Ready for a before-and-after that will seriously satisfy your brain? Hitting the market today: the beautiful Biltmore Heights renovation project I’ve been working on with Camelback Urban Development. The team includes realtor/developer Rob Kukla and his wife, architect Sandra Kukla — also known as She Who Designed Sky Harbor Airport. (!@#$!)  There’s an open house on Sunday from 1-4 p.m.(5125 N. 32nd Place, Phoenix) — but until then, come have a look inside:

Our vibe was Arcadia Farmhouse — but with a modern edge. I’ll be breaking down the materials and finishes in posts to come — but don’t you love those wood floors (NOT tile), the ceiling detail, and wide open entry? I’m in love with the color palette: serene walls, crisp white trim, and rich gray doors with just a touch of black hardware to give that modern edge.

The kitchen features the world’s largest island clad in goooorgeous honed Olympic marble. Note the chic fireplace and designer Visual Comfort Lighting. I selected the lights to help tie in the dark door frame and to make the farmhouse vibe feel a little more modern and fresh. Also, these lanterns are glass-free and therefore easy to clean. Dear future owner: you are happily most welcome. And can we be friends, so that I can come to parties here? Out that back window: a big view of Camelback Mountain.

P.S. The kitchen used to look like this:

Yikes! And now it’s this:

Before we got our hands on this house, the bathrooms looked like this:

And now they look like this:

And the master:

I love this master bath  – so elegant and calming: there’s gray marble everywhere, paired with small luxuries like statement cabinet hardware, notched marble backsplash corners, cross-handle faucets, and Visual Comfort sconces with gray-trimmed shades. And it’s right next to the largest master closet I have ever seen in a flip — and by Classy Closets, even.

Exterior before:

And after:

Those red gooseneck lights were the first thing ever selected for this house – from Rejuvenation. Oh, and here’s a peek at the cute powder bath:

That wallpaper!!!! I walked a few friends and clients through this house and they were all dreaming of this ikat in their lives. It’s paired with gray wainscoting and a custom gray wood mirror,  and gold fixtures and pendant lights to warm it all up.

Lastly, a tease of the laundry room and drop station – I love this crisp floor.

I’m thrilled with how this project came together and really loved collaborating with Sandy and Rob. This house is a testament to their work ethic and incredibly thoughtful planning and foresight. (There are like 4 hall closets – all enormous, featuring things like shelves sized to accommodate luggage.)

The listing is here (link updated!), if you’d like to see more — and everyone is welcome to the Open House on Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m.

Which room is your favorite?

Photos, as ever, by the wonderful Isaac Bailey.

Behold, the master bathroom at Jennifer Hendrix’s 1929 Arcadia abode. I’d be pretty happy spending life here. Like, I could sleep in that bathtub.

Yesterday, we covered part one of Jen’s remodel: the kitchen, dining, and powder. In Jen’s house, we were focused on staying true to the original Spanish vibe, but wanted to update it with some modern bohemian notes.

To us, this meant lots of vintage and handcrafted elements, like her bathroom’s Granada Tile floor.

Yes, these tiles are crazy popular. Want to know why? Here’s cement tile 101:

Sometimes called concrete tile, or encaustic tile, the pattern and color on these tiles comes from different colors of clay that go through the tile, instead of just sitting on top of it. So as the floor wears down over years of use, the pattern remains. And they take on a really cool look as they age — there are 200-year-old cement tile floors all over Paris, Morocco, and Spain that still look gorgeous, like so:

The cement tiles have a matte finish, which also makes them a great application for a shower floor. And anytime you can extend the bathroom floor material into the shower, you make your bathroom look that much bigger.

In Jen’s shower, she kept things simple with simple cream wall tile to let the floor be the superstar.

With the tile in place, we looked for ways to add vintage touches to the bathroom. And in a bathroom, unless you’re bringing in vintage mirrors or vanities, this can be hard. In master bathrooms, you generally need two matching vintage mirrors and vanities, and yikes. That’s hard. It’s time to look for lighting.

Jen found this vintage empire chandelier in town, fell in love, and hung it in her stairwell. Upon first sight, I began my crusade to get her to move it to the bathroom, above the tub, where it now lives. And neither of us can imagine this bathroom without it.

Ready for the before and after?

Before:

After:

And how lucky is this bathroom, because every day, it gets to hang out next to this master bedroom:

The bedroom is Jen’s favorite room in the house, and for good reason. It’s her perfect bohemian-modern mix, with just enough Spanish underpinning. Not to mention wood floors that came with the house. The vibe is relaxing and pretty – exactly what a bedroom should be.

