My assistant, Sarah, and I, at our new office!

My assistant, Sarah, and I, at our new office!

We are ready to begin new projects. We love our new office and location and look forward to having new clients stop by and visit. Sarah Bourne has been with me now for the last three months. She is organized and technical and is a wonderful addition to Aston Design Studio. As a degreed designer and Allied Member of ASID, she recently passed her NCIDQ, the qualifying exam for state licensing of interior designers. While I sketch, she operates our CAD and we have double the skills to offer our clients. I'm very happy to have her on staff.

My New Office!

My New Office!

Here are photos of my new office. I really love it! It’s a nice blend of commercial office with a residential softness. The industrial style light fixture and mesh office chairs combine with the soft window valances and shades, residential style of the ghost chair, and linen covered tackboards to create a nice blended look. Design offices can look so cluttered because of all the colors, samples, and paper everywhere, so I chose to have a soft creamy white backdrop on the walls and furniture. The neutral coffee colored countertops, lighting, carpet, and hardware anchor the space and provide a break in the light colored room.

The layout of the room gives the maximum use of storage and work surface and the tackboards are a must in every design office. We even have room for a future intern! Maybe in the fall.

Here it is, finally done!

Here it is, finally done!

I haven’t posted in a long time, too caught up with work and an exciting new venture I’ll discuss later. Here is the bathroom, all finished and beautiful.

I’m so happy with everything. My perfectionism served me well, everything is really just the way I want. I love my plumbing fixtures (they are so solid and function so beautifully), my mirrors (they gleam!), the tile work, the paint job (so smooth), the lighting (fabulous!), my vanity (it makes me feel so special), my storage (much improved!), and how spacious the bathroom seems now. It was a truly successful makeover. Let me know what you think!!!

My business is growing. I’ve added an employee, a young designer, who comes with good technical experience and contacts. She is very helpful.

The big news is that I’ve moved out of my home office to a business location. A local remodeling contractor contacted me last spring to talk about relocating into his showroom space. We will retain our separate businesses, but refer clients to each other. I have been doing contracting on my jobs, but I wanted to stop that and just do the design part. He wanted to farm out the design work and concentrate on the contracting – a perfect symbiotic relationship.

We are remodeling an old house on I-45 North in The Woodlands, a great location and great venue to show off what we can do. We will have a model kitchen (with a built-in cappuccino machine:), a large conference/showroom area, and sample rooms for tile, stone, and flooring selections. His wife is a faux finisher and we have many samples of her work as well. She occupies a separate painting studio in a storefront/garage building on the property. The remodeling business office is upstairs and my design studio with a nice sample room for fabrics and furniture is adjacent to the conference/showroom. I’ll post pictures soon! I’m very excited about this new endeavor!

A New Window!

A New Window!

My new window, shown in the top two photos, has been installed in my bathroom and it is fabulous! Double pane, rain glass, installed properly to sit above the tub deck, not below it! We had rotten wood on the exterior, so it was due to be changed anyway. That cheap single pane window, shown in the bottom two photos, just did not do my bathroom justice. Nor did it insulate any being on the east wall, where we had direct sun in the morning.

You can see in the lower photos that the tile on the tub deck previously died into the glass of the window. By getting a shorter window and installing it 6” above the tub deck, I’ve created a wall for the new granite deck to die into. This window will also have a granite sill, so if a random wet washrag or soap bottle gets put on the sill, the water will not be a problem.

It has been trimmed out in wood beautifully by my carpenter, who thought to add the small crown at the top. I was considering doing an upholstered cornice above that window, now that it is so beautifully trimmed out, I may not. I’m very happy with this installation and my new double pane window!

My Cabinets!

My Cabinets!

I am soooo lucky! I had a wonderful cabinet maker build my cabinets and trim out my bathroom. His work is fabulous! It took about a week and a half, but everything turned out beautifully.

I have my super deep medicine storage cabinet, my custom jewelry cabinet , my tall linen cabinet, my 36” high sink vanity (no more stooping!) with perfectly aligned cabinet drawers and doors, and of course, my beautiful walnut vanity! I have wonderful full extension glides and European hinges. I have my simple recessed panel doors with a minimal bit of routing for detail. Since it was built on site it fits my bathroom like a glove. Well built cabinets are a true luxury and the people that build them are true craftsmen.

Plumbing Fixtures

Plumbing Fixtures

I have some fabulous plumbing fixtures going into my bathroom. They are heavy and feel good in your hand and have a lovely matte bronze finish. The wall mount faucet is a modern touch while the overall style is traditional. The shower will have a “Torrent” shower head with multiple spray options and a hand held sprayer with three spray options as well. It is thermostatic, so once you set it on the temperature you like, it will always come on that way. How luxurious!

The tub is the Kohler Serif bubble massager. I love the graceful oval shape, it relates to the oval shape of my sinks and my mirror over the vanity. I like not having the big jets inside the tub, just little pin holes for the water to shoot through. I only had a 5 ft. tub in there to start with and only a 5 ft. tub would go back in. Luckily, this beautiful curvaceous tub comes in a 5 ft model that fits my tub deck exactly!

The toilet is my favorite Kohler, Memoirs, Stately version. I like the traditional “crown moulding” look to the tank and of course, the comfort height and elongated bowl. As we get older, we all like the comfort height, a bit higher to make it easier to get up and down.

All of these products are of high quality and I can’t wait to use them!

Finishes

Finishes

The finishes for my bathroom are shown in the photo above. It took a long time to come up with the selections. I went through so many samples getting just the right color palette and look that I wanted.

My bedroom and bath had been a light grayed down blue color since we moved in back in 2000. I liked the blue as a cool, restful color in this hot climate, but I was tired of it. I decided to go for a light, soft green, almost light pistachio color scheme to keep it cool, relate it to my garden, and make it appealing to future buyers. “Green is gold” for resale you know!

It started with my granite I found at a stone yard about a year ago. It captured that color perfectly with a subtle pattern and not much variation. Some suppliers call it Costa Esmerelda, but it’s not the typical blue/green color of most Costa Esmereldas. It is more of a light pistachio. The granite will go on the countertops and tub deck. I also usually do the threshold of the shower in a stone for maintenance purposes.

From there, I looked for tile. I wanted my floor tile to be larger in scale and sort of serve as a background for the room. (Not much detail) I like porcelain tile for maintenance, but I much prefer tile that does not have the fake variation most of them do. I wanted a really soft, consistent look with rectified edges so that it could be butted together with a tiny grout line. Basically a monolithic floor with a hint of traditional style in the pattern, laid in a running bond. The tile I selected is from Arizona Tile, 18” x 18”, Fabula Avorio. It is a good neutral with a greenish cast to the color.

Of course, I couldn’t resist the “wow” factor. I went for 1” x 1” glass mosaics with a listello from Walker Zanger in this lovely subtle matte or sand blasted look finish. It looks like sea glass washed up on the beach! It’s beautiful in my color scheme of greenish neutrals with a bit of bronze color. The bronze relates to the metal finish on the fixtures and hardware in the room. This tile will go on the backsplash at the sink vanity and the tub as well as inset in the back wall of the shower.

I’m doing these wonderful light olive pebbles from Daltile in the shower stall. I love the look and feel of pebbles in a shower. It’s like a foot massage and gives a spa-like feel.

My paint color is still to be decided. I’ll wait until the tile goes in I think. I usually select everything before, but I’m not sure how much green I want in the wall color. I want a very light color, a lighter version of the floor.

I’ll show you my fabulous plumbing fixtures next!