Showing posts with label home renovation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label home renovation. Show all posts

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Nora Ephron Loved Food and Gardens and Home Decor


I miss her.
Nora, that is. 

This home renovation diary honors Nora Ephron.  

She brought laughter to us through her writing for the big screen and her books and blogs.   

I am still saddened for our collective loss.

Nora created authentic, inimitable, champagne-bubbly and martini-sophisticate narratives in her literary and cinematic work.

Further, I love that the New York Times championed her career as “a journalist, a blogger, an essayist, a novelist and a playwright, an Oscar-nominated screenwriter and a movie director.”
(What blogger and writer doesn’t like to hear that career hat noted?)

Nora was a dame. 
She was funny, smart and spot-on when it came to showcasing and illuminating contemporary fin de siècle home décor and food and an enriched homegrown lifestyle. 

Over the years I’ve read some critic’s reviews that said her movies showcased a too-perfect world of garden and home design.    
They said the worlds she created were not real or average. 
Really?
The world of cinema is magic.  And aspirational.
And I for one am thrilled that she touched a nerve.

She loved food so much. She wrote that when filming “Julia & Julia” she made sure not use any chimera-inducing sleight of hand. 
The real food was all the magic she needed. She worked all day on the camera angle to get the rich, reach-out-and-taste it epicurean ingredients just write. She fairly danced in the door, exclaiming to her husband that she’d “nailed it.”
Take that action movie men!

I joined the New York Times Nora Ephron book club in order to stay a bit closer to her.
I also pulled an excerpt from a piece written for my other blog, “Master Chefs and their Gardens,” for the cookbook party for both Amanda Hesser and Melissa Clark at Chelsea Market some two years ago…
I saw Nora among the food enthusiasts there. She was enjoying herself immensely and posed gamely for my photos:

Here is the narrative as written then:
Heading for the Luchy’s Whey center table featuring cheese from Cellars at Jasper Hill, I see Nora Ephron.
Nora Ephron at the book signing party.  She was stylish!


I had to tell her I loved her feature article in the December issue of Town & Country.  She smiles and says a sincere “thank you.”  She looks great in person too. (No neck thing whatsoever!)  The T&C story is a Q&A with Ina Garten.  Ina’s publicist doesn’t email anymore…  I asked her to be in the Long Island Homegrown Cookbook and she said yes, then no.  I give up.  So Ina’s not on my favs list. But Nora is.
And I will make a point to attend Nora’s latest play, “Love, Loss, and What I Wore.”

Good listener, too


Upon Nora’s passing, Meryl Streep wrote: “You could call on her for anything: doctors, restaurants, recipes, speeches, or just a few jokes, and we all did it, constantly. “She was an expert in all the departments of living well.”

In her set designs and in her love of food. 
I share Nora’s passion for living well.

Here is an update on our dining room and sitting room as part of the
Home Renovation Diary Update:

The silk duiponni drapes were made from fabric I got from Mood – the same place that the hit TV show “Project Runway” uses. This was unbeknownst to me until I stepped off the elevator to a veritable party and I inquired if I was in the right place.  It’s managed chaos there.  The bulldog “Swatches” is just too cute, keeping a calm eye on all things fabric…
We had to wait some months, because Mood didn’t have enough of the silk drapes for our needs.  Eventually, after some frustrating follow ups, we were back on track and had the drapes in time for the Independence Day fireworks party.  
Wendy, the seamstress, brought the completed drapes.  She is a cutie pie! 


Wendy steamed the ball gown-like drapes.  I wanted them very, very full and the silk fabric allows them to stand on their own – as if a petticoat is underneath supporting the skirt.
When the breeze captures the hem, it’s more than a flirtatious, sexy Marilyn moment…

I designed the valance to be wide enough for the drapes as well as the solar shades behind them – the shades offer protection from the rays of sun to protect the material, the wood of the dining room table – and our skin.  Shades from Smith+Noble.  www.smithandnoble.com



I had to match the switch plates to the wall color.  Things you never think about! 
So on the advice of our electrician, I took a trip to Chinatown's Lendy-- the go-to the place for all things like this.  







More shopping close to home:
The porch is outfitted with a rug we had in the garage. 
I repurposed a cocktail cart, a table, and the small, gurgling fountain for some nice meditative nature sounds.  