And can we talk for a minute about those nightstands? Jen wanted campaign-style nightstands something fierce, but all of the vintage ones are petite shrimps — far too short to reach the height of today’s boxspring-pillowtop-mattress situations.

When Jen sent me a photo of these nightstands in their original state, they were brown and short but fabulous. We had them lacquered white, and the collector who was selling them even built on that base to bring them up to the mattress height.

The same vintage collector was the source of the turquoise lamps, which are probably our favorite lamps ever. We call him “Jen’s Furniture Drug Dealer.” He sends texts and photos late at night, and the source of his wares is always a mystery — but oh, do his pieces make us feel good.

A few other pretty moments in Jen’s home:

Vintage keys purchased from my dear friends at Vallone Design rest on her desk — the lucite bases kill me. (Seriously, though — those Vallones are kind, good, helpful, encouraging people — with amazing style and warmth, to boot. Love them.)

Jen had these fantastic original built-in bookcases all over the house. She’s a pharmacist with an awesome collection of vintage mortars and pestles, and this bookcase was just the right place to show them off.

Lastly, a fresh magnolia we brought in for the photo shoot that rests on a table near her tub.

(Do you want to know what a girl’s got to do to find a fresh and open magnolia blossom in Phoenix? You cannot buy them, which means you pack your garden shears, put on your tennis shoes, and go on an urban hunt. It’s dangerous and insane  — I assure you.)

Big thanks to Jen for being my wish bone — the client I’d dreamed of finding. And I’m extra lucky, because our work together also brought me a wonderful and dear new friend.

Sources

Bathroom – Floor tile, Granada Tile. Countertop, Calacatta Gold Slab from Arizona Tile. Plumbing fixtures, Kohler. Bathroom chandelier, vintage. Bathroom sconces, Restoration Hardware. Bathroom Mirrors, One Kings Lane. Bathroom Side Table, Regina Andrew, To The Trade. Towel on Bathtub, Turkish T. Standing Vanity Mirror, Noir Furniture, To The Trade.  Bathroom cabinet pulls, Restoration Hardware. Wall color, Dunn Edwards Whisper.

Master Bedroom – Rug, nightstands, lamps, and bench, vintage. Bedframe, no longer available. Solid linen bed duvet cover and pillowcases, Restoration Hardware. Pink paisley pillow, custom by Jaimee Rose Interiors in a Peter Dunham fabric. Window shades, Smith and Noble. Wall color, Dunn Edwards Whisper.

Hello and welcome to my new website and blog!

It was high time we redecorated this blog, don’t you think? Today, I’m also sharing my design portfolio for the first time (eek!), along with fun new happenings all around this web domain of mine.  (Product of the week! Posts from my archives! Testimonials!)

And stay tuned — because a couple of my favorite projects are under wraps until magazine publication. (Hooray!)

I need the world’s most epic thank-you note for Isaac Bailey, my web designer and photographer. He makes my designs look wonderful, works like a mad fiend, and is the best kind of person to have in your corner.

Also, the beautiful Andrea Heser of Featherpress Design created my new logo, which I love.

And now, would you like to see one of my projects? Let’s start with Jennifer Hendrix’s 1929 adobe home in Arcadia. Today: kitchen, dining and powder room. Later this week: more to come.

Jen and I met because she needed help choosing that impossible thing: the perfect shade of white paint. We’ve been scheming and planning and stalking tiles together almost every week since. (We just finished house number two!) When she called me, her project looked like this:

This was her kitchen:

And the powder bath:

Jen is a fierce devotee of midcentury modern design, but she knew it was important to nod to the Spanish style of her home. Our design mantra became boho-modern-mix.

We used vintage pieces anywhere we could because nothing beats that authentic patina, but also because Jen has one of the world’s great soft hearts.

She likes to save things that no one wants anymore — sofas, animals, and even houses.

I love her.

We also focused on using materials with a hand-crafted, Spanish vibe and updating them with the modern twists that Jen loves.

And now her kitchen looks like this:

Jaimee Rose Interiors – Phoenix, AZ Interior Designer – JaimeeRose.com

Jaimee Rose Interiors – Phoenix, AZ Interior Designer – JaimeeRose.com

Isn’t it cool?

The walls in the kitchen aren’t clad in just subway tile — that is hand-formed glazed Mexican terra-cotta tile that has the most incredible undulating texture in real life. Jen also chose the terra-cotta tile floor, and combined with the arched doorways, we instantly had a lot of that Spanish thing going on. For a modern twist, Jen went for the midcentury globe lights that she loved. (Don’t worry – sources to come.)

