design: black + white interiors

I love color.  I really do.  I like bright neons, barely there pastels, rich emeralds and teals, orangey- reds, but you wouldn't know it from my Pinterest board...?!?
Whenever I'm working with clients, I ask them to gather images of spaces they like. Its a great tool to see what they gravitate towards, especially when words like of modern, rustic, clean lines, casual are so subjective. Usually, right away I can identify themes or common threads in these look pictures, sometimes ones the clients weren't even aware of. So let's take a look at a few (and by a few I mean a ton) of my personal look pictures!

I think you'll see that overwhelmingly I love high contrast black and white interiors. I suspect it's why I keep messing with my Living and Dining rooms. They are nice, well laid out, with personality pieces... but too much color. I think. Sorry these pictures aren't the best...

It's a good lesson to learn, even if it's exactly what I already tell clients, follow you instincts and listen to your innate sense of style, pay attention to the little whispers. Yep. These are good words to live by, not just for interior decor.

- all links to original sources can be found here + a whole bunch more black+white interiors-

xo Lea Hart
ps- it would also appear that I love greenery, modern art, and antlers....eh?

design: thrift store finds + a fenced in back yard

This week has been kinda crazy already... We have having some structural work done on the house. So this weeks posts are gonna be short and sweet.
Yesterday, my mother in law and I were on a mission to find cool funky finds for her basement guest room redo. Of course, even though I wasn't looking for anything for myself, I wound up bringing this little guy (the table- not the cat) home with me!

Hello brass and glass goodness! It's the perfect compliment to my Kodawood chair, and brings in some more warm metalaccents.  I think it works well with my brass lamp, a little tray that I got at a cute thrift store in Arlington, and the candlesticks I have up on the mantle. Don't you?

We found this chair and ottoman for my MIL's project. We are going to rework the cushion, and even though I like the orange, it is going to get recovered in something funner. 

So retro, this project should be fun! 

One more exciting thing happened at the Casa Pino yesterday, we got our backyard fence finished! Now Zozo is the happiest pup in all of Northern VA! 

We still have a TON of work to do in the yard, but we are well on our way and it's already 100% doggy approved. 

xo, Lea Hart

design: the kitchen reveal

Ok so y'all saw what the kitchen looked when we moved in... and yeah... it left a lot to be desired.  Here is what it looks like now!

Looking good, riiight?! I love it, especially the arabesque tile from the Mosaic Tile Company. It's on Overstock now!

We have plenty of room for glasses, cookbooks, coffee and a microwave (that I never use) in this corner. 

Hi Dizzy!  He is on a moveable storage cart infront of the built in ironing board. I'd like to make that a pantry one day...

Here is the back door, and we hung a cool piece by Jen Adger, its of the Alabama Capital.  The colors look great! I painted the Kitchen Benjamim Moore Color Stories Sagebrush.  The description for this color starts with, "Wind whips through the New Mexican desert..." so yeah, I knew this was the color for us :)

The only existing cabinet has this little shelf just below, which is perfect for coffe cups and my sugar and creamer. I gotta have the coffee stuff easily to get to- I'm grumpy before my first cup.

I decided to to with a more "cottage-y' style for the cosmetic updates. I personally would have preferred more modern finishes, but were weren't changing anything else in the room and the cottage look seemed like it would work best with everything existing. We went to Ikea and worked with their kitchen "specialists" I have a really good idea of what would fit since I'd already worked up a scaled floor plan like this.

I used Sketch Up. Its pretty easy to learn and is an invaluable tool that I use for all of my projects. I would absolutely recommend doing a little research into the specifications of the components you want to use in you kitchen and drawing up plans first before visiting a retail cabinet manufacturer. The sales people at Ikea were nice and all, but they didn't really know their stuff... 

*also triple check the print out their computer system generates!!! We had to make 2 additional trips because of mess ups on their part. They were really nice about it and gave us a discount- but it was a hassle*

Because I had drawings I knew I would be able to do things like squeeze in the cabinet beside the stove and a small one next to the fridge. I also got creative with a few of the cabinets, for example

this cabinet is really a specialized wall cabinet. So we raised it up to match the height of the other base cabinets and even though its not as deep as the other cabinets, since its right next to the refrigerator, you can't tell! It's perfect for storing little things, in ours we have wine and tea.  

We were able to just fit in this pull out cabinet next to the stove, too. Its so great to have the extra storage, and it finishes off the counter nicely. I think it looks way better than walking into the side of the stove.  We keep all of our cooking utensils and all of the pet food in here. Its also really nice to have a little counter top on both sides when cooking. 

The rest of the cabinets that we used are just the standard base cabinets. We used one large corner cabinet, which holds all the pots and pans, large mixing bowls, small appliances, pretty much everything. This guy is the work horse of the kitchen. 

We also have one single wide cabinet, and two double cabinets. One of the double cabinets houses the biggest sink we could fit along with cleaning supplies and the trash underneath and then the other double cabinet to the left of the sink was retro fitted to open the other direction and is a large storage cavity. Its hard to access it completely, but its awesome storage for things we don't use often. 

I selected this faucet and these cabinet pulls. We went with the oak counter tops, I'm still on the fence about them as they aren't the most impervious substance... but they look nice and are "good enough for at least the next 5 years" which was our biggest factor for determining if anything was worth the splurge or not. 

We left the one existing cabinet in place, for a couple of reasons: we needed additional closed storage and it was built into the ceiling where it dropped and we didn't feel like creating even more challenges to work around. It is painted out the color of the other shelves and trim and serves our needs as the pantry. 

I designed the simple open shelving to use in place of additional new cabinets. We love them, I love the look and M likes them because they make clean up a breeze. One other major factor that helped me decide to do shelves was the fact the we have that lowered ceiling by the stove and for the bottom of the cabinet to be high enough above the stove to be to code would have meant that they would have been 6" H cabinets... so shelves it is. I keep everyday dishes and serving platters up there and it really works great. There is some grease from the stove, but I rinse off everything before using it anyway, so for me its not a huge deal. 

So there she is, my cute functional cottage kitchen on a crazy tight budget. 

There are three more items on the 

Kitchen TO DO  list:

- roman shades in a fun fabric 

- new lighting (I have no idea on this one... suggestions welcome!!!)

- paint the floors, something like this?

via the Casa Pino 

via the Casa Pino

or this? I'm really digging the ones with a geometric pattern... 

via the Casa Pino 

OK, so what you you guys think?!?!? I'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions! If you'd like more details about specifics- just email me at thecasapino@gmail.com

xo Lea Hart