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Behind the Curtains – Kate Carlson

Inspiration By Lindsey January 11, 2018 No Comments

Behind the Curtains

In case you didn’t make it to my mailing list, I recently posted a new video on my YouTube channel to kick off a new interview series. Throughout almost a decade of jobs at various design agencies in the Twin Cities, I’ve has met some truly amazing people. I wanted to give you a sneak peek inside their homes and showcase their space, how they make it their own, and give a sense of each person’s individual style. Kate Carlson and I use to work together at Ideas that Kick, and sharing her boho craftsman in Kingfield seemed like the best place to start.

You can of course peep the video below if you haven’t seen it yet, but I wanted to give a behind the scenes look and feature a bit more of the interview that didn’t make the final cut. Enjoy!

Kate, Erich, Wally and their home

I won’t belabor the details too much, since it’s covered above in the video, but Kate and her husband Erich bought their home a few years back. As I mentioned, Kate is a graphic designer, and Erich is a swim coach for local youth. Since purchasing their home, they’ve added Wally the Frenchie to their pack, and are happily snuggled into their lovely two bed one bath in the hip Kingfield neighborhood of South Minneapolis. Kingfield is easily one of the hottest neighborhoods in the Twin Cities, and the work they did to spruce it up really brings it in line with the sophistication the neighborhood is known for. The kitchen had been lovingly remodeled before they moved in, but the rest of the space was lacking warmth, brightness and a welcoming feel. With refinished hardwood floors, some fresh paint, bright colors, and a lot of personality from Kate & her artist family, the home was completely transformed.

The bonus interview

So of course there’s only so much from a 30-minute interview that can fit into a 4-minute feature. Here are a few highlights!

Lindsey: What was the home shopping process like, and how was the transition from renting to owning?

Kate: It was super fun looking for houses, but a bit overwhelming. We looked at about 30 houses over the course of a month, and this one ended up being the last one we saw. None of the others had nearly as much character as this one, so we instantly fell in love and just had a connection to it. We loved the fact that we would be so close to restaurants, cause we’re such foodies. The back yard was really charming, which was a bonus since we wanted to get a dog eventually. Plus, Erich is kinda obsessed with bungalow architecture so that really drew us in as well.

The transition to owning was a little scary but nothing too bad. It mostly just freed us up to make decisions that we wanted to that we weren’t able to make when we were renting. Refinishing floors, painting, none of that really feels worthwhile when you’re renting, so it’s just a lot more satisfying making the space truly your own as a homeowner.

Lindsey: What plans do you have for future renovation beyond what you’ve done so far?

Kate: The second story is currently just an unfinished half-story attic, so that space has a ton of potential. Currently the ceiling height isn’t tall enough to accommodate much of anything, so we have plans to bump it out to a full second story – master bedroom, master en suite, kids’ room, and maybe a small kids’ bathroom if there’s enough room. With the house now only being at about 1,000 square feet and our neighbors pretty close to our house, the only direction we can really go with additions is up.

Lindsey: What’s your best find in your house?

Kate: Well I have a little bit of a shopping problem, so I tend to swap things around all the time and there’s always something new & fun. But one thing that I feel like is a solid, lasting piece is my dining room table, which was in my grandparents’ house when I was growing up. My mom was one of seven kids and they all ate around it when she was a kid, so it’s pretty fun to continue that tradition.

Lindsey: Where do you usually go to find inspiration for your house?

Kate: Well being a designer I’m on Pinterest all the time, but I also get a lot of books on interior design. I’m a big fan of Emily Henderson, and I’ve learned a lot from her books. She offers a lot of great advice and teaches you how to style things, so if you get too wrapped up and end up cluttering a room, there are great tips in her books about how to edit and clean up the space.

Lindsey: What do you feel is the best way to utilize color in a home?

Kate: I really love color and sometimes have a hard time taming it back. But my neutrals are typically white, black and navy, and there’s usually a pop of pink or orange – something to help the space feel a little more fun & festive. I really think that if I could get away with it, I would totally put colored tassels everywhere, and hot pink and orange on everything but it becomes too much if it’s not done minimally as an accent.

So that’s it for this episode, but make sure to pop over to YouTube and give a thumbs up if you liked this video. Also, if you subscribe and click the bell icon, you’ll get a notification when the next one is released!

