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Flaunt Your Home’s Personality With Style Create a home in harmony with your life with these simple tips. By Kit Davey CTW Features
Is your house full of things that you love that don’t seem to go together? Does your home lack a pulled-together, cohesive look? You may have tons of great furniture and artwork, but if you haven’t spent time defining your personal style, you’ll forever struggle with creating a home that is visually peaceful. When you know your personal style you’ll stop making “wrong” purchases, and you’ll be able to create harmony in every room of your home. Here’s how. Every Room Conveys a Message Becoming aware of our home’s personality involves observing each room’s message, theme and color focus. Grab a pad of paper and a pencil and pick a room to start with. Take in the room as a whole and observe what it is “saying.” Even though there are many objects in the space, you usually can sum up the room’s “message” in a few words. Your living room might have an overall feeling of formality, tradition, antiquity and a love of delicate objects. Your family room might express coziness, love of family and sports, comfort or informality. Your bedroom might be romantic, soft, dreamy,
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flowery, light-filled or peaceful. Jot down the feelings and phrases associated with each room. This list of descriptors is a powerful tool. You can immediately begin removing objects that are not in harmony with the room’s overall message. If your living room exudes an elegant, cool feel, your stuffed bunny, bowling trophy or antique teacup collection will not harmonize. When an accessory does not fit your list of descriptors, put it in a room that shares its message, donate it or store it. If you must keep it in the space, group it with similar objects in a bookcase or on an end table. If a major piece of furniture isn’t working with the room’s message, try switching it with something from another room, painting it, draping it with fabric or positioning it less prominently. If you can’t substitute or disguise the piece, vow to replace it with something that works
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when you have the time and money. The Theme’s the Glue A room that looks and feels pulled together usually has a theme or style. This doesn’t mean that all the furniture in the room has to be from a specific period or has to match in any way. The theme is an idea or the visual glue that helps everything in the room work together. Your theme may be a simple descriptor, such as “garden, Southwest, feminine, barnyard, handmade, whimsical, modern, seaside cottage, Zen-like, toys, jungle,” etc. Once you have established your theme, examine every object in the room to see if it fits with your theme. An Early American rocker will look out of place in a retro living room. A cubist Picasso print probably won’t work in country kitchen – if it fights with your theme, remove it. If you find that a room in your
home doesn’t have a theme, create one. Find at least two things in the space that have the same theme and build on them. Go on a treasure hunt throughout your house looking for décor with a similar flair. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to find accessories sprinkled here and there which you can group together. Consciously Select and Place Color Your personal style also is expressed in the colors you emphasize and how you place them throughout the space. A room without a scheme can be a chaotic jumble, whereas a room with carefully placed
objects reflecting the room’s predominant colors will help create balance and harmony. Make note of the one, two or three predominant colors in each room. (If there is no color with more importance than any other, establish a scheme to work toward.) Check for the presence of each color in each quadrant of the room. Note where there is a lack of the color and find accessories in the missing color to place there. Add pillows or a throw to a chair, paint a flower pot to place on an end table, place a stack of books on the coffee table, position art on a plate stand
or hang a tassel from a door knob – use your creativity to spread color throughout the room. If major furnishings don’t blend with the colors you’ve chosen, switch with pieces from another room, slipcover, paint or replace when you can. Kit Davey, an interior designer based in Redwood City, Calif., helps clients redecorate their homes through the creative use of their existing furnishings. E-mail Kit your questions: kit@ctwfeatures.com © CTW Features
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Adding a Little
The Renewed American Home
By Paul Rogers CTW Features
Just because you live in a 1940s bungalow or a 1970s ranch doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of today’s flashy home audio, video, security, lighting and other electronics systems. That was one of the messages from The Renewed American Home, a showcase house built under the auspices of the National Association of Home Builders for the 2007 International Builders’ Show held February 7-10 in Orlando, Fla. For each of the last 24 years, the NAHB has organized the construction of a showcase home, calling it The New American Home. But this is the first Renewed American Home – the distinction being that the former is new construction, the latter a remodel. Albeit a massive remodel, including the relocation of the entire house to a new lot. The Renewed American Home came about by accident. The NAHB purchased the house in Orlando’s historic Lake Eola district, intending to knock it down and build The New American Home. When the city’s Historic Preservation Board nixed the knockdown, NAHB decided that a remodel might complement a from-scratch building and serve equally as “a real-world laboratory demonstrating concepts, materials, designs and construction techniques that can be replicated – in whole or in part – in housing built any place and in any price range.” The Renewed American Home offers a plethora of ideas, including environmental features that earned it “green” certification from the Florida Green Building Coalition. But one that stands out because of the juxtaposition
