Author: Kindra

Party Time!

Posted on by Kindra

Primarily I design and decorate homes, and occasionally refinish or repurpose furniture.  But this week I branched out into somewhat new design territory.  I guess I’m sorta known among my friends for being the “creative” one (a compliment and certainly not the worst thing they could call me).  One friend decided to throw her daughter a huge sweet 16 birthday party and enlisted the help of her friends to do everything from catering to sweets to decorating … that’s where I came in. (Friend Colette provided catering and dessert with her company ColMoni’s Catering and it. was. fantastic!)

The party would be held in my friend’s very spacious home and host over 100 friends and family.   Much like designing any other room, we began with an inspiration piece to base the rest of the design on.  Our inspiration began with the gorgeous invitations which featured a watercolor floral motif with periwinkle as the feature color and splashes of other shades, deep and light pink, light and dark green and a range of blues and purples.   We decided to decorate the expansive basement dance floor with streamers of tulle and tissue paper pom-poms in this same range of hues.  Here are some of the material basics that we utilized.

There are about a million tutorials out there for making tissue paper pom-poms and it really isn’t that hard but it IS time consuming.  We made over 125 tissue paper pom-poms of varying size and color.  To say it took a long time is an understatement, but the end results were all worth it.  We put pom-poms on the dance floor, we put them over the cake table, over tall drink tables, on the cake table, at the home entrance, and hanging from the balcony.  All of those same areas were also adorned with varying shaded swags of blue and purple tulle ribbon and fairy lights.  I think the overall effect was exactly what  we were going for, transforming a stately and elegant home into a fun and whimsical setting for a Sweet 16!  Here’s a few preparty shots in daylight.

 

These are a few evening pics during the party (please forgive poor cell phone quality).

 

As you may have noticed I have a love affair with flowers so I was very excited to also design and arrange four statement centerpieces.  We selected a tall vase filled with hydrangeas, curly willow, monstera leaves and purple statice accent.

 

While decorating parties isn’t the core of my business, I think I’d love to take on a few more and really perfect this design art!

 

Building a Dream: Our Vacation Rental Property Series #3

Posted on by Kindra

Picking up where we left off last, Dave and I had selected the perfect piece of land that met all of our requirements for a perfect beach house and was well suited for building. Next, we had to put in an offer and cross our fingers that we’d land this little slice of heaven. This particular property had been on the market for a while, was owned by the same person since the 1970’s and was a bit overpriced. We did our research. By looking at other comps and measuring distance to beach and size of other lots we felt pretty well informed about the right price for this piece of land. Our realtor had also informed us that the selling agent was “old school” and probably not as inclined to know or do all the same research we were doing and might not accept our initial offer price right off the bat. We were undeterred. We wrote up an offer that was a bit lower than the asking price and submitted the offer WITH a detailed spreadsheet that essentially reflected all of our research so that the seller (and his “old school” agent) could see that the price we were offering was fair and reasonable for the area. As expected, they gave us a counter offer and we countered back eventually settling on a sale price that was about 11% below asking. Doing an hour or so of research payed off and saved us over 20 grand! In our minds, that was more money that we could put into the building of our beach dream home.
As we searched for land we had also been simultaneously looking for builders. We were able to see who had previously been successful in the annual Outer Banks Parade of Homes (an event sponsored by the Outer Banks Home Builders Association). We selected several builders from this list of previous winners and reviewed their websites, googled the crap out of them, and stalked them on Linked-in and Facebook. I heart internet research! After we narrowed down our top 3 contenders we sent them a detailed list of questions. We sent all of them the same 47+ (yikes – we probably seemed like nightmare clients from the get go) questions. Tip – don’t be afraid to ask questions – even if it makes you feel like a pain for asking! This may be the single largest investment you ever make so you should understand it all so you can make good decisions. So, here’s our list of 47+ questions we posed to 3 builders. If you’re embarking on a custom building project feel free to use them and truth be told as an internet research nerd I probably copped a few of these from elsewhere at the time! We also talked with a friend that was building a custom home and he had a few good ideas that we questioned builders on as well. Note, we also prefaced our list of questions to the builders with some context about who we were, what we wanted to build, size, location, purpose (i.e. vacation rental) etc.

