IKEA sells a pretty nice $40 Varde wall shelf unit. But actually, it’s a little bland. A couple of designers from Los Angeles offer some variations in the L.A. Times. Above you see 1) the original in the center, 2) a metal grate and chain treatment on the left, and 3) the shelf embellished with…
Isn’t this bedroom yummy? It’s in the Rosarito Beach vacation condo that Don and Gigi Maurizio remodeled. Gigi, an administrator with the Glendora Unified School District who lives in Claremont, told me she found the headboard (which is really a footboard) for $5 on closeout at a Pier One Imports store. That was the starting…
Andrew C., a reader from Crofton, Md., needs our advice on whether to add a bathroom to some extra space on his ground floor, or to enlarge his cramped laundry room. (See the miserable laundry room here and here.) A little background: Andrew bought his three-story townhouse a year ago and plans to live there…
Did I not watch "Sex and the City" reruns for the past four years? Did I not come to feel in some TV-induced mania that I knew Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte? Did I not notice who they were and how they would decorate their homes? So how in the world did attorney Miranda Hobbes’…
The nice thing about remodeling an older home in a neighborhood of such homes is that you need simply walk around the area with your eyes open to find ideas for exterior architectural details. That’s what Aaron Raymond did when he remodeled his 1942 French Normandy home in the Windsor Hills area of Los Angeles.…
Here’s an unusual design in a Los Feliz kitchen. Instead of a massive stainless-steel or stucco-looking stove hood over the gigantic range and built-in grill, these homeowners opted for a fan hidden behind faux cabinets. Plus, there are some pot hangers tucked in there as well. I’m not sure I would do this, but I…
After the flooring is laid, the walls are painted and the furniture is repositioned at the end of a remodel, what’s left? Accessorizing. For those of us with original artwork taste but poster budgets, here’s an idea: fragments of larger works, printed, numbered and signed by the artist, costing $63 each plus $9 shipping, from…
If you want to stretch your design vocabulary, you might consider attending the Dwell on Design conference this week at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Put on by the San Francisco-based Dwell magazine folks, the seminar descriptions include sentences like this: "Not all designers set out to achieve the Platonic ideal in a concept for…
Question: My daughter, who lives in Westchester, has a house with coved ceilings and wants to paint the rooms but is wondering if there is a crown molding that breaks up the ceiling and accommodates the rounded ceiling and corners? — Greg Answer: From Reseda licensed general contractor and author Gary M. Katz: There isn’t…
As shocking as it may seem to fans of young, hip, cool, midcentury contemporary design, this style will not be popular forever. Stick around on the planet for a few decades, and you’ll understand all too well that today’s "modern" is tomorrow’s "hopelessly dated." Whenever I find homeowners denigrating Mexican tiles or avocado green appliances…