Mood Boards: A great communication tool

After your interior designer has a good idea of what you have in mind for your project, they will put together a design concept for your home.  One of the tools they might use is called a 'mood board'.  A mood board is a communication tool that uses visual language to make sure everyone is on the same page regarding the colors and 'mood' wanted in the newly decorated room.  

Mood boards are not meant to be interpreted literally.  There is no need to nitpick the board and say that you don't like the arms on the chair or that you don't actually own (in the case of this board) a chocolate lab with it's own set of pearls.  You want to step back from the board and decide if the feeling, the essence it suggests, is the feeling and essence you want to live with in your new room.

This mood board was created to communicate the feeling of a 'vintage chic' style. 

The next picture shows one of the areas in the home that grew out of the mood board's concept.  Can you see the relation in the color scheme and feeling between the board and real life vignette?

There is no reason why you can't create a mood board for yourself, too!  If you are planning on working with a designer, most will welcome the advance time and thought you put into the dream and vision you have for your room.  And if you are paying your designer by the hour, you save money, too!  Don't worry about making it perfect, or even about things matching.  It can be a pile of clipped images that may not seem to relate; your designer can often distill your design style from vary disparate images.

On the other hand, if you are do-it-yourselfer, a complete mood board is a great tool for making sure that as you are out shopping you don't stray too far from the feeling you want, and you are more likely to end up with a cohesive, finished room than if you shop without this kind of a map and just buy on impulse.  Impulse shopping usually just leaves you with more stuff and a still unfinished room, crying out for cohesion.  So try your hand at a mood board.  Let your imagination run wild with the room you'd Love to have.  Clip images from home magazines, off the internet, from your own photos, and even from travel, fashion and cooking magazines.  This is about setting a mood with texture and color - the details of the arms on the chair will be worked out later.

Green is the new Black

I attended a seminar the other day at the Seattle Design Center by Bob Margulis of Ravenworks Joinery. For those looking for truly green, truly beautiful cabinetry, I highly recommend making an appointment with Bob!

Sustainably built kitchen cabinets by Ravenworks Joinery.

The seminar was designed to educate interior designers on "green building" and how they can educate clients and sway them towards "green" choices. What struck me was a comment Bob made about working for some of the wealthier clients in the Puget Sound area. When asked if it would violate his "green" principles to work for a client with a 10,000 square foot home, he said no, that he'd certainly take the job. Is he looking to cash in on a big project? While I am sure that the paycheck is nice, he had a more important reason for this choice. If he didn't take on the work, someone else surely would, and who's to say that that contractor would be using sustainable practices in his or her work? Regardless of Bob's (or my) opinion of living in that large of a home, making the cabinetry in such a home out of FSC wood is a great big checkmark on the side of the environment! It also gives Bob a chance to educate the customer or his contractors on other green choices that could be made in that home.

Bob made one other (I think) fantastic point. As environmentalists we *must* be careful about getting too high and mighty about our green choices. As he points out, what's "green" today may be "black" tomorrow. Take bamboo, for example. Just a few years ago this was touted as a fabulously green option for cabinetry, flooring, and other uses. Since then we have recognized that while it does *grow* sustainably, it is engineered using glues that off gas toxic fumes and it is also shipped halfway around the world, requiring enormous amounts of carbon based fuel to export. There is very little black and white in "green" - maybe green is the new gray.

Where to start with an interior designer

So you've decided to have a designer come over to look at your decorating dilemma.  If you've never worked with a design professional, you may not know what to expect.  This article is meant to give you some tools for making the most of that first meeting in terms of communicating your design wishes (please see "Up Front Budgets" for help on the financial side of that first meeting).  

A clean and contemporary bedroom featured on eurofurnitureonline.com

You've probably decided to hire a designer either because you feel that you 'have no style' or that this particular room is outside your problem solving comfort zone.  Regardless, please don't tell the designer to do "what ever they want" because you may not get what you want, but you'll have to pay any way.