Builder Questionnaire

1. Can you show me a copy of your business license?
2. Please describe the structure of your company.
3. Do you design/build or will you work with our plans or our architect? Are there extra fees if we select one over the other?
4. How many members of your team can I expect to work with through the process?
5. How many homes have you built in the Outer Banks?
6. Can you provide home owner referrals for recent builds we can contact?
7. How many homes have you built dealing with the Southern Shores or Chicahauk Property Owners Associations?
8. Are there any HOA covenants that will affect building in these areas?
9. How many homes are you currently involved in building?
10. How many homes are you currently bidding to build?
11. Of the last 10 homes you have built, how many have been awarded based on a competitive bid?
12. If we decide to use a stock plan we find on the internet, what format would your company require the plans be in for use (reproducible master, CAD, etc.)?
13. Could you specifically explain what quality control measures you will implement to ensure the highest standards of excellence throughout the building process?
14. Who will be assigned to my job?
15. Will my job have a job site manager? Would you provide the name of that person and describe their educational background and experience?
16. Will I be given one single point of contact throughout the construction of our home or will have I have to deal with subcontractors and separate installers individually?
17. What role will you play once my house is under construction?
18. How often will you be at the job site?
19. Will you have sub-contractors working on my job that you have never previously hired?
20. How long have each of your sub-contractors been working for you?
21. Do you have preferred pool installers you have worked with in the past?
22. Have you ever worked in conjunction with a prefab company? Would that be something you’d be willing to do?
23. How do you protect damages to building materials, appliances, plumbing fixtures, stone, tile, glass, etc. during construction?
24. How do you maintain temperature/humidity control inside the home during construction?
25. How will you keep me informed during the building process considering we will be in Virginia?
26. When will I be required to be present at the job site? Historically how accurate are you at coming in on budget?
27. Once a budget is established, how will you keep me within my established budget?
28. Do you offer any form of plan modification, design, or construction credits or discounts for Military Personnel?
29. Would you be able to provide a working timetable of this project prior to an agreed start date?
30. Do you include a timetable as part of your contract?
31. Would you expect to be penalized for not completing the job on time?
32. How do you want to be compensated? In a Cost Plus – Fixed Fee Contract, what is your fixed fee?
33. Do you have a bank you are familiar with and have worked with in the past that is located in the Outer Banks?
34. What is your billing schedule?
35. How will I be billed?
36. How will change orders be managed?
37. How is home plan modifications and landscaping designer paid?
38. How much liability insurance do you carry?
39. Can you show me a copy of your Builder’s Certificate of Insurance?
40. Do you provide workman’s compensation?
41. Do you carry fire insurance? What other insurance do you carry?
42. What protection do I have if your business fails?
43. We are focusing on lots found in “X” flood zones – what are unique building ideas you use to still try and give the homeowners a water view?
44. What are your pet peeves when it comes to dealing with homeowners?
45. How open are you to allowing the homeowners complete certain home finishings (such as painting), as long it does not interfere with the build schedule, as a way to reduce costs?
46. How can we be your best client?
47. What have I forgotten to ask you?

Building a Dream: Our Vacation Rental Property Series #2

Posted on by Kindra

Continuing our journey for finding a vacation rental property, we had a whirlwind weekend of seeing about 8 houses across the Outer Banks towns of Duck, Corolla, and Southern Shores.  We had seen a house that we liked very much but the current owners couldn’t tell us much about its history, things like the last time the HVAC was replaced, how old the roof was, if the pool pump had been replaced etc.  That was a red flag for us, but not totally surprising as a lot of homes change hands frequently in this beach community.  I think many people idealize the concept of owning a beach home but then the reality sets in that owning a rental home is a lot of work, homes near the beach require so much maintenance and the older the home is, the more work is required and accordingly the more money necessary for upkeep.  It’s not all relaxing in the hammock and pina coladas at sunset.  Therefore, some people give vacation rental home ownership a go for a few years and then throw in the towel.