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between the remodel and the original home, built in 1909, is the electronics. “The Renewed American Home demonstrates that owners of historic residences can still participate in the modern entertainment lifestyle without needing to compromise their environment,” says Malcolm Wertz, president of Electronic Systems Design, Orlando. ESD designed the low-voltage systems in both IBS showcase homes. Among the installed systems at The Renewed American Home are structured wiring, security/life-safety features, multi-zone audio, lighting control and flat-panel displays. Structured wiring refers to all the low-voltage wiring in the walls that provide the audio, video, phone, security and network access, as well as the components that interface the wiring with the electronics they control: the displays, processors, phones, radios, cameras, lights, etc. Structured wiring, in essence, makes the home one big, integrated, electronic device. “The systems of today allow you to interface/interact with your home – the structure becomes ‘alive’, if you will,” says Joe Tame, design specialist at ESD. The Renewed American Home, for example, features a Bose Lifestyle multi-room audio system that allows the homeowners access to all music, video and communications from any room via LCD remotes. Every room boasts in-wall speakers. A centralized hard disk stores digital music. Video distribution connects every TV in the house (three plasma, three LCD) to all video sources and security cameras. Another example: All lights can be set to sequence on and off at specified times of day or, when interfaced with the
security system, in conjunction with other house activities such as opening or closing the front door. The system also controls the brightness of lights, turning them on at only half power, for example, to set a relaxed mood and save energy.
Electricity to the Home
shows how today’s electronic trends can work in any old home – even yours.
It doesn’t take much to imagine a scenario in which you come home from a hard day’s work, open the front door and the hall light goes on long enough for you to remove your jacket and hang it in the closet. You enter the library greeted by soft
lighting, sit back in an armchair, touch a remote sitting on the end table and are soothed by Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1. And it doesn’t take much to imagine the kind of selling point such electronics would be if you were marketing a home or
how such a system might boost the price. How easily such systems can be incorporated into the average existing home depends on many conditions. But that’s the point of The Renewed American Home – to show it can be
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Wired up: Structured wiring makes your home one giant, functioning device. So your refrigerator, stove, microwave – and wine fridge – all are on the same page. Image credit: NAHB
done with existing materials found in almost any major home-improvement store. It starts with structured wiring, which has become common in new-home construction only since 2000. Homes built prior to 2000, “with few exceptions … are ill-equipped to handle today’s electronic needs. In many cases, homes that were lucky enough to have [sufficient-grade] wiring, for example, were wired in a fashion that renders the capability of the wire null and void,” says Wertz. Those homes without structured wiring can expect a certain level of
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drywall or plaster damage from new wiring, but usually not inordinate amounts. Although The Renewed American Home does not utilize much wireless, there also are limited wireless options for certain systems, such as lighting, heating and air conditioning. Wertz and Tame expect lighting control to be one of the first features picked up en masse by builders – ranging from whole-house shut-offs to motorized drapes, shades and awnings to capture or shut out sun – with house-wide control touch panels not far behind. “From a resale standpoint, I believe
that buyers will be asking more and more for the ability to have home networks,” says Wertz. “When I started in this business in 1994, security systems were really the only electronic system that was standard for the most part. Today I see customers asking for systems ranging from iPod interfaces with whole-house audio to dedicated home theaters to flat-panel TVs, and I believe these are becoming the standard equipment of today.” Even in houses built in 1909. © CTW Features
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New Year’s Home Resolutions
Get a jump on home improvements and decorating changes that will help you enjoy your house throughout the coming year. This year’s the year: Organizing your home will help you purge the items you don’t need and locate the ones you do. And who knows, you may even be able to park a car in that garage. By Barbara Ballinger CTW Features
