Hello and welcome back to Katherine Mondadori blogs. I’m Katherine Mondadori and today I am going to share something new with you guys. Many of you have seen my home over the years especially during my walk through tours at Christmas time and you’ve seen this home all dolled up but I’ve never showed you before is the before pictures of what it looked like when we bought it fifteen years ago. We were looking for home and I knew when we found this one it was perfect why because it had six hundred feet of office space in the front of the house and up until that time broken design was operating out of my garage wow A lot of stuff before I even began my ten list of things let me just say the obvious we removed all the wallpaper the popcorn on the ceilings we changed the textures on the walls which was like a cottage cheese that had been painted in a similar gloss really nasty looking walls we really textured all of that and we added lighting throughout the house lighting is you know is one of my biggest things that I love we have a design session just on lighting and I do it here in my house and if you want to know more about that go to my website and check out the design sessions so I guess the best place to start this house is at the entry. Your entry is your first impression and this intrigue drove me nuts. It was a big rectangle it was dark and it had this low drop ceiling now I asked my contractor can’t we just start the vaulted ceiling that goes in the living room and bring it on down he said it would cost a tremendous amount of money and all of my air conditioning and heating would have to be rerouted. Way too expensive I was working on a very tight budget so this is what I did and I think it’s a pretty creative idea. I want your guy up instead of feeling like this wall in this opening is dropping so low by adding this transom of molding and crown molding on top of it and painting it this off white color it trying to just make sure I feel like it’s a higher ceiling. You need to think about what’s the first thing you see when you walk it now in this new home we bought it was this wall behind me and you can see that the previous owner had a curio cabinet on it while it was nice for them it wasn’t as wow as I wanted my home to be so what I did was I installed a ten foot tall mirror I had the arch the top of it and then Oscar came and added eight inch thick casing all the way around it makes it look so handsome and it’s actually kind of an illusion you actually think there’s a room beyond there let me show you right now I have a table in front of this but if I was to move this table and you were to see this do you see how the floor runs right into the mirror and you literally feel like you could just walk right on into another room I wouldn’t recommend it because it could be painful but you could. Still look at this clever little idea. I was able to add a little bit of natural light to this rather dingy entryway and bring some architectural interest

I have loved collecting old vintage Windows for years when I got to Garcia with my neighborhood so I asked my contractor that opened up the hole in this wall and he did and look how great it looks it’s hanging from a couple of just cups and some I little screws on top and it is really amazing it’s again in that nice dark rich stain that has a lot and it kind of gives you a first impression peek a boo right on into the living. After years and years of designing absolutely beautiful staircases for my clients I knew that something I wanted to do in my home the staircase as it was very straight and it was very I had a pony wall that came up to about here was just a very typical tract home in Southern California I had the lease create for me I designed it but he created this beautiful custom iron railing for me had my contractor come in and instead of having the stairs come straight down and just I had him put around lower that pony wall giving me more space for this beautiful iron work and then a beautiful custom sort of free flowing design as it came down around so watch this as I walk up and down my stairs instead of coming down and just going straight there I’m able to walk and to my living room my entry and the rest of my home. This is really strange I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this before but my wood floors downstairs are all this very light wood Well when we did the woods line upstairs I actually did it in the darkness press so very unusual I’ve never seen anyone mix their woods before and it was a little scary but I knew because I had all this dark wood in my furniture thought maybe it could go you know what it does it looks amazing. My kitchen is not where I want it to be but thank God it’s not where it used to be oh my goodness when we first saw this house for the first time I was like that kitchen is seriously scary one of the things that had in it was this bank of cabinets right across here and what it did was it really defined the kitchen as a very. Operate space and it was not a part of the other room I wanted to have that flow through feel this is an idea that you could use in your home and I have done it many times I then of course dropped into pendent lights but the other thing we did is take a look at what the lighting in the ceiling was like in this kitchen it did not do anything for my complex or my appetite so we took that out and we put in canned lights and then around the perimeter we kept the original shape someday I’d like to redo my kitchen new countertops new cabinets all that kind of stuff but for now just ghost coating those oak cabinets to be this dark is fresh so went with the rest of my house it was a very inexpensive cheap fix so I think it made a nice difference and one last thing that I noticed and this is kind of a clever thing I think you can tell me what you think so the cabinet that used to be here went straight across once that was gone take a look. I self like it looks I was glad that this cabinet was gone but it looked a little heavy on one side and nothing on this side so the way I sort of camouflage that issue as I took a shot or that I bought at Home Depot I stained it as spreads so and I just literally lean it up against there and to me that kind of balanced out the chocolate cabinets on the outside and a