We were having a heck of a time finding a home that met our requirements.  Most homes were disqualified due to location, either lack of proximity to beach or too close to major roads.  As we searched we did see a plot of land about a quarter mile closer to the beach than the aforementioned house.  This piece of land got us thinking that perhaps we should build our beach house.  Certainly, there would be benefits to building; we would be able to get exactly what we want and have a brand-new home requiring little maintenance and we could finish and furnish it to our liking rather than falling in on old dilapidated furnishings.  However, there would be disadvantages to this approach as well; total end cost would be higher, would require work to find a builder and architect to design the home from scratch resulting in a longer wait time.  No matter the disadvantages, we decided to look at several lots that met our requirements for flood zone, location, and neighborhood, while we still kept an eye on other homes coming on the market.  We also simultaneously embarked on the process of researching local builders.  There is a pretty large selection of builders of varying degrees of experience across the small Outer Banks community.  If we had known anyone who had built in OBX previously we would have asked for a recommendation, but since we did not, we initiated our own research.  Of course we started our search just like many other super important searches in our lives, with our best friend, Google.  Through Google we came upon the Outer Banks Home Builders Association and read about their annual OBX Parade of Homes Competition.   The past winners of this competition rose to the top of our potential builder picks.  I’ll discuss more in the next installment about how we went about choosing the best builder for our dream home, but we did make that selection WHILE we were still searching for a lot and that was probably one of the best decisions we made.  Our builder even came out to a few potential home sites with me to debate their positives and negatives, which was immensely helpful as he was able to comment on things I was not smart on.  For example, one site was completely wooded and significantly “gullied” in the center.  Our builder pointed out that we would need to bring in tons, yes tons, of fill dirt to make this lot buildable.  In the end, after significant searching, we settled on a wonderful partially wooded, mostly level, half acre which was only about 1400’ from the beach.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’ll pick up the next installment talking a bit about how we successfully negotiated a great price for our land and how we selected the best builder.

 

Building a Dream: Our Vacation Rental Property Series #1

Posted on by Kindra

I envision this post to be the first in a series to describe our process for making the leap to purchasing a vacation property and ultimately building a beach home from the ground up.  It’s no doubt a scary venture, with a lot on the line. I figure reading about our successes and mistakes might help a few people venture into vacation home dreams of their own.

I had been half joking with my husband for several years, whenever he would ask me what I wanted for my Birthday, Christmas, etc. I’d always reply, “A beach house.” Hah, funny, right…. I knew I’d never wake up to a house with a big bow on it like those silly Lexus commercials (don’t you hate those people on those commercials even though you know it’s not real?)  Anyway, in saying that I wanted a beach house as a gift, I really meant that I wanted us to save money and forego trivial gifts and really sock away some savings so someday we really could buy that beach house.

On a (sort-of) whim, one winter, I started searching on realtor.com.  Initially our plan was NOT to build a brand-new house but find a home that needed a little bit of cosmetic work, which many beach rentals do, and fix it up.  Cause, ya know, we fancy ourselves pretty handy.  We had been traveling to the Outer Banks of North Carolina for several years and renting homes for a week for summer vacation.  Over the course of my childhood I had spent time in other beach locations like Virginia, Maryland and Delaware beaches and the Jersey shore …yes that’s really what it’s called, it’s not the “beach” it’s the “shore” and if you say it with a Jersey accent it’s even more accurate… and if you refer to OBX as the “shore” people look at you like you have three heads.   Of all of those places I loved OBX the most and it was a manageable 4 hour drive from our home in VA. So I found a house I liked and I promptly contacted the realtor.  This is the house that drove me to start our search in earnest – adorable, right?

Okay, here’s recommendation #1, don’t do what I did, and call the realtor who lists the house you may want to buy, because if you make this person your agent, they are then working for both sides.  We were lucky because in our case it worked out because the seller wasn’t willing to negotiate as much as we’d have liked and I was hell bent on getting a good deal (that was a high priority of ours) but we did find a good agent in the process and he showed us a number of places in a whirlwind rainy weekend).  Finding someone who is willing to roll up their sleeves and dedicate a whole weekend to you is a pretty big deal because if you’re looking for a vacation property that is several hours from your home you want to be efficient with your time and not do multiple trips back and forth.  Working with a realtor that is local to where you want to buy is really important.  They know the area, and will know what areas work best for rentals as well as what home elements will help return on investment potential.  And although your realtor will hopefully have lots of info for you don’t forget to do research on your own.  We did and it came in really handy when it came time to negotiate (more on that in a later installment).  In fact, when we started our vacation home search I was dead set on buying in the quaint town of Duck, pictured below.

Did I buy a home in Duck? Nope.  Based on our priorities, our agent turned us on to a neighboring town called Southern Shores, which was a much better fit for what we wanted in a property.  I still find new and interesting things about Southern Shores, NC and I just love, love, love it!  Every time I visit I say that I don’t want to go home to Virginia and just want to stay there forever.  Here’s the gorgeous dunes at Southern Shores.

A few other things I learned and I recommend as you start looking for that vacation rental property: know what your priorities are. Do you want maximum ROI in rentals?  Proximity to the beach and amenities? Peace and serenity?  A place for boating? Low maintenance? (Hint, you may want to scratch this last one off your list if you’re going to rent your beach home out, but we’ll talk about that more later).   We knew (or thought we knew) our primary priorities going in. Here’s our list:

  • Within a 5-minute walk to the beach
  • In an “X” flood zone (see more on this below)
  • A good deal (and preferably below our budget of 550K)
  • Have consistent summer rental history (or potential)
  • Not along a main road with a lot of audible traffic
  • At least 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms or one that could sleep about 10 or more people
  • A pool or room to add pool
  • Not in a commercialized area (no views of stores, restaurants)
  • A water view

I’ll let you know which of these we actually accomplished at the end.  But these all sorta make sense except, why wouldn’t you want a house RIGHT smack dab on the beach if you’re buying a beach house?  Ok, well admittedly, that would be lovely and would probably help a ton with rental potential, right?  Only I’m at least somewhat risk adverse and wasn’t willing to push those limits on our first foray into rental properties.  Houses on the beach are exponentially more expensive in terms of sale price.  But consequently, you could rent it for more, which is true, but there are other expenses you incur with a house ON the beach.  Maintenance is one; you will have higher overall maintenance costs for things like painting, rusting metal that needs to be replaced, and storm damage, which brings me to our #2 priority, an “X” flood zone.  FEMA has mapped all coastal areas and assigned different letter codes to designate potential risk for flood based on historical events and geography and probably all other sorts of scientific stuff.  More info on all of this is available at FEMA’s flood risk website.  Here’s a pictorial simplification of FEMA’s flood risk lettering.

What is important to know if you are buying a coastal property is that these letter codes affect how much or how little flood insurance you have to carry and ultimately, how much you’ll pay.  Being in an X zone doesn’t mean that our home is invulnerable to weather, not at all, but it is at a lower risk for flood devastation.  For us, it wasn’t just about the money but not having to worry about having to board up our little vacation abode every time a hurricane threatened the east coast or worse worry about having to rebuild it or worse yet, worry about being so severely impacted that our entire property was rendered unusable….. and it happens….  These homes are along the beach in South Nags Head, NC, just a few miles south of ours that had been condemned after a storm.

Are you considering buying a vacation rental property?  What are your thoughts or dilemnas?  We’d love to hear them! Share in the comments.

Next installment coming in a week or so – continuing the house hunt and expanding it to a “land hunt”…

Window Wreath How-To

Posted on by Kindra

In keeping with my love of classic colonial design, I have for years admired the timeless look of putting a wreath hung by ribbon in each window.  I also am a fan of a candle in each window during the holidays and have been sporting this look for some time now.  This was the year I decided to make the investment in wreaths for each of my 8 front windows, and it was neither as difficult nor as expensive as I thought it would have been.  Here’s how it’s done.  First, a before shot of my house, boring!

windows-before

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You’ll need:

  • One evergreen or faux evergreen wreath for each window (most people only do the front of their home). I used 24” diameter wreaths for my windows.
  • Wired ribbon, I used 4 spools that were 10 yards each and at least 2.5” wide
  • Floral wire
  • Hot glue gun and glue
  • Scissors
  • Wire cutters
  • Stapler and staples

The first thing I did (and I bribed my kids to help which made it go SOOO much faster) was remove the screens from my windows and cleaned the glass.  This will allow you to hang the wreaths from the inside and will overall look very neat and clean.

