Inspiration in the Studio

The Southern Living Inspired Home on Bald Head Island has certainly been a labor of love! We’ve been so fortunate to work with an incredible design and development team. Every member of this team was top-notch….from the incredibly supportive development team at Bald Head Island Limited, to the talented architects at Allison Ramsey Architects, to the award-winning building team at Whitney Blair Custom Homes! What a thrill that Whitney Blair Custom Homes was awarded a Diamond Award in the Brunswick County Parade of Homes….AND Best Interior Design too!

The Southern Living Inspired Home is open for tours every Saturday and Sunday through Thanksgiving weekend from 10a to 4p. A portion of the $10 entry fee is being donated to the Old Baldy Foundation, a non profit organization dedicated to the preservation of North Carolina’s oldest standing lighthouse. If you can’t visit the home in person, we’re happy to take you on a visual tour.

The great room is fresh and comfortable with layers of gray texture and colors of sea glass.

The kitchen cabinets are a soft blue with open shelving and a large center island for entertaining. The seating is covered in durable Sunbrella fabrics, a perfect solution that can withstand the challenges of salt and sand. The corner banquette is the perfect spot for casual dining. We love the shiplap walls and variety of pillows.

The dining room becomes the ideal gathering spot for family meals. The mix of color and texture is inviting and playful.

The master bedroom features a bed alcove with shiplap painted a beautiful blue. The master bath is a mix of natural textures and sleek fixtures. The private outdoor shower off the master bathroom is a personal favorite!

Upstairs there is a second master bedroom accented with a beautiful wallcovering by Thibaut.

Everyone loves the kids bunk room! We designed the custom built storage and closets to maximize every inch of the space.

The outdoor sleeping porch complete with swing bed and television is the ultimate luxury.

To complete the tour, you can download the brochure for the home which includes many resources. Each and every person we met on Bald Head Island was kind beyond words and we’re so thankful for the hospitality. We’ll be back for more as the development continues….can’t wait!

The time has come! The Southern Living Showcase Home being built by Whitney Blair Custom Homes in the Thistle community is in the final stages of construction and we’re preparing and packing for furniture installation on Monday! The behind-the-scenes preparation is in full throttle. This is just a glimpse of what’s happing this week…boxes and boxes of beautiful accessories.

Window treatments and hardware….the beautiful Kravet fabrics under all of that protective wrapping are going to look amazing.

And, of course, no house would be complete without the last minute fill-in necessities at Target (special thanks to the store manager who brought us Starbucks while we shopped)!

This is always the stage of the process that we start to wonder if the vision we’ve been working so hard to achieve is actually going to come together. We’re staying focused on the plan….time to make it happen!

Welcome 2015!  It’s going to be an exciting year and we’re ready for the challenge. This week we made a quick visit to check on the progress of the Southern Living Showcase Home in the Thistle community in Sunset Beach. There are so many details to consider and we spent the day on site to get them just right…although I’m not sure Eric likes whatever idea I’m sharing in this photo!  The stack of trim material became our make-shift work table for the day.

Janene (our super-talented window treatment fabricator) and Julia spent much of the day precisely measuring for window treatments. The super-talented Whitney Blair craftsmen were out in full force installing trim.

It was an exciting day, but we really need to do something about our poor planning with Mother Nature! We were once again battling some serious rain. Let’s hope that we’re paying our rainy day dues now. We are requesting beautiful weather when the Showcase Home opens to the public Easter weekend.

Wishing you a 2015 filled with happiness….even on the rainy days!

We’re making great progress on the design of the Southern Living Showcase Home! There are so many decisions that need to be made and so many details to consider. The creative energy is contagious! Here’s what we’ve been working on over the past few weeks.

We visited an amazing warehouse filled with unique wood species to consider for specialty treatments in the house. The craftsmanship is impressive.

Construction is progressing….exterior is looking great, windows are installed, and framing decisions are finalized.

We are spending a lot of time on the design development of the interior furnishings and finishes. We never say we are making changes to a design since it seems so negative. Instead, we say we are allowing a design to evolve. Well, it’s time to stop evolving….time for commitment.

It’s going to be exciting to see this house come to life. I welcome you to follow the progress on the Showhouse Facebook Page! It’s hard to believe that our next update will be in 2015. Gotta go…lots of designing to do!

It has been an incredibly busy few months in the studio.  One project we are particularly happy to finally share is going to come to life in the spring of 2015!  Here’s a sneak peak….

We are thrilled to be the exclusive designers of the Southern Living Showcase Home being built by Whitney Blair Custom Homes in the Thistle community at Sunset Beach, North Carolina. We’ve spent hours in construction meetings designing every last detail of the home….and it’s been exciting. Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll share our progress.

On our most recent trip to the coast, Martha and I battled monsoon rains to visit the site (this job is really not very glamorous). Construction is progressing…brick is up on the exterior and rough-ins are almost complete.

We’ve spent many hours in the studio developing each interior space. Creative studio work days are the best and on this particular day, we ran out of workspace and the design spilled onto the floor.

We still have a lot of work to do, but the process is exciting. The home will be open for tours beginning Easter weekend, 2015 and will benefit Lower Cape Fear Hospice and Operation Finally Home.  Please join us on this Showhouse journey!