Winter - 2010
BUILDING trends refer to the features you’ll find in the homes of the
Luxury Home Tour and the Parade of Homes. These are the most permanent of
trends, and enjoy the longest run. While color will be hot today and cool
tomorrow, building trends reflect permanency and stability. By definition, these
trends don’t rotate quarterly, but here are some recent highlights.
METALS ARE CHANGING. Brushed Nickel is so-o-o-o 2ooo. POLISHED NICKLE
is the current favorite – just open any issue of the Pottery Barn Bath
Collection or visit your local Restoration Hardware store. In Edina, Oil Rubbed
Bronze is still the King and mixes beautifully with all the other colors
of hardware – including stainless steel appliances. CHROME is the absolute
favorite for bathrooms locally. But let’s not fret the small stuff, chrome
faucets and polished nickel hardware on the cabinets co-exist exceptionally
well. This should be a nice warm up for PEWTER as the design magazines are
suggesting. Are you wondering what pewter is? Technically Pewter is a metal
comprised of 92% tin, and other metals like copper or antimony. A great place
to see it in person is in any store that carries Match Tableware. Ampersand in
the Galleria is a great example, and so is Gordon Maxwell in International
Market Square. I’ve even seen it as a dreamy countertop.
REMODELING TO STAY. Locally, more than a dozen lovely
families called me in November alone to begin remodeling their kitchens. The
conversation starts something like this, “We thought about selling our home, but
not in this market. We got your name from a friend, and we love what you did
for them. We want to update the kitchen – and maybe the master bedroom/bathroom
so that it will sell when the market improves – but for now, we want to make it
pretty for us.
These are the Local Runaway Favorites for Remodeling Projects:
- Carerra stone.
- Grey paint in every color.
- Updated Kitchens. This starts with new appliances,
faucets, countertops & backsplashes, cabinet hardware and lighting. More
often than not, a new foot print in the kitchen makes the rest of the house
work much more efficiently.
- Simple Luxury in the Master Suite. The bathroom
becomes more spa like. In some cases, we add square footage and a soaking
tub. In other cases, we pare down the number of things in the room to
create a more luxurious shower, or a larger double vanity instead of an
existing awkward vanity.
- Finishing the Lower Level and gaining a real Family
Area.
- Neutral colors for countertops, regardless of the
material.
- Updated Lighting fixtures.
- UN-installing overly busy window treatments in favor
of more simple and elegant ones. Woven wood shades are a beautiful
alternative to most windows and become fashionably elegant paired with
simple silk panels on the sides.
- The Front Entry. Ask yourself: What does
my house look like from the street? How would other
people describe my home? And
then make those changes for curb appeal – as in columns or a new front door
– or extending the graciousness of the front facade into the foyer.
- Fixing what could work better. The adage is function
over form, meaning that a room or furniture (or a car for that matter) first
and foremost must operate correctly before we care what color it comes
in. There are elements in every home that seemed like such a good idea
at the time, but just didn’t work the way it was planned. Sometimes it is
the entry from the garage to the kitchen. Sometimes it’s the arrangement of
rooms, and sometimes it’s the furniture within the room because we’ve kept
the armoire in that same station forever. Sometimes it’s a closet or a
bedroom or a home office that is just too small. And sometimes you just
can’t put your finger on it until someone new sees it. Let’s fix that.
