When we work on the Dream House project we always have a pretty tight budget for the room we are designing and decorating. Just like in real life, we have to find a way to make those dollars s-t-r-e-t-c-h.

When I splurged on an amazing chair for my reading nook in the Great Room, I knew it meant I was going to have to find places to creatively save money. The chair is called the Lowden. It’s 50″ round {right}  and swivels 360 degrees. It’s from Arhaus and retails for nearly $1,900! It was SO perfect for catching the views out of the two windows and I just HAD to have it. While I got it on sale for $1,279, it was a large part of my $8,000 budget {which was my entire furnishings budget for the kitchen, dinette, butler’s pantry, and great room!}

Splurging on the chair meant I had to save in other areas and one way I did that was by using window treatments that I call “semi-custom.” When you look at the wall of windows I had in the Great Room, it might seem hard to believe that I spent less than $150 on the two drapery panels.

My drapes were 13.5 feet long – fabric alone could have eaten up a lot of my budget. I was able to use ready-made drapes from Lowes as the main body of my panels. {Yes, you read correctly, drapes from Lowes – as in the big box home improvement store}.

Lowes is one of my favorite places to shop from drapes. In my area, Lowes carries a nice variety of window treatments that are on trend and reasonably priced. I bought four ready-made panels @ $24.99 each – they are a grommet top which was perfect for our clean-lined look. The brand is Allen+Roth and they are one of my favorites. I used the Milton panels in the color “mineral“.

I then used a two-foot band of fabric between the two panels to create our custom look. We lined our new panels and voila!

When I was at the house on Friday, people were commenting on the drapes and were shocked when I told them my secret! Such a great way to get a custom look! Had these been made by a typical workroom, they would have cost upwards of $3,000 – $4,000! Ours were under $150.00. I love saving money with syle!

“Stunning.” “Tranquil.” “WOW.” “Amazing.”  Those are just a few of the words I’ve heard being used to describe this year’s YMCA Dream House.

Sorry I have not posted this week but I am working on putting the finishing touches of this year’s YMCA Dream House! Yesterday was the first official day of install but the entire week has been prepping for this day.

I think this photo, snapped by intern Chris Langer at the News Herald, is brilliant. It captures the organized chaos that is move in day at the Dream House!

That’s me, in my trademark hat, moving the giant wicker ottoman {from Padma’s Plantation} with design student Lauren. Our carpenter Mike is behind us, working on hanging a window treatment, while design student Christopher is wrangling with the drapery rod box and Cassie, my intern, is moving the cocktail/game table. A big thanks to Virgina Marti School design students – YOU ROCK!

You can read the official story of Move In Day at the Dream House at this link. The reporter covering this story, Jean Bonchak, has just been wonderful to work with and to get to know.

We are busy, busy busy as we need to be ready for a private preview party on Tuesday for Cambria, one of our sponsors. Their national spokesperson,  the original supermodel and Sports Illustrated swimsuit covergirl  Cheryl Tiegs will be at the party. Sure wish I was taller and thinner!

The official preview party is on Wednesday and then the house officially opens for tours Friday, June 25th. Have a great weekend and I will be back early next week with snaps for a sneak peek of this year’s house. You’re going to LOVE it! You can now buy tickets online for just $12 each for a chance to win the house or $200,000 cash.

Walls are going up! The 2010 Lake County YMCA Dream House is becoming a reality! Click on this link to follow our progress as we build a dream!

You can see the color palette we have decided upon on this post which also has a link to a newspaper article from our local paper giving a behind the scenes of making the Dream house.

I’ve been busy working with my own private clients and on the YMCA Dream Home. I’m so excited about this year’s house and the beautiful color palette we’ve selected {below}.

The larger color samples on the left side of the board are our wall colors. The more saturated hues to the right are our accent colors. It is the first time we have ever had a house at the lake and I think people will really love the house!

These  photos are from an article that was in our local newspaper toay. I’m the blonde in the hat {photo above right}. It was taken at our first meeting and we all laughed because so many of us showed up wearing green and black!

To get an inside look at the making of the Dream House, hop on over to this article written by the talented Jean Bonchak. {photos Maribeth Joeright}

Here’s a sneak peek at the architectural rendering of this year’s YMCA Dream House.

Tickets will go on sale in June {$12.00 each or 3 for $30.00}. You can win this fully furnished house or take a $200,000 cash option.

It’s the house that everyone seems to love. The Hampton’s beach house from the movie, Something’s Gotta Give.

The fabulous kitchen and dining room. The must-have living room. This house/set design was the reason I bought the movie on DVD!

If you love great movie homes, you must go visit the ladies of The Skirted Roundtable and listen to their interview with  Beth Rubino, the Set Decorator for Something’s Gotta Give.

Beth talks about the process of creating these beautiful sets and you’ll be kinda shocked to hear how they created the iconic rug in the living room {above}.

The Something’s Gotta Give house is going to be the inspiration for the 2010 YMCA Dream House. This year’s house is a lake house – our first ever! {For those of you not familiar with Lake Erie, it looks like an ocean – you can’t see land across or from side to side.} So the Something’s Gotta Give house is a perfect inspiration for our designers.

I’m excited to announce that I have been asked to be the design coordinator for this year’s house! I’m very honored and a bit overwhelmed – it means I help determine the color palette and other major aspects of the house. I have also been asked to design the kitchen, eat-in area and the living room. Wow! I’m going to be pretty busy these next few months but that’s a good thing!

