D.I.Y. Run Amuck

Koontz - I have been inside four houses recently that have all been remodeled by their owners, and I'm beginning to wonder if I need to change my stance on D.I.Y. work.

I've supported DIY because I believe it contributes to the sense of a personal investment in your home. But lordy, what these people are doing!!!

All of these homes are owned by friends of mine. Of the four, three of the owners have worked (or do work), as carpenters. The last house is a friend who works in the trades in an area unrelated to carpentry. For the most part, the workmanship is fine. In my rating scale, one does excellent work, one does very good work, one does good work and the last, the non-carpenter, well, he tries very hard.

The problem with three of the four houses is the design tact choosen by the owners'. Only one of the houses is staying true to it's root structure and actually being improved upon. That house was remodeled by a previous owner and my friend who owns the place now is working at correcting several serious design flaws from the previous remodel. His will be the hardest remodel because of this previous work. It will also be the only one of these four examples that will turn out right for a couple of key reasons that I'll come back to.

The other three houses all started as various sized Craftsman bungalows. They have since become; 1. A combination Craftsman/Victorian with long hallways, over-fancy trimwork, and 1200 additional square feet that resembles a train car. 2. A stripped Craftsman-you can still see the skeleton, but everything that made it what it was is now gone, including the lovely old front door, (now a metal six-panel), the wood floors, (now Pergo), and the six-over-one, wood, double- hung windows, (now single-hung, nine-over-nines). 3. Okay visually from the outside, but inside it has been modernized to the point of bastardization; wrong material choices, bad lay-out, no character left.

The sad fact is that I even know how these houses came to be; On the first one, they had the budget, but not the right design sensibility. On numbers 2 & 3, they sacrificed the house to the budget demands, trying to "get the most" for their money, in short; their budget was too tight to start with.

The other sad fact is that these owners' would do the same thing all over again, because they think they made the best choices they could with their design and budget. But they're wrong.

With better planning and more time to consider and search out options, all of these owners' could have made their improvements without destroying the gems they started with.

Have a heart people! Do some research, be aware of the space you're in, recognize that you can rehabilitate, remodel, even add-on and not lose what was originally built-and if you want a modern, new-styled house than think about selling your old one and relocating!

Going back to house number 4-this remodel will work because the new owner knows something about the style of his house and he likes it and wants to stay in keeping with it. He will take his time and if the budget gets too tight, he'll just take longer to accomplish all that he wants; he actually does serious DIY stuff---if he wants a wooden door at the back and he can't find the right style, he'll take the time to build the right door. He drives his wife crazy I think with his pickiness, but when he's done, you'll never know he changed anything. This will be a job worth following, (obviously he's also the only one not done). I'll keep you posted.

Color, more color

Koontz - Boy, do I have a website for eveyone! Check out Colorquiz.com-it's fairly amazing. Be warned though, it deals with color and your personal psychological status-at the time-you take the quiz. One of my brothers' nearly cried when he did it---he was in a bit of a weird state apparently...

Color does say alot about a person though. I have an ex-roommate who always did her homes in really bold, vibrant colors. I love to walk into the rooms. I enjoy being in them with her, but I have never been able to live with those colors when I go to do my own spaces. I want to be a bold color person...or so I say. But given the choice, I can't live day to day among those colors. (Interestingly enough, when she married, this woman went to pastels. Now she is divorced, and she's back to bold...talk about psychology!).

I tell people all the time to look around at the things that they buy. The things that attract them. The colors in the throw pillows, in their clothes, in the art they hang. Those are the colors you love. For me, these colors always go toward "earthen". I like what I call the muddy colors-burnt reds and oranges, deeper greens with alot of gray in them. Yellows that tend toward gold and brown. I want to be vibrant, but I'm pretty much the polar opposite. I like the soothing colors. I've learned that all the things I'm attracted to tend to be in these shades, and I repeat that trend from my furniture, to my carpet to my walls. I finally realized that only on my patio can I deal with the bright colors that I think I should want-real red, sun yellow, grass green. There, I love those shades-but not in my quiet spaces.

My work partner has a great color sense. Perhaps because he knows me well, he can and has told me-"You need a red color there Peg". He doesn't pick it out, he just says red, and leaves it to me to find the right red. One wall in my livingroom got painted four or five times before I found that red. We've since used it at his house too, and we've tried to talk several clients into it-it's a great color! (They've resisted-they must be the pastel type...).

You can try all kinds of programs for color and some of the programs are great for deciding on the second color-but I think you just need to look around your existing house to figure out what kind of color person you are-the cool thing is that when you determine if you like cool colors, bold colors or earth colors, you'll find that you seem to like all of the colors in that spectrum. And hey, paint is the cheapest of all the remodeling tools-you can always get another gallon and try again!

Smoked-Out is the New Black

Okay, after all this business about there being no new colors, I have found a trend that I love. Kitchen and Bath Business May 2006 www.kbbonline.com (okay, a little behind on the ol’ reading here—definite Periodical Guilt) has an article subtitled “smoked-out, toned down shades show that gray matters.”

