1: Unpack Essentials First like a few days clothing, toiletries, tools, pet supplies. Put them in their rspective rooms.

2: Wipe out shelves, clean windows, & mop under appliances before putting things away. Plan ahead where to place certain items, like putting dishes & glassware in the cupboards above the dishwasher. Decide what goes where before unpacking.

3: Plan where to place furniture before putting it in place. Make a sketch of the room, and locate furniture on the sketch. Easier to erase a sketch than move a heavy piece of furniture.

4: Focus on unpacking one room at a time. Unpack the items most-used first, like shower curtains, toilet paper, soap, kitchen glasses, silverware, dishes. Set-up the beds, and make them with fresh linens.

5: Unpacking the living room can be done by everyone living there, as it will contain lots of items & several electronic hook-up. Use a surge protector when setting up computers or stereo equipment.

6: Have the garage set up with shelves & hooks for tool placement, yard supplies, and sports equipment.

7: Make your house feel like your home.  Hang window shades, blinds, or curtains. Consider painting some rooms a different color. Add new knobs to cabinets, and/or refinish the cabinets. Hang family pictures, artwork, and mirrors. Add potted plants.

8: As you unpack boxes, take inventory to see that nothing has been lost or broken.  Remember insurance claims need to be filed within a few days of moving, and damaged items need be kept as evidence.

9: Collapse each moving box as it is emptied, and set aside for storage or recycling.

10: Start of list of home repairs & maintenance that needs to be done; and create a shopping list to make sure you have everything you need.

Before you know it, you’ll be able to relax and enjoy your new space! Remember, in order to be functional for you,  it should fit you like your favorite shoe fits.  After you are in, ask yourself, “Does the Shoe…..FIT?” If you need some  help, give us a call; we’re the interior & exterior space experts.

Space for circulation is often overlooked in our involvement with styles, colors, room focus, etc. We forget to really analyze how much space we need in order to get around in an area. Oh, we leave “some” space–maybe a foot or so.

In kitchen areas, we can generally expect more than one person to be moving about, at least some of the time. Cabinet and appliance doors open to narrow a passageway. Stools are pulled out into the passageway. Likewise dining room chairs must be pushed from the table to allow us to get into them and up from them.

A standard rule with designers is to leave a minimum of 3.5 feet space in a kitchen aisle or around a dining table for circulation. Coffee tables and sofa’s need about 2 feet of space between them for leg room. To enter a conversational furniture arrangement, again use the 3.5 feet rule as minimum. Of course, one “can” get through in a smaller space–however, it is awkward and appears cramped. People are more comfortable with the extra space.

Your existing hallways  or corridors may not be 5′, but if someone in the household is walking down the hall with a laundry basket, and someone else is approaching  from the opposite end with something at his side, they will wish the hallway WAS 5 feet wide. (Even wheelchairs can turn around in a 5′ space–a definite consideration should there be an accident or an elderly in the home.) Typically, we say a minimum 3 feet of width for a passage that only one person will walk through, and a minimum of 3′-6″ where there may be two people passing from opposite directions. (Odd?? yes! How does that second person fit into a 6′ space?–Both people have to slide a bit sideways!)  If you are building, just make the halls 5′ wide. You will be very glad you did–as will every owner of the home thereafter. 

Remember, your spaces need to fit you like your favorite shoe. Ask yourself, “Does the Shoe….FIT? If not, feel free to contact us, Breay Design Associates, for help……You’ll be glad you did!

What do I do?  Well, I use a lot of my mom’s old techniques. I block some of the sunshine from coming into the house. It’s hard for me to live in a dark environment, but even simple sheers at the windows are a help. We have light-blocking top-down / bottom-up shades for the 6’ high bedroom windows, and set them to give us early sunlight only, while still having some daylight in the rooms through the entire day. It’s amazing how only 18” of opening in each window will give plenty of daylight in the summer.

Our mountain home doesn’t need air conditioning, but we do keep the hottest window exposures closed until evening. We’ve always planted or had a few shade trees in the yard, shading some part of the home. We save MUCH energy by these few tricks.

This is the time to get the cooler colored accents through the home, those in sky blues, ice blues, grass greens, mint greens, and purples and blue violets. Be sure to have live plants around, perhaps a water feature or two, and take the extraneous out of the space to give a spacious, airy feeling.

Have cooler-evening or under-shade-trees get togethers. Splash the table with bright, colorful summer prints and foods. Set a garden atmosphere. Again, have a water feature.

Summer is a wonderful time for enjoying our homes as havens of relaxation. Create the environment, and then give yourself a little down-time daily to enjoy them.  Remember–YOUR home should fit you like a favorite shoe. Ask yourself, “Does the Shoe….FIT?” And, give me a call if you need some help adapting your spaces to your lifestyle.

