Search Results for: back door
family photos
We’re crunching on a deadline here at Studio Zerbey, but I wanted to drop by to share some family photos that we had taken recently. Now, we have no shortage of photos of Avery (and Bailey, for that matter), but very few of us as a family. I wanted something more than the outstretched-arm iPhone photos, but different from a traditional portrait setting. We worked with Seattle photographer Dorothy Huynh and she was great! (We also took the opportunity to snap a few headshots to use for our Studio Zerbey website and various other things.)
For our outfits, I didn’t want to be all matchy-matchy but there needed to be some cohesiveness. I actually picked out Avery’s shirt first and then Kyle and I chose things that would compliment it.
Classic Bailey. This is what he does when he meets a new person.
We went through a lot of O’s trying to placate a wiggly little girl who was ready for a nap by the end of the session.
Kyle just started wearing glasses and I love them. (Back off ladies…)
In addition to our home, I also wanted an outdoor setting. These were taken at Discovery Park in Seattle. (We took a couple with Bailey, but could only coordinate a dog and baby for so long. No offense, Bails.)
Thank you Dorothy for taking these photos of our family. Now, time to actually print a few to hang in the house! Y’know, eventually.
studio zerbey / animal hospital remodel
It’s been a couple of months since our last Studio Zerbey post, so today we’re sharing another project that is currently in schematic design – a remodel of an existing animal hospital east of Seattle.
A big thanks to Kyle, who is brilliant and created these renderings.
The project is located just south of Bellevue, WA in what was originally a 1950’s home. The house was converted to an animal hospital a number of years ago, but the client requested a series of updates that would reflect their modern sensibility and high-tech inner workings while maintaining a warm and inviting atmosphere. (Also, the zoning code does not allow any changes to the building footprint or massing, significantly informing the design direction.)
Naturally, we brought in a specialized consultant for the job…
(He gets paid in dog treats and belly rubs.)
In general, the exterior needed some functional updates with the added goal of steering it towards a more commercial (professional, yet warm) aesthetic. The composite roof will be replaced with a more durable standing seam metal roof and we’re proposing that the existing aluminum windows be upgraded to a clad wood window (or possibly a more efficient aluminum product). To save on costs, we’re focusing mostly on the two prominent elevations (north and east) and leaving the rear, “back of house” elevations much the same (with the exception of paint and new windows). The existing chimney and fireplace will also be removed during construction.
The brick around the reception area will be removed and replaced with a siding material (shown as 1×4 T&G cedar siding here) with a durable finish. Part of this decision was a function of enlarging the windows in this zone as well as a desire to make the entry and reception area a focal point. On the remainder of the main facade, we’re proposing taking the brick down to the level of the window sill. This creates a more proportional elevation and eliminates the fussiness of attempting to cut and patch bricks where windows are being added or taken away. (We experimented with leaving the brick color as-is and doing a darker siding or panel above, but it was too much darkness up top with the metal roof.)
The north elevation is tricky because it is visible from the street but also contains a service entry (originally a garage door) at the lower level. We’re proposing to paint the existing siding and door in the same dark gray as the brick and also adding a steel plate awning to provide protection from the elements and a visual break between the existing concrete foundation and wood siding above. (We’re also exploring the idea of sandblasting the painted concrete back to its original (raw) color.) The northwest corner was “filled in” during a previous remodel and cladded with a cement board siding. To reduce introducing too many different exterior materials, we’re suggesting that this area be resided with a metal siding to match the roof.
We’re also proposing that the existing roof soffit be replaced with a gray panel product that extends into the reception area, creating a better indoor-outdoor relationship and a lower, more intimate ceiling height over the seating area.
The interior remodel is limited to half of the main floor, including the reception area, lab, two exam rooms, bathroom and office. As shown by the dashed lines, we’re proposing the removal of the old fireplace (which was never used and right in the middle of the space) and a more efficient layout of the other rooms. The animal hospital has made the transition to a paperless business, so space for extensive file systems and storage are no longer needed. The lab serves as a hallway of sorts to access the other spaces, creating an efficient workflow for employees. It’s also the intention of the client that the customers go through this zone to get a glimpse (and appreciate) the inner workings of a small animal hospital.
We’re excited with where the design is headed and can’t wait to share more as things progress.