In the end, I opted for the light, open-weave Sunbrella outdoor drapes – even though the color was charcoal.  I
However that color was in canvas and I knew it wouldn’t have the same light, see-through, blow-in-the-breeze texture and look.  And the color looks elegant with the black iron furniture and urns. 

I wanted the “walls” of the porch to “drip” with Sunbrella drapes.   The mildew-resistant drapes are ready made with nickel grommets.  This made hanging easy.
So now, when I do my yoga or have a massage, we can “pull” the drapes for added privacy.  Other times, it’s a sensuous design accent.  I secured the drapes from Ballard Designs.   www.ballarddesigns.com  They are very professional and helpful.

The reconstructed terrace was made whole again by the masons – who were quite cruel with the original.  The colors are cool blue and grays.  I thought the succulent plants would play nicely here. The plants’ architecture and color shades are stunning.  
Love these cool blues & ice grays

The new terrace furniture was supposed to be here for Memorial Day!  It’s on back order.  Digits crossed it makes it oh – sometime this summer!
Patience is a virtue with a home renovation…





Nora’s Lists
In her hysterical, fun-read, “I Remember Nothing,” Ephron concludes the book with two lists: things she will not miss and things she will miss. The New York Times concluded its obit with this reference.   “…Of the things she will miss, begins with “my kids” and “Nick” and ends this way:
“Taking a bath
Coming over the bridge to Manhattan
Pie.”
Pie indeed.  As an homage to witty, literary home design and foodie “friend,” we will enjoy homemade blueberry pie.  With a deserved dollop of homemade ice cream… Enjoyed on our new porch.

Friday, July 27, 2012

Home Renovation Update: Garden Design Takes Shape


I had been dreaming of my home garden design ever since I started taking Landscape Design classes at The New York Botanical Garden. 
For one of my final exams to earn the Certificate in Landscape Design, I created somewhat of a fantasy garden – knowing full well I would never be able to afford or create the concepts I had rendered on the blueprint. 

Now, in addition to being a garden and food writer, I’m also a garden designer and an award-winning designer at that! 

So when it came time to actually design my garden, I realized the stakes were high.
I wanted to produce a garden I could be very proud of. One that would not only showcase our home, but would show off my garden design profession.
And inspire other garden lovers.
And make my garden design clients glad I work for them.
And something I could write about.
And a place of enduring, beguiling beauty…

And a design we could afford.

Clearly the stakes are high.

Some of those early design concepts still bewitched. 

And over the years, while conducting painstaking research for my clients that made the home office look like something out of the movie “A Beautiful Mind” and John Nash’s garage -- with magazine clippings everywhere, books opened on the settee, tables and the Mac screen open to too many sites, I would sometimes – well actually often – come across ideas I would tuck into an all too soon bulging folder. 

When the time came, I deftly edited the file.  I smiled as I reviewed eras of garden interest: the billowy English gardens, palatial fountains and pools. Or boutique-style Caribbean retreats, Hollywood-inspired set designs, Colonial Spanish and Pasadena, California to Italian Riviera.  Then to my focus on native plants.
All grand inspirations.

But truth be told, I think a good garden design borrows a bit from all that and then it will tell a story unique to the person and home and location.
Just like I do for my clients.

I sketched the concept for the front yard garden rooms, including the driveway garden to be. Already in place is the arbor that we built and have been nurturing for years.
The goal of the arbor is to architecturally, with beauty, lead a guest from the street to the back yard.  Most suburban homes have no clue how to do this.  In our case, I wanted to create the added tension of walking from one world to the next as leading the eye through the tunnel of roses, Lady in Red Hydrangea and Coral Bark Maple overhead and the sides of arbor, there is the big drama at the end of the walk where one can see the bay and marina and New York City skyline beyond. 
It is a heart clutching, take-your-breath-away moment made possible by the creative and elegant use of plants and good garden design.
Oh and at night, the arbor is softly lit with solar powered little lights.
So romantic.

One group of designs that was appealing to me from the early days and struck a chord or me and informed my garden design for clients were the driveways from the studio of Dargan Landscape Architects. 
I made so many copies of the magazine layouts for fear I’d lose them to a misplaced file.
So it was with great joy and surprise when about a month ago, I saw an ad or received an email from the principal of that firm, Mary Palmer Dargan, to participate in a garden design webinar. I never did, but intend to. 
Yet I took this handshake across the internet as a good sign that my long-ago lust for those driveway concepts was coming into play just as she reappeared in my world.

