part owner and chef of a restaurant; when it closed he moved back to Paris.

Then, there is the restaurant "La Bagatelle", and this is where we met Claude for Sunday lunch. The day was perfect: sun/clouds and just the right temperature for eating outside.

Here's a short history:

Marie-Antoinette waged that the Count of Artois, who had bought this property in 1775, could not turn it into a park in 64 days.

Belanger designed it and Thomas Blaikie built it, to the day’s in-vogue anglo-chinois taste.

Bagatelle park and chateau only barely eluded obliteration during the Revolution, but a string of owners altered them considerably. The orangerie, gates and stables date back to 1835, and the guard’s lodgings were built in 1870, along with the Trianon and the two terraces.

The City of Paris bought this gem in 1905 and entrusted its head gardener, Jean-Claude-Nicolas Forestier, with the restoration work. He set out to turn these gardens into a botanical domain without upsetting the harmony that the existing layout had already established. He turned the subsistence crops into showcases for collections of roses, irises, perennials, clematises, peonies and other flowers.

The well-known Roseraie de Bagatelle (rose bed) which has hosted an international competition every year since 1907, is also the work of his hand.

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Guess which one is Claude and which is my husband:

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Un vrai "dejeuner":

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Peacocks in the park:

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flikr: mingkeong

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flikr:ctdoan

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It was a delightful day. After lunch we drove around the parc, around the famous Longchamps racecourse, through the parc and back to our metro at Porte Maillot!

THE MAILMAN DELIVERS HERE

In the village we are moving to, in North Carolina, the mailman does NOT deliver to the house. 

Instead, we walk across the park:

 

to the mail kiosk:
 

Cute no?

We find our box:

And if there's a package we get a key to one of these larger boxes, left in our regular box!

   

And as we exit and head home, across the park, here is what we see:

 

And today, as a special treat, I went for an afternoon swim. The water, the sun, the temperature: all were perfect.

 

 

Not bad, not bad at all!  

MAISON ET OBJET: DESIGN ELEMENTS II

What, exactly, did I see at the show?

To begin, the signs on the front of each building were....gray!

Now you have a hint as to what I saw. I started my day in this building, "Home Accessories" and yes, gray was the overwhelming color of the day. From table linen to upholstery to furniture to zinc storage to lamps, it was a gray world.

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{nilson}

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{linum}

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{deshouilliers}

Then some totally new, out of the blue, outside the box trends:

1. The use of Swiss motifs...as in edelweiss, reindeer, fir trees, skis and skiers, snowflakes, small hearts combined with surface lace motifs. Now, I could not have been more surprised by this, as you can imagine. But the more I looked, the more I saw. It was especially evident in bedding and table linens.

One company that really stood out in this "trend" was Sylvie Thiriez:

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and from Charvet Editions:

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2) I also saw a lot of pierced lamp shades...and again, totally unexpected! Traditional bell shapes to modern drum shapes: they all had piercing. And here, again, there were often Swiss motifs in evidence: skis and poles tossed or a line of upright fir trees with snow on the end of the branches, ringing the shade. I wasn't able to get any pictures of this at all.....and haven't been able to find anything good online yet: sorry about that. But believe me, it was there!

At the very opposite end of the color spectrum and, as it turns out, the opposite end of the fairgrounds, is the personal accessories building. Take a look at the totally wonderful jewelry from Ana Hagopian:

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it's a bracelet!

Needless to say, I am totally in love with her entire line! Look around the site and see the saturated colors in so many great combinations.

There was so much more to see. Well, maybe I just have to go again....want to join me?