Design Files: Philanthropy By Design

I just realized that I’ve never revealed another great project.  There is an organization called by Philanthropy by Design which helps nonprofit organizations improve their spaces with the assistance of interior designers.  It’s a fantastic organization and I was lucky to be able to volunteer my services.  My project was one of the SRO community rooms in San Francisco. SROs are essentially residential hotel rooms for low-income residents typically with shared bathrooms and common spaces.  This room was in the basement and acted as the tv room/dining room/relaxation room for all the hotel residents.    It started like this:

Obviously, this room was a little rough around the edges and we were tasked with making it more inviting and less depressing.  Working with a team of volunteers, I came up with the plan to clean it up, make it a lot more colorful, and deal with all the poor construction issues – the exit doors not working, a “countertop” with broken glass shards, a ceiling that had seen many better days, and poor craftsmanship in other areas.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any after pictures with the furniture but the difference we made with just one weekend with Rebuilding Together (another great nonprofit organization) and dozens of volunteers is amazing.

We added new colors, a gorgeous new bar top, freshened up the ceiling and added new pendant lights.  It was truly a group effort and was a great experience.  Here are a few additional shots of all the volunteers helping out.

The residents were excited about the new space and I hope they’re still enjoying it.  I’m currently looking for a similar organization in Los Angeles that provides opportunities like this. I believe that everyone should have a space that’s comfortable and welcoming.  It was a pleasure being able to help those less fortunate and I would love to do it again.

I’d love to help you design a space that you love and truly represents you.  Please contact me if you are interested.  Follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram (@joystreetdesign).

Design Files: Loungy Bathroom Update

Last year, I had the pleasure of helping a church update their bathrooms.  I shared the plans and renderings here.  Just for a recap, this was the plan.

I don’t have many before pictures as I was called in at the beginning of the construction phase.  But this is how the space looked at that point:

My client was nice enough to send me some phone pictures of the space.  There are still a few things to finish but it’s functional and it looks fantastic.

My favorite part is the replacement of the bathroom stalls with individual rooms to make it feel less sterile and “public.” I also love the tile around the room and the mosaic tile accents.  Hopefully we’ll get some better pics and finish the design in the near future.

I’d love to help you design a space that you love and truly represents you.  Please contact me if you are interested.  Follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram (@joystreetdesign).

House Reveal: Office

So we’re at the end of the house tour – the last room I’ll be showing is the office.  I’ve shared the thought process on planning the space previously here.  The office has a great view towards the Hollywood Hills and gets great light during the day.

Here is the bedroom before:

Besides new windows, all the changes in this room were purely cosmetic.   I went with a black and white scheme in here with a few pops of yellow.  There is a magnetic chalkboard wall along with storage and desks from a big box store.

I have a second desk in the corner with the more powerful computer and monitor to use to design floorplans and work with powerful programs like Photosthop.  Otherwise, you can find me at the desk in the center of the room taking in the view outside.

I hope you enjoyed the tour – I’m still working on a few projects but for the most part, I’m going to call this project complete.  Now we’ll get back to our regularly scheduled programming…which is god knows what 😀

I’d love to help you design a space that you love and truly represents you.  Please contact me if you are interested.  Follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram (@joystreetdesign).

House Reveal: Family Room

So we’re nearing the end of the house reveal and the pickings are getting pretty slim :D. The room that we use the most is the family room.  There wasn’t much going on in this room for months until the sofa finally arrived.  Now it’s at least comfortable even if Zoe has officially taken over the space.

Here are the before pictures:

We removed the step down into the den and leveled the floors.  The same updates were added – new windows/doors, hardwood floors, etc. – along with the fantastic bar closet. We decided against closing up the ceiling and adding additional overhead lighting.

And here is the “intermediate” afters:

And my favorite part of the room is the entertainment center area with the Carter Kustera silhouette portraits.

Kelly: Life is short, live it up and drink it down
Delvecchio: Life is not all that short, it’s actually really long
Nala: Life is simple…enjoy every beach and bite
Zoe: Life is like a box of chocolates…that tastes like my fingers and toes

I’m still planning to add more black and white accents – namely the Hicks La Fiorentina fabric that I’ve been yammering about forever.  I’d also love to have an accent color…I’m thinking blush pink but not sure how the hubby will feel about that.  If I do anything substantial, I’ll be sure to update you.  🙂

I’d love to help you design a space that you love and truly represents you.  Please contact me if you are interested.  Follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram (@joystreetdesign).

 

House Reveal: Dining “Room”

As promised, here is a full view of the dining room.

The dining room is open to the living room, kitchen, and den.  There is a 2-sided fireplace that separates the dining room from the living room.  When we first moved in, the fireplace had a large overhang/seating area that wrapped around it and protruded into the dining room area.  We had the fireplace seat removed, covered the fireplace with drywall (for now), opened the doorway leading into the den and installed hardwood floors.  We also added a junction box for a chandelier, new windows, and skim-coated all the walls.

Here are the before pictures:

And here it is now:

Sorry about the dark pictures – some angles were just very difficult to shoot.  I think the chairs play very nicely with the navy blue kitchen and the blue chandelier.

We still have things to do in the room – mainly dealing with that fireplace.  Once we can find some magic money, we’ll add stone all the way to the top.  Until then, that bad boy is out of commission since the drywall is not fire safe :(.  I also can’t decide if I should paint the cabinet since the wood tones are starting to compete or just move it and find a simpler buffet table.  But all in all – I’m happy with the way it’s turned out.

Happy Monday!

I’d love to help you design a space that you love and truly represents you.  Please contact me if you are interested.  Follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram (@joystreetdesign).

