Four over One Design

4/1 got news last week that Houzz.com has given us a ‘Best of 2012′ award.  I’m thrilled, of course, but puzzled – while I use the site with nearly all of my clients, I only just put up photographs of the Ottawa house recently and did not think they were getting that much traction (except the darling photo of Ash in his bedroom, which is getting all the attention).  After doing a little digging, it turns out it was based on customer satisfaction – and my clients who uses the site gave 4/1 a perfect score, so up goes the award!  I’m grateful and a little flabbergasted, and thought I’d take the opportunity to explain how and why I’ve been sending my clients there.

For the uninitiated, Houzz.com is a storehouse of interior photographs, showing every style, every room, and every finish you could possibly imagine.  The site allows easy bookmarking of images, tagging of the bits you like, and searching for particular details.  I have always recommended that my clients gather images of spaces they like as we work together, and Houzz has become an ideal way to gather it all in one place. If you’re considering doing a renovation, remodel, or addition, I’d highly recommend spending some time lost in their treasure trove, regardless of your future designer.

Of course, there’s nothing like seeing a space in person, and two 4/1 designs will be on a house tour coming up next month.  The Cleveland/Holloway tour, usually an affordable $5/person suggested donation, is scheduled for Saturday, June 9th.  I’ll be there, bouncing between 527 Holloway and 508 Ottawa – come and visit!

My favorite part is the view: you can now see through the house from the kitchen to the foyer, diagonally across the dining and living spaces.

The Chapel Hill News just printed a nice piece by Sally Keeny about one of my renovations that wrapped up over the winter.  Of course the online version has only one tiny photo included – so it gives me the push to finally write it up here, as I’ve been intending for weeks now.

The kitchen got a little bit of space and a whole lot of new finishes.

Not all of my projects fall under the ‘preservation’ heading, and sometimes the house in question isn’t quite 100 years old yet. Bill & Trish Hussey have been family friends since I was knee-high to a toadstool, so it felt especially significant to take on their master suite addition as 4/1′s first project.  Their brick, 1950s ranch had some nods to modernism in the living and dining rooms, but one foot back a few decades.  It worked fine as they raised their family, but with the kids mostly out on their own, they started to imagine updates that would suit their needs now and better prepare the house for a future family too.

The hall to the master suite doubles as an art gallery, with four sets of french doors that lead to the new front porch.

The private, dark kitchen was entirely cut off from the public spaces and the cramped entryway was invisible from the driveway.  The main goals were to add a master suite on the first floor, create a gracious foyer, and allow the dining room to actually hold the Husseys’ many friends.  Starting with that brief, we ended up moving the laundry, refinishing the kitchen, updating some of the systems, adding a massive front porch, and giving a whole new axis to the house.

Once the space planning was done, I knew Trish could take the finishes and run with it – she’s always had a clear idea of how she wants things to look.  Never particularly partial to the ranch-ness of the house, Trish took it towards a more contemporary style throughout.  I’ll be happy to reuse some of her great ideas in a future project – like the wood inlay around the foyer floor.  It’s the perfect transition between the original, distinctive parquet flooring in the main house and the new wing.

The foyer doubles as the music room for Trish's beautiful baby grand. And that wood inlay around the border - love it!

It’s a real pleasure to see the house done, and even more to see the house in action.  Over the holidays they threw their annual party, and the new elbow room worked beautifully throughout the evening.  It feels a little like the house has always been this way – exactly what I was aiming for.