I hope you enjoy the interview with Beth – so interesting! Thanks ladies of The Skirted Round Table!

In our local paper this morning they have an article on the Dream House. The online version of the article includes a video tour of the main rooms.  Video Tour of 2009 Dream Home Wouldn’t it be a fantasy to win this dream house? Even if you live out of state, who couldn’t use $200,000?

Buying tickets online is easy and just a click away! Unlike other house giveaways I’ve seen online, these tickets are just $12/each – NOT $100+. I love it that our YMCA keeps it real and affordable!

The YMCA Dream House is definitely on my list of beautiful things from my life this past week! Check out where others are finding beauty at Melissa’s Inspired Room.

And since it’s obvious from a week’s worth of posts on the Dream House, guess you can tell I’m hooked on it – check out what others are hooked on this week at Julia’s Hooked On Houses!

When designing rooms for kids & teens, it can be hard not to end up with a space that looks as if you pulled it right out of the pages of some of the popular catalogs. And what’s wrong with that, you might ask? Well, it requires no imagination and means there’s nothing special about it. The space ends up looking  just like every other kid’s room out there.  My goal is to infuse my client’s personality into the room so that, even if I have purchased items from those stores, the rooms won’t look straight from the showroom.  Make sense?

Here are a few ideas from my room at this year’s YMCA Dream House that are “outside the box.” Remember, the background I was given for my imaginary client was that HE was a freshman in college. I was also given a palette of colors from which I could work within. We also had a theme that the lead designer had created. So, just like you have constraints when putting a room together, I did too.

Instead of buying the usual rectangular wardrobe mirror to hang on the back of the door, we created our own using these round mirrors from Target [also available at Bed, Bath & Beyond].

I only had 10.5″ of wall space between the trim, so we tucked these mirrors into the space to make our own hip & unique version of  a wardrobe mirror.

You can see in this photo below how welcomed the circles are in a room dominated by squares!

Another fun idea? Layering our floor rugs. I had bought the smaller 3×5 rug a few weeks earlier but once I saw it in the space it was just too small.

Placing it on top of the larger 5×8 rug was a great way to make an otherwise too-small rug look just right!  I love how the circles play off the round mirrors.

Because of the awkward angle of the ceiling, it made a part of the room fairly un-useable for something like a dresser, desk or chair. The solution? A platform bed which was perfect for creating the bachelor pad feeling I wanted for our freshman. [It also gave us extra storage!]

We turned the angled ceiling into a focal point by using roof flashing to create magnetic ”boards” on the pitched ceiling. [It was a happy coincident that the designer in the kitchen was using the galvanized metal on the ceiling!]

I did my undergraduate work at BGSU, so you see a bit of love going out to the home of the Falcons!

In the photos above and below notice the levitating shelves. One I used as a ”nightstand” next to the bed and the other two flank the TV shelf. They’re from Umbra. I found them online a couple of years ago and have been wanting to use them in a project. I thought they were perfect in this room since books are a staple of the college experience. I hope when people see them they’ll stop and wonder how we did that?!

And don’t you just love the hat hanger? It’s a one-of-a-kind display inspired by authentic rock climbing gear. The hats and tie hang from aluminum carabiners – I loved how this accent piece played off the rock climber mural. [BTW, you may be wondering about the tie. My intern Maureen told me I needed to have one in the room because guys have to wear them when they give presentations!]

So, there you go. A few ideas for thinking “outside the box!”

I know you all are SUPER creative – share with us your outside-the-box ideas!

Last Friday and Saturday the Lake County YMCA Dream House was abuzz with activity by an invasion of designers. We were all making beautiful happen. I call it organized chaos. You’ve already seen a sneak peek of my room – so here are a few other shots I snapped during install:

Here we are looking down into the great room from the second floor catwalk area. The guys in the kitchen were installing the mircrowave and range Friday morning as we were trying to decorate.

Amazingly, there were relatively few tradesmen in the house and we were all able to go about our work.

The master bathroom pays homage to the marshes of “Marshview Landing.” The design on the wall is a raised relief. The fireplace and tub surround is riverstone. This year’s house has a “Jackson Hole, Wyoming” ranch-style home feeling – rustic yet elegant.

One of my favorite aspects of the house is the kitchen ceiling!  I love the corregated metal framed out with simple 1×4’s. It’s an unexpected design element that’s certainly never been seen in one of our Dream Houses.

There is no formal dining room in this year’s house. Instead the eat-in kitchen and two bar areas seat a total of 10. Love the bar height table and stools – the upholstry is stunning as are the custom mirrors.

Because real people will be living in this house at some point, there has to be flow from room to room. (Unlike a designer showcase home which is all about the designers, so you go from room to room with no connection of design or color). 

Although two different design firms were working on the great room and kitchen, you can see from the photos they have created flow with their use of color. The beige of the furniture/accessories and the citron green seen in the sofa pillows is used in the kitchen chair fabric.

Here is a look at the living room fireplace. I think the designers created a stunning mantel – resisting the obvious rustic, chunky look and instead designing an elegant mantel with mass and scale. Beautiful.

While there are many other rooms in the house, you’ll have to see them on the official tour. Here’s one last shot  . . . the exterior: