Outdoor Rooms: Three Perfect Rooms May 13, 2008

DINING

LOUNGING

SLEEPING

These rooms might be pretty close to perfection. But while they are pretty to look at, for most of us our objective in decorating indoor or outdoor rooms should not be perfection. The point in creating beautiful rooms is to actually ENJOY them. If we obsess too much about the details or have to spend time or money beyond our means in order to create them, we miss out on so much! We may never get around to LIVING in these rooms — how sad that would be (I’ve been guilty of that myself, I know of what I speak!)! Experiencing the fun of life in these spaces is the point. Perfection is not. We may not have a fancy table, an enormous rock fireplace, or matching lounge chairs. But, we can enjoy our humble rooms just the same or even more as the fancy ones!

Make living the life you want within your reach right now, not something that is always saved for “someday!”

Budget friendly ideas:

• Give an old picnic table a new coat of paint (or let it stay weathered and worn!).
• Go ahead, bring indoor furniture outside to enjoy on a nice day! Why not? No need to buy expensive outdoor furniture if it is not within your budget.
• Shop at thrift stores or garage sales for items you can re-purpose in your garden or patio.
• Build a fire pit or bring candles & lanterns outside to create the ambience of flames on a cool night
• Don’t have a green thumb? Keep your landscaping simple. Use containers for easy to grow plants.
• Involve the whole family in planting a garden! You’ll save on your grocery bill and have fun in the process.
• Use gravel to finish off spaces, instead of expensive stone patio and walkways (the crunch of a gravel walk is so charming!)
• Focus as much or more attention on creating memories with your family outdoors this summer than you do on how to decorate or design your space. Pour your creativity into the experiences: plan a BBQ, have a family camping night, roast marshmallows, read together outside, have breakfast on the patio, drag your TV outside and host a movie night for the neighbors.
• Don’t have a backyard or the means or energy to create a pretty one right now? Head to the park! I am writing about this very situation for my article for CWO in June (oh, and speaking of which, don’t forget to visit CWO this month for my article on The Art of Memory Making as well as articles by other women who will uplift and inspire you in everyday living).

House Beautiful

Outdoor Rooms: Weekend Dreaming May 10, 2008

HGTV: Scott Cohen

Find (budget friendly!) outdoor room ideas by clicking on Gardens & Outdoor Rooms in the Inspiring Topics area of my sidebar. More outdoor room inspiration to come! Stay tuned.

Outdoor Rooms: Potting Benches May 7, 2008

Cote Ouest via Garden Rooms blog

Cottage Living Minh + Wass

A potting bench is a great idea for a focal point in a small shed or corner of your yard. It doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive. Creating a purpose for even the smallest nook in your yard makes the area a charming destination. A simple bench, picnic table or set of shelves is really all you need to define your space. Add some pots, shovels, a watering can and some gardening gloves and you are in business!

John O’Hagen Cooking Light

House to Home May 2005

For more inspiration on Garden & Outdoor rooms, see the “Inspiring Topics” links in the sidebar

Outdoor Rooms: Creating the Borders April 30, 2008

this old house

One of the things that really contributes to the success of an outdoor room, in my opinion, is when there is a certain amount of privacy. After all, when you are in your house you have both walls and windows. I think the same should be true with the outside. My husband and I have always had a notion that outdoor rooms should be closed off enough to offer the feeling that you are in your own private world, but be open enough to let others have the tiniest peek of what is inside. I think it is part of our romantic notion of living a fairytale life. When you can steel a little glimpse of something beautiful as you pass by, but not see the entire scene, it leaves room for imagination and draws others to the space.

house to home

By leaving portions of your rooms open, you are also allowing the room to be connected to the beauty that might surround the room. There is no need to close off a room if the mountains beyond are fantastic, if your neighbor’s cherry tree can be framed to be a part of your view, or if you want to be able to have neighborly conversations with those who pass by your front porch.

house beautiful

southern living by jean allsopp

house to home

Each space will be different in its need for privacy or openness. But with the right balance, your space will feel intimate and cozy enough to entice you into the space without making you feel claustrophobic once you get there.

house to home

Borders are what give an outdoor room a sense of enclosure. And without definition, we lose the sense of the space being a room. By using things like the side of the house, shrubs, potted plants or trees, benches, trellises, small posts, ropes, lattice screens, lanterns or fences to create various borders, we can start to create definition in a space. You can really be creative here in what you use to define a room’s border.

house to home

Homes and Gardens

I like to allow spaces to unfold as one wanders from room to room, rather than revealing the entire space all at once. This can make your space seem bigger than it is, leaving it a bit of a mystery as to where the yard really ends.

