Contemporary Open Living and Dining Design

Contemporary Open Living and Dining Design

WE ARE STARTING RENOVATION IN MID JANUARY 2020 (however the 1st 2 weeks are for demolition)

Here are 2 quick videos of the house so you can have an idea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX0CtOzBWFA

https://youtu.be/kBaYOngZxRc

Please also check the following Pinterest album (Chatham house) for the current situation of the house.

https://pin.it/myxchzsl2lm5xw

We will provide Pinterest albums with pictures of what we want for every room.

Overall, we're looking for some help with the following:
Furniture
Lighting advice
Advice with the stair railing of the living room (have a look and let us know about your thoughts on the style of the railing we should go with).
Organization of elements
Modern, minimalist and Eclectic
Manage gray and golden colors/elements very well
Manage modern rustic style very well (since our house is in the suburbs, with a lot of trees around)

FYI - Attached in the comment is the house renovation PDF manual that I actually sent to the contractor, showing what we are trying to achieve as a very general (structural perspective)... just so you have that information.

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- Bought house 7 or 8 months ago. They are rending a house until Dec. 31st.
- Renovation is starting January.
- The goal is to have a place that they feel comfortable and really like.
- Everything that they are doing is cosmetic.
- Doing painting, floors, lighting
- We used to live in miami so like modern stuff, but need help merging the style of the house with our contemporary style.

What room(s) are you looking to decorate? specifics?

- Lighting - Entire house, pot lights (hotel - ,
- needs a chandelier in 3 rooms. Living and dining room.
Would like to know - if they should put a glass railing.


What is your style? What furniture brands do you like?

- Everything is modern/white in Florida - want to add wood, grey.
- planning to buy everything new.
- likes Modani in terms of style and pricing, likes CB2, Crate&Barrel, Grey/gold/wood/rustic.
- Modani dining table - probably wants to incorporate. will send link.

What is your lifestyle like? Kids? Pets? Entertainers? Incorporating any existing pieces?
- Will have pets, will have a dog.
- We travel a lot, and we take a lot of pictures, so want to do a gallery wall with our own travel picture. Luma gallery in Soho - they put pictures in a critique.
- We have ideas -

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FLOORING
It is basically:
• Changing all the carpet of the bedrooms, halls and closets for
hardwood/laminate.
• Changing the floor of bathrooms, entry hall and indoor patio (excluding
stairs) for tile.
• Polish floor of living room area and fix according to the changes in the
kitchen
PAINTING (only interior)
Paint all the interior of the house, however it is not necessary to paint ceilings
unless the changes in lighting require it. It should not be a maximum of 3-5 colors in
the whole house(white, 2-3 levels of gray and maybe pink for Amelie’s bedroom).
Most of the window frames will be painted matte black. We might do a test first with
one side of the house to see how it looks.

Lighting:
The interior designer will dictate the number of lights per room, but we estimate:
• 6-8 bulbs for living room
• 4-6 at kitchen
• 4 at dining room
• 2-4 at every bathroom
• 4 at every bedroom
• 2 per hall

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Other notes:
- We are not planning any window treatment. However any ideas? We were thinking about painting the window frames in matte black so it would look more modern.

- How many people would you like to seat in the living/dining area?
I guess it is more a priority of good look, than capacity. However I would be happy to fit 8-10 people in a party, and normally 4-5 (in the living room itself, excluding kitchen, dining room). But on the other hand we don’t want oversize furniture that does not look good according to the size of the living room.

- Are you looking to include a TV in the living room?
Yes, I will provide details shortly.

- Except of the travelling pictures which sound amazing for a gallery wall, are you interested to other art options?
We were thinking not only in the family gallery for one of the walls, but we have really nice pictures of us from our trips around the world, and there’s a store called Lumas in New York Soho (https://www.lumas.com/galleries/new-york-soho/) that they do really nice HD prints in glossy acrylic, so we were thinking on getting most of our art decoration from this store. Of course we are open to suggestions, and if the designer agree, we would be looking for advice on the selection of pictures according to the color.

On the other hand, I guess we like pop art. There’s for example these skate boards that they also sell in Lumas, and you can buy as many as you want and gather them. I was thinking on doing something like this (however less, about 3) of course depending on the advice of the designer:

https://www.lumas.com/pictures/andy_warhol-2/campbells_soup_cans/


- Are there any colors that you prefer as accents or do you want to maintain a modern monochrome look (neutral or in grey tones)

We really like the combination of gray and gold (specially gold as accent color). However I guess white, black, dark navy blue and woody would fit in this color palette. We will definitely be sending some pics of what we like. The goal is an eclectic, modern, elegant and a bit rustic (woodish) style.

Chatham, NJ , USA

Chatham, 07928

Contemporary

My Combined Living/Dining

Neutral

Morning light

Please check the following Pinterest album to see the current situation of the living room: https://pin.it/xr7qux7hwqviue

It is actually easier to say what we like. We love the open space of the living room, and the thing of having living room, dining room and kitchen in one space. We also like the high ceiling.

