before
& after
The Right Touch of Red
When I first met Catherine and Alejandro Araiza in 2009, I was enthralled by the resilience of this young couple with two small children. Readers may recall The Araiza’s story of their kitchen reconstruction from “Changes In The Wind,” Houston House & Home, March 2011. During Hurricane Ike, a neighbor’s very tall pine tree crashed diagonally 20
through their small home all the way to the foundation, narrowly missing both sleeping children and parents. As the eye of the storm passed overhead, the couple managed to wake the children, climb over the tree inside their home in pouring rain and escape to Catherine’s mom’s dry and safe home down the street.
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BEFORE AFTER: By increasing the size of the entertainment wall and painting the shelves the same color as the wall, the large bookcase now blends into the wall. Careful furniture placement allowed room for a large tree and plenty of gifts with adequate space to walk through the room.
BEFORE: Storage was a big issue in this small open plan. By keeping the floors natural in tone and darkening the walls the room felt larger.
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BEFORE
AFTER: Decluttering the view of the backyard from the dining room and arranging the table near the window, but not against it allowed a spacious walkway to the hallway and room for the family to actually use the table.
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BEFORE: The cluttered backyard was visible through the large dining window and needed simplifying to make the spaces flow.
Living in an apartment while construction workers put their flattened home back together, Catherine called me (after a referral from family friend and client, Fritzy Dean) to help her select finishes and colors and redesign their home. “I needed someone to quickly read my style and help make decisions which were just overwhelming for me. You were very knowledgeable and methodical,” she said. “I was so relieved after our first visit because I knew you would
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make this process easier and that we would come out with a much nicer project than we could have conceived on our own. Your experience and creativity gave us so many more options to consider and you were willing to work with our small budget,” Catherine explained. TIP: When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. A devastating storm like Hurricane Ike opens the door to make changes and improvements.
Catherine and Alejandro’s living/dining room is a small, open space and it is always a challenge to squeeze in a large Christmas tree. She loves Christmas and treasures her collection of tree ornaments, always a big highlight for the children. The couple loves a classic holiday look, with Nutcracker dolls and a beautiful tree. But the look of her living/dining room is more mid-century Danish modern with aqua accents than traditional red and green, so the two looks don’t necessarily go together. TIP: Red and green can be mixed into an aqua color scheme if done sparingly. Sherwin Williams “Believable Buff” (SW 6120) in a flat latex finish was applied to the walls.
AFTER: The top of the credenza was cleared, allowing the holiday cheer of the nutcrackers, candles and snowman to truly shine.
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The same color was used on the bookcase in a satin enamel finish to make the shelves practically disappear into the wall, while the natural color on the oak floors created a calm feeling in the open room. “I love the colors—they make me feel warm and good when I walk into my home and are so much better than renter’s white,” she said. Working with what they had, my design assistant Dorenda Longoria and I placed a colorful weaving and iron sleigh filled with holiday balls on the couple’s coffee
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TRADE SECRETS • Think green. Editing existing holiday decorations repurposes them and saves money, too. • Paint consistently gives the most bang for the buck. Painting a large bookcase the same color as the wall visually declutters a room. • Get creative. Inexpensive cranberries can be used to add a holiday touch to a vase of flowers. • Sometimes the most effective strategy is not to buy more furniture and accessories for your home, but to first rethink the pieces that are already paid for.
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table from World Market. Beneath the table, the existing area rug from Home Depot complements oversized pottery pieces from Jim Romberg, so the colors came together in peaceful harmony. Christmas accessories were also tucked in amongst books and everyday accessories on the bookshelves. Catherine was not surprised that my main suggestion was to reduce the holiday clutter and tone things down. The hardest thing to visualize was removing the runner that she had always put on the credenza. “I had way too much holiday stuff piled around, and you two helped make it look simple, which flows better with the normal look of our house,” she explained. Catherine really liked the way the color red was threaded throughout the decorations. “You can’t do Christmas without red, in my opinion, and I really liked how you used just enough of it in the poinsettias, candles and cranberries. Not overbearing, just the right touch,” she said. Joetta Moulden offers home makeovers using your own home furnishings. See more makeovers on her Web site at www.shelterstyle.com, email her at joetta@shelterstyle.com or call 713.461.2063. Appointments or referrals booked by November 30 will receive a 15 percent first meeting discount. Shelterstyle.com holds a "Pages of Happiness" rating and, for the fifth consecutive year, a “Super Service Award” presented to 5 percent of companies that achieve and maintain a superior rating on www.angieslist.com.
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