To add more texture and material integrity, we had a looooong discussion about Carrara marble countertops. Yes, they’re high maintenance. Yes, they etch and scratch and stain and dent, and you know what? They’re still beautiful. Marble is a material that stands up to a rough patina — it ages like Helen Mirren.

In the end, Jen took the plunge, and on the day they were installed, I got a text that said “The countertops are so beautiful I almost cried.”

Her dining room above features an incredible Bernhardt bone-inlay dining table that I ordered for her, along with a custom Canopy Designs chandelier in her favorite color. The chest is vintage, and she found the artwork in Paris. Jen found the chairs at Cost Plus World Market, and we had the draperies made.

Are you ready for the powder room?

Jaimee Rose Interiors – Phoenix, AZ Interior Designer – JaimeeRose.com

Can I get an amen?!

Jen’s favorite color is turquoise, and it’s such a great contrast with that killer black and white Granada cement tile. We kept everything else in the space quiet to let the tile do its thing: bronze fixtures, vintage lights that came with the house, and a seriously fab budget find mirror that we painted ourselves – even that gold bead around the edge. People love walking into this room.

And in case you’re wondering, the perfect white paint for Jen’s particular project and light was Dunn Edwards Whisper — crisp, Spanish whitewash-esque and just a little warm.

Come back tomorrow for a look at her master suite — and don’t forget to explore this new webpage of mine! I’d love to hear which space is your favorite.

SOURCES 

Built by Matthew Douglas Construction

Kitchen: Pendants, Schoolhouse Electric. Faucet, Kohler at Farnsworth Wholesale. Carrara slab, Arizona Tile. Barstools, Ballard Designs. White shelves, Ikea. Cabinet hardware, Restoration Hardware. 

Dining room:  Table, Bernhardt, to the trade. Light fixture, Canopy Designs, to the trade. Vintage mirror and console, to the trade. Draperies, custom. Chairs, Cost Plus World Market. Lamps, Arteriors, to the trade. 

Powder room: Floor tile, Granada Tile. Mirror: no longer available. Sconces: vintage. Cabinet hardware, Restoration Hardware. 

We’re in mad rush mode here at the Jaimee Rose World Headquarters. (Ahem.) In prep for publishing our new website this month — along with my design portfolio, at last — my team and I have been working like fiends to photograph some of my work from the past couple of years. Today, we have packed 5 photo shoots into one looong day, with more staggered all week long — along with our regular client work.

(My team clearly loves me, and what a lucky lucky girl I am to have them.)

Photo shoots are insanity and a complete mess. Basically, the entire house is torn apart to make a room look absolutely perfect from one particular angle.

Fiction and lies, as my beloved Emily Henderson says. Room photography is always a lot of fiction and lies.

It also involves the questionable procuring of much plant life, not all of which is conveniently for sale at the flower market.

For example, to get my hands on the glorious flowering branches we used to style my client’s kitchen below, I went to a bank parking lot in the middle of the night and got out my tree trimmers. (And went home with my arms covered in cuts, but it was worth it. Just look at those babies.)

I have no dignity. Just vision.

Photo by Isaac Bailey

Isn’t that kitchen insane? I keep telling the clients that I want to sleep in the pantry.

Follow along on Instagram today if you’d like a few more sneak peeks. Happy Monday!

Thanks to the world spy organization known as Google,  my Facebook feeds are chockablock with decorating articles like “six things you must have in your bedroom if you’re a grown up” and “seven design mistakes that drive every designer mad.” I LOVE these articles. Sometimes they’re insanely silly and even off-base, but I cannot look away. And Google knows this. Such a stalker, that Google.

And hence begins a new occasional series detailing my rules for decorating. There aren’t many true absolutes in this trade, but each designer has a personal code. You might find some of my rules silly, too. But I thought they would be fun to pass along.

Don’t #1: The Wimpy Doormat

There is a conspiracy among the people who make adorable doormats — they’ve all agreed to save money on material by offering Barbie-sized specimens to the unsuspecting public.  When I reach that mythic day in which I design my own product line, I will unleash a doormat revolution. (Fascinating, isn’t it, the things that go through a crazy person’s mind?)

Your doormat is the first thing anyone sees when they come to your house, and almost all the time, the mats are small little sad things and out of proportion with the space.

Your doormat needs to be at least as wide as your front door. If you have glass side lights on the sides of your door, consider going even larger — try to find something as wide as the door and side lights combined.

This doormat is sized correctly.

This doormat is not.

This is my favorite doormat, because it comes in the right sizes for a standard door and for double-wide doors. And you can monogram it, add your last name, or leave it blank.