My interpretation of the driveway look is to eliminate macadam and use natural elements of stone, gravel, trees, planting beds, and utilize layered, graded elements.
Make it good looking and functional.  Not a parking lot, for goodness sake.

One garden design client has turf and Italian white marble for two parking courts.
I almost persuaded a client to incorporate turf for a somewhat checkerboard look but instead we agreed on a paver stone set on diagonal that has worked well, especially due to its sloping elevation so no need to irrigate.  The walls are covered with climbing hydrangea and kiwi for a dripping-with-plant look and cooling effect on the sun-drenched bowl effect of the driveway to garage design.
For another client, I designed a teeny, postage stamp-sized parking court using the Turfstone – where the grass can grow up through the pavers, providing stability but beauty (see earlier blog post, November 2011) to create a serviceable and pretty driveway in what was the front yard.

While I drew up the plans for the driveway and the rest of the front yard garden vision, including the walkway to the front steps and door, my landscaper and I met several times to review materials and schedule. 
Bluestone -- to best amplify the blue grey of the house siding and old/new brick.
Decomposed Granite for part of the walk leading from the main walk design to a water garden off what is now the dinging room, with its wall of windows, two of which are sliding French doors.
Here, I wanted to create an instant mini lawn for the two steps down into that water garden.  I think it will be lovely in every season: green grass to step out on and in winter, a wonderful canvas for the snow.

There will be a front border, street side, and small strolling garden off the front steps. Later…
But as the spring season turned to early summer, we still had plywood leading to the driveway which made guests come and go like circus Wallendas or gymnasts on a balancing beam. 
And when it rained, it was more medieval moat.
Then there was the big sand pit or what we came to refer to as the big kitty litter box. 
It was the sand left by the mason.
















Burke the landscaper extraordinaire and the team were so over-scheduled and weather wasn’t helping due to what I call the Goldilocks weather report: “it’s too hot, too cold, too wet…”  All extremes.
So no work at our house despite great planning.
In the meantime, we had the stunning but massively large Kwanzan pruned up and in for our sake, and our neighbor’s and the tree.

And we waited.  And waited.

Finally the week before the big Independence Day fireworks party the work began!  Towns around glory in our town’s fireworks, set off in the marina below and our house has a front row seat. The entire town ignites in preparation. There is a Fireman’s Fair the week before.
Every house it seems is undergoing painting, manicuring, and decorating. It’s big.

And happily, we could too.

I couldn’t have guests navigate the plank. My sister in law just had had hip surgery too. So for safety reasons we needed at least the walk and a bit of turf. 

A few last minute reviews with Burke and me.  He painted it out.
At his suggestion, I went to his yard to look at some stone and brick.
At this point, there wasn’t really any time to get from a stone dealer.
Plus he could clear out some things and I loved the idea of getting some stone with provenance.
The turf step off the dining room would now be in former bluestone sidewalk from a neighboring seaside town! 

So the work began.

The first-class team of Honnold Landscaping artisans was on the job. 
Like cobras, they fix on the stone to be measured and cut. 
They stare it down.
They use the string, the level.
And only when they are absolutely, positively certain, do they cut.




After the step up from the driveway, I wanted a circle design. I think a circle represents movement and in this case, one has the option of going up to the front walk and door or to the walk to the water garden. Essentially offering a choice of three directions to take.   

In terms of the design and the stone, the circle proved a bit challenging.
It took three of us some time to recalibrate and amend a look to make the angles and geometry work.  But we did it.

The dust flew.
It was hot.

The grass steps and stone turned out better than perfect. The old stone is extraordinary and made the design work all that much better.
And there is a story to tell with it. You can even see some of the yellow from the No Parking mark!


The steps are off the new dining room - seen here from inside.  I designed the curtain look from the valance to the drapes.  When the breeze catches them billowing and flirting it's pure cinema. Then picture opening the doors to step out onto the grass steps and soon to be - I hope - water garden.  I wanted to create that lovely sound of water off the dining room. 

The other side is all bay and city scape vistas which is tough to compete with! 