How do you direct the conversation?  Do your homework.  My clients start one of three ways.  Either they have an inspiration piece they want to use to focus the room, they have a collection of images from the internet or magazines to share, or they get handed "The Book", my own collection of images for those too busy or uncertain to have started before I arrive.  

One of my clients asked me to redesign her bathroom.  She had a light fixture already chosen and purchased, and my job was to create a room around the fixture.  That was a great starting point!

Other clients have torn out 10, 20 or more pictures from design magazines and printed pictures they've downloaded from the internet.  To do something like this try typing in a search like "modern bedroom images" or "traditional kitchen images" in Google.  Then click on the "images" button right at the top of the Google search page and print out any that inspire you.  By going through these images with my client I learning what they like (or don't like) identify a common design thread and style.

Finally, many of my clients are overwhelmed before I arrive and have done practically nothing. They get "The Book."  The Book is simply a three ring binder full of images I have torn out of magazines over the years, and I have the homeowner go through with a stack of post-it notes and mark images that they love (and at least three that they hate).  From there I go through the ones marked, learn what they like and dislike, and again identify their design preferences.

I do this in addition to asking questions about their house, lifestyle, and wishes for their home.  All this is critical to making sure that 1) I understand what the client wants, 2) that my own design style is in line with their wishes so that we work together seamlessly and 3) that I am able to communicate effectively with this particular client; without effective communication the project is doomed.

Every designer that comes to your home with have their own way of running that first meeting, but the more prepared you are beforehand, the more you will get out of the meeting and the more quickly you'll know if this designer is the right designer for you and your home.

To Permit or Not To Permit... do you need a permit for your bathroom remodel?

As a homeowner you might not be sure whether you need to get a city permit for your bathroom remodel.  This information is meant to help clarify that question, but please keep in mind that this information is *only a guide* and that you need to evaluate each project individually.  There are some good resources to help you answer that question for your specific project, listed below.   Additionally, this article is only for Seattle area homes, because while the same rules may apply in other jurisdictions, they are not my area of expertise.

In all likelihood, you probably do not need a permit for your bathroom remodel.  If you do, you probably only need an “over-the-counter” electrical permit, for which you can quickly apply online, no need to wait for hours in a city office.

There are three basic kinds of permits you might face - the first is a building permit.  You might need this if you are removing structural beams or moving or resizing a window.  In a standard bathroom remodel you are probably leaving the walls alone, and perhaps replacing, but not moving or resizing a window.  No permit needed.  

The second kind is a plumbing permit.  You'll need this if you are moving around the rough plumbing, that is if you are, for example, moving the tub across the room, adding a stand alone shower, and moving the new double sink vanity to a new wall.  That is significant plumbing work and you should have a permit.  However if, like in many Seattle area remodels, you are just replacing the fixtures (and perhaps the shower diverter) but not moving the plumbing to new locations, no permit needed.

Finally there is the electrical permit.  This is the one permit that you might need, and you might need this even if there is no need for plumbing or building permits.  You want this if you are moving around the wiring (adding new recessed lighting, for example), changing the kind of wiring, or (especially) if you are running new circuits from your electrical box.  When would you need a new circuit?  In older houses it may simply not be done right and when you open the walls you may realize the circuits have too much load and need to be redone.  Or you might be adding electrical underfloor heating that should have it's own circuit.  You (or your contractor) might be tempted to skip an electrical permit, but they are not that hard to get (you can apply online!), and when you go to sell the house, you want that all in order.  Not to mention that you have no need for any new fire hazards, and having an inspector check the quality of your contractor's work is not such a bad thing.

So, what it often comes down to is what kind of remodel you are really doing.  If all you are doing is giving everything new clothes (tile, fixtures, paint, even sheetrock) but you are not changing any of the bones (plumbing, wiring, beams) then you likely have no need of a permit.  But I'll say it again, this is only a guide, so judge each project on it's own terms and, if you need more help, check out the Seattle Department of Planning webpage to learn more about building permits, read here to learn about plumbing permits, and click here to learn about electrical permits, and about applying online.

If you have any further questions, I'll be happy to help you find an answer, so don't hesitate to email me, too!  I am at design@rivalee.com.