Archive for December, 2013

To further continue to share more pieces of our Better Homes & Gardens Kitchen and Bath Ideas spread ‘One Kitchen, 2 Budgets’ below are the materials and selections we chose as we brought the design together for the mid priced kitchen.  Initially I was focused on being a bit fearless with color – but not in the ‘use hot pink’ sort of way. In the idea that the sink could be colored, the range could be colored, etc. So we weren’t relying on just a fabulous backsplash to pull the space together, but a balanced mix of thoughtful choices.

One of the first items specified was the Kohler farm sink. This choice was driven by the fact that it came in this amazingly deep indigo blue color – Jonathan Adlers line where the color is called ‘annapolis navy’, which I put on their 30″ Whitehaven farm sink.  Secondly I wanted a backlash material that would pull my myriad of color selections together – something fun, graphic and casual. I found that in the idea of a scalloped moroccan tile that could be custom colored. It clicked in as a perfect next design step. Once I had those core selections I was able to easily pick a color for my Bluestar Range and of course a cabinetry color.

kristina crestin design BHG one kitchen 2 budgets

Sourcing:  Kohler 30″ Whitehaven farm sink in Jonathan Adlers ‘annapolis navy’. Faucet: Kohler Purist Single Hole Pull out faucet. Colored range from Bluestar. The island idea is using the Big Sur dining table from Crate & Barrel and putting it on some super cool casters to bring it up to counter height. The bar stools are from Sugar SCOUT – those ladies work with Tolix like stools in any color you want – at an affordable price! Multi colored scalloped tile is custom colored Tabarka moroccan tile from Discover Tile.  The green shiplap cabinet door is a custom cabinet design that Premier Builders made for me.

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Featured on Houzz Today!

December 27th, 2013

A nice little late Christmas present – I just got an email from Houzz sharing that they used our bunk room (yes that one, yet again) in an editorial today on decluttering. Sweet!

Kristina Crestin Design_Houzz feature Dec 27 2013

Check out the feature on Houzz today here!

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Wishing you a Happy Holiday

December 25th, 2013

Wishing you and your families a very Happy Holiday. May it be healthy, happy and of course surrounded by good design!

our home to yours  JPG

Sharing a little bit of our own holiday decor – nothing like a festive atmosphere to make it feel like Christmas!

Kristina Crestin Design holiday decor

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As a follow up to sharing the Better Homes & Gardens Kitchen and Bath Ideas spread ‘One Kitchen, 2 Budgets’ I wanted to share some more of the materials and images behind the design since not everything we selected showed up in the magazine. It was exciting to see the spread but at the same time weird since it was just a design exercise, it wasn’t actually being built!

Below are pics of the materials and colors as we were evolving the design.

kristina crestin design BHG  one kitchen 2 budgetsAs we were working through the design process Kelly and I had this active ‘tray’ of materials as we kept playing with colors and finishes, really working through how much color to bring in, and of course where to stop with the color (since you really can go overboard)

kristina crestin design BHG one kitchen 2 budgetsMaterials in the photos: bubble door & cabinet knobs from Anthropologie, multi colored scalloped tile is custom colored Tabarka moroccan tile from Discover Tile. The lovely rich indigo blue cast iron sample is a stunning sink color from Kohler. The green shiplap cabinet door is a custom cabinet design that Premier Builders made for me.

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Speaking of Cooper – she just showed up in a new magazine spread! This summer an editor from the group that does Cottages and Bungalows reached out to us about a new magazine coming out year end ‘American Made Living’.  They were interested in using some photos of our camp project. Great, more exposure nationally – why not! I had no idea which pictures they chose to use and it was rather fun the other day when my Mom ran in with some copies she just found and we all got to see it for the first time.  They chose a picture that Jamie the photographer captured of our Cooper on the clients dock – how fun! I brought quite a team for this photo shoot, even Cooper for a few days. I am sure that in future photo shoots it will be like ‘where’s Waldo’ – ‘find Cooper’…. I see a theme starting here ….

Kristina Crestin Design_American Made Living Magazine

Photographs taken by  Jamie Salomon.

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It’s been another one of those days, a million small things done, 7 stops all over the place on the road and I am wondering where my day went! Working on a follow up post for the BHG article as we speak and I couldn’t resist snapping a quick pic of Cooper.  A couple schemes for an upcoming job are spread all over the office floor  I look down and Cooper apparently made a scheme decision for Stacey! Done. Wouldn’t it be nice if that is how easy this job was!

Blog Post_Cooper sitting on Rugs

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It’s amazing the lead time in working with larger publications. We started talking with Better Homes & Gardens last year this time about working on their Kitchen and Bath Ideas quarterly magazine’s spread ‘One Kitchen, 2 Budgets’. Kelly and I worked away this summer on it and submitted it at the end of the summer. So much time has passed I almost forgot when it was coming out! I found out yesterday it came out this week! Mom of course got her hands on a couple right away – so excited!