The turf was cut as the truck waited.  And then, just like that, we had a front walk and some real grass for the very first time.   

And our guest for the fireworks party could walk up to the front door.

We celebrated our first phase of garden design with a bang!

Party Time

Couldn't have done made phase one of the dream come to be without the amazing talent and dedication of Burke Honnold Landscape team. I love them and respect their talent. Burke and family, er sorority made it to the party too! 


 Do you want to see the before/before pictures??

Friday, July 13, 2012

Home Renovation Diary Update


The stairway to heaven was cursed. 
In fact, it was driving us to hell in a hand basket!

The spiral staircase was an inspired, gateway to the new loft office/ atelier/guest room. 
It was to be a visual, cinematic gesture: custom black iron work, stairs we’d stain to match the kitchen’s new wood floor, copper-painted spindles to better match the copper floor insets that randomly punctuate the porcelain tile floor in the renovation’s dining and sitting room.
It was a good design concept. 
Bill engineered the specs, found a Pennsylvania craftsman to build it and the railing.
What could be better? Simpler. 
The builders and literature said “Two people, Two days.”

Umm, unless they had a super hero in mind, this is unrealistic and was never going to happen.
But we didn’t yet know that.

As gal Hilary often admonishes, “It takes a village…” and in this case, we did reach out for help. 
With optimism, we had an extended-circle friend come to help install and we were most grateful. 
In just one long day, the spiral stairs were up! 
Thanks to Bill, the point of first-stair entry matched up to the dining room carpet with the precision of a German-engineered Porsche fanaticism. 

Next is the railing.

Not so fast.

The steps we learned have an ordinal pattern that needed to be followed.
Yikes!
The stairs were up and winding and twisting with all their sinuous charm but it was not meant to be.

Solution? 
Not unlike those Apollo astronauts, Bill came up with an original, “duct-tape” remedy that he’d thought about, worked out and re-worked out a gazillion times in his head and on paper.

The plan was brilliant. The jack wasn’t. 
After some stroke-inducing attempts between the two of us, he reluctantly agreed we could use some help.

Yeah!
In came our brother-in-law, Gerry, the mastermind of all things good, family, and construction; along with our fireman-hero nephew Brian and friend, who had the brain muscle and muscle-muscle – if you know what I mean – to get these bloody steps aligned properly. 

Success was celebrated with lots of grilled hot dogs, beer and fair-thee-wells.

Now the “easy” part.
Just needed to get the rail up and banister up.  
Bill painted the spindles a copper color to match the copper in the insets in the floor.  Here they are painted and looked not unlike those terra-cotta Chinese soldiers!  

Bill and I were steeling ourselves for the task ahead when miraculously, the extended-friend circled back ‘round that very morning. 
Brilliant you say.
I did too.

The stair railing was up in less than half the time.
Only trouble was, now the railing  had to be painted in situ.  Sigh.
The question was to spray or to brush paint.  Each was fraught with issues.

Soon, after some trial and testing, all was resolved and we were back on track to completion.
Not without some painful “Holy Smokes” and “Oh for the love of Pete” and some sailor-style cussing.

And there was more, I assure you while putting in the railing. 

Was it worth it? 
Yes.

Decorating the Loft with Furniture

I’m not embarrassed to say, it came to me in a yoga moment.

We had listed our black lacquer furniture that was oh-so-courant in our previous townhouse and as a placeholder in this house on eBay and Craig’s list. (beware that Craig's List, I say)

I had been totally seduced by the sexy Koket day bed while walking the Architectural Digest show earlier this year. http://www.bykoket.com/catalogue/prive.php

(I have been trying to do a feature story on the designer, Janet Morais, ever since I fell in love with her “Love Happens” romantic, design approach.  And will do when we are not so both over the top crazy. But don’t miss her designs simply because we are oversubscribed.)


Feature story to follow, accordingly.  Morais possesses a passionate attention to detail, customer service and an enduring romantic, feminine perspective.
Plus a wicked sense of humor.

It doesn’t get any better.
Plus you get to glam it up.  From the moment it arrived in it's own sarcophagus
My nieces couldn’t resist. 


Neither could I.  
It’s a longer story for another post and while fraught with its own can-you-believe-it-moments, the designer and I never lost our sense of humor and dare I say, glamour. 

