A Week in Weston - Bedrooms Finale

Hot dang it's Friday. I'd do a dance and celebrate like nobody's business, but if you're in the design business, you probably gotta work tomorrow so TGIF is really a smack in the face. Of sorts. 
Anywho, lord Jezus it's been a hell of a week. 
Thanks for indulging us as we took this week-long blogging fest to showcase our biggest project of the year. If ya missed it (how could you?!) then feel free to hit rewind and check it out here, here, here and here.
This has really been one of those projects in which I really connected with my clients, got inside their heads and was so grateful that they gave me so much free reign to turn things up a bit and take a few risks in my designs. On this final day we say hello to bedrooms upstairs.
We're starting with the master. Oohhhhhhhhhhhhhh Weeeeeeeeeeeeee it's come a long way.

Here's how it looked in it's previous life. We flipped things around a bit with the floor plan. A media center was placed against the wall where the bed now sits. The unit is sitting between two windows and it made much more sense to place the bed there to embrace the natural light and give us a full wall to place the bed against.

 Sam and Athalia already had much of the furnishings here - the bed, nightstands, chest of drawers and console table.

But what pulled it all together was the wallpaper and custom drapes. Athalia fell in love with the bird print on Pinterest and with our luck, we discovered it was available as a wallpaper and off we went.  

Here's what's happening down the hall.

This room that was once an office:

Guests now get to check in here and get some simple work done at this desk if they so choose. 

 

Emmy's room once looked like this:

 

 

 And finally, little Noa's room started out like this: 

 And now looks like this.

That's all folks. I think we've shown that there are some great ways to incorporate your existing furniture into a new home, and give it new life with the right accessories, flooring, curtains, wallpaper and so much more.  

Guess what? There are two rooms we didn't even get to highlight here! 

To see the girls playroom, and Athalia and Sam's home office, head on over to our Facebook page where you'll also see a full album of the before and after of each room. Happy Friday and cheers to a great and safe weekend.

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A-Efendy Bedrooms, before and after, girls room, Guest Rooms, Inspiration to Reality, Kids, Kids Room, master bedroom

At Last! Our Guest Room/Office/Kid Zone Reveal

Whew, so I've finally emerged from my Thanksgiving food coma! I seriously ate too much which means the weight loss struggles I've chronicled here, will be a struggle for quite some time. Sigh.
Any who, so happy to be back in Bloggerville, and bwoy do I have a treat for you!
The guest bedroom/office project we chatted about here and here has finally been completed. It was in fact the star of the Thanksgiving day festivities at my client Pat's house as everyone sorta snuck in there to chill.
Let's go take a peek shall we? This is where we started:

This room once belonged to Pat's daughter Jina, and had become a catch-all space since her move earlier this year. To the right, all cleared out and filled with the new day beds. 

 And this is where we are today... 

• My client has a thing for red, so I decided to add splashes throughout in some key areas - curtain trims, a few pillows, piping along the white pillows, and even the edge of this amazing rug, which was a genius last minute find! 
• To balance all the pops of color, I decided to go with white walls. The white stools/end tables were the perfect and versatile fit, and they are kiddie proof! Her grand kids doodled all over them with crayons on day one and the markings came right off with the everyday household cleaner.

Okay, let's talk about these daybeds. What a great way to maximize seating and sleeping. When guests are in town, the beds can be pulled together to form a nice king size retreat, of if you've got a mother load of guests, the upper mattress slides off each to sit perfectly next to the padded lower frame to create not one, but two beds! Genius design me thinks. 

My client and I fell in love with this fun fabric and knew it would be a groovy addition to the room. White and red pillows with piping are the perfect balance.

So this guest room does double duty as my client's office. She's working from home a lot these days so we needed to give her a fab area to be productive. We sourced the desk first.  Finding a desk chair that did not scream "desk chair" was the next challenge (why is that so hard?) but we finally fell in love with this amazing and comfy chair. The curtains are one of my go-to faves from Pottery Barn because they are insanely budget-friendly. But to jazz em up a bit, I had the edges trimmed with the same fabric as the red pillows. For even more coordination of textures, I used the curtains to make the over-sized white pillows shown on the daybed (a little trick of the trade that way you're not scrambling to find an exact match of fabrics).  And do y'all remember that I spray-painted these rods? My very own DIY project, hehe.p.s. That's Pat's hubs in that framed photo atop the stainless steel shelves, looking kinda fab eh?

So now we're gonna take a peek at perhaps my favorite corner of the room. The Kids Zone....

