The kitchen, informal dining area and family room below, were all one big open space in Angela’s home.  We coordinated fabrics, wall coverings, pillows, valances and panels to create a cohesive look.

In the dining room we did the same chair in six different colors of the same fabric.  The art for the walls were framed Hawaiin shirts that had all of the colors of the chairs.

The family room was designed so that 3 couples could comfortably watch TV or play games on the large leather ottoman .

The formal living room in the home of Cindy-Lu and Marsha.  Pale greens, water blues and wicker gave this room a feel of the islands.

In the formal living room of Angela A.’s home, we used formal furniture pieces, including two Bergere chairs,  to give the room an elegant look.  Angela likes sheer, light window treatments, so we used two different colors of the same fabric and wove them together into a combination of casual swags, jabots and panels, on custom rods.

In the boy’s room, to the right, we found the furniture with the baseballs on the headboards and the dressers, making this room very fun.  We finished the room with posters of their favorite baseball players.  The kids play room, below, incorporated primary colored fabrics along with denim bed covers for a bright, cheery room.

Decorator’s Dream House:  Kitchen, New Laundry Area, Informal Dining Area, Wet Bar   1995

This has got to be my most stressful remodel that I ever did.  The home owner’s moved out just two weeks before the Dream House was to open.  I was responsible for completely tearing out the old kitchen and putting everything back together.  The Robert and Toby Stornetta, along with their crew, did the tear out and rebuild, which included opening up the wall between the dining room and the kitchen (shown above), and building a new wall at the back of the kitchen in the top picture (wall with glass doors on the cabinets).  This room was completely gutted including sheetrock and flooring.

In two weeks with the help of so many talented people, we were able to put in all new windows, cabinetry and new hardware, appliances (Ultracraft Cabinets and appliances from Ginno’s), new electrical including the indirect and direct fluorescent lighting, faux painted the walls and ceiling, installed new countertops and installed new flooring.  Nancy Lindahl from Zucchini and Vine accessorized the kitchen beautifully, and we were done in time for the Dream House opening.  This remodel took so much pre-planning and coordination with all my sub-contractor’s that I vowed NEVER to do this again!  I was exhausted.

This fun and quirky furniture lives at the home of Judy S.  I had just set up this beautiful blue velvet loveseat, the lime green chenille chair with the blue velvet welting, the chair-and-a-half in a bright contemporary fabric, the “Twisted” one-of-a-kind blue bookcase and the contemporary sofa and side tables as my front window display.  Before it had been in the showroom long enough to be seen, Judy and her family came in and purchased the entire room!  It looks great in her living room along with the picture that my daughter, Julie Groark had painted for the display.  Julie still is not happy that I let her picture go—but what could I do?

Painting by Julie Haase Groark