A swooping charcoal-gray stone wall tells the story of this modern home in one gentle but generous gesture. Enveloping trees, entry, living room, and vistas all at once separates the main wing for two from an in-law suite and carefully guides this ensemble around a set of mature tress. Lightly placing this house on a heavily wooded Charlotte, NC site while keeping the natural setting intact, paired with concerns of privacy, sunlight, and views of nature has made the initial design phase especially fun and challenging.

This client had a large square backyard that wasn't particularly interesting and was way too hot most of the afternoon. She wanted to be able to enjoy the space, grow food, and was also very concerned with groundwater recharge. The downspouts from the roof were directed into a large dry creek for onsite water harvesting which also serves as a main visual feature as it curves through the garden. Meandering pathways of decomposed granite lead you wherever you might want to go - whether that's out to the patio to get some shade under the arbor in the hot afternoon sun, or to the elongated raised vegetable beds. Party guests can sit at one of two patios or even sit on the generous benches around the sides of the raised bed. Curving shapes allow all of the garden features to flow together. Plants were installed on large soil mounds which allow for excellent drainage as well as topographic interest. Client's existing heirloom roses were replanted throughout garden. This overgrown weedy space was transformed into a beautiful, multi-functional garden for entertaining, relaxing, growing food, and recharging groundwater.

Our clients immediately recognized the potential of the home located in a highly sought-after section of Allentown. The dated kitchen needed significant rethinking but our clients knew it could be turned into something beautiful and inspiring. And, indeed, they were right. Busy professionals with an active social life, our clients wanted an inviting space to host both intimate dinner parties and large social gatherings. With this in mind, we worked to reimagine the flow of traffic from one room to another. Extraneous walls and a desk inconveniently positioned in the middle of the main kitchen thoroughfare needed to be removed and tight workspace aisles and narrow passageways demanded widening to help alleviate the problem. In addition to the kitchen’s flow concerns, the dark and dated space needed brightening. The wall between the kitchen and family room was opened up to unite the two spaces allowing more light into both rooms. Windows were also added at the sink wall so the room could be flooded with bright morning sun, while also offering a beautiful view of the park below. All-white cabinetry was selected to help reflect the additional light. An unfortunate challenge of expanding the windows meant there were fewer wall cabinets to store dishes. We turned to the island where we installed large dish drawers featuring wood pegged interiors. We also relied on wall-to-counter cabinets for additional storage to help keep the room clutter-free as appliances were neatly tucked behind doors. A new, built-in pantry was also added. The finished kitchen unites traditional with today and elegance with comfort to ensure perfection. We are thrilled for our clients who have an abundance of good taste, an eye for what is possible and a drive to see it accomplished. Jacqueline Powell Photography

Emily and Steve have remodeled several pieces of their home and because they love Kaufman’s process so much, they keep coming back. In past years, we’ve remodeled most of their main floor including an updated living space and staircase, and a completely remodeled powder room and kitchen with a nice big island that’s perfect for entertaining. Their most recent project was this year when we remodeled their deck. The major pain points Steve and Emily dealt with before the remodel was lack of functionality due to poor design and because the previous owners had built the deck themselves, there were quite a few safety concerns. Throughout the design process, we decided to remove the existing deck completely and start fresh with a screened in porch, Emily’s Porch, and a deck off the porch with stairs going down to the beautiful backyard – one of the factors that motivated them to make this house their home to begin with.

An update was needed for an outdated kitchen with spacing and workflow issues. The revamped design not only addressed safety concerns and improved functionality but also introduced full-height pullouts and a corner pantry to maximize storage efficiency. Installing the same flooring throughout the main floor of the house created a sense of cohesion and enhanced the visual flow in the home. A new lighting plan was implemented to deliver light to crucial areas to improve visibility and visual comfort while working in the kitchen, as well as contributed to a sense of spaciousness. Ultimately, the remodel resulted in a stylish, inviting, and efficient kitchen with unencumbered pathways to the work areas.

