Displaying posts labeled "Outdoors"

Big Red Sun is a landscape and garden design studio, plant nursery, and lifestyle boutique located in Venice, California, and I am so happy to have discovered them. Their love of succulents and container gardening is such an inspiration. Makes me wish so badly that I lived in a warmer climate.

Forgive me. I seem to have developed a new obsession, French beach houses especially in the Cap Ferret region. French chic meets a casual, sun-kissed lifestyle in this holiday house by L’Atelier Delphine Carrère. Sigh! I wish I was there right now.

Photography by David Duchon-Doris

The weather had been incredible this past week. It seems we skipped spring and went right into summer! I’ve been spending all of my time in the backyard and the greenhouse and I could not be happier, especially as we just started another month long stay-at-home order. Speaking of the outdoors, I spotted this home featured on Nuevo Estilo and it is located among the glorious vegetation of the mountainous region of Spain’s Asturias. The home is light and bright and warm, and the views are magical. What a sweet spot for a family retreat! (Architects: Jaime Gaztelu and Ana Fernández de Mendía; Interior Design: Noel Marichalar and Isabel Taboada of M&T Decoration; Photos: Montse Garriga)

We received the following email recently from Sean:
I live in central United States, Iowa, to be exact. I bought a home built in 1955 with some very cool 1950’s charm. I am completely stumped on what to do with the exterior of the home. I don’t want to do massive renovation and remove the 1950’s charm that attracted me, however, I do want to give it a sophisticated and updated look. Is it possible for me to send you a photo? Perhaps readers would want to weigh in on what should be done to give this home new life. I believe it has modest potential. I am lost on how to draw that out. I’m mostly looking for paint and landscaping ideas, however, I am very open to any suggestions. No matter how invasive. It is early Spring here ,so, a great time to get to work cleaning this property up and giving it new life. 

It is such a great house! Here are a couple more photos of it…

Here’s my 2 cents, and I have basically zero experience with an exterior renovation, aside from a complete overhaul of my current home’s landcaping so I really hope our readers will help out with some suggestions too because I’m sure you’ll have better ideas than mine.
Because that fabulous porch overhang darkens the front door area I’d be tempted to paint all the siding white. Or something very light. Very light grey even? And then black trim (or dark grey) along the roofline, front door (or maybe a fun colour for the front door if Sean is feeling adventurous) and windows. I’d be tempted to get a new garage door – one with some frosted glass inserts so that whole section isn’t so solid. If not in the budget paint it black. I’d put tall planters on either side of the garage with something tall in it. (This means house numbers would have to move). And just about anything could go in terms of landscaping but I’d start with something tall/bushy under that narrow window on the right because it’s looking a little awkward.
I had a tough time time finding some decent inspirational photos to go along with this but here’s what I came up with…

A before and after of a house that was a brown/beige and went white and black

Brie Williams via this post

How a shrub/hedge in front of an awkwardly high window results in it making visual sense

Designlines

When making the exterior a bit lighter really brightens up a house, and with some basic landscaping added the result is really impactful. A sweet before and after…

HGTV

Another before and after where the landscaping made all the difference

This Old House

Please leave comments below if anyone has some ideas and tips for Sean. Hopefully he’ll send us photos when he’s done 🙂

“A 1970’s townhouse in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs has been transformed into a tranquil and spacious family home designed for entertaining, with a hint of a postmodern design aesthetic.”

It’s the light I love most in this redesign of a four split level home by Sydney-based Tom Mark Henry. Light pouring through the wall of windows, the central staircase with its open treads and glass balustrade and the repeated use of fluted glass.

P.S. We have changed ad providers and there is a weird glitch of multiple (and I mean multiple) ads turning up in the body of our posts. Rest assure we’re looking into it.