A Few Additions…

The remaining areas of the house – the communal spaces – have been pretty much neglected.  We’re basically working with what we have except that there is an additional living space – the den – and we did not have furniture for that space.  Here are a few other things that we’ve added to the house that I didn’t get to discuss when they arrived.

I designed a sleeper sofa sectional for the den.  This is the original sketch:

Three months later (and a certain amount of money 🙂 ), here she is:

I also found this great mid-century dresser at the Rose Bowl flea market for a song.  Unfortunately, I didn’t need a dresser so I turned it into the entertainment center.  I removed the top two drawers for the peripherals.  I made basic box frames and added black mesh fabric to the front (allowing the remotes to work and air to flow around the components).

I’ll show you the entire den space next week.  Have a great weekend!

I’d love to help you design a space that you love and truly represents you.  Please contact me if you are interested.  Follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram (@joystreetdesign).

Dining Chair Revamp

I spent the three-day weekend relaxing with the fam so we’ll take this short week off from the reveal of the final rooms in the house.  But I wanted to share a few of the random projects that I never got a chance to discuss.

Last year, I decided I wanted to finally replace our dining room chairs that we’ve had since we bought our first table in the San Francisco house.  The chairs are perfectly decent Ikea upholstered chairs but I thought it was time to come up with something different/better/unique.

I came across this image from Nate Berkus and was immediately smitten.

Those chairs, that view, the artwork…love it.  Anyway, my room doesn’t look anything like that and I have an open dining room that looks directly into the kitchen (and is sorta next to it).  So I decided to do a green velvet dining chair but I needed it to play nicely with the navy blue kitchen cabinets and the chandelier I had already installed.

I couldn’t find any chairs that I liked (and could afford) so I started a search for vintage chairs that I could recover.  After a few weeks searching, I found these “beauties” on ebay and had them sent across the country.

I got them all for $50/chair including delivery from NY.  Anyhoo, I found a great fabric and had the chairs reupholstered for about $125/chair.  So for about $175/chair, this is what we’re working with now:

I know you can’t find mass produced upholstered chairs (non-Ikea) for less than $250/chair so I’m ecstatic that these are custom and exactly what I wanted.  What do you think?

I’ll take some pictures of the entire room this week.

I’d love to help you design a space that you love and truly represents you.  Please contact me if you are interested.  Follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram (@joystreetdesign).

House Reveal: Bar Closet

Let’s celebrate another wonderful Friday by revealing the best part of the house…the bar closet :).  The closet was originally the location for the furnace.

After we upgraded the HVAC system, we moved the entire unit to the garage and had this empty closet in the main family room.  The closet was skim-coated and painted the same gray as the rest of the main living areas of the house.

If you remember in this post, I had trouble deciding the type of bar closet I wanted.  After spotting this fantastic abstract wallpaper from Black Crow Studios, I knew I had a winner.

Then we added in the wine cabinet (that we scored on Black Friday!) and some shelves to create a great bar.

Although the room gets a lot of natural light and there is ambient lighting elsewhere, the closet was actually a little dark.  I didn’t think of adding lighting during construction and adding it now was cost prohibitive, so I found another solution with LED strips.  It was super easy and it makes a world of difference.

So here is the finished product.

You’ll be happy to know that the wine fridge is completely stocked and I even removed some of the liquor bottles for the pictures just to make us seem less like alcoholics.  😀  But the true star of the closet is the wallpaper.  I was deciding whether we should put filler panels on the side of the wine fridge but I’m loving how you can see the wallpaper all around.

If you’re ever in the neighborhood, feel free to drop by for a drink!

 

I’d love to help you design a space that you love and truly represents you.  Please contact me if you are interested.  Follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram (@joystreetdesign).

 

House Reveal: Guest Bathroom

The only other full bathroom in the house is attached to the nursery.

When we bought the house, the bathroom contained yellow and black tiles/sinks/tubs/etc.  It actually wasn’t horrible and I would have been content with spraying it all white but the tiles contained lead and had to be professionally removed.  Here are before pics:

The budget was pretty tight with this bathroom.  We used basic subway tile with dark grey grout, installed cork tile flooring, and just added some colorful accents.  This image was the beginning of the plan:

The Happy Elephant by Zlatka Paneva

And here it is in the final version: (Fair warning: The remaining photographs of the house were taken by moi….so they are pretty sucky. Plus the room is somewhat dark or shadowy and hard to photograph :).)

We still need to paint the doors and some of the trim but this room is essentially done.

I’m loving how bright the room is (more so than in photos) and the fun/colorful accents.  Zoe seems to like it as well …although she’s not too discerning in what she likes.  😀

I’d love to help you design a space that you love and truly represents you.  Please contact me if you are interested.

Follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram (@joystreetdesign).

House Reveal: Master Bedroom

Let’s kick off this week with a peek into the master bedroom.

The room looked like this when we started:

The bulk of the work in this room was simple decorations.  We added a door for the closet, new flooring and a few electrical outlets for sconces/chandelier but the rest is just paint, fabric, and furniture.

The walls a painted a deep navy blue.  Add the gorgeous new headboard, some purple (radiant orchid) and teal accents, and great antique walnut furniture and you have a room that I’m loving.

I’m so obsessed with this bed!

Pantone’s color of the year is Radiant Orchid.  The folks at Pantone must have gotten a sneak peek into my room before making their determination :).

All photos taken by the wonderful Katrin Auch.

I’d love to help you design a space that you love and truly represents you.  Please contact me if you are interested.

Follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram (@joystreetdesign).