These are the colors I have loved and searched for all my life. I’ve simply been unable to use whole brand palettes--Pittsburgh Paints being one of them, until they recently recolored—because the trend was for clear colors or tints (white). The article says it best, “Gray and black influences will impart more earthiness to bright colors, and cues taken from ‘skins’ (from human to nature and culture) will add more realism to color and texture selection.”

Benjamin Moore has always had more of these tones than any other line I’ve worked with, which is probably why they are hands down the favorite of professional designers. “Smoked-out, toned-down palettes,” is what’s in store says Doty Horn, BM’s director of color and design.

Smoked-Out will undoubtedly Trend-Out in a few years, but for now I’ll enjoy the selection and the ride.

If I got really bored I could analyze why these colors appeal to me, and I would come up with a cultural and familial sources: Sweden (one of the many cultures making up this here American Mongrel); the time my mother spent in Japan as a young married woman and the aesthetic taste she developed because of this experience; the San Joaquin valley where I was born and raised with its grayed-golden summertime hills and grey-green vineyards.

So if I was my own client, how the hell would I uncover that in the programming interview?

Lifestyle Catalogs Getting into the Paint Biz

Fitzpatrick--Many shelter catalogs are getting into the paint biz. Sundance has its own paints, Restoration Hardware has theirs.

Pottery Barn has gone a different route and teamed up with Benjamin Moore to create their line. Smart choice.

Who’s your favorite paint company, and why?

All Color Theory is Bunk

Fitzpatrick--In spite of the fun Pittsburgh Paint interactive game at www.thevoiceofcolor.com, I tend to think that most color theory is bunk. Color is the most subjective thing in the human sensory experience. Culture, sex, experience, memory, association, all come into play in an individual’s experience of color. This hasn’t stopped legions of color charlatans from flogging their theories, books and seminars.

I once let an intern of mine select the wall colors for a new client’s office. She chose a rich deep chili red for once wall. The company owner’s wife’s opinion was “warm wonderful.” The office manager’s opinion, “angry, threatening.” Same color, two women, two completely different experiences.

Sometimes I feel that only Jungian analysis would be sufficient to truly discover the mechanism behind our color preferences. I’ve yet to locate a book on such a thing, but if someone knows of one, drop a line.

The Voice of Color

Fitzpatrick--It’s not often the question preceding a paint selection is “How would your friends and family describe you?” followed by ten statements such as “Trustworthy and calm, a good communicator,” or “Sophisticated and straightforward, a purist.” (Neither one of those describe me, by the way). But at Pittsburgh Paints new interactive website, The Voice of Color www.thevoiceofcolor.com you’re asked all kinds of crazy things in a clever little Rorschach game that attempts to match your style with one of their new color families. It’s a lot of fun. I’ve been doing it over several months, since Pittsburgh Paints’ artistic director, Josette Buisson, came to town and gave an excellent talk. It’s interesting to watch your answers change, depending on what time of day you’re taking the test, what your stress level is, even how hungry you are (some choices involve photographs of cake!).

As a designer, I become weary of color. Every month articles in shelter and fashion mags tout the “new colors.” Workshops are held all over the globe to discern the new trends. Countless really bad books have been written on the subject. For me it’s the hardest element of design to do well and the thing I’m most asked for. “Will you come over to my house and give me some ideas?” usually means pick colors, and everyone seems to think it’s as easy as pulling ye olde Crayola out of the box.

I hate picking paint colors. I’m not good at it. I once sat in my own newly-sheet rocked master bedroom for three hours in 110 degree heat with no air conditioning (supposed to hasten my decision) trying to decide on a color for my own bedroom. I cried.

What I loved about Josette is she said she’s asked the same thing by journalists every season. “What are the new colors? What are the new colors?” She responds, “There are no new colors. They’ve all always been there!”

Custom

Koontz - I am so tired of people referring to "custom" work, or "custom"homes", when the actuality is that they are talking about production work. The semantics of the words may not matter to the consumer, but they matter intensely to a tradesperson.

You do not buy a "custom" product off the shelf at Lowe's. Nor do you purchase a "custom" house from a residential developer. Custom means something that is made individually for a customer. If you choose one of the options on your developers' house, that is still not a "custom" house. If the same product is offered to everyone, it is not custom, it's an upgrade.

If your contractor tells you that they can't or won't do something, because they "just don't", it's because they won't spend their time on custom work-they want production work. The same cabinets go in every job they work on because it's easier for them.

Custom work takes a considerable amount of time-and not only on the actual job site. If you want custom work, you need to understand that the process starts long before the carpenter is on site. For the tradesperson, it begins the minute he or she sees the space and starts envisioning what could be. For custom work, 60% is in the workers' head, figuring things out, the other 40% is putting it into effect. That takes talent, time, money and faith.

You can have custom work using a good designer and a good builder, but you can't get it from a home store or a tract builder.