Now, back to work Bailey!
re-energized by design: challenge one!
Back in October I wrote about the Re-Energized by Design challenge, a local “design show” competition put on by Puget Sound Energy. I was selected as a design coach and paired with this awesome family who lives in Bellingham, WA.
Well, the challenge has been underway for the last several months and I’m happy to finally get to share all of my family’s hard work with you! (To see an introduction of the families and design coaches, check out this webisode.) You can read all about the challenge on the official website, but here’s the main gist: 6 families compete in a room-by-room makeover hoping to eventually win the $5,000 grand prize. Every other week, the families tackle a designated space, take photos and videos and submit the results to a panel of judges. After careful deliberation, the judges vote one family off, leaving the remaining contestants a few days to rest before diving into the next challenge. But this isn’t just any room makeover challenge – the families must also place an emphasis on energy efficiency and how it relates to good design (hence the name of the competition!). They have $500 and a little over a week to complete each phase and they’re doing the work themselves, while also juggling family and day jobs. No easy task!
The first challenge was the bathroom! The Sayers opted to tackle their upstairs bathroom, a small space that their family of four shares. Although they built their house ten years ago, they never really got around to giving this room the love it needed. It was functional, but in need of some serious updates. Check out the before photos:
The biggest issues with this space were the lack of natural light and poor artificial lighting (yeah, the bulb-less light in the shower wasn’t helping the problem).
The minty green walls were tired and a lack of effective storage created too much visual clutter for such a small room.
Although they started out as a temporary solution (we all know how that goes!), the vanity and medicine cabinet had become permanent.
From a design standpoint, we talked about the importance of bringing in more natural light and swapping out their vanity fixture for something more effective. We also brainstormed ways to bring in clever storage and a different wall color to brighten up the space. The results? Behold…
One of the things I love about Scott and Nia is their uncanny ability to source salvaged material, whether it’s something they had lying around or that they found at a local re-use store. In their bathroom, they repurposed a mirror they already owned and created the vanity from a wood table that was in the garage. (In pure salvaging karma, it was a near perfect fit for the space.)
They also painted the walls and installed a wainscoting around the lower half of the room.
The solid door was replaced with a salvaged glass door to allow borrowed natural light from the adjacent room (they installed frosted film over the glass for privacy). A vintage metal locker was moved from their home office and now serves as a cool way to store extra toilet paper and other items.
An energy-saving light bulb was added to the shower and the sad vanity light was replaced with a new fixture equipped with LED bulbs. A new vessel sink and faucet (with water-saving aerator) put the finishing touches on their DIY vanity.
Finally, everything came together with a bold shower curtain and a few simple accessories. Revamping such a small space on a tight budget and schedule isn’t an easy task, but I think they did a great job!
So, did the Sayers advance to the next round? Well, guess you’ll just have to watch this week’s webisode to find out!
office organization
It’s been nearly a year since we finished the loft. Ahh, such minimal beginnings…things sure have changed!
The loft is now Studio Zerbey headquarters and where Kyle spends his days (and sometimes, nights). (In this post, I talked about the importance of having our own spaces.) Although I usually work from the dining room table, we try to keep all of our shared resources in the loft. And by resources, I mean stuff. Over the past few months we’ve accumulated office supplies, code books and building up our material samples library. The space was quickly becoming overcrowded and needed some serious organization.
So, even though I probably bad-mouthed the IKEA Expedits in an earlier post, we desperately needed some low shelving to hold books, building codes and our backlog of magazines. Of course, the Expedit was the perfect size and so I caved, overcoming my beef with its chunky proportions.
With the magazines relocated from the white IKEA Stolmen units, we freed up enough space for our material sample library. We’ve tried to go digital as much as possible, which primarily means forgoing physical product binders that are clunky and have to be updated frequently by product reps. But, there is something about being able to look at a physical sample of a tile or piece of wood siding that you just can’t get from a website or photograph. We often do mock-ups to try out different stains or paint colors and so having a collection of physical samples to share with clients is critical.
Besides, it looks pretty. (And boy, oh boy am I glad the loft is not Avery accessible! Samples go boom!)
Here’s a snapshot of Kyle’s workstation on any given day. We buy a metal paper tray for each new project – it’s getting a little Tower of Pisa, but I suppose that’s a good thing. 🙂
Ok, now let’s move downstairs.