We believe this space has a great opportunity for renovation, but it definitely needs a fresh look and better finishes.

continuation in the following paragraph

We are planning to do:
- Painting (including the window frames, maybe on matte black frames to look more modern?)
- Polish the hardwood of the entire space and try to change a bit the color of the hardwood finish if possible (for other rooms and stairs we will change the carpet for hardwood as well)
- Redo recessed/spot lighting and add pendant lights. We need general advice on how many spot lights we need and where.
- buy new furniture (sectional, coffee tables, chairs, etc), lamps, rugs, TV, sound system, ventless modern fireplace (maybe), dining table, art and deco
- Redesign the kitchen (already working with Scavolini for this) but we need advice on high chairs or island and pendant light. We have a Pinterest album (https://pin.it/fed4jvtfelwj3v) with renders of the kitchen, Colors of kitchen will be determined according to the design of living/dining room
- Change the stair railing (we like glass, pls check the ideas album for some ideas we have). We need advice whether railing with frame or frameless.
- According to the floor plan, change Window 1 for regular window (since we do not like those glass cubes) and on Window 2 see advice on what we can do there (maybe create a wall and do something like a mirror with that, since Window 2 actually does not have exterior view like Window 1)
- Advice on location of every item

We are planning to buy all new. We have other furniture that might fit for other rooms, but we really want the living/dining/kitchen space to look woow!! and amazing, so we basically need all that looks accordingly.

Yes

Open to both

Maybe

• IMG_0214.jpg

Living & dining room, and kitchen including stair railing (they are in the same room)

REGARDING DESIGN, we really want this to look AMAZING and have the WOW effect when we enter to this space. Please check the following Pinterest Album to see all the ideas we have. Please check the comments of every pin to see what exactly we like of it.

https://pin.it/2m2tbbag5o7nbw

Please also check the current design of the kitchen. Final colors of the wood and lacker will be defined according to the design of living/dining room. However the aluminum parts (like toe kick) and faucets will actually have brass color.

https://pin.it/7rqv7cbk55wevn

As an additional example and as discussed with Agniezka, a design taste we liked from Decorilla designers is for example the one of McLaden C, so we would look for a taste like this:

https://www.decorilla.com/virtual-home-design-samples/mladen-c-19

In summary, I would put the design taste we like in the following words:
- Modern but cozy or comfortable
- Luxurious/Eclectic
- Elegant
- Rustic modern
- Minimalist (not super, but have the concept)

We believe that different types of grays, and gold/brass and wood help to achieve this goal. As 2nd option for colors, I guess dark navy blue, black, white and maybe the darker side of purple could also fit like one pic on Pinterest.

On more details, we would like to highlight the following:

LIVING ROOM

We believe a sectional would fit nicely in the living room. Styles you can check on the Ideas album on Pinterest. We like the combination of task lamps, floor lamps and furniture. There is particularly one type of accent chair that we like (Kardiel's also in the ideas pinterest album). RH is one of the furniture styles I like the most for this, however is a bit expensive. I have several pics of RH style on the ideas pinterest album. Pls check the album. As bottom line, we imagine ourselves enjoying a nice glass of wine at night, jazz music using the B&O speaker (the one very comfortable and low dimmed modern lights while having the modern fireplace on (if we are able to fit the modern fireplace).

We think the TV and fireplace could fit nicely in that wall of the living room.

We like a lot the halo LED lighting, and we want a really nice pendant lamp for the high ceiling.

The stair railing is going to be in context of the living room. We like glass railings, but since we would look for brass accent, we do not know if a brass/black frame would be good or too much, or better not having a frame at all.

DINING ROOM

We like a lot a Modani dining table that has rustic wood. (see ideas album) However we are open to opinions. We believe the walls could fit nice art or pictures of us (pls see ideas album for an idea on several family pictures of us for one of the walls). Chairs, lighting and additional furniture is also upon advice.

WINDOW 2

As you can see in the floor plan, there are 2 windows that currently have those old glass cubes. For window 1, we were thinking to replace for a regular window since on the other side (where the indoor patio is), there is a window that shows the gardens. However window 2 see only to the walls of the patio, so I guess it would be good to replace that for something else, maybe create a wall and add a nice deco spot (maybe a nice piece of art, or a dark mirror with back LED light (ideas on album). However your ideas are more than welcome.

KITCHEN

As we mentioned before, we are doing the kitchen and design with Scavolini. However we need advice for type of high chairs, pendant light (which might be a LED brass pendant lamp). Please remember that final wood and lacker colors of the kitchen will be defined according to the design of living and dining room. However it will definitely have a gold/brass accent on toe kick and other lines around the cabinets, and the faucet.

LIGHTING

As I spoke to Agniezka, we need general advice on lighting, both for recessed/spot lighting, pendant lamps and floor lamps.

ART

As we mentioned before, we have a lot of nice pictures from our trips. So we would like to have them as piece of arts in our house. We like Lumas Gallery in New York Soho that they make glossy acrylics with your pictures. I also added an example on the Pinterest Ideas album. https://www.lumas.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI2tvyrpyS5QIVh4nICh30tQtTEAAYASAAEgL2kvD_BwE

If you believe we should have some art anyways, we like a lot pop art. I believe Lumas also has some nice pieces. I actually like a lot some skates they have with some Campbell soup logo printed (check pinterest album for example).

ENTRANCE DOOR

Since we are looking for a more modern look, and we might paint the window frames, we would like to change the entrance door from the indoor patio to the living room space. I guess one like the one on the Pinterest Ideas album could be an option.

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I know it might look that we have very defined ideas of what we like, but we really appreciate your advice in all. We know we like modern, and even though the house is modern, we know it is not ultra modern (in other words, it is not a cube), so we want balance on this. Furthermore we like a lot the brass/gold finishes, but we don't want to exaggerate with this from a design standpoint.

Master Bedroom

Patio Enterance

Patio - Entrance is though the patio/long lobby. Wow part of the house. Want to put flowers/in-door garden, modern. sit/get a coffee/read a book. Maybe one hanging chair. Artificial grass on walls maybe?


KITCHEN - kitchen is being designed by the kitchen cabinet company
- Want to invest in appliances and cabinets.
- Contractor is more familiar with colonial style kitchen so still not sure how to approach kitchen.