As I’m quickly learning, websites are a continuous work in progress, so today I added another slideshow of “before” photos to our portfolio. This one in particular is in our “Avenues Home” gallery. It’s amazing how quickly we forget the dramatic transformation that occurs in each project. While you peruse our photos, I encourage you to follow the link titled: ”see before photos here” found below the photo box and compare…

A few other galleries show before photos and the others are soon to follow.

We recently finished up a great kitchen and family room remodel in St. Mary’s. A kitchen with outdated oak cabinetry, dropped fluorescent lighting and parquet flooring was bringing down this lovely home and our clients decided it was time for something new.

Our design includes crisp white architectural soffit and columns, rich mahogany cabinetry, great hardware. Stunning Cosmopolitan Granite and a unique, but classic tile backsplash topped it all off.

In the adjecent family room, an elegant bar area replaced original floor to ceiling cabinetry and the old brick fireplace was updated with beautiful limestone and mahogany detail.

Here’s a sneak peak while we await more photos…

• Before 

• After   

It’s not every day that a client asks us to design a family room in a two-story hexagon rotunda of their home. After much deliberation and several attemts to discourage this use, we planned away. We thought of moving the staircase or changing the flooring layout and tried to pretend that the room really wasn’t a hexgon at all. As it turns out, once we abandoned our concerns and embraced the hexagon, things began to come together.

An elegant curved sofa was selected to fit the angles of the space. We designed a beautiful built-in custom cabinet, made by Custom Caseworks, that became a focal point in the room. Despite our vow to never place anything but a four-sided rug in any space, we had one made to the exact angles in the room. It’s terrifying sometimes to step outside of your comfort zone, even for us, but we were pleasantly surprised with the final result.

For some additional nail biting, we decided to design our own light fixture to hang in this grand, 30 foot high, 20+ foot diameter room.

It began with a drawing, something that seemed like a simple feat. Just a drum shade…with 3 tiers and a nice difuser to filter the light. Oh, and it’s 5 feet in diameter and about 3 feet high. Piece of cake.

I planned it all out locally with Bill at The Lamp Company and he began working away. I’ll spare you the details of the trials and tribulations, but it turned out that this light was a bit more than a challenge. Bill was a hero to build it all by hand and actually complete it without having a nervous breakdown.

We were just as uneasy…. It wasn’t until installation day that we saw this glorious drum shade. Bill personally delivered in a large rented truck as our trusty guys from JS Electric set up some major scaffolding in our client’s living room. The whole installation process took about 7 hours, 5 strong men and some seriously fancy pulley work. Finally, we had light!

It looks a lot smaller all the way up there.