Here’s a photo of our stair cabinet (aka fauxdenza) from two years ago. At the time, we used it as a bookshelf, mail holder and collector of random things. It has pretty much stayed in this configuration until a few months ago, when my “office” began to take over.
Here’s a typical Instagram snapshot of my work zone. (Yes, I’m rocking two laptops. As much as I wanted to fully switch to a Mac, I’m using our old Dell for Autocad. It’s not ideal, but I’m convinced switching back and forth between the two will help stave off dementia in my later years.)
During the process of organizing the loft, we moved most of our architecture resource books upstairs and did some major purging. Now all of our books fit in the fauxdenza. I have mixed feelings about this because I generally like to have books on display and am convinced that hidden behind closed doors, they will not get read. (A theory that has been proven mostly true so far.) Moving the books also freed up space for more work clutter, which wasn’t ideal either.
So, more purging and reorganizing. As part of our babyproofing efforts, we decided that it was probably not a good idea not to store our liquor in the fauxdenza. So I did some kitchen shuffling and carved out enough space for the booze in the cabinet above the pantry. (Having recently watched the last season of Mad Men, we also joked about how now that we’re self-employed we should totally have our own bar cart by the couch. But again, the idea didn’t seem to really mesh with creating a safe environment for our daughter. Avery, make me a gin and tonic!)
With the alcohol relocated, this allowed me to dedicate one shelf for my own office supplies, leaving only a few random items on the counter. Admittedly, it now feels too sparse. Functionally, the fauxdenza is a perfect catchall or temporary holder. Stuff to go up to the loft gets stacked by the ladder and items to go to the basement on the other end. The ceramic bowl serves as Kyle’s catchall for, well…everything that would typically go in a purse. Aesthetically though, the counter space is hard to style. The low height limits displaying anything too large, but it’s not quite tall or deep enough for records or larger books. (Looking back, it’s amusing to think that we thought we’d mostly use it for a buffet for dinner parties – a scenario that has yet to happen and probably won’t since it’s easier to just use the island.)
So, maybe I’ll move some of our design books back up and I’m on the lookout for something to replace Kyle’s bowl (preferably something with a lid!). I know it’s only a matter of time before Avery will be yanking things back off so maybe I don’t get too invested?
Organization! I took four boxes of books to a consignment store to get to this point. It was hard to let them go, but as we’ve been in a pattern of acquiring stuff these last several months I’ve been trying hard to also get rid of the things that were just taking up space.
So here’s my mini office cabinet. For now I’m sharing the space with my cookbook surplus (I’ve relocated my favorites or more frequently used ones to the open shelving in the kitchen). The two binders on the bottom left are filled with recipes torn from magazines that I’ve collected over the past ten years. Every once in a while I try to think of some genius system for organizing it all but that has yet to happen. (In my idealized fantasy world I would cook my way through every recipe, typing up a card (with beautifully shot images) for the ones that pass the test.)
Finally, I can’t leave you without an obligatory dog/baby photobomb. I took most of these photos yesterday afternoon and had to work around my little helpers.
redoing the master bedroom
Our bedroom was the first space to be gutted and remodeled nearly 4 1/2 years ago. The room is modest in size and we didn’t have a big budget so we opted to keep things simple. Sure, the finished space was a drastic improvement from the day we closed (ack!), but as we continued to remodel the rest of our home we came to like our bedroom less and less.
So, time for a redo!
If you follow me on Instagram, you may remember a teaser photo of an empty bedroom from several weeks ago. Maybe you thought we were repainting (a good guess and logical first step), but no…we got a new bed! Our old bed frame was IKEA and purchased when we moved to Seattle in 2004. The mattress itself was Kyle’s from college and our first DIY project. He wanted a TempurPedic, but we were young and had no money so the guy at the mattress store tipped him off to a little secret: buy the 3″ high-density foam topper (that’s meant to go over conventional mattresses) and then pick up an inexpensive foam mattress from the Army Surplus Store to go underneath. Bam! Instabed! The mattress served us well but after 10+ years it was time for an upgrade.
[We also took down the birds. It was time. The twine was held by some nails in the corners so Kyle quickly spackled over those areas (hence the darker spots you see in the photos). We’re not sure what the new art will be just yet, but will likely let the rest of the room dictate.]
