Drama

I am sure that on Christmas Day many people will be opening boxes or digging into stockings to find what I call lifestyle gifts. These are things like cute kitchen towels, hand painted plaques or fun little sofa pillows with smart statements like, “I am a no drama Mama,” or “I am living in a drama free bubble today” that reflect our growing cultural dislike for drama in everyday life. Drama is stressful and exhausting but what about in the world of decorating? Is there a time when drama is good? Yes! Drama is great in the visual world and therefore great in the design world. Like spice to a great dish, dramatic flair excites and creates interest, so each room needs a little bit. Let’s peek into a St. Charles model and see how we added dramatic flair to the kitchen somewhere in the heart of The Villages.

• Paint
The paint in this house is a light creamy tan and a color that the homeowner loved.
We did not need to repaint since the walls looked great! Remember, we don’t always need to repaint if the walls are a light and neutral color.

• Focal Point
The St. Charles model has very high ceilings which make each space look huge. In the kitchen there is a large amount of space above the kitchen cabinets that is often ignored or underutilized. The before picture will show a lack of a focal point. Also, many of the items were too short to provide proper balance. We created a focal point to add dramatic flair.

• Large art
We created the focal point by hanging a large piece of art above the kitchen cabinet bank at the back of the kitchen. In this model as you round the corner to enter the kitchen from the bar area, the large wall over the double oven is the wall that draws your attention first. The canvas that we hung above the cabinets is sixty inches wide by forty inches high and it makes a jaw dropping impression. The picture is titled, “Pathway to Palms” from Alan Maltz. This picture pulls the eye into the center of the path and invites the viewer to gaze toward the ocean. This is a great piece to view each morning over breakfast. We added accents on the side to complement and tie into the artwork. The large basket and wood vases tie into the walkway nicely and the green glass jars are the perfect green to complement the grass on each side of the walkway.

• Right bank of cabinets
The right bank of cabinets over the refrigerator is a wide and deep set of cabinets attached to two less deep cabinets. We placed four baskets on the large deep cabinets. We filled one very large basket in the back with heather at thirty six inches high, to pull the lavender color from the art and provide much needed height in the space. We surrounded the heather basket with other complementary baskets and the collection appears full and luxurious above the refrigerator. We hung a piece of art above the slightly recessed cabinets that looks really great with the lavender and complements the “Pathway to Palms” canvas. Just below the picture we placed the homeowner’s collection of wooden birds further pulling around touches of brown in the space.

• Left bank of cabinets
The left bank of cabinets is staged at different levels of height. The center is the focal point above the stove top. The homeowners had a clock above the center cabinets and we liked it so we kept it. The clock is one of reasons we added more brown wood to the space. There is a principle in design known as rhythm when a color is dispersed around the room at regular intervals. The clock had lots of brown and to balance the brown we added more touches so that the color story made sense. We needed to add more white in space to make the baskets make sense so we added solid white earthen pitchers on the step down cabinetry on each side of the center cabinetry. Finally, we added two more heather pots on each end of the cabinet bank. The heather pots were predominantly white with a hint of green. I like the symmetry of placing like items in symmetrical places to keep the balance in the space.

• Clean countertops
The homeowner likes to keep her countertops clean and free of most décor. I like the few items that she chose to place and I don’t think it needs more because it looks perfect!

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Before and After Pics Below