{bits & pieces: utah mountain house by way of veranda magazine)

From what I can tell this magnificent mountain home in Utah has some awesome views, but the attention to detail on the inside is what caught my eye. Can’t you envision many of this home’s design features in a cabin or lake home right here in the midwest?
See what you think. Tour the rest of the home right here.

Designer:  Anthony Baratta

Photographer:  Eric Piasecki

Wall color in this room is White Dove (OC-17) and the ceiling is Yarmouth Blue (HC-150) both by Benjamin Moore. No mention of any other wall or door colors in the resource section of the magazine.

Since Frank and Elizabeth Hirshfield opened their first store in 1894, it has been our mission to do the best job possible meeting customer needs and solving customer problems. Hirshfield’s. People and products you can trust.

{beautiful silhouettes: students’ unique design wows the runway crowd}

Interior design and fashion design are continually overlapping — specially on the day Pantone announces its Color of the Year, then we all leap to attention. But we are excited to tell you about the time we recently helped two young design students steal the show at a runway fashion competition.

UW-Stout interior design students Emily Gross and Madi Goodrich entered the IIDA Northland‘s 10th annual Fusion+Fashion show at the Muse Event Center in Minneapolis. Much like Project Runway‘s non-traditional materials challenges, this event is a friendly competition among members of the local design industry that challenges interior designers to create garments out of materials typically used in interior design — like mosaic tiles, upholstery, and paint chip samples.

{bits & pieces: house of turquoise}

Library Ceiling – Baltic Sea CSP-680 with overlay pattern in Dove White

Laundry Cabinets – Hollingsworth Green HC-141

Wall color: Benjamin Moore AC-22 Nantucket Fog

Did you catch House of Turquoise last week? Erin gave us a week-long tour of an amazing 14,000 sq. ft. home featured in the Utah Valley Parade of Homes.  Once you see the home, and even with the expertise of their designer, think about all the decisions the homeowners had to make. Yikes!

The best part of the home tour for me was seeing the Benjamin Moore paint colors in action. What a great resource! Here’s the link to day one of the tour. Enjoy!

Psst. The countdown to The Twin Cities Fall Parade and Remodelers Showcase 2015 has begun!

Since Frank and Elizabeth Hirshfield opened their first store in 1894, it has been our mission to do the best job possible meeting customer needs and solving customer problems. Hirshfield’s. People and products you can trust.

{bits & pieces: fabulous finnish homes}

Purolan Rauhala

Interior and exterior inspiration coming to you from Finland. I hope you enjoy these amazing Finnish homes as much as I do. Nauttia!

Aurora jarven rallalla

Kakarannan Harmaja

Muuttovalmis Aurora

Moderni Rauhala

Valkoinen Harmaja

Vihervaara Kalajoella

Since Frank and Elizabeth Hirshfield opened their first store in 1894, it has been our mission to do the best job possible meeting customer needs and solving customer problems. Hirshfield’s. People and products you can trust.

{bits & pieces: wallpaper as table runners}

Kate’s Creative Space

Wallpaper table runners? What a brilliant idea. When I saw this tablescape posted by Design By Color Wallpaper I had to see what else was out there. I found a few, but this one is my favorite as I’m a sucker for anything faux bois, especially wallpaper.

Original Content via Indigo Crossing / Adore Home Magazine

Mochatini | Enhancing The Everyday

Vintage wallpaper used by Cherry Hill Cottage

Mochatini | Enhancing The Everyday

Whether you spend hours setting a splendid table or you’re just happy your napkins get ironed, using gorgeous wallpapers as part of your tablescaping adds “the unexpected” to any tabletop, formal or casual. Happy entertaining and bon appétit.

P.S.  Trend prediction – EGGS!

Since Frank and Elizabeth Hirshfield opened their first store in 1894, it has been our mission to do the best job possible meeting customer needs and solving customer problems. Hirshfield’s. People and products you can trust.

{bits & pieces: outstanding customer service}

 The knowledgeable experts at Hirshfield’s are here to make sure your painting, staining or design project is a success. We are always happy to help any way we can, as demonstrated in this letter we received from a Woodbury customer praising Faye for her customer service and product knowledge!