The daybed is quite sexy, no? And it has black lacquer sides.
So while I can’t remember if it was a downward facing dog or plough or a triangle pose, it did indeed hit me that hey- I can re-purpose and use the glamorous furniture we have to complement the outré daybed.

Ask me how much satisfaction it was to “shop” in our garage and basement for long-forgotten furniture and I will tell you it was over the top hilarious.
The price was right. Free!
It cleared out the garage so we could actually put the car back in after almost two years of having my wonderful mother move in with us and accommodating all those boxes and then moving all our stuff there for the repairs and renovation.

It was just so great
And in that meditation moment, it came to be.

The only challenge was we sorely needed that manpower yet again.

To the rescue was nephew Brian aka superhero fireman and friend.

I held my breath twice in spite of their careful, homecrafted attention to hoisting the two furniture pieces up, up, and ally-oop over the loft balcony, prior to the railing going up.  

And then, just like that, it looked like it had all been planned from the get-go.  

In some way, perhaps it was.  All that good karma cannot be a mistake.

Cheers.

Almost there.

Wait till you see the Parisian-like ball-gown silk drapes… 
And the beginnings of the garden design will break your heart with hope…







Friday, June 8, 2012

Home Renovation Diary Update


The calendar for home renovation seems to be in a similar class as that of dog years. 
Or a space-time continuum.  
It’s just that things go slow, then swoosh along, only to hit a pothole, before racing full steam ahead.  It’s like a motorcar that stops and stalls – but the driver knows he’ll push the throttle and get this baby home!

The Home Renovation Diary Update marks the successful completion of the painting in the home’s addition, and on to the delivery of the reupholstered living room furniture that is styling new shades of a cadet or sea blue for the slipper chair  

and the kitchen island stools, and a softer shaded trompe l’oeil of subtle cornflower to sky blue set off with marquis patterned top-stitching with yellow to gold dot joints (that pick up the kitchen and fireplace and fireplace wall of creamy yellow and gold, respectively, for the two love seat couches – to accessorize the blue bay beyond the living room’s composition  window view perch.



I ordered the kitchen stools online from Ballard Designs.  They are the nicest, most helpful team of decorating professionals. 
The only slight snafu is that I ordered the custom fabric from the local upholstery pro in order to match the living room slipper chair – and he recommended some yards less than Ballard suggested.  He said he only used a little under five yards for the entire chair so couldn’t imagine that they would need near eight for the back and seat cushion.  So I urged Ballard to talk to their outsourced upholstery professional and get them to be more realistic – especially at more than $45 a yard. 
It all worked out and in less than a month or so, the completed stools arrived.

Of course the delivery had to be the morning I was racing to catch the ferry back into town.  And I was waiting for the decorative painter, Stacey, who was designing and completing the wall art, transitioning the loft room color to the garden dining room color.  More on that in a second.

UPS must have smelled my urgency, waiting like a cunning cat till I was at the point of departure, when he knocked the door and fled like a schoolboy prankster.
Now I had to bring in those four huge boxes because my fairy housemothers, aka Mother and Aunt Margaret, wouldn’t have been able to quickly maneuver them inside nor would that be fair to them…  So like a longshoreman, I hauled them in and raced down to the ferry dock – but not before ripping open a box top to peek inside and enjoy my first looks at the lovely new blue counter stools, complete with metal foot kicker, dark brown wood legs and base and silver grommets to match the kitchen appliances.
All the better to sit and enjoy the sky-like blue - complete with clouds - of the marble kitchen island, the cook in the kitchen, and the New York skyline on the other side. 
Yes, the stools turn and spring back to crisp attention.

Blue upholstered stools highlight the blue marble of the kitchen island


I didn’t leave the starting line in my race to catch the ferry before wishing Stacey well on her redo of the wall art transition. 

The wall art started off as a brilliant design concept – dreamed up by me J 
I thought I could capture the extraordinary color transitions from the sunrises and sunsets that we bask in at our home on the water. 
Sunrise from the right and the sunsets from the left are both dazzling, shimmering performance art -- and the color transitions embrace the rainbow spectrum.
I especially wanted to capture that blue to orange syncopation.  

The loft room is Benjamin Moore Dix Blue – mirroring the blue-green water beyond and the patina of the copper I left on the fireplace that was the outside but is now the inside wall. 

