As you can see in this article I wrote for Remodeling Magazine, a bathroom can be both standard and then accessible for wheelchair users when they visit. When architect Emory Baldwin designed a Seattle house for his family, he thought of all this. Though his family is young and able-bodied, he also has visiting inlaws…
When famed kitchen designer Susan Serra visited Copenhagen this month, she stayed in this apartment and sent back this photo. In this living room, I was struck by the deep-set windows, which add so much charm. It creates a feeling of thick walls, and provides shelves for plants, flowers and other things of beauty, and provides a…
In case you’re not familiar with central Florida, let me break it down for you: it’s HOT, HOT, HOT. And humid. Think sunshine, thunder and flash rain storms in the summer. So what does this mean? Houses in hot and humid climates need to be built differently from those in, say, cool and dry climates.…
As you may know, Brad Pitt helped create the Make It Right Foundation, which has the goal of building 150 new homes in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. The area was decimated when the defective walls of the Industrial Canal gave way after Hurricane Katrina blew past, making the destruction part of the…
I’ve been especially enchanted with several house photos in my collection, and I finally realized what they have in common: All of the homes use natural light to make the journeys from room to room more pleasant. The top photo shows Claire Gunning, 8, walking down the stairway in her family’s Hermosa Beach home, which…
The more I study this “green” house, the more I like it. Of course, it’s more of a teardown and rebuild than a remodel, but the lot size — at 30 feet by 50 feet — presented plenty of challenges. The 2,000-square-foot, three-bedroom house, which is two blocks from the beach in Hermosa, was designed for a…
In this funny and insightful talk from TEDxHouston, builder Dan Phillips tours us through a dozen homes he’s built in Texas using recycled and reclaimed materials in wildly creative ways. Brilliant, low-tech design details will refresh your own creative drive. via www.ted.com
How important is a fireplace and mantel? Take it from a man who tours hundreds of houses a year and whose sales depend on features that attract buyers: “Every room needs a centerpiece,” says David Kean, an interior designer and real estate agent with The John Aaroe Group, in Beverly Hills, Calif. According to Kean,…
Tired of all the ornate cemeteries in our world? Have a hard time seeing your modernist remains resting comfortable in one of them? For those deposed in Munich, a very modern alternative exists. See the photo gallery here. On the flip side, the burial grounds themselves are lush and natural, like meadows. So it’s not…
This idea is so unique that we at Kathy’s Remodeling Blog can hardly stand it: You can have your own garden flowers imbedded into resin panels for use as kitchen or bathroom cabinet inserts. See some options here Can you imagine your favorite flowers, that you grew, immortalized in resin panels? You can use translucent…