This little corner evolved with the design. We knew we wanted a chalk/magnetic wall to keep the kids occupied when they came to hang out and then my client found this insanely cute chair at Ross no less, and I switched the location of the chalk wall, "borrowed" this Ikea side table from Jina's house (don't worry I'm replacing it with something very fab in a few weeks), painted the chair legs white (I'm on fire with this DIY bug) and voila, the kids had their own little office to hang out in. Word to da wise, it takes about seven coats of that magnetic paint to get the wall to work. The three coats suggested on the box is a bold faced lie! 

Kid tested and approved! Grandsons, Oscar and Brandon show their approval. They are too adorable! p.s. little Oscar is a tough cookie so that thumbs up made my day!

Remember these gems? These were the framed art pieces spray painted here. The remainder of the artwork throughout the room, are photos taken by the client on her many trips throughout the Caribbean, supplemented with some  stock photos.

We close out this design with these new frosted doors. You can see the old ones here. Who says the doors can't make their own statement?

That's all folks. A small project with some bold statements. Thanks as always to the team that helped pull this all together, and to Shaggion at Circle Ten Media for taking such awesome photos of all my projects.
Tip of da day: Invest in good photography peeps. Your work is only as good as some good photography. Trust me on this. There are projects I took from back in the day that will never be shown here or my website because the photography is so bad. And that's all on me! I take horrible photographs which drives Debbie and the hubs insane! I'll work on that for 2013.
Questions, thoughts, faves? Holla. Let us know. 

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A-Efendy before and after, DIY, Guest Rooms, Inspiration to Reality

My DIY Demon Unleashed and West Elm - St. Jude Children's Hospital

So thanks to some of my very DIY savvy blogger friends, I've been dabbling more and more with some DIY when time allows on projects. DIY works best because there is NO labor cost to you. It becomes a little tricky when your designer does DIY because well, we have to charge for our time and labor. So anyways, I'm squeezing in some simple projects here and there for some of my favorite clients. 
This weekend I installed the guest bedroom project we talked about here. Well, sort of installed. We're 95% complete and will be making final tweaks this weekend. 



This client has a thing for the Caribbean and had these custom framed artwork from various islands. The walls in the guest room have been painted white so since I needed to incorporate these pieces,  I decided to paint the frames. Colors to be revealed! This curtain rod was also in perfectly good shape but I needed it to be black to make the new white curtains pop. They too got painted.



The guestroom will also function as an office space since she's working from home more these days. When her adorable grandsons come to visit, we wanted to create a little zone in the room that they could call their own. We decided to paint this wall with a magnetic paint and chalkboard paint so they could both pin items on the wall and write away to their hearts content without getting in trouble! So word to the wise, that magnetic paint is a britch! Three coats should do the trick? Er, no. Try seven or more which is why our project isn't complete and why they have gotten such scathing product reviews.  Sigh.


In other news: Our friends at our favorite West Elm store at the Village of Gulfstream are hosting a Customer Appreciation Event today from 5-9 pm.  

 

 

They're having some killer sales (I got some great deals here for the guestroom) so tonight's event is a great opportunity to start your holiday shopping early, and also give back to the community by making a donation to the St Jude Children's Research Hospital. Their Thanks and Giving campaign is a time to give thanks for the healthy kids in our lives and give to those who are not. It is important to remember that at St. Jude, no child is ever turned away because of a family’s inability to pay. All costs for treatment, travel, food and lodging for patients and their families are covered. Eighty-five cents of every dollar St. Jude receives goes directly to research and treatment, which is why it is so important for us to help. So please go forth and shop this evening to show your support. Enjoy some light refreshments as well while you shop.

That's all folks. Holla back and let us know what's cooking with you and what you're giving thanks for this holiday season. 

*LLD received no compensation for this West Elm/St. Jude Hospital mention.

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A-Efendy DIY, Donations, Guest Rooms, Thanksgiving, West Elm

Cheers to the Freaking Weekend and More.....

Two hands in da air if you're happy it's Friday! Three hands in da air if you're glad the elections are ova and your phone is no longer ringing off da hook with campaign calls - though I gotta say, it was kinda cool to hear Alonzo Mourning, Serena Williams and Magic Johnson on my voicemail! 

Any who, as always, we have lots to be grateful for in our neck of the woods. 

We're installing this guestroom/office this weekend and yikes, I still have so much shopping to do to finalize that. Lord help me. 

I'm finalizing fabric selections for the sectional in this awesome family room project.

lol. So much has already changed since this initial design.

Not our exact sectional, but pretty close and it'll be a left hang chaise as shown here, and not the right as shown in the rendering.

