Interior design awards can inspire homeowners
The budget for your home improvement might be modest, but Adele Lampert says you can glean inspiration and tips from her award-winning project.
In fact, Lampert's Barrington firm, Page One Interiors, is trying to achieve the same feel with a family room remodel as in the brand-new house that grabbed two honorable mentions from the recent Design Excellence awards sponsored by the Illinois chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers and i4design magazine.
Today's popular neutral palettes require contrast, she said.
• This can be done with color - stain the floor dark walnut and take turns with dark and light finishes on the cabinets, walls, trim and countertops, for example.
• Texture is the other tool - try nubby fabrics near shiny marble tiles or partnering with silk. She espouses a generous use of perennial favorite naturals like wool, cotton and linen.
Here are other features in the Barrington home that Lampert's designers started on during the planning stage.
• Distressed wood includes reclaimed pieces for flooring and beams in ultra-tall ceilings. This tool works even in formal rooms, said Lampert, and fits our desire for a more relaxed, less uptight lifestyle. One way to tone down the look is to apply an additional glaze after the distressing. The knots in the knotty alder doors provide drama without the need for much additional distressing.
• You may not be able to install a two-story stone fireplace, but you can reface your old one with stone veneer, which means you won't have to worry about shoring up the home to support it.
• Remember hardware - door knobs, lighting fixtures, faucets - should not be shiny these days. Get brushed metal rather than polished brass or chrome.
• Something has to hold a look together. Think palette or perhaps using different sizes and finishes with the same stone for various surfaces.
• Pay attention to those lighting fixtures. It is worth more to be sure they are beautiful, and if the rooms or tall ceilings demand it, a bit larger.
• The colors in this home are cream, chocolate, and grays with subtle tones of blues and greens.
• Designer kitchens are so gorgeous because professionals look at the overall room and all its uses from preparation to storage to entertaining, said Lampert. In other words, they miss fewer details than less skilled or inexperienced people might.
• The kitchen island is too large for a single piece of granite, so bronze strips mark the seams.
Of course, there are features in the new home that you cannot easily add to a remodeling.
Most dramatically, the walls are all 12 or even 18 inches thick to create a feeling of anticipation when you travel from room to room.
While Lampert worked on a home in the over-3,000-square-foot category, Mary Lou Kalmus of Designing Edge in Clarendon Hills won her honorable mention for a condominium kitchen under 200 square feet.
The client took culinary arts classes, then wanted a better kitchen. Kalmus faced several constraints besides the room's small size, including a modest budget and the lack of a basement for running utilities.
One of her solutions was jazzing up the space with stock cabinet styles from separate manufacturers in wood, glass and aluminum.
She also made the range, high-powered ventilation and glass ribbon-style backsplash a focal point in the corner and laid combed white porcelain tiles at an angle to expand the space.
John Robert Wiltgen, formerly a suburbanite, took first prizes for a home over 3,000 square feet and in the bath category.
For the large city penthouse he even worked with the client's attorney to negotiate the rights to complete the project the way the client wanted - including a glass-enclosed terrace.
As dramatic as this is, the home has clean and simple furnishings to showcase the owner's photography.
Wiltgen's other award is for a bathroom with floor-to-ceiling windows. After a trip to Italy, the clients wanted a master bath that would make them feel like they were in Florence. Wiltgen achieved this with his-and-her vanities that look like antique commodes, hand-painted Italian tiles around the mirror and fireplace, and an elegant gold-plated Italian chandelier.
The Best of Show entry is a large kitchen that connects an existing home with a great room addition.
Solutions from Barbara Ince and Sarah Davis of Susan Fredman Design Group in Chicago include three islands for baking, gathering and dining.
The owners wanted an open, airy and bright kitchen. Finishes that helped create this start with off-white cabinets, white ice quartzite countertops and glass tiles for the backsplashes.
Again wide-plank walnut flooring provides contrast. And the designers put a lot of attention into several types of lighting.