Caught in a Whirlwind: Part II

The week we have all been waiting for came and went in the blink of an eye. This past week was the install of an entire home. When we arrived, the walls had already been painted and wallpapered, the trim had a fresh coat of paint on them, and the floors had been updated with a dark stain. The draperies and light fixtures had also been installed. Our job was to install all of the new furniture, rugs, lamps, and accessories. Basically, it felt like we were prepping for a magazine shoot.

The garage before un-boxing everything. 

Accessory wonderland. 

First things first, our team and the movers had to unload all of the furniture from the trucks. Luckily the house was in a cul-de-sac because we took up the entire street with our two moving trucks. The system was to un-box all of the furniture so that the movers could take the items inside. It felt like Christmas as we opened huge boxes and tore away the wrapping in one swift slice of a box cutter. Accessories and lamps were placed in the garage, almost like a staging area, so that the items that worked best in the space could be easily found. Most of these items came from the shopping that went on the week before, so extras were bought in case one item didn't work. Some shopping had to be done mid-week to find some more floor lamp options and pick up miscellaneous items like candles and accessories.

A blank canvas. 

Love the wallpaper!

Once all the items were unloaded and placed, we worked to tweak the pieces in order to make the space look as close to perfect as it could. It takes a team to make the process run smoothly. Then came the cleaning and staging. This involved cleaning the mirrors, placing lightbulbs, and organizing photo frames.

And that bookshelf display that I was talking about earlier came together quite nicely. It took a while to get the placement of each piece right, but it was well worth the effort. The room was one of my favorite in the home and I think the bookcase really added a special touch.

The finished product. 

Believe it or not, that's about 260 books!

Fun chair.

Once Friday came, we were all exhausted. But the job wasn't done yet as we had to invoice all of the items. This is done by going around to each room and writing down all the things that weren't "contract." Meaning that we had to record the items that client did not previously know about, like art pieces, accessories, and throw blankets.

The whole install process was such a great experience and it was so cool to see the project truly come together. By the end of the week, the house looked like a show home, ready to be photographed. I will leave you with a few of my favorite images of the home!

The Breakfast Nook

The Family Room 

The Dining Room 

The Master Bedroom
 (one of my favorites and I'm kind of
obsessed with the mirrored nightstands!)

And these lamps!

The Master Bedroom 

The Classroom

Fun wallpaper in the daughter's room. 

Caught in a Whirlwind: Part I

So I am going to break the past two weeks up into two posts. The past couple of weeks have been leading up to an exciting install and wrapping up a huge project. The week leading up to an install can be very hectic and I now realize the amount of preparation that goes into it. For the install, a lot of shopping has to be done to find accessories, art, rugs, and lamps to fill the space. I made a shopping spreadsheet for the designers in order to organize all of the items purchased for the install. Luckily, I was able to contribute a few of my shopping skills as well.

I also got to "get my craft on" by wrapping roughly 260 books for a bookshelf display in the home. Pineapple House is known for their creative book displays that basically act as an art piece. They purchase a bunch of used hardback books and then wrap them in coordinating colored paper to create a uniform look. The color scheme for this install was brown, neutral, and orange with a little newspaper mixed in. Basically, you wrap the books like an old-school book cover, unless you were like me and had some of those spandex book covers in crazy patterns.

Becoming a pro book wrapper. 

The finished product.

Photos to come of the finished product in the next post!

I also finished up those CAD plans that I was working on. I worked with the designer to finish up the plans. We discussed the options for the media room in the home and drew out a couple of plans that might work for the space. I realized the importance of saving the changes as a new drawing when the design needed to be changed back to an original plan. Unfortunately, this was learned the hard way and  I had to re-draw the plans since the previous drawing had been cleared. I also sent the contractor for the new home the initial plans so that he could fill in the missing dimensions.

A week is never complete without a trip to ADAC. As I was grabbing some samples, look who I ran into!

Taking a Walk on the Creative Side

This past week at Pineapple House was busy, busy, busy. Stephen and Zach made their round trip to Canada and returned with all the updates from the client proposal. In order to have everything ready for them, I finished gathering all of the memos and printing off tear sheets.

The product of one of many trips to ADAC.

They met with the wife of the household as well as their twelve-year-old daughter, who definitely knows what she wants. Once they returned, Zach and Abby reviewed the changes with me and I got to work on updating the floor plan. Many of the changes had to do with moving the furniture around. The task made me reminisce on the hours I spent playing Sims as a youngster. I used to play it just so I could build a house and arrange the furniture. I also had to make a corresponding furniture list that kept track of the furniture locations of the house they are moving out of and where they were to be placed in the new house. This became quite confusing because I would lose track of the placements and forget that I relocated one piece while keeping that same piece in its prior location on the plan. But needless to say, everything was put in its correct home once I was finished.

I also had to gather estimates for fabric that was going to be used to re-upholster the clients' old furniture. I  learned how to call the corporate customer service of the furniture manufacturers, tell them the repeat of the pattern on the fabric to be used, and then they would tell me how much COM (customer's own material) would be needed. Before doing so, I had to call and inquire about the available stock of the COM. This seemingly easy task became a little difficult when I found out that some of the fabrics were discontinued with no stock on hand. In those cases, I had to look for a sub for the fabric. However, you also have to make sure there is enough fabric in-stock, especially when working on a short time frame because there may not be enough time to have the quantity you need made.

Hours were spent making phone calls and doing price/stock checks. Luckily, Abby had a side project of pulling together a few schemes for a client's walk-in closet. The client wanted either Tiffany blue or a feminine pink scheme. We ran to ADAC to look at fabrics and trims which was very fun. We ended up going super feminine and came up with three options.

A glam, pink option with natural details and a pretty antiqued mirror ceiling.

A casual, blue option with soothing accents.

And my personal fav, a glam blue option with metallic accents and a mother-of-pearl ceiling.

This was my most creative assignment yet and I have to say I wouldn't mind doing more of them!

I'm excited for this upcoming week because we are going shopping for this weeks install. We will be looking for accessories, lamps, and art pieces for the home. We have a small install coming up on Thursday and I'm looking forward to experiencing the whole process. Details to come!