Next, before you hang the wreaths you probably want to put a bow on them.  A bow can either be placed at the top or the bottom of the wreath.  I opted to put my bows at the top.  Making the bow is the most time consuming part of the whole process and I’ll be honest, it can take some practice to get them right.

Cut a length of wire about 5 inches long and place it nearby.  Take a length of ribbon of about 18 inches but don’t cut it off the spool, but pinch it at the 18” mark.  This will leave one of the 2 “tails” of the bow.  Take about 3 to 4 inches (depending on how large you want your bow to be and how big your ribbon is) make a loop and repinch it.

1st-loop-2

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s going to be a lot of pinching going on for the next few minutes – warning – your fingers will probably cramp up.  Turn the ribbon about a quarter turn and make and pinch another loop.

3rd-loop

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Repeat this process several times until you have 5 or 6 loops, just until it looks right.  Brilliantly descriptive, eh?  Take your pre-cut length of wire and wrap it around the area where you are pinching and twist it very tight so that the loops stay intact and are held together.

wire-box

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pull the ribbon another 18” from the spool and cut it free from the spool.  Angle cut the end of each tail.  Ta-da! You made a bow.  Once you get the hang of this technique it is such a great skill to have in your repertoire for gift wrapping, floral arranging, it really comes in handy!

Next, it’s on to attaching the ribbon that will actually hang the wreath.  Pull several feet of ribbon from the spool (will depend on the size of your window and the size of the wreath).  I like to hang mine about halfway down the window so about 3.5 feet of ribbon was enough for me.  Again, leave this length of ribbon attached to the spool and wrap it around the “top” of the wreath leaving an overlap of about 4 to 6 inches in the back.  Staple the ribbon where it overlaps.

hanging-ribbon-staple

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also like to add a few dots of hot glue between the 2 lengths of ribbon to really hold it.

hanging-ribbon-glue

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next attach your premade bow.  You could hot glue it on, but over time, especially if you live in a warm climate, this could come free, so I prefer to wire mine on.

ribbon-attach-to-wreath3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Take a length of about 5 inches and wire the bow to the wreath.  Since I put my bow at the top of the wreath I wired mine around both the wreath and the top ribbon for extra security.

ribbon-attach-to-wreath

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now it’s time to hang your wreath!  You could measure out exactly how long you want to hang them but I used the grids on my window and just eyeballed it.  Open the top of your window and dangle the wreath out, holding onto the spool end of the ribbon.  Lower the wreath to the place you want it and close the top window.  Cut your ribbon from the spool with about 5 inches to spare.  Use this excess to tie a knot (depending on how substantial your ribbon is you may want to do this several times over so your wreath stays secure in the window).  If you have wood windows you could also thumbtack them to the frame, but the knot method works for vinyl or wood windows.

knot-in-ribbon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cut off any excess ribbon hanging inside the window.

close-knot-in-window

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Repeat for all of your windows, and once complete be sure to take a trip outside to make sure they all look even and if necessary just pop inside and reknot if a wreath needs to go up or down!

wreath-at-halfway

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I got both the wreaths and ribbon on sale and spent under $40 for the project.  Besides cleaning the windows it took me about 2 hours to complete and hang all 8 wreaths, though I did have this little helper.

wreaths-lil-helper

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Window wreaths: Follow this simple tutorial to add classic holiday charm to your home exterior with window wreaths!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Get to decking those halls!

Welcome to Village and Coast’s Blog!

Posted on by Kindra

cropped-cropped-Village-and-Coast-Logo.png

Well, here goes… something!   I’ve loved designing home interiors for a long time, whether it’s my own home or that of a friend or a family member.  I decided recently that I love it so much I’m making it my full time career, even if it meant leaving behind a pretty successful corporate career.  You only live once, right?  It’s been fun getting the business started and now I’m excited to add the blog as a part of Village and Coast.  Here in Northern Virginia summer is officially over since today was the first day of school.  I thought I’d begin my “academics” by starting my blog today.  My goal on this blog will be to share ideas and images of great design ideas, what’s trending in design, some DIY tips and help, great before and afters, or anything else that happens to be on my mind.