This was a pair of unique entry gates we built for a client. The gates have a frame fabricated from steel and are clad with raw copper. The columns are also wrapped in copper on all sides. The copper is left raw so that it will age naturally and develop a beautiful patina. These photos are from after installation. We will try and post some aged photos after the patina has had a chance to form.

A swooping charcoal-gray stone wall tells the story of this modern home in one gentle but generous gesture. Enveloping trees, entry, living room, and vistas all at once separates the main wing for two from an in-law suite and carefully guides this ensemble around a set of mature tress. Lightly placing this house on a heavily wooded Charlotte, NC site while keeping the natural setting intact, paired with concerns of privacy, sunlight, and views of nature has made the initial design phase especially fun and challenging.

A swooping charcoal-gray stone wall tells the story of this modern home in one gentle but generous gesture. Enveloping trees, entry, living room, and vistas all at once separates the main wing for two from an in-law suite and carefully guides this ensemble around a set of mature tress. Lightly placing this house on a heavily wooded Charlotte, NC site while keeping the natural setting intact, paired with concerns of privacy, sunlight, and views of nature has made the initial design phase especially fun and challenging.

Sun Control of Minnesota is a family owned and operated business that offers Professional Window Tinting Services. We first started out in one office with two part time installers, and we have now grown our business with over 15 employees badge-1980and four different locations in the metro area. We continue to expand our relationships with customers, as well as our service and quality of work. We offer a complete line of Window Tinting services for Automotive, Commercial, Residential, & Marine applications. Our products include Decorative Frost Films, for glass enhancement; Safety/ Security Films, for Anti-Theft and Blast Protection; and 3M Paint Protection Film, for Automotive Rock Chip Prevention. We focus on helping our customers reduce damaging UV rays, excessive solar heat gain, and glare from their interior spaces. UV rays, solar heat, and visible light are the main contributors to fading concerns in homes. Window Film reduces these elements to provide a beautiful view without having to close out the natural sunlight with a shade or blind. We provide the quality that competitors can’t even touch. Our Mission is to Provide the Highest Quality Service, Products, and Installation in the Solar Energy Control Tint & Glass Film industry.

Sun Control of Minnesota is a family owned and operated business that offers Professional Window Tinting Services. We first started out in one office with two part time installers, and we have now grown our business with over 15 employees badge-1980and four different locations in the metro area. We continue to expand our relationships with customers, as well as our service and quality of work. We offer a complete line of Window Tinting services for Automotive, Commercial, Residential, & Marine applications. Our products include Decorative Frost Films, for glass enhancement; Safety/ Security Films, for Anti-Theft and Blast Protection; and 3M Paint Protection Film, for Automotive Rock Chip Prevention. We focus on helping our customers reduce damaging UV rays, excessive solar heat gain, and glare from their interior spaces. UV rays, solar heat, and visible light are the main contributors to fading concerns in homes. Window Film reduces these elements to provide a beautiful view without having to close out the natural sunlight with a shade or blind. We provide the quality that competitors can’t even touch. Our Mission is to Provide the Highest Quality Service, Products, and Installation in the Solar Energy Control Tint & Glass Film industry.

Step Inside a Superb Altamount Residence by Hirsch Bedner Associates ⇒ Based in Santa Monica, Hirsch Bedner Associates (HBA) is an international firm dedicated to hospitality design as well as residential projects. Since 1965, the leading design firm has been continuously concerned regarding the pulse of changing industry trends, which are mainly directed towards today’s modern traveller. Quite recently, HBA has designed a superb Altamount Residence that will be the focus of our article, so get ready to be inspired and step inside a beautiful residence.