Kitchen Inspiration

House, Inspiration By Lindsey April 26, 2016 No Comments

Last fall Josh and I tackled probably the biggest project yet – the kitchen. I’ve been dying to share the process and results with you since we started this blog. Before diving into the details, take a look at what we were working with:

Honestly, things could have been WAY worse. The prior homeowners updated the kitchen probably back in the early 2000’s which was a win/lose for us. The big win was that the cabinets were in pretty good shape, minus some burn marks from improperly installed lights, so we decided to reuse them (Yay, environment!) and paint them to our taste. We were also really happy with the can lighting and ceiling wallpaper, which sort of looks like those vintage ceiling tiles. Literally everything else had to go – beige leaf tiles, laminate flooring/countertops, peach paint…see yah later! The wall dividing the dining room and kitchen also made the space feel really cramped. Opening it up would allow us to wrap the countertop, providing more seating with a couple of bar stools. Thankfully another HUGE win for us was discovering the wall between the dining room and kitchen wasn’t load bearing (initially we thought it was).

As we started making plans for the kitchen, we knew whatever we’d do needed to fit our home. One underlying goal we’ve had all along is to stay true to our house’s history. As a craftsman style built in 1917, our house came with some pretty great features. For example, all of the windows in the living room have original leaded glass, our dining room has a beautiful built-in hutch and the main level has original maple flooring throughout. The way we use our house today differs greatly from a family back in the early 1900’s but we want to honor the work that went into this house. What does that mean exactly? Well for instance, we’ve decided not to paint our hutch. We also restored the maple flooring. And even though we’ve had some issues with our boiler and radiator heat, we really love the charm those big radiators have.

The Inspiration

A few years ago when Josh and I were out in LA visiting his brother Sam, we fell in love with the tile at Intelligentsia Coffee Shop. I instantly wanted to use the same tile in our kitchen, and after a little digging, I found that the manufacturer was Granada Tile. Here’s the original inspiration from Intelligentsia in LA:

With that in mind, I made a SUPER quick before & after mock-up to visualize the tiles and color palette.

If you check out the Granada site, make sure to play around with their custom tile tool. It gives you a live preview of the pattern as you select colors. Pretty neat!

Unfortunately, the concrete tile turned out to be too thick to allow for a smooth transition from hardwood to tile. Plus we wanted to put in a heated floor, which added another layer of complexity. These concrete beauties ended up not being the right ones for this kitchen job, but we’re hoping they’ll find a home somewhere in our house in the future.

Once I convinced myself life could still go on without those tiles, I pulled together some inspiration and we plowed ahead. In addition to finding the right flooring, another high priority on our list was Carrara marble countertops. And our passion for marble grew stronger and stronger as literally EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. told us not to get them. But one thing you should know about Josh and I is that we’re neat freaks. The kind of neat freaks that hang out on a Friday night to reorganize the tupperware cabinet or label our tool bins. So, we were totally up for the challenge of babying our light, porous, and precious countertops.

As you can see from the inspiration board, we really wanted a timeless, vintage kitchen — something that felt era appropriate but still had a clean, modern feel. To ground the room we chose to do dark lowers and white uppers. And as stated earlier, marble was in the plan all along. Subway tile was also kind of a no-brainer for budget reasons, and with this being our first time laying tile, we wanted to lay something simple that wouldn’t leave us pulling our hair out. So really, the only undecided detail was the floors. Untillllll we found this kitchen. We loved these floors so much we decided to use the same hex pattern, but we wanted to center it between our cabinets and act like a decorative runner. Early on we found knobs and pulls from Restoration Hardware that we just couldn’t resist. These pulls are legit and totally worth the investment. So much so that the knobs might actually weigh more than the cabinet door (which is a strange feeling). To break up the black and white we decided natural wooden accents like a fruit bowl or utensil holder would do the trick.

Okay, so I promise within the next few posts we’ll reveal the final result. But, we have some interesting challenges and mistakes we think you’ll enjoy hearing about first, so stay tuned. Josh is gonna talk next about the process and a couple of the mistakes we made, including setting all the final cabinets in place, only to learn we had an illegal plumbing set up that required us to take some of them back out and knock open a wall again. Fun times, and lesson learned: Always call the plumber FIRST.

Additional photo sources: 1 | 2 | 3