The Garden Dining Room is the Martha Stewart Sherbet/Gold shimmering color and texture described in the Garden Glamour Home Renovation Diary Update April

With the two rich colors and the bay view beyond, combined with all the sensual elements in between, I dreamed up an ombre color transition between the two spaces.
 
I tried it out with the wall paints on a spare sheetrock sample. 
It came out good, if I do say so myself! (I also do watercolors and I’ve been told that my final colored landscape design “blueprints” are like works of art.  Some of my clients frame them.)
Everyone liked my ombre.
I couldn’t wait to add my personal Georgia O’Keefe artwork to our home and join the lads painting away on other parts of the addition. Ha!
Alas, it was not meant to be. 
Shockingly, I discovered I have a kind of vertigo.  I’m afraid of few things, and this was most embarrassing to learn that without a railing up (too early for that), I couldn’t lean over, or even get close to the edge of the loft in order to render my ombre… Even if Bill held my waist, which is really no pose for a working artist, anyway. 
This was a big setback in more ways than one.

But Roy, the painter was magnanimous, saying no harm in the vertigo admission. In fact he knew of someone who he thought could do the job. 
Crunch to the budget. I hadn’t planned on this expense…

Soon enough, we were working with Stacey.   
She seemed confident, talented, possessed a great online portfolio – and most important, was not afraid of heights.

She saw my painted design sample and said no problem.  We exchanged some emails during the week about the design.  We wanted a small footprint between the rooms, as there is nothing separating the rooms.
I didn’t want someone to walk into the room and exclaim about wall art – as divine as it could be in it’s own right – but rather to admire the soaring ceilings, the sunlight or moonlight streaming in – and that glamorous Martha precious metals sherbet wall color we’d worked so hard to achieve.

Not to diminish the decorative art, but we didn’t want a mural.
I realize ombre takes space, but thought we could modify the process to suit our needs. 
PDF rendering of suggested ombre for wall scanned in on actual wall & colors. Declined. Too much!


By the end of the week, we thought we got it, despite some rather elemental pdf visuals where Stacey took the sunrise image and compressed it on the digital image of the wall. 
With fingers crossed, and hopes high, the following Saturday was art-in-the-addition day. 
We had agreed that an ombre like solution could be a series of the rooms’ colors: blue, peach, pinkish, and sherbet -- blending or morphing into one another – from the blue to the sherbet.  Nice, gentle transitions – like the horizon at sunrise…

I spent the time writing upstairs in the La Boheme-like garret that was and soon will be again: the guest room; while Bill worked putting on the door handles in the addition room below the loft where Stacey was creating. 

The art work didn’t start off too good. In fact, there was an initial whoopsie that took my breath away. 
As Stacey started up the ladder with paint can in one hand and brush in the other, the ladder started to slip away off the loft!  I was speechless, gesturing to Bill with my hands. Stacey had so much presence. Rather than go back down, which is natural I think, she scampered UP the ladder as it slipped away.  If this hadn't been so loaded with disaster, it would have been acrobatic entertainment.

With breathing restored and all precautions reviewed, we were back to our stations.
I never want to oversee or make the professional artisans or trades nervous with someone looking over their shoulder so if I’m home, I make sure to stay out of their way.
Later that afternoon, with the work finished, it was time for the look-see inspection.  I was filled with trepidation. Just like when Roy called me to see the finished sherbet painting.
Unlike that inspection that yielded heart-holding joy, this one was more of an “oh dear.” 
I was tilting my head. Looking at it from different sides.  But it was so much like a rainbow!  The colors were too distinct. Too obvious. No nuance.  With courtesy and caution, Stacey and I reviewed and she said she could remedy it. 

Back to the garret.  An hour or so later: another call to have a look-see.  My heart sank. Same reaction.  Instinctually, I didn’t like it.  Stacey knew it.  We couldn’t look at each other.  The deed was done. 
It was getting late – near cocktail hour.  We agreed we’d live with it a bit. 
We did. For less than a week. 
We asked Stacey to come up with some other solutions.  She did.  She sent us this. 
We agreed to do in our colors.

She returned the next week and redid the wall (for more guilders), after we had to have Roy come back and redo the primer.
The result is it is beautiful, original art and is a conversation piece – in a good way.




We love it.

You?

The “little things” make a BIG difference.