Our tropical inspired holiday design board is also causing a buzz over on Olioboard. But we need a LOT more votes to help us win this challenge so please click away and vote for us and spread the word! We promise there will be no long lines and unlike our beloved Florida, your vote will be counted on time. 

   
 
The little man is again feeling under the weather. Congested once again. Sigh. I swear daycare is a recipe for illness times 10. But he was pleased as punch to get his first Miami Heat gear, a gift from my amazing boss and his equally amazing girlfriend, who as you can imagine, are sports fanatics.

He'll suit up next week for a sports themed day at the school. Pictures to come of course!
And after weeks of not running into the teacher who caused this shit storm,I finally saw her last Friday. I'd already had my angry Jamaican mama chat with the Director about braiding his hair without my permission, and her using God knows what comb to do such styling.
The teacher was apologetic and insisted she meant no harm and conceded that she had crossed the line and would consult with us first should she wish to practice her hair styling techniques on our child. We are now all good. He'll be moving up to her class in a few weeks once he is walking confidently on his own. Any tips on that fellow parents? He only walks unassisted when we're not looking! Drops to the floor and crawls otherwise.
Any who, have an amazing weekend. We're sending lots of love and warmth to Linda at My Crafty Home Life and all my peeps in the Northeast.   
P.S. If anyone knows what the heck is up with Blogger and the craziness that we've endured with each post this week, please send me a holla? Especially if you have a solution!
Thank you, merci and mucho gracias!

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A-Efendy Guest Rooms, Interior Design, Personal Musings, Whisk Me Away Fridays

Guest Room/Office Makeover

I've been transforming the home of this particular client, Pat B., for years. She is indeed a dream client, someone who is a huge supporter of small businesses and I cannot count the number of referrals she's sent my way. Over the years, she has become a true mentor, friend and even a fairy Godmother to the 'lil man, senor Xavier or Javier as he is called in daycare. 
We transformed her kitchen here, her master bedroom and bath here and this year we're tackling her guestroom/office. Said room had been occupied by her daughter, non other than the amazing Jina B, who has since moved on to her own swanky digs seen here, here, here and here.
She is not a believer in having a guestroom all dolled up for guests only, since she swears they'll never want to leave. To that end, we needed to make this space multi functional. It needed to be part home office since she's now working from home more often, part guest room for guest who agree to a VERY temporary stay, and part play area for her adorable grand kids. 
Here's our inspiration....She loves the Caribbean and has traveled to quite a few islands and wanted to be reminded of it in the space....

 Here we are in progress...

The room already had amazing hardwood floors so those of course will remain. Everything else has been stripped included one of my pet peeves, popcorn ceiling. Gone, gone, gone. We now have a smooth ceiling, loads of recessed lighting, a fan we've recycled from her kitchen, white walls galore and these amazing daybeds which will be great to lounge in. They can be pulled together to make one bed or the top mattresses can be lowered to fit next to the lower mattress to create two queen sized beds. A genius creation from CB2.  

These wooden bi-fold closet doors have been replaced with some very sleek sliding doors. The bedroom door has also been replaced with a similar frosted door. Ditto for all the other bedroom doors. 

This compact desk is both functional and fab. Smart creation from Crate and Barrel.

We love and wanted an Egg chair for the office but they are sorta bulky and would just overwhelm the small room. Finding an office chair that doesn't scream office, aint an easy task. But in the end we've settled on this amazingly chic and comfy chair from KMP. Legs will be in white. 

We fell in love with this fabric and had to have it. Not as budget friendly as I like my fabrics to be but sometimes a little splurge is necessary. It'll adorn some of the throw pillows that will sit atop the daybeds.

We still have a LOT to do. And I'm even throwing in some DIY. Shocking I know, but sometimes a project needs it so I'll be spray painting her existing curtain rod - which was in fab shape just the wrong color - and also painting a chalkboard/magnetic wall (did y'all know there is such a thing as magnetic paint?) for the grand kids to have their fun while chillin in the room. Installation is next week. Photos to follow of course.  


P.S. 
We're participating in our very first blog hop organized by the amazing Morgan of Quite the Blog. We'll be hopping all around to check out some new blogs and hopefully making some new friends. Feel free to grab the button and hop along. 

P.S.S
I'm also doing my first chat ever with some talented design students at  Broward Community College. The class is taught by my dear friend, Asanyah D. Dear Lord, please help me to steer these students in the right direction!

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A-Efendy Guest Rooms, Inspiration to Reality, Renovation