FINISH: PRIMED The advantages of this approach – of this type of interior door finish – are fairly obvious. Pick a color, any color that suits your projects best. Mix and apply. Re- coat whenever you feel it is necessary to do so. Touch it up. It gives you, the proud owner of these interior doors, complete freedom of choice, and the significant savings, especially where it comes to bulk orders, can be a true source of joy. As Kurt Vonnegut mentions in one of his novels (Bluebeard, unless I’m mistaken … check it out when you get a chance), the thrill of laying on colors is a large part of the artist’s professional satisfaction. In other words, a keen pleasure. When back in the remote past visual arts became a field dominated by professionals rather than hobbyists, the main problem of “just laying on paint” became obvious: you can’t. The medium of choice back then was egg tempera, a permanent, fast-drying substance consisting of colored pigments mixed with a water-soluble binder medium, usually glutinous material such as egg yolk. Portraits and ornaments were executed in this medium, and the wood panel was the surface of choice. One of tempera’s interesting features is that it is not as easily absorbed by wood as other mediums. Some sort of primer was necessary, of course, but pretty much any substance that dried evenly could be used. The drawbacks of tempera, or pintura al temple, as the Spanish call it, only became obvious with the advent of the Renaissance, when the leading representatives of the trade turned to oil (and interior doors suddenly became a great deal less crude, but that’s a story for another day). Oil painting is the process of “painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder.” Commonly used types include linseed (highly preferable in art, though not necessarily in interior doors, mind you), poppy seed, walnut, and safflower. Today, five hundred years later, it is safe to say that oil is more versatile than pintura al temple – by orders of magnitude. Specifically, the contrasts achieved through the former are much greater, the darks are far deeper, and three- dimensional, highly realistic images are much easier to achieve. Next time you visit a museum, take a closer look at pintura al temple portraits. All of them, without exception, come off as a bit “flat” as opposed to their latter-day counterparts. Also, where glazing is concerned … Glazing: a painting technique in which a transparent layer, with just a touch of pigment, is laid over a previously painted surface, allowing light to travel through the glaze and be reflected back off of the opaque layer below. Gentle shadows, subtle changes of color, smooth transitions – all these can be achieved through glazing, which was used by all artists up until the middle of the Nineteenth Century, when artist tubes were invented, revolutionizing the field, and other techniques began to be explored. Tempera enthusiasts (it takes all kinds to make a world) will assure you that glazing is not just possible in pintura al temple but is actually the basis of the whole enterprise. Well, what are you going to do? They’re enthusiasts. Anyway, la peinture à l'huile, as the French call it, re-introduced the ancient problem of most surface’s propensity to absorb dipingere, as the Italians call the stuff. Wood or canvas, it is all the same: you’re not going to get very far without a good primer. Experiments were conducted, and soon rabbit skin glue emerged as the least expensive and most effective solution. It was easy to apply. It dried evenly. It made the application of the l’huile stuff on top of it a walk in the park. There were drawbacks. Today, rabbit skin glue is considered to be a major cause of cracking by most modern conservators. (Remember, when you visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art – and did you see those interior doors? … some of them are quite something … - most “old masters” pictures are completely covered with a cobweb of cracks? There you go). Because the glue is hygroscopic, it continually absorbs moisture from the atmosphere, causing the glue to swell and shrink as ambient humidity levels change. Over many humidity cycles, this repeated flexing causes the brittle oily layers to crack. To combat this problem, modern primers are made of acrylic materials which are guaranteed not to cause any damage to the dipingere. No bubbling, no cracks. Your interior doors are safe.