The spread is basically an exercise of designing without a client, taking one existing space in need of love (and I used my own kitchen!) and redesigning it – first on a budget and secondly at a higher end. There were no constraints to do the same aesthetic for both, in fact looking back at other spreads the designs were all over the place. Seeing that I decided I wanted to work on the 2 as my 2 split design personalities – the colorful, creative and fun as the first and the second being more sophisticated and chic. Sharing it with some friends last night it was interesting to see which space each person liked better. Even more interesting to see which one my husband would prefer if we could actually do either! (Take note, the higher end one – since I was living in the world of unreality I decided we’d take the 2nd floor off to get more ceiling height on the first floor and bring in these amazing metal bypassing windows, opening up the kitchen to the outside. Ha! That is never going to happen here – but a girl can dream, right?)

See some scans below. There is SO much that didn’t get chosen to be spotlighted by the magazine that I’ll be sharing all of our materials and products in a next post, stay tuned for that. Props to BHG’s renderer, I am so floored by her beautiful watercolors!

Kristina Crestin Design BHG

Above: scans of Better Homes & Gardens special Kitchen and Bath Ideas quarterly magazine. So many people to credit with helping; I’ll be sharing in my next couple blog posts!

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Project: Reading Kitchen Update

December 7th, 2013

Yesterday a client with a kitchen job recently completed had me run over to do some styling as a new magazine for Reading (a new quarterly magazine I just heard about) was shooting her kitchen. It was a great opportunity to snap some pics of the space done. I got involved on this project mid point in the design. The client had already designed and ordered the kitchen but wanted some help on a bar area that she wanted to take some risks with and have look different from the rest of the classic kitchen as well as pull together a millwork package for trim and ceiling treatments. Right up our alley!

I sketched out some simple cabinetry layouts to start for the bar area integrating some refrigerator drawers and we discussed some creative open storage ideas above. I had an idea for something open and integrating some metal finishes – like old apothecary type shelving. New hardware proved to be crazy expensive and we had pretty much abandoned the idea when I stumbled (literately) over some salvaged nickel ones on one of my antiquing trips in Maine – at a 1/10 of the cost of the new ones! Woo hoooo! All we had to do was get new glass cut. I am so thrilled with the outcome. That combined with a rich graphic tile backdrop and we certainly have a great little bar space!

Added to that the client wanted to  bring in a pop of turquoise (NO people, I did NOT suggest this; it really was all her!) She bought the kitchenaid mixer and we matched the Tolix stools to the mixer and then to round out the color pop we went to Jill Rosenwalds studio and picked out some colors to have a bowl made to pull together our colors. Done!

Kristina Crestin Design bar design

Pictures below of the apothecary shelves I found on a day trip antiquing the coast of Maine. They had exactly the pieces I needed and the height was just a little taller than we were looking for. It couldn’t have been more perfect.

Kristina Crestin Design apothecary shelves

Shots of a couple angles of her ceiling, where we spent some time debating how to differentiate the kitchen area from the eating area. She also had the cabinetry already ordered so I had to work out some details that would work dimension-wise with the existing height available for crown moulding.

Kristina Crestin Design Ceiling details

Sources: Cream crackle tiles and moroccan navy crackle tiles are from Discover Tile in the Boston Design Center. Turquoise tolix stools are from Antiquaire.

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Yesterday was the first ‘big’ move in day. Of course we’ve had all sorts of pieces leading up to this but today rugs came, the first wave of furniture and we did part 1 of some art installation. It’s really starting to look like a home!

Our friends at Mingo Gallery referred a brilliant art hanger to help us out (I’ve learned I can’t do everything and giving up art hanging was the best idea I’ve had in a long time!). Sarah worked on a couple locations today, one being our ‘family’ bathroom off the kitchen that we wanted to do something casual and fun, an jigsaw puzzle type layout and another giant grid up a tall stair hall to the basement.

The Family Bathroom we initially did some sketches to show the client the concept and did an order based on this idea, adding one of each size just in case. Lucklily and handily the frames came with mounting guides – BRILLIANT! Rather than hand cutting paper to size which I have done in the past for installs like this I could easily work with these loose pieces of paper and go over my layout up on the wall before any holes were made. Check out some progress photos below. I get some finished pictures tomorrow that also show off our glass tile and floating vanity.

Blog Post_139_ Art hanging JPGThe stair hall idea started as a way to cover a very tall space without determining early on art selection – photos were the easy thing to do for now while we focused on some other spaces as far as original art. So we set to finding some large frames with nice matting and hired Sarah to hang. Wish it was always this easy!

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Frames are the ‘Gallery Frames’ from West Elm, Architecture by Water Jacob Architects and the builder is Apex Carpentry. Glass backslash in Family Bath above is from Ann Sacks and the wall hung vanity is a Duravit vanity from Designer Bath. If your interested in art hanging shoot Sarah an email: sarahdotjohnson@gmail.com.

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Those sneaky folks at Boston Magazine Home! They asked this summer to include a room of ours year end as part of a story but we had no idea it was for Best of Boston Home! Sweet! We won for best Kid’s Room. I absolutely love the bunk room, it’s pretty darn gratifying that other people love it too!

A big thanks to my collaborators too as this project never would have happened without the team: architecture by Art Dioli of Olson Lewis and the GC was Dunn Builders.

Blog Post_138_Best of Boston Home 2013Bunk room photo taken by Jamie Salomon

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