Hello to those concerned,

I just wanted to take a moment to relay to you the outstanding service and advice I have been given from Faye at the Woodbury store.

Last spring I came in looking for stain for my deck. Faye quickly asked questions, that led to more questions than answers. I returned later and met with Faye again. With all the facts on hand, she was able to guide me through the process, the products I would need, and steer me to other vendors that had things I would need but were beyond the store’s range (i.e.; renting sanders) and gave me all the tips I needed to be aware of while trying to beat the weather this season.

The bottom line is that while it took all summer to get the job done, Faye was on hand to see to it I had all I needed to get it done to MY satisfaction. It was a big job and it took a long time, but Faye’s advice, driven by her understanding of what I wanted and her knowledge of the products she sells and the procedures required to do the job correctly led to a great finished product.

I hope you know and understand how valuable Faye and others with her skills and customer care concerns are to you, your business, and your customers.

I do. And I’ll be back with the next project.

Sincerely,

 G.

Thanks “G” for the fantastic email. I think we all agree Faye is a rock star!

 

{bits & pieces: painted sinks and bathtubs}

Houzz

 It’s always fun to add the “unexpected” to a design plan and have it work out. Painting the underside of the wall-mounted sink and outside of the clawfoot tub is “unexpected” and gives these vintage fixtures a fresh look. In my opinion, the paint colors make this bathroom and that’s why it was voted by Houzz readers as one of the Top 10 Most Popular Bathrooms in 2012. The accent colors featured on the sink and tub, Pale Avocado 2146-40, White Dove for the trim, and Summer Shower 2135-60 on the walls…all Benjamin Moore Paint colors.

For your viewing pleasure, here are a bevy of painted bathroom beauties.

{bits & pieces: why men fear painting wood paneling}

 

The Decorologist

It’s been four years since The Decorologist dug deep into the male psyche attempting to figure out Why Men Fear Painting Wood? I don’t think mens’ attitudes about painting wood have changed since then. Every day Hirshfield’s sales people hear, “my husband doesn’t like painted wood,” or “why did we put in oak trim if we’re just going to paint it?” Hmm…

Whether you’re pro or con on the issue of painting wood paneling this post will make you smile.

Since Frank and Elizabeth Hirshfield opened their first store in 1894, it has been our mission to do the best job possible meeting customer needs and solving customer problems. Hirshfield’s. People and products you can trust.

{bits & pieces: censational girl talks wood trim and paint colors}

Courtesy of BHG

Kate from Censational Girl posted a long-awaited piece on rooms with wood trim and what to do with them when it comes to paint colors. White trim has been so popular as of late, it feels like wood trim is considered out of favor in the decorating world. Painted or stained trim? Surround yourself with what makes you happy.

These beautiful rooms are for our customers with wood trim… and I know there are a lot of you out there.

Here’s the link to Better Homes & Gardens Style Spotters which is where you’ll find the rest of the story…

Centsational Girl continues to be one of the top rated Home and Garden blogs on the web with an average of 1.5 million pageviews per month. Kate is crazy with the DIY projects and I often wonder when that girl sleeps. Check out her blog for inspiration overload.

{bits & pieces: penguin library wallpaper}

Penguin Library wallpaper

Introducing PENGUIN LIBRARY wallpaper, produced with the kind permission of Penguin.

Just a little something I ran across at the H’s design studio which tugged at my bibliophile heartstrings. A wallpaper featuring Penguin book covers! The Penguin Library wallpaper is from the English company Osborne & Little, if you couldn’t already tell by the civilized phrase…with the kind permission of Penguin.

The PENGUIN LIBRARY wallpaper is a collage of front covers of those iconic early paperbacks from this famous publishing house and includes Ariel, the very first Penguin paperback published in 1935. The book covers were chosen for their diversity of colour and to illustrate the breadth of Penguin’s publishing backlist. Great care was taken in the design to truly represent the original paperbacks in all their, sometimes well-read and a little worn, glory. The resulting PENGUIN LIBRARY wallpaper is a glorious colourful ‘conversational piece’ which we hope will be received with as much affection as the books themselves.

 Here’s the press release Osborne & Little provided when the paper was introduced in April. It’s an interesting read.