As you look over your list of New Year’s resolutions, don’t forget what should be at the top, since it may be your biggest asset: your house. It, too, needs tender-loving care to look and function its best. We’ve rounded up a baker’s dozen ideas. But before you get going, heed another one from Kathy Passarette, owner of Creative Home Expressions, Long Island. “Remove your holiday decorations by the second week in January. Nobody wants to see icicle lights or reindeer on your lawn, whether they’re your neighbors or prospective buyers.” Here are others: • Get organized. Yup, everyone promises that the New Year will be the year they really do, but this year be sure you do. Before you start, make a list of what needs organizing in every single room in your house, which may include throwing out or giving away. Jeff Davidson, author of Breathing Space: Living & Working at a Comfortable Pace in a Sped-Up Society (Mastermedia, 1999), suggests donating anything you haven’t worn in the past two years. Don’t forget
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your garage, which often is a dumping ground but fortunately has become the latest place to spiff up. HouseWall Garage System, Hialeah, Fla., has developed a software program that sketches your garage, and maps out how space can be maximized. • Go green. Sustainability is no longer for a small fringe group of architects, builders, contractors and homeowners. Plus, it’s an easy way to help save our planet. Danny Seo, eco-stylist, author and host of the TV program Simply Green, suggests choosing low-VOC paints, which contain no ozone-depleting chemicals, buying only enough paint for what you need to minimize waste (online paint calculators are a quick resource), choosing green hardwoods like bamboo, and donating reusable building materials to an organization like Habitat for Humanity, so they can be used for new projects. • Become more energy conscious. Turn off anything that you’re not using, whether it’s lights, TVs or computers, says Don Whaley,
CEO of Choice Energy Services Retail, Houston, Texas, an institutional energy brokerage consulting. • Make your house safer. October may be National Fire Safety month, and June may be Home Safety month, but there’s no reason not to be safe all year. Among suggestions from the Home Safety Council: Install smoke alarms and test them monthly; stay in the kitchen while you prepare food; post emergency numbers next to every phone; keep your
water heater setting at 120 degrees F or less; install four-sided fencing with selflocking and closing gates. • Keep your house well. Don’t let your house lock in pollutants and get sick due to super-energy efficient building techniques. Ventilation fans, like Panasonic’s WhisperGreen vent fan, help flush out pollutants and keep indoor air quality at its best. John Brennan, an environmental consultant in Summit, N.J., advises checking that your house has no asbestos, radon gas, lead or mold. • Get more fit. You’ll enjoy your home more if you like how you look. Find a corner or extra room that you can dedicate to a home gym – many treadmills, ellipticals and bicycles can fit into these spaces, and some fold up for easy storage.
• Keep everything in good shape. RepairClinic.com’s handy Appliance Maintenance calendar reminds you what to inspect and repair when. Many repairs require less than five minutes. Example: Improve your refrigerator’s efficiency by cleaning its condenser coils with a condenser cleaning brush and your vacuum cleaner. • Add color. Even if you’re not up to repainting your entire house, add color to improve its curb appeal, says James Martin, an architectural color expert and founder of The Color People, a design color firm in Denver. Paint the shutters, front door and some front-facing flower boxes using a high gloss. To decide on the color, look to the roof, masonry and landscaping; use one color for consistency. • Have the title checked. With fraud and ineptness, you never know if the
title for your home is clean unless you’ve checked. Title-protection companies can offer an inexpensive check through your title’s history to see if there are any defects that could plague you at a later date. You need a clean title before you sell. • Save funds on furnishings. Let your artistic side shine by buying unfinished furniture and decorating it yourself. For tips on decorating and where to find a store, go to the Unfinished Furniture Association’s Web site at www.unfinishedfurniture.org. • Create a sleep sanctuary. Homeowners are putting lots more money into their master bathrooms, but how about the room where they sleep? Many bedrooms could use sprucing up, especially since most of us spend onethird of our life sleeping. Invest in a new bed, mattress and lighting.
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• Retrofit for the booming boomer generation. More folks want to age in their homes and make them welcoming and safe for fellow boomers. AARP suggests installing handrails on both sides of all steps, securing carpets and area rugs, using brighter bulbs, nightlights and lights in closets, and switching to lever handles. • Meet your neighbors. They may become wonderful friends and may help watch your house when you’re away. Before the New Year ends, host an open house and invite everyone over. They’re likely to ooh and aah over your beautiful, organized home, says April Masini of the column AskApril.com. © CTW Features
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