Refining the Look of Your Log Home

Darker floors, neutral colors, and having large focal point pieces can help to compliment the rustic qualities of your home.

There’s nothing more comfortable and cozy than a log home. However, while the style of a log home will certainly provide an inviting and comfortable atmosphere on its own, you’ll want to decorate it in a way that compliments its rustic qualities for a balanced interior design. The following are a few rustic design tips for your log home:

  • Design darker floors – Add some contrast to your wood log walls and ceiling by staining the floor a darker brown. This helps add a sophisticated balance in addition to providing some visual weight to the space.
  • Use neutral colors – Neutral colors throughout your interior will help create a more cohesive overall look. Gray palettes tend to calm down interiors and help modernize your design a little bit in addition to softening your interior.
  • Large focal point pieces – If you have tall ceilings, which many log homes do, consider hanging a big light fixture that stands up to the scale of the room. A big art piece can also help create a focal point and add visual interest.

Use these decorating tips to design your log home. For more advice on enhancing your log home design, contact us at TAB Associates today.

Light Your Home Up With These Tips

The right interior lighting can make a well-designed home look even more stunning. Follow these lighting tips to ensure your home is perfectly lit.

  • Place mirrors cleverly throughout the room to reflect light that comes in the windows. Mirrored table tops are even more stunning.
  • A filter for natural light, placed over the windows, can make it appear even airier.
  • The color of a lampshade affects the color of the light that shines through it. Look for white lampshades made from organic material for the most vivid light.
  • Interior doors with glass panes can make interior rooms with few windows seem brighter and larger.
  • For rooms where you want dimmer, more ambient lighting, use 20 or 40-watt bulbs overhead. For rooms that must be brighter, 75-watt bulbs are the best choice.
  • A dimmer switch is perfect for the living room or dining room overhead light, but it also works well for table side lamps, since you can turn them down for ambiance or up for reading purposes.

If you’re working on your interior design and need more help choosing the right lighting scheme, contact the experts at TAB Associates today!

TAB Goes Green With These Beautiful Properties

Green building is more than just a trend, it’s the right way to build for the health of the planet. At TAB Associates, we’ve created many beautiful green properties, including:

The Bonidy Residence

This 3,000 square foot home has stunning views of the Sawatch Range. We used blown urethane insulation, an 80% effective air-to-air heat exchanger, and a passive solar system to keep energy use down. Radiant in-floor heating is supplemented by a wood-burning stove. Click here for further information and images.

Holzworth

Spanning more than 8,000 square feet, this timber home has 6 bedrooms, 7 1/2 bathrooms, a 3-car garage, a hearth room, a ski room, and more. It’s located on a ski-in, ski-out lot. The photovoltaic panels and evacuated solar panels green up the design. Click here for the further information and images.

Madison Partners P.U.D.

With 112 condominium-style homes, this resort is situated on 21 acres in Avon, CO. It is still being planned and developed, but we are focused on attaining a LEED certification through the use of green building products. The homes stretch across the base of a mountain. Click here to see project.

To learn more about our commitment to green building, contact TAB Associates today. We’d love to share our latest project and design ideas with you.

Our LEED Gold Residence is Beautiful & Eco-Friendly!

TAB Architects is proud to introduced the Navarro-Wear Residence, a 5.900 square foot home with a wood frame and wood accents. Earning its LEED Gold Certification, the home is energy-efficient and sustainably built.

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design. It’s a green-building certification program through which building projects that meet environmental and energy-efficiency standards are given ratings. The Gold Certification is certainly one to be proud of.

This home is not just eco-friendly, it is also stunning. With 5 bedrooms and 5 1/2 bathrooms, it incorporates unique timber accents. Solar collectors provide heat supplemental heat, and all of the insulation is polyurethane spray foam. Air exchangers provide continuous circulation of fresh air. Set amongst the hills and surrounded by gorgeous landscaping, the exterior of the home stands out with its wooden and stone finish and unique, multi-level roofing design. There are even several balconies from which residents can enjoy the outdoors.

Learn more about this LEED Gold Certified home and our other projects by contacting TAB Associates. We’d love to help you design a beautiful, environmentally friendly residence, too.

TVs and Fireplaces are a Terrific Combination

When you think of focal points in a living room, two items come to mind most often — TVs and fireplaces. You don’t necessarily have to choose between them. Here are some ways to work TV and fireplace combinations into your décor.

  • When designing your fireplace, have a frame designed above it in the same style and color as the fireplace. It can even be a continuous unit. Mount the television inside the frame, and you have a beautiful display of both focal points.
  • In an artistic, modern living room, try placing both the fireplace and the television on an otherwise blank wall. Offset them so that the TV is on one side, while the fireplace is on the other.
  • Center a stone backdrop along a long wall in your living room. Build a fireplace into one side of the backdrop, and a television cubby into the other side of it.
  • Choose a fireplace and a television that are the same shape and size. Mount a shelf on the wall directly above the fireplace. Above it, mount the television.
  • Another way to mount a TV above a fireplace is to hide it behind a piece of art on a lift.  When the TV is turned on the art lift activates and slides up the wall above the TV.  this takes care of those that hate a TV in the Living Room, but know it is a logical place for one.

