Presenting to Cortez

Last week was a very enlightening and relatively successful week for Grace and I. We finalized our floor plans, finished collecting materials and making furniture selections, and headed to Long Island to present our design scheme for the Cortez family. We left early to make sure we made it to the presentation on time, but ended up arriving a half-hour before our scheduled time. We decided to take a tour of the little town and found ourselves on a path that jutted out into the Hudson River. The view was amazing, with the bridge in our skyline. It was really peaceful and breezy, and we saw a lot of ducks enjoying their morning splashing in the water.

We headed back to the house when it was time for the presentation. After we walked in and said our hellos, we began to set up all of our materials to present. On the kitchen table, we placed all of our furniture selections for each room. Our color scheme and fabrics went on the island, and we put all of the different furniture layouts on the console table. Susana decided to start with the furniture layouts, because then we could move into picking actual furniture based on which layout they liked. There was some debate, as the husband and wife's favorite layouts were different. The way that their house is designed, they have an area in between the wall of windows and the island in the kitchen where normally one would think to put their dining table. However, there is also a big open area to the right of the island that sits between the kitchen and the living room. We had two different ideas for this area:

1. (Wife's Favorite): put a 120" long table with chairs on one side and a bench on the other in the space between the island and the window wall. In the gap between the kitchen and the living room, we could put a settee with a coffee table and a small chair. This could serve as another seating area and also provide them with a place enjoy their view of the water.

2. (Husband's Favorite): put a four person seating area in the space between the island and the window wall to serve as a socializing/eating area for guests. This would also open the kitchen up to be more social. In the gap between the kitchen and living area, put a round dining table with a great chandelier above it.

Finally, they decided to go with using a long table in the dining area. Although they agreed adding the social area near the kitchen would be an interesting and fun idea, they thought that being able to accommodate their big family during holiday meals was more important. Also, it had always been a dream of theirs to have a big, beautiful dining table.

After the furniture plan was chosen we moved onto the furniture. We were able to make decisions on most of the pieces, although we left still needing to do some searching for others. We moved onto the fabrics and color scheme next. This was a rather disappointing presentation, as they were not too excited about the sea-greens and beiges that we had chosen for the home. We explained to them that because they live on the river, the colors outside would compliment the colors inside as there were many grays, beiges, and sea-greens coming into the room. We also told her about the idea to use a linen sea-foam wall paper and white flowing drapes coming down over each window, but she said that using wallpaper was a bit scary for her. She told us her vision for her house had more navies and bold pops of colors rather than the muted sea-foams. It might come off as too dark if we add darker navies and colors, however Susana said she was willing to start over and promised that when we came back for the second presentation, we would have something beautiful to show her. The Cortez's did like our elevation drawing and idea for the built-ins and fireplace, although we have to go back and make a few tweaks to it.

Overall, the presentation went well we thought because we did decide on a lot of furniture pieces. Susana said the fabric scheme is a relatively small part compared to finding furniture that a client likes style wise, price wise, and size wise, so we completed most of the work for the project already. Our focus for the rest of the week was finding navies and bolder pops of color for the Cortez house, as well as making further furniture and accessory selections.