Orange Vinyl added to bathroom glass to spice up the look Sun Control of Minnesota is a family owned and operated business that offers Professional Window Tinting Services. We first started out in one office with two part time installers, and we have now grown our business with over 15 employees badge-1980and four different locations in the metro area. We continue to expand our relationships with customers, as well as our service and quality of work. We offer a complete line of Window Tinting services for Automotive, Commercial, Residential, & Marine applications. Our products include Decorative Frost Films, for glass enhancement; Safety/ Security Films, for Anti-Theft and Blast Protection; and 3M Paint Protection Film, for Automotive Rock Chip Prevention. We focus on helping our customers reduce damaging UV rays, excessive solar heat gain, and glare from their interior spaces. UV rays, solar heat, and visible light are the main contributors to fading concerns in homes. Window Film reduces these elements to provide a beautiful view without having to close out the natural sunlight with a shade or blind. We provide the quality that competitors can’t even touch. Our Mission is to Provide the Highest Quality Service, Products, and Installation in the Solar Energy Control Tint & Glass Film industry.

This gorgeous contemporary glass front custom wine cellar in Corona Del Mar, Newport Beach, California is an eye catcher. The sleek, glass ultra modern wine room was a unique and exciting project for our team here at Vintage Cellars. The stone bar extends into the wine cellar itself, but due to mechanical, cooling, and condensation concerns, our expert custom wine cellar team knew that extra measures needed to be taken to ensure the end quality remained top notch. The bar itself was divided into two sections, one cut section outside to make up the main seating area and the other inside the glass wine room. The stone bar, which is porous, takes up a good portion of the front facing glass panel. Had the bar simply extended into the wine cellar and been sealed off at the joints, the stone would have eventually transferred in enough heat and moisture to cause condensation. Proper wine cellar design and planning enabled this wine cellar to not only look fantastic, but function perfectly as well. One interesting unique feature in this Corona Del Mar, Newport Beach, Orange County, California glass and metal wine cellar is an extension of floor to ceiling frames mounted to the backside of the stone bar. This feature was made to seamlessly show consistency in floor to ceiling vintageview frames throughout. Corona Del Mar, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Huntington Beach, Newport Coast, Ladera Ranch, Coto De Caza, Laguna Hills, San Clemente, Dana Point, Seal Beach, Laguna Niguel still remain the areas in Orange County that we build wine cellars most often. Contemporary wine cellars such as this are becoming more and more popular in modern design trends. Interior Design, Architecture, and Construction all play a part in ensuring that the client’s vision comes to reality. This project was no different. Working closely with David Close Homes, Vintage Cellars was able to meet with the client and team involved, determine the ultimate wine cellar wine room wine closet goals, and see them to the finish. Upon walking into this glass and metal modern contemporary wine cellar, you become quickly surrounded with triple deep bottles from many of the world’s best wineries. On the left below the countertop is a black stained poplar wine racking system for single 750ml bottles. Above lies room for display case storage, room for large format bottles, and label forward vintageview design racking to the ceiling. On the middle wall of this wine room is room for case storage below, similarly with triple deep vintageview floor to ceiling frames dying into more case storage above. On the right side of this wall lies a vertical space for single large format case storage. Ultra Modern wine cellars such as this are all the rage in contemporary homes in San Diego, Orange County, and Los Angeles. This glass enclosed wine cellar with a sleek modern contemporary racking system is truly a showpiece in this home in Corona Del Mar, Newport Beach, California. Wine Racking, Wine Cellar Cooling, Wine Cellar design, Wine Cellar Build out and Wine Cellar Installation is what Vintage Cellars does best. Timeless Luxury.

An update was needed for an outdated kitchen with spacing and workflow issues. The revamped design not only addressed safety concerns and improved functionality but also introduced full-height pullouts and a corner pantry to maximize storage efficiency. Installing the same flooring throughout the main floor of the house created a sense of cohesion and enhanced the visual flow in the home. A new lighting plan was implemented to deliver light to crucial areas to improve visibility and visual comfort while working in the kitchen, as well as contributed to a sense of spaciousness. Ultimately, the remodel resulted in a stylish, inviting, and efficient kitchen with unencumbered pathways to the work areas.

