Project size: 4,800 Sq. Ft. Interior + 1,200 Sq. Ft. Exterior
Meeting One / Client’s request:
The fist meeting took place at the waterfront residence at the outskirts of Belleair. The clients were looking for a designer that could understand their needs and wants and the potential of the existing house. It took one step into the house for us to realize that the layout wasn’t flowing, the walls were incorrectly positioned, the main views were blocked, and spaces were wasted with hallways and incorrect use.
At first, the clients voiced that the colors of the house were ugly and that something didn’t feel quite right, they communicated that their reason for buying the house was because of the stunning view and the great location but really, they did not enjoy being inside the space.
(Before pictures).
The couple had very different design preferences so in their mind they’d have to sacrifice one or the other and they did not expect to have both expectations met and to say the least exceeded.
As a personal interest they enjoy wine and business and she’s very much into health, family and entertaining.
Design Services:
Custom design means tailored services. It starts with knowing what the condition currently is, and a complete documentation of the existing state of the space. Then it’s just like carving a sculpture, going into further detail, using different tools until the masterpiece is unveiled. For this family, the range of services went from scanning the house and creating accurate existing floor plans to designing new layout options, and going into great detail with lighting design, landscape design, built-in cabinetry and furniture design, art and decoration. It is important to keep in mind that some of the design takes place at the design studio and the rest of it at the showrooms and the job site. For these last two we had dozens of meetings hunting for the perfect elements, gathering samples, making decisions. Everything shown in the pictures was picked or custom designed.
(3D Models - Interior/Exterior).
The Concept:
When a concept is developed, it needs to contain only the non-variable design elements, meaning that all the ideas that are “nice to have” stay out of the drawing table. The concept has more than one face, like a Rubik’s Cube, where all faces matter and back and forth is needed to achieve the desired outcome. Great design concepts have a dependency on non-design factors, such as the budget, location, available resources, daily life activities, just to name a few.
This concept got developed rapidly after finding out the space advantages, weaknesses and the client’s ideal scene translated into sketches and ideas. The key words were wine, openness, entertainment, texture, ocean, Spanish accents and modern/elegant touches.
(Hand drawn sketches - Interior/Exterior).
The Actual Work:
No matter how easy it looks on TV, custom design goes a long way. No Pinterest board or HGTV episode is applicable to a project of this nature. Thinking is free but doing takes action and actions are preceded by decisions. The decisions must align to the vision.
This is where teamwork is vital. The importance of having specialists can’t be overstated, and the importance of a great attitude towards the result is key to success. To list what was designed for the space would probably take over one hundred sentences, and to list the items that were considered but not chosen or done would take another three hundred of them. Being factual, every detail seen in these images was designed or integrated by Levy Design Group in sync with the client’s approval.
(Completed project photos - click to expand).