Susannah115's Profile

Susannah here -

Guys, thank you so much for your kind words! I love the sense of kinship and encouragement that this community fosters. I feel like I didn't explain at all well - my husband and I are actually the licensed contractors in the family. Our family in Seattle (a city we LOVE) consists of just the two of us and a grouchy 8 year old rescue Great Dane named Gentle - and he hates construction!

After my husband got laid off from his Architects' job, we bit the bullet and started our own residential renovation and interiors firm - Alkhun Design - named after my Ukrainian Jewish Great-Grandfather, who had a knack for entrepreneurship. My husband and I spent many, many years chained to desks, and only let our imaginations free and found our 'bliss' in redoing our and our friends' houses.
Seattle is a 'green' city in more than the lush evergreens around us and the emphasis on sustainability drew us here from Chicago. Since my background is as a structural engineer (who dropped out of corporate industrial engineering to go to art school) and Jeff is in architecture, we wanted to make sustainability the core tenet of Alkhun Design. Building construction accounts for the largest source of landfill waste (50 million tons/year) so we thought we'd start at home - in our kitchen.

Now to address some of the quesions -
Iresboston - thank you so much! I love floating shelves too - we achieved this with eyescrews and tension wires suspended from upper cabinets or with 45 degree angle wires from the shelf going into wall mounted anchors. Crimp the wire with compression thingamabobs - they look like figure 8's in profile. Sorry, can't remember the technical term! They are amazingly strong. We used hidden L shaped brackets under the shelves for extra support.

Bumblebee & RachelIQ - thank you so much! Yes we love to make a big ol mess in the kitchen now!

Ciddyguy - Seattle totally rocks! Thank you for mentioning the copa feel! Who doesn't love a woman with a fruit basket on her head? The original cabinets are serving as garage storage - the doors were just destroyed and beyond repair. We were hesitant to use stainless steel - in the past we'd bought cool vintage appliances and had them rewired, but we didn't know who could do that here and energy conservation is just not that great in older appliances.

Lizzykewl and Spanisholives - Yay Seattle!!!! Restore in Ballard and Second Use on Second Ave in Georgetown and Habitat on Nevada St are all great resources! Sustainable Ballard is coming up. We love this city!

MKQ, Emily Sneds and Madampince - I hear ya! We spent years acquiring these skills and learning from pros! If we can do it, you can too! Powertools are cool! (but get insurance)

Indy Jeffry - thank you for your comment. One of the trickiest aspects of getting the tile was getting enough to do several installations - we wanted a flow and a continuity. It's a fairly small house - 1,100 sf - so having a dialogue between the rooms was important. You can see examples of the living room and bathroom in the portfolio portion of www.Alkhun.com.

tara1979 - thank you so much! The curtains were actually from another project but I just couldn't let them go! They created the color scheme. They are also reversible - I make all curtains reversible for versatility. We took Jonathan Adler's advice and used color as our anti-depressant since Seasonal Affect Disorder is rampant here.

Thank you all once again for sharing your thoughts!
Susannah
www.alkhun.com

Thank you so much for all the comments. Palmettogal, I know who you are and I love you very much! Although SC is not generally renown for it's love of vintage stuff - fake Victorian and traditional are more the norm - there is a small, obsessive and gently subversive population of thrift store/antique store addicts, I'll be happy to pass on sources (I'm afraid you won't find them by reading the roadside billboards). Meleslecky, thank you so much and my husband is now officially barred from hanging artwork. His eye level is about a foot and a half above most people's. Woodleyparkzoo, a weakness for cannisters is, I think, a sign of great spiritual and intellectual strength as well as intestinal fortitude! Especially the kind with mushroom caps. Who can withstand a happy forest of mushroom cannisters, daintily displayed on a high shelf? I only had a few to start with, but they reproduced in the dark. The aluminum cannisters in the bathroom hold all the unmentionables, or at least all the stuff that doesn't fit in the medicine cabinet like bandaids and cotton balls and shampoos and styling products that don't actually work but you spent entirely too much and maybe mall hair will come back?
Susannah

Thank you guys so much for all of your kind comments! I've been lurking on this site for such a long time and it feels great to have so many people 'over' to our home. Kittykatz, thank you so much. I wish I could have grown up with Great Danes. I've never had such a good dog before. I'm completely sold on the breed. I really agree with your Mom. In our experience, Gentle (the Great Dane) has enjoyed condo living. He's a slightly fussy, very codependent couch potato who follows us around from room to room and sleeps about 16 hrs. a day. Thanks Emmm, the photos do tend to make it more yellow, but it is indeed, an unabashedly yellow apartment. The paint color is a slightly bastardized version of Ralph Lauren's 'Claude', we added some green and darkened the mix because the light in the condo is so wonky. Also, after one Chicago winter with the original white walls, we started researching Scandinavian design for inspiration on how to deal with dark, drab days. Lourdes, thank you so much for the comment! My husband is 6'8" and hung most of the paintings, also the ceilings are almost 10' and the Danish sofas have super low profiles.. and dammit, I should have painted much bigger paintings! Thank you Mdeathstar, the books are in the wall-hung boxes above the credenza, and in the credenza and under the couches and under the bed and in the storage room and we took boxes to the Salvation Army (about which my husband is very remorseful).