House Beautiful

Outdoor Rooms: Create Your Own Escape! April 26, 2008

Thought you might enjoy a peek into the backyard of a fellow reader! I completely gasped when Teresa sent me her photos! This property is MAGNIFICENT! I’d feel like I lived a resort everyday!

While not everyone can live on a property this expansive with such a glorious view and beautiful features, we can use whatever space we have to create a magical escape for ourselves. It doesn’t have to be big and glorious, it can be small and intimate. This is part of evaluating the space you have and deciding how to use it. If you make use of what you already have and use it effectively, you can conjure up a perfectly wonderful experience wherever you are! “Teresa” has definitely made the most of her space. I hope we are all invited over for a pool party!

This photos are the property of Teresa Andersen, click here to visit her blog! Thank you so much for sharing your lovely space with us, Teresa!

Room Design: Where to Begin April 22, 2008

The most common words I hear from potential clients is: “I’m stuck.” Sound familiar? You know you want to surround yourself with beauty and feel that things are put together, but it is oftentimes overwhelming to know where to begin to create what we want. Let’s talk about how to get started, whether your room is indoors or outdoors, we can tackle them the same way.

WHERE TO BEGIN?

DEFINE THE SPACE
When I first begin work with a new client, I always sit down with them and ask a series of questions. One of the first topics we discuss is what the client intends to use the space for and what sorts of activities will take place in that room. Defining a specific purpose for your room, and even spaces within the room, really helps to zero in on some basic information that will be useful as you begin to design. You can apply this to indoor or outdoor room design. For outdoor rooms, even if you have no yard and only a front step to work with, a space can have a purpose! With a front door, it is a place to welcome guests as they knock on your door! It is “the welcoming space.” Just knowing that small piece of information can help you decide what to do with the space you have. From there you can design a “room” that will function and be aesthetically pleasing.

You can assign purposes several times over within a room. You might have a room that has to accommodate both eating and relaxing, for instance. So now that you have defined two purposes of the room, you can begin to create rooms within rooms. In both big or small spaces, every nook can be assigned a purpose. Dividing a room up by several purposes makes it much easier to design than if you just call a room a “living room,” for instance.

AN ILLUSTRATION
Below is a playroom of a client who called me with those common words, “I’m stuck.” She didn’t need any new furniture and her room was already cute, but she knew something was wrong because her kids didn’t want to play there. This is a big clue that something is wrong with your space. If you don’t want to go there, that signals a problem.

BEFORE: PLAYROOM

THE SOLUTION
The problem was it simply wasn’t arranged with specific purposes in mind. Calling it “a playroom” was not specific enough. We needed to create zones, or rooms within the room. By simply creating two distinct spaces, I was able to create play zones that made sense for the kids. One area became the reading/TV nook, and the other was the “arts & crafts” zone. Each space you are designing needs to have a specific purpose so that you can know where to focus and how to solve the problems. In this case, it only required switching two pieces of furniture.

AFTER: READING/TV NOOK

BEFORE: PLAYROOM; AFTER: ARTS & CRAFTS ZONE

By simply defining the room and spaces within a room, whether your room is inside or outside, you can start to envision spaces that serve a purpose, rather than just a big design dilemma.

Next posts in this series (which will at times address both indoor and outdoor rooms) we’ll talk about problem solving in room design and then start to discuss the specific components we need to create inviting rooms. TTFN!

Photos: Top “25 Beautiful Homes: September 2005″ via House to Home website
Playroom photos: my personal design projects