West Ellis Street Foyer & Dining Room | Virtual Mood Board Installation

A quick refresher to a space…seems simple enough, right? But with all the lovely avenues of inspiration, it can lead you down the rabbit trail of searching only to have 1,000 pins to a Pinterest board and no real direction. The lure of those beautiful and visual platforms can catch us hours deep into what we think is “research” for a specific space and then all of a sudden you are looking at DIY Halloween costumes and skinny crockpot meals…so our friends say.

It's the reason why many (if not all) of our clients who choose our Virtual Mood Board package come to us. They can’t pull the whole space together or see it. That in conjunction with sticking to the budget they have in mind, can be a challenge and take a lot of time and we gladly like to take off their hands. But you don't get off that easy, there is still some "homework" we need from homeowners in order to get the design right.

With this home, the homeowners already had us design the two bookends of the house for a full remodel: the living room and kitchen. Between those two spaces are the foyer and dining room, and all open to each other. The living room and kitchen tie together with design elements but that left them feeling the disconnect when they continued through the space.

The spaces weren’t elaborate or large and in fact, the homeowner wanted to keep some of the elements intact. But, in design, our minds are trained to think about the smallest of details…ties to make a space complete and (if desired), cohesive. The wishes:

• a little bit of farmhouse

• a little bit sophistication

• cooler color palette

• some modern elements

• a way to include family pictures

• keep some furniture pieces and light fixtures

• tie the spaces to the kitchen and living room

You may be thinking…it’s just shopping for items, which is true…we do the shopping for you and provide the sources in a pretty lil document but the time we spend considering the other elements, applying scale to each selection, tone and colors, patterns and balance to a space makes us really happy that we didn’t skip those 8 am ‘Elements and Principles of Design’ courses in college. They all matter. They all play a role to completing the space and achieving a look.

The client requested some alterations to the original mood board. We encourage feedback and are happy to make the changes and truth be told, there were a few elements that ended up in different spaces of the house because heck…even we can change our mind. And they work beautifully since this home had a clear cohesive aesthetic.

We love a grand scheme that includes demolition and construction but we also believe that a transformation can be simple and still impactful. Now, their entire main level is updated and tied together – the goal they started with. The amount of times they have shared how much they love of their updated home melts our hearts. From the bottom of our hearts, we thank them for welcoming us into their personal space and trusting us to help with their design needs.