This past month I’ve been playing a complicated game of hide & seek hoping to find just the thing I needed without unearthing too many other objects that would make the hunt harder. With each passing week more things have found like things and I can now go to the closet where I stashed pillows and [...]
Hello! I’m finally reporting in from the other side of the move. We only uprooted 2.4 miles—a longish stroll, really, but a move is a move and even a short one can make you feel like you’ve traveled a very great distance. The move itself went smoothly but was exhausting. Six professionals did the bulk [...]
So here we are at the end of this crazy month of remodeling. I just left the new house after taking a peak at the glossy grey floors, the final coat still shiny wet as it begins to cure. The new coat of exterior paint (White Heron by Benjamin Moore—more white!) glowed against the clear [...]
“You’re moving in next week ?” said Jill, my trusted move-in/move-out house cleaner as we toured the new place. Looking at the paint splattered floors, unmoored broken appliances and piles of wood shavings, I understood why she thought that seemed iffy. Would the house be ready in a little over a week for us to move [...]
This week we’ve been working on the guts of the house—and by we, I mean our handyman Gustavo Portillo with M.J. assisting at times and me peeking over their shoulders trying not to panic when things get ripped out to Make Things Work in our kitchen and bathrooms. Take a look. We knew the refrigerator [...]
Week 3 and there’s clear progress in the house. Most of the rooms are painted, the kitchen cabinets and front door are refinished, and the kitchen and powder room renovation projects are coming into focus.That said, there were enough hiccups this week that I ended up one evening pretty much in a fetal position. No [...]
In my quest to find the best white to paint the interiors of our new house, I asked ten designers participating in this year’s San Francisco Decorator Showcase to tell me about their favorite white paint colors. Here’s what they had to say: “Any color from Benjamin Moore’s* Color Story Collection is good—they have so [...]
As a design writer, dare I admit that the older I get the less interested I am in renovation projects? There are just too many other things I want to focus on as time speeds up (read this for more about that.) And so I hoped that our next house would be pretty much “done.” Or [...]
All that’s gold glitters and shimmers (matte is in!) at this year’s San Francisco Decorator Showcase. Held in a grand 1907 brick mansion in Presidio Heights, this showcase house offers the chance to see some of the best Bay Area designers showcasing their best work. The show runs through May 26–go to www.decoratorshowcase.org for tickets. [...]
The next five weeks will be a blur of projects and packing but I’ll try to take a moment every Monday to capture the process. Today we made our final pre-closing visit to the house to meet with the painter and carpet seller to get bids for projects best tackled before we move in. After [...]