For help designing a living room that balances your TV and fireplace, contact the expert designers at TAB Associates!

For more information, check out this awesome article:

Light Wood vs Dark Wood in Your Home

Light wood, dark wood or somewhere in between — which is best for your home? The answer really depends on the character you’re trying to achieve in your space. Here’s a look at a few factors to consider as you make your decision.

Lighter Wood

Light wood is a good choice if you really want the detail of the wood to call attention to itself. It’s easier to see the grain of light wood, and thus it often looks more natural.

You’ll want to choose light wood if your room does not have a lot of windows to let natural light shine in, since it opens up the space. You can use dark colors as accents without creating a dungeon-like effect.

Dark Wood

Only use dark wood in rooms that get plenty of natural light. Ensure you pair it with light-colored walls so the room doesn’t feel too closed-off.

Dark wood is often used in conjunction with pale cream cabinets in a kitchen, or with white walls in a living or dining room.

For help choosing the perfect wood for your home design, contact the experts at TAB Architects to begin discussing your project.

For other insights into this topic, check out this article:

The Genesis of Today’s Rustic Aesthetic

Log cabins, farmhouses, and country cottages — they’re coming back today with a more modern twist. Rustic designs are increasing in popularity, but where do their beginnings lie?

Cabin homes, made mostly from natural lumber, were originally built by stacking notched logs. The logs tended to warp and expand over time, so early settlers would seal them together with a mixture of mud or clay, mixed with straw.

Cottages can be traced back to several origins. Early cottages were built along beaches in America and in Victorian England. The features they shared were bright, airy interiors, small size, and clapboard siding. Often vacation homes, cottages were designed for seasonal use.

Farmhouses were usually constructed from a variety of natural materials — whatever was available at the time. Wide plank flooring, fieldstone fire places, and roughly hewn ceiling beams were elements still used in farmhouses today. Farmhouses had big porches as these originally served as places to kick boots off and enjoy a view of the fields.

Are you ready to adopt today’s rustic look as your own? Contact TAB Associates to learn more about the rustic cabins, cottages and farmhouses we have built for prior clients and can also build for you!

Tips to Updating Your Kitchen Countertops

The countertops take up a lot of visual space in your kitchen. Additionally, they take a decent amount of abuse considering the how often you probably use them. This means that if you’ve had your kitchen countertops for more than a few years and they are looking outdated or beginning to show signs of wear, you may want to update them. The following are a few ideas for updating your countertops:

  • Granite – Granite is a beautiful option that gives the kitchen a natural look. It’s also very durable and is resistant to both scratches and heat, not to mention easy to clean – both of which are an advantage for the kitchen space!
  • Stainless Steel – Stainless steel is a good option for a more contemporary or modern kitchen space, especially if you already have stainless steel appliances. It’s non-porous, which means it’s easy to keep clean and naturally antibacterial – perfect for food prep.
  • Wood – Wood is another excellent choice, one that comes in numerous types, from oak or maple to cherry.  This is particularly nice in an island.

These are just a few kitchen countertop ideas that you should consider using. Be sure to contact us at TAB Associates today for more kitchen updating advice.

Create a Cozy Dining and Living Room

Would you like your home to have a comfortable, welcoming appeal? These decorating ideas for cozy living spaces will allow you to create a living room and dining room that show off your sense of style.

  • Pillars in the entryway leading from the dining room to the living room can give both spaces traditional appeal. A matching fireplace, in the same color and material as the pillars, complete the look.
  • To make a large living room cozier, place an area rug on one portion of the floor. Center a coffee table on top of the rug, and arrange a few recliners around it. This makes the space feel smaller and more intimate.
  • Natural wood adds plenty of coziness to a dining room. Focus on choosing a natural wood table that matches your hardwood floor and woodwork. Crown molding makes for a traditional space.

Are you thinking of remodeling your living room or dining room? Let the experts at TAB Associates help! Contact us to discuss your project and design ideas today!

How to Make Your Master Bathroom Into a Retreat

It’s okay for the bathroom in your downstairs hallway to be designed mostly with basic function in mind, but you should want something more out of your master bathroom. This is your bathroom after all! It should be relaxing and comfortable and maybe even a little bit luxurious. You should get pleasure out of using your master bathroom. So how exactly do you do this? By turning it into a retreat!

First of all, if the bathroom is decorated with old wallpaper, get rid of this and give the space a fresh coat of paint. Then work on the floor. Consider adding heated flooring in order to make your bathroom as comfortable as possible – especially during those cooler winter months.

Install windows if possible that allow more natural light to flow in. If it’s not possible, think about installing a skylight. Go with a frameless glass shower enclosure in order to keep the bathroom spacious and to add a bit of elegance. When it comes to the color schemes, we recommend calm and refreshing colors, such as watery greens.

Use these tips to turn your master bathroom into a retreat. Contact us at TAB Associates for more bathroom design advice.