I look forward to your comments!–Sharon Breay, Breay Design   &   “Does the Shoe….FIT?” Workshops

Courtesty of OutdoorLighting Perspectives

Hi again!  This blog will continue discussing exterior lighting, focusing on the task lighting of our entries. In review, our yards need three layers of lighting:

1)      Ambient, low level general impression lighting

2)      Task lighting for where we perform tasks

3)      Accent lighting for areas of interest (the brightest area of lighting)

You may have a walk leading up to some steps at your entry. Perhaps a fixture with lights about eye level will be enough for both walkway and steps. The steps will need brighter lighting than the walk so no one trips on them. Therefore, put the light close to the steps, allowing the waning light from the fixture to glow down the walk. If you have a longer walk, you may need a lower, small auxiliary light further down the walk, being careful not to create monotony with too many of the same fixtures.

The steps consist of treads we walk on, and risers (at the back of the tread ) that take the treads to the next level. If we light the steps from below or with lighting that illuminates both tread and riser equally, we have a safety hazard. The user can be easily confused seeing both treads and risers as “one” plane because of the equal lighting on both, instead of 1 horizontal plane (tread) and one vertical plane (riser).But if we light the steps from above, the treads are lit and the risers are in shadow. This is a much safer method of lighting steps.

Now visualize the door. Consider putting a light right above the door or at the side of it. Having one light centered in a porch ceiling will give overall light, but you will be in your own shadow trying to unlock a door. If you have this situation, consider adding task lighting over the door or at it’s side.

Next blog, let’s discuss discuss designing for happiness.

See you then!—Sharon Breay

compliments of OutdoorLights

Once there was a poem about a light in the garden. Is “a” light enough? Probably not. Exterior lighting needs to be planned as carefully as we plan our interiors and our architecture. So often when I am looking out the window of a home in evening, all I see are the reflections of the interior home staring back at me. I see none of the lovely grounds beyond!  If this sounds like your home, here are tips to rectify the problem.

Yards are to be enjoyed in the evening as well as in the day, and from the inside as well as from the outside. A little string of low voltage or LEDs, or solar lights usually won’t do the job—not because of the type of light, but because of the straight line of lighting fixtures. Too much of a good thing becomes too predictable—and ultimately, boring. Nor will a huge sensor light over the garage door create the feeling of peace and mystique that are so appealing in a night garden. Nor will lighting up the yard like a commercial parking lot be appreciated by viewers, particularly neighbors! 

By mixing lighting heights and intensities, and what the light illuminates, we can create an interesting, unobtrusive night scene that can be enjoyed both from inside and outside. Think about the spaces in your yard. You will do well to provide some ambient, low level lighting for general visibility, some task lighting at areas such as steps, and some accent lighting to focus on a favorite area of architecture, or lawn ornament, or shrub or tree. The task lighting should be about twice as bright as the ambient light, and the accent light, which will only shine on one element of focus, can be 15 times as bright as the ambient light, for real “punch.” 

Next blog, we’ll discuss some methods of lighting the entry. 

See you then!—Sharon Breay

You may want solid information to solve a problem. You realize the “trends” seldom relate to your personal lives and budgets. You can “see through” the entertaining, staged television shows on design. You know that pretty pictures don’t answer your questions. For these reasons I became a designer and professional speaker on design. Audiences have gone wild with my informative workshops; you may enjoy the same interchange here.

This blog is fashioned after my speaking presentations by the same name, “Does the Shoe….FIT?” Your homes ought to fit your personal ways of living, your style, and your home’s architecture, the way a favorite shoe fits. Would you think of wearing steel toed construction shoes with a formal gown? Would you try to get into a shoe 4 sizes too small? The shoe has to fit the activity in order to perform well. So too, must your homes, in order to give you peace, functionality, beauty, and a place that works well for the way you entertain.

Here’s an example of what I mean: I live in a mountain canyon in Colorado. Up here, you wouldn’t wear spike high-heeled shoes when mountain climbing—even though some advertising touts a particular high-heeled shoe as the “shoe of the year.” Even though you’ve seen a gorgeous movie star wear this shoe for such feats as walking through the desert for a week, climbing up the mast of a sailing ship, and running away from a hungry lion! The fact remains, the shoe isn’t appropriate for mountain climbing! Just as the right shoe fits your activity and personality, so too your homes must fit. You deserve to have them fit your lifestyle, personality, and the architecture that you live in….not vice versa.

I am not a professional writer, and may not even have all the answers! But with decades of design experiences, awards, and recognitions behind me, I intend to give you a new slant or viewpoint to deal with the areas you live and work in. Feel free to send me your comments and topic suggestions.

I look forward to meeting again December 30^th, or shortly thereafter!

Sharon Breay, ASID