little something chocolate on this side so it’s worked it’s been fifteen years I think we’re due for a kitchen remodel What do you think family. He said yes. Do you ever look at a wall in your house and you see door after door after door kind of annoying after I fell in love was the family room with a pretty. Good here and there was a door that went underneath the staircase a door to the counter room and a door to the laundry room the way that I fixed it is really inexpensive and it’s a great way to do it to kind of make a door go. Way. Thank. Supporters here I actually took the door off to the laundry room and casted all the way around over here we use the same casein and put a beautiful solid core door right here in the bathroom so now no door to door and that when I needed as it’s under my staircase but you know what I did let me show you we actually textured it the same thing as the wall. We took in the basement off of it and the door handle it just has a little button here now you know what this is this is a. Touch latch right on into my very. Dirty closet but anyway the concept is cool you do see the little line around here but it doesn’t give you the impression of yet another door now if you’re going to do this you really want to carry off the illusion you’ll notice on the floor I put in my baseboards they go actually of cross the door through the door that opens has baseboard and you’re going to need to do this to actually have to notch out at an angle from this spaceport to this spaceport because when this opens that have to be able to open completely and not run into the base for just little things you learn as you do this kind of crazy stuff. Take a look at the before picture of this wall this was a family room and the television used to sit over here you know why the television didn’t sit against the wall because of this thing this hearse that for some reason some builder thought would be a great idea to bring it all the way across we know what he did he just cut off I don’t know eighteen twenty inches of the room where nothing could go back against that wall. I decided I was going to make this my dining room and I wanted this to be a great focal point Wall. So I bought two vintage chests of drawers to use as a favor. And what I did was I one of them to go back against the wall well how could you do that with that in the way I tell you how I cut the back legs off of both of these vintage pieces I mean if there weren’t that expensive and it was a pretty smart and clever idea leave me a comma below let me know if you think that’s clever idea here’s the other thing this fireplace I mean what I have loved to have done a paneled built-in and all this kind of stuff yes I would I made the best of what I have and that’s the key I want you guys to think outside the box and think OK I can’t change this but what can I do to work around it that’s what I did here this is a simple plant on man told that I got from Pottery Barn years ago so you get that feeling do you know why having the wood on either side is sort of gives you that impression of this grand fireplace Trust me this is no for hands are this right it looks pretty good and. I’ll just and you know for those of you park cerned about the legs on my birthdays there are taped underneath to each buffet so if I ever move don’t want to use these again I only have to do is drill pegs peg holes in them and reattach these appeasers. You often find a linen cabinet in the hallway somewhere well in this home upstairs at the top and you could still see it from downstairs was your typical linen cabinet lower cabinets upper cabinets boring so eventually I designed a beautiful linen cabinet I call it my Martha Stewart cabinet because it reminds me of something she would deal it brings in all of my casements my crown molding big base molding and it’s in this nice yummy kind of buttery cream color but with the glass doors what it did was it made me accountable to keep my linen clean and made a big switch to all white. And the master bedroom on this far wall which this was a long room I actually had some space so here’s what I did I added an entire wardrobe system to this back wall and I completely covered a mirror Now let me show you these doors right here this all Ikea this is my jewelry storage and I am going to do a video just on jewelry and how I store my jewelry that’s coming out every one of these open the doors themselves come this way you can get them with mirrors on them but the drawers not so much IKEA does not make them that way so I had a mirror company come and cover the mirrors and then I had them fill in the empty space that the Ikea wardrobe system didn’t cover we love it gave my husband a place to put his clothes because you know that walk in closet over there taken off of both of us so this answered our issue for where we’re going to hang our clothes and it really added a lot to this room. Hey have you guys heard the next design session is on window treatments that’s right and you know what the one after that is on. Spring cleaning so I thought I’d get up here in Qana kill two birds with one stone and you know what not a moment too soon. Here’s one more clever quick and cheap idea for you in the kitchen if you wish you had an island but you don’t have one I actually put this one in it’s just a movable little French I don’t know I got it from Ballard company for a couple hundred dollars but is just the right size it gives me something in the middle of this kitchen gives me a place to put stuff to chop things if I was to ever chop and to light some candles. That’s kind of nice to think. I hope you’ve enjoyed kind of taking a look at my house from where I was to where it is today getting the top ten things that I think are pretty cool and fine and a lot of them are obtainable it in the budget what was your favorite And what do you think maybe you could use in your home after all that’s what this is all about just remember this is taken me fifteen years and I still haven’t arrived but I hope the one thing you take away from all of this is it’s a process it’s a journey and it’s fun getting married I wish you guys all the luck in the world in your own decorating your own home remember the design sessions that’s where I teach you everything I know the kinds of things.