Planning Exterior and Interior Lighting, Storage Solutions, and Interior Decorating
A high-tech lighting control system is reviewed, as well as furniture, storage, and decorating choices in various rooms.
Clip Summary
There are many options for lighting fixtures when lighting the exterior of an old home. It is important to find something that is complementary to the age and style of the home. The two lighting fixtures on the home's porch ceiling are from Bellacor and feature clear glass domes that are appropriate for a house built in the 1920s. The house features elements of Dutch Colonial, American Colonial, gambrel, and arts and crafts styles. Some of the lights around the back of the house reflect the arts and crafts style. The interior of this home, like most of the homes built in the 1920s, had very little storage space. Chloe Durant of California Closets reviews some of the changes made to the house to improve the storage space. Before the renovation, the boys' room featured lots of little containers for toys which made the room feel cluttered. In an effort to expand toy storage space and add space for work, a two-section desk was installed. Bookshelves and drawer space were included with the desk. Some bookshelves include baskets for toy storage. A door was removed from a pre-existing closet, the interior was painted, and display shelves were installed. A bunk bed from Levitz.com was put in the children's room, which helped open up more space. The master bedroom was also furnished with products bought online. This 1920s-era house had almost no exterior lighting and not even a place to plug in the Christmas lights. Electrician John Schiavone installed new lighting outlets for the exterior and interior of the home. The lighting fixtures and table lamps in the living room are all operated by wireless control. Ben Wilson Jr. of Lutron/Keyes North Atlantic reviews the features of this system. The control unit has five settings for the homeowner to set, which will control various lights in the house. The system seeks out and uses wireless frequencies that are not currently in use and will not impede the use of other wireless devices in the area. Each room of the house is equipped with a dimmer switch that for manual operation. The house has a lot of architectural character from the nice dark woodwork. The selection of new furniture for the house reflects this character. All of the new furnishings were purchased online and the only two objects still remaining in the room are the grandmother's piano and an Indian armoire. The accent cushions for the couch use the same colors and floral patterns found in the Indian armoire. The furnishings were bought from Levitz.com and the rug was from BelleRug. The oriental-style rug really unifies the room. Adult space has been reclaimed with the addition of the space for the family's children.
You have lots of options when you are choosing lighting fixtures for remodeling an old house, and you want to make sure you find something that's sympathetic.
These are chosen from Bellacor selections.
The two you see on the porch ceiling which with their clear glass domes really are appropriate for a house built back in the 1920's with kind of an eclectic mixture of styles.
There's a little bit a Dutch Colonial here mixed in with just regular American Colonial. Gambrel in arts and crafts. In fact, some of the lighting fixtures that we'll see around the back of the house, really do reflect that arts and crafts style.
But remember, houses in the 20's, people were very happy just to have electricity, never mind all the other amenities that we have today . And that applies for the interiors too. Most of the interiors of this house had very little storage room and the closets, in fact, were quite small.
So again we've had the opportunity to embellish and expand on the whole area of closets and storage.
When I came to see the boys room There was a lot of little containers for toy storage and it felt a little bit cluttered. I asked Sarah what she would like to see incorporated in this design and she said she would like to have easy toy storage as well as a desk area.
The first suggestion I gave her with the design was one desk. She suggested two separate spaces, for sanity for the boys. I've included some pencil drawers, as well as a big drawer for art storage.
Some toy storage on bookshelves over here, with baskets for stuffed animals, balls, baseball mitts. Bookcase that boys can easily reach down low. Extra things to store up high .
And we don't, when we are in someone's house we don't always have to come up with a system. We try to use what's existing. This is a perfect instance. With the closet I suggested taking the door off. Painting inside. Sarah's using some storage space items that she had before. We're using every nook and cranny. And what we have left is nicely clean design for boys to grow and play.
Next we added a great new bunk bed from levitts.com and suddenly we had lot of space for homework and chilling out. All this online dot-com shopping spread to the master bedroom as well. So, besides having hardly any closet space, this little 1921 house basically had almost no exterior lighting and not even a place to plug in the Christmas lights.
Our electrician John Charvoni changed all that, as well as adding some great fixtures to the inside of the house, which has really undergone a big face lift.
Now in the living room itself we're going to talk about all the changes in a minute, but the light fixtures, the table lamps are all under a control that's wireless.
in an old house like this you don't want to have to run from table lamp to table lamp turning switches off all the time when it's night time.
So we learned how this one radio control can help, not only turn them on and off, but also create different moods.
Watch.
The massive control unit is the heart of the Lutron Radio RAW system.
Here, we program five buttons to accommodate the homeowner's lifestyle.
Here we have the welcome scene.
And this controls the exterior light pole.
The other one is , the third one is the TV. And this button, for when they're watching TV, you don't want every light on in the house so, I have some of the lights to turn off, and some we didn't.
The brain of the Lutron Radio roster.
This is known as the RS signal repeater, which seeks out a signal not being used by wireless devices such as wireless phones or baby monitors.
It seeks out this signal to secure it, so that it's only used by the Lutron radio raw system.
The massive control box is not the only way to control all the lighting. In each room there's a wall demo switch which will allow you to turn it on or off or in between.
I especially like the dimmer features. But anyway, the house has some architectural character. It's got lots of nice dark woodwork. And the homeowners in taking back this space, now that they've got kid space downstairs, took that into account in their selections of new furniture. And of course everything's been done online.
The only things that remain in their old living room are grandmother's piano and an Indian armoir from which they have really taken the color scheme and even floral motive which they've found is the accent cushions.
Now, the other cool thing is that busy parents with young kids don't have too much much time to go to department stores and furniture stores and so this was all done online.
Levits.com for the furnishings and Bell rug for the beautiful oriental rug, indian rug, that we see on the floor here which really unifies the room, and wool rugs, oriental patterns, no matter what you say, they're always, they're always in keeping with especially New England houses like this.
And then of course, all the accent lighting, and all the little features that make it a warm room, but the main thing is that now we have adult space reclaimed and next we are going to look at the new kids space.