THE SETUP “You have to figure out how to rebuild a life worth living,” Basia Kozub’s client says. Her husband passed away suddenly three years ago. Holidays with family became more important, and she found herself struggling with a 37-year old kitchen that was falling apart. “I made a decision to move forward,” she says. “I went, ‘You know what? I’m redoing the kitchen.'” The big task of getting started was as easy as having a conversation – literally. Basia was on the job, helping the client sort through priorities, wishes and ideas. Basia’s client is 5′ 4″, likes keeping an eye on the kiddoes in the backyard and wanted certain things to have their own place. THE REMODEL The objectives were: Enlarge and open the space Find a classic look that incorporates blues Upgrade to easy-to-use appliances Hide an office space within the space Ample storage for dishes Design challenges: Uneven window alignment on the back wall Original kitchen smaller than desired, stuctural concerns if walls to be moved Keep folks close – figure out seating for entertaining Main sink in corner is ideal, but windows are hard to reach Lots of storage needed for dishes, glass collection, pantry items, bar bottles and office supplies Specific storage needs for oft-used spices and utensils THE RENEWED SPACE Design solutions: Replace back wall windows, establish window size continuity Take out two walls to open up the space, tall shallow cabinet and a tall filler added to conceal a new header Large island that seats six easily Custom corner sink cabinet with recessed edge allows vertically challenged homeowner to reach the windows Mindful storage planning features: plenty of cabinets, pull-out bar bottle storage, file drawers & cubbies with pocket doors for office appliances, magic corner pullouts, and appliance garages with pocket doors Shelf behind range for easy access to daily-use spices and oils. Also: spice and utensil pullouts on either side of range The clients says every priority and wish box got checked. The highly functional design absorbed everything that used to be in that area of the house, but now those things are out of the way. “In the past, we were all spread out when we gathered for the holidays, because we had to spread out. Now, we’re all in here together, including my 92-year old mother. We’re visiting, cooking, laughing… everyone is here. And I’m really learning how to use these appliances. This kitchen has given me a whole new life.” This is a custom specialty bread drawer!

Client was looking for adding new office space for him and his partner at his house along with adding dormers to the front side, right side and back side of the existing house. He was also looking to add some storage and closet spaces to his house and providing sunlight to one of the back-side bed rooms. The biggest concern by the client as doing an expansion project as if the new added parts are part of the original house, when somebody sees the house from the main street. Completely consistent and faded into the existing design theme. and this is why he asked for some 3D renderings first and then creating permitting documents in separate phases.

At Shawnee Mission Builders, we want to help you make the most of the existing space in your Kansas City area home. With our basement finishing services, we can turn your oft-forgotten storage area into a fun place to hang out with friends and family. Give us a call today for a basement finishing service estimate, and to learn more about all of our home remodeling services. We’ll help you create a design and floorplan with building materials and products that work with your budget. Dens & Family Rooms Revamping your existing basement is an easy way to add value and square footage to your Kansas City home, and for less money than the cost of a room addition. The first part of your basement remodeling project is to inspect the area thoroughly for leaks and potential problem areas. Our experienced remodelers will patch leaks and bolster the structure of your basement, installing moisture barriers and sump pumps if needed. Once the structural concerns are out of the way, we will begin the process of remodeling the floors, walls, and ceiling of your basement. We can turn your Kansas City basement into a media room, game room, wine cellar, or a guest bedroom. Many unfinished basements offer the same square footage as the main floor, so you’ll have plenty of space to design your extra living area. With the addition of partial walls and finished columns, we can separate your basement into distinct areas, such as a laundry room and a den.

Step Inside a Superb Altamount Residence by Hirsch Bedner Associates ⇒ Based in Santa Monica, Hirsch Bedner Associates (HBA) is an international firm dedicated to hospitality design as well as residential projects. Since 1965, the leading design firm has been continuously concerned regarding the pulse of changing industry trends, which are mainly directed towards today’s modern traveller. Quite recently, HBA has designed a superb Altamount Residence that will be the focus of our article, so get ready to be inspired and step inside a beautiful residence.