New York designer Alexa Hampton once traded in her Volkswagen Jetta for a custom-built, down-filled club chair from the best upholsterer in Manhattan.
Not a surprising $5,000 exchange from the daughter of the late Mark Hampton, the design legend who brought Bush Blue to the White House in the 1990s, worked with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Pamela Harriman and created one of the first successful designer furniture collections.
When her father died in 1998, Alexa Hampton took over his prestigious Madison Avenue office. Now, at 35, she has brought the business into the new century, furnishing lofts in Manhattan, delving into licensing of lighting and furniture, appearing regularly on two PBS design shows and making Architectural Digest’s list of the top 100 designers.
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A slew of sophisticated software for home design has recently hit the market, allowing homeowners embarking on a remodeling project to plot everything from shingle styles to window placement and even see how shadows fall across the porch at different times of the day.
If used properly, the do-it-yourself products can save thousands of dollars in architects’ fees on a major project. But the growing popularity of the products is making them a point of tension between builders and their clients. Homeowners can spend hours on a design, only to be told they’ve taken out a key beam or put in a toilet where there are no pipes. (more…)
You don’t just open a door and wander into a Parade of Homes house.
You travel through custom-designed iron gates and into an expansive courtyard. Or into a room with a wall of windows and a view of the pool.
Then comes the Italian Travertine floors, European cabinets, massive stone fireplaces, coffee bars in the master suite and outdoor kitchens nicer than your actual kitchen.
At the 2006 Parade of Homes in New Braunfels, it’s all about the details.
“Everything is hand-done and custom-ordered,” said Bart Goldblum of the Laredo-based Artison Homes, whose parade home entryway features a cross vault ceiling covered with Travertine in a herringbone pattern.
The Parade of Homes continues through Sunday in the RockWall Ranch neighborhood, a rural, gated community in New Braunfels. (more…)