We did some shopping and tried out other mattress types but ultimately came back to the TempurPedic. They’re definitely an investment, but we were able to buy a floor model (looked new to us!) for 20% off. (Woo!) Our old mattress and bed frame were a queen, which fit nicely in the space. Although we dreamed of upgrading to a king, the room is too small so we settled on a California king (which is narrower but longer than a king). It’s still a whopping 12″ wider than a queen, which feels downright luxurious. You’ll see we also had to rotate our nightstands (Offi tv stands that have since been discontinued) 90 degrees – it works for now, but we have other plans.
One of our concerns with getting a wider bed was how Bailey would react. He’s used to sleeping on the floor between the side of the bed and the wall, with his head fully under the bed. The metal frame is now too low for his head and the space too narrow for his 95 lb. body. We were feeling a little guilty about the situation until we realized that Bailey actually preferred to just sleep in the new bed. So, problem solved? Guess that’s why we got a bigger bed.
We still love our IKEA Pax wardrobe system but the brown curtain and tension cable were a last-minute solution that has never really worked as we hoped it would.
So here’s a rundown of our game plan:
Paint: In 2008 we had not yet discovered Benjamin Moore’s “super white” and painted our bedroom and bathroom an off-the-shelf white from a home improvement store. Yeah, I don’t know what we were thinking either. It seemed ok until we found the perfect white for the rest of the house and now it seems really yellow. There was also an incident during our 2010 demo where a crow bar went through the bedroom wall. We had the drywallers patch the spot but when I went to repaint I grabbed the wrong sheen from the basement. UGH. So, we talked about painting the room a color but with only one window (that faces north) we need to make it as bright as possible.
Flooring: The fir floors in the bedroom are original to the house and during the first remodel Kyle sanded and refinished them. Well, fir is soft, Bailey has claws and the finish we used wasn’t durable enough. Seriously, there’s a divot where he sleeps. Even if we took the time to refinish them again, the wood isn’t all that nice to begin with so we’re planning to do Flor carpet tiles on top. To save a little money, we’ll omit the tiles that would go under the bed. (Our design ideas for a new bed frame will accommodate this.)
Bed frame and nightstands: We’re still working out the design details, but basically we need a new bed frame to accommodate a bigger bed and new nightstands since our previous ones no longer fit like they’re supposed to. (We’ll probably move the Offi’s down to the basement to use as side tables.) Ok, technically we have a simple metal frame already but we have plans for a DIY headboard and skirt of sorts.
Wardrobe: Kyle and I keep debating the best solution for the wardrobe. The storage itself is great, but we need a better option to conceal all of our clothes, as the current tension cable is too saggy and the curtains are too small to look good when closed. My vote is to do something similar to the nursery, where we buy a ceiling-mounted track and sew custom fit curtains. Kyle wants to make custom drawer fronts and cabinet doors (out of a cabinet-grade maple plywood) so it looks more like a built-in. (We vetoed the idea of just adding IKEA doors since it would be a two-step process to open the doors and then pull out drawers. Does this make us lazy?) I like the custom doors/drawers idea but am worried it will end up being a labor and time intensive project.
Window curtain: We still like the way the window curtain can slide back between the wardrobe and the wall when not in use, but it’s suffering from the same saggy issues as the wardrobe curtains. We have a translucent roller shade that provides privacy while letting in natural light, but for the part of the year when the sun rises early we need a way to make the room darker. And yeah, we’re over the brown. I’m feeling lots of warm gray (I know, I’m getting crazy and straying ever so slightly from blue-gray!), but I know we need some color too.
Ceiling fan: The ceiling fan and light combo is currently centered on the door and window but we’re wishing we would have located it more central in the room. So maybe we’ll move it over? (If we go with doors on the wardrobe it will have to move regardless.)
Bedding: Kyle bought some new sheets that are a pale blueish gray and match our existing duvet cover. We still like the duvet (which is king-sized), but I wouldn’t mind switching it up either. And then there is the question of whether we get new, larger pillows. We’re obviously not into making the bed so maybe we don’t fret about these things too much?
So, nothing too drastic but we think it’s going to bring the room up to the same level as the rest of the house. This will also be the first real room redo since Avery was a couple of weeks old so we’ll see how the juggling of tasks goes. Who wants to repaint? One, two, three…not it!