Don’t #2: The Dreaded Stubby Twin Drapery Rods

When considering the astronomical sticker shock that comes along with drapery rods — good drapery rods, especially, I understand how the Stubby Twins were born. Believe me. I have to give clients their custom window treatment proposals along with a paper bag in which to breathe.

Drapery rods are priced per foot, and if your panels are merely decorative, it seems a smart solution to buy two short rods and hang them on each side of the window.

Just please resist, because  I promise you that pulling the Twin Stub Rod trick is  akin to buying a pair of pants with holes cut from the thigh to the knee just to save money on fabric.

Design is about creating sight lines to direct the eye around a space. A broken rod = a broken line, and it draws the eye toward something you don’t want to highlight: a virtual poster that says, “Look, mom, I cheaped out!” OK, sorry. That was true mean.

Drapes are meant to close – or at least look like that’s a possibility. The rod needs to stretch across the window. Even if the wall is curved and angled, or the size of a Broadway stage.  Even if the window is arched. Even if ______________.

Yes. Even then.

These windows were done expertly:

These make me want to throw myself upon the doorstep of the Helser Brothers Factory in Chandler, where I will plead for the grace of a completed rod.

Do #1: The Double Grommet Drape

Since I’m being the evil queen of expensive curtain rods, I’ll share an easy trick for making store-bought drapery panels look better:  Use two panels on each side of your window. You’ll think you don’t really need it, but you’ll be floored by the difference it makes. These are Pottery Barn drapes, doubled.

One of the key differences between store-bought and custom draperies is the fullness of the fabric (see the custom glories below), and doubling them up is a simple little cheat.

This trick looks most crisp if you can find a grommet-top panel, since most store-bought draperies aren’t pleated, and it’s hard to make clipped-on rings or pole-pocket panels look professional. (Decorating Don’t #3: Pole pocket panels entirely.)

Grommets are metal rings inset into the fabric.

West Elm, Pottery Barn and even Ikea have decent grommet panels. (These gray Ikea panels look better than expected when doubled up.)

Also: make sure your rod and grommets are the same metal finish.

Do #4: Buy Lined Drapery Panels

One more for the road: if you can find drapery panels with lining, choose them every time. They’ll last longer, and they’ll look so much more like the professional window treatments we fussy designers favor — all of which are lined.

A good place to start: These Pottery Barn grommet-top panels are lined, and the white colorway is particularly crisp.

In review:

Don’t buy doormats that are too small.

Don’t cheap out in the rod department.

Don’t buy pole-pocket drapes.

Do double up store-bought draperies for high impact on a smaller budget.

Do look for lined draperies, whenever you can.

And please DO send me any questions you have about the rules of decor. I could play professor for hours. What do you think about this new series?

We used to be one of those annoying childless couples who spent weekends going to the movies and to The Parlor for dinner, with Sundays dedicated to lying on the couch.

This weekend, after cleaning out the laundry room and scouring the grill, I plan to paint my yellow kitchen countertops and possibly the yellow linoleum kitchen floor. Again, these are $20 6-month survival tactics.

The DIYers in blogland insist these tasks are easy – although the paint formulas kill brain cells. I’m good with that. Currently, I’d like to think a little bit less.

And yes, both of the above are pretty stringent decorating don’ts, but I’m a desperate “do-it-for-now-er”. Yesterday I hung up draperies from a big box store in our guest room, where Bunny put tinting film on an enormous window to keep out the heat.

The film is peeling around the edges, looks like a B movie, but will not come entirely off.  And of course, we have an actual guest coming (!$%&!).

Here’s the best part: I tied the drapery rod to some mystery leftover brackets with twine. And that’s pretty much how it’s hanging.

Yes, I spend weekdays designing flooring concepts, millwork details and ceiling plans for my clients’ 8000 square-foot multimillion dollar homes. There are gorgeous custom draperies galore.

And I spend weekends tying my own curtain rods up with string.

Please don’t tell.

(In the new house, there will be new windows, with appropriate and worthy draperies that I best start saving for right now.)

Anyway, after I kill my brain cells with truly toxic paint, I am going for a manicure, which sounds like some pinnacle of bliss.

I always choose the same colors. Boring, perhaps, but I’m a classicist.

For a gel manicure on my hands, it’s Essie’s Amusing Bouche (similar to Mademoiselle).

For traditional polish on my hands, it’s OPI Bubble Bath.

For toes in Fall and Winter, OPI Big Apple Red.

For toes in Spring and Summer (it’s time to switch!), OPI Cajun Shrimp.

(P.S. My favorite nail spas are The Nail Spa at Lincoln View, where there’s a masseuse to rub your shoulders during your mani-pedi, and Sundrops, for an experience that’s always a treat.)

Happy weekend! May yours be free of Home Improvement.