Lifestyle Driven Designs by Lifestylist® Suzanne Felber

When I work on a model home, my first priority is bringing the outside in – what’s going to make the buyer feel like what he experienced before he walked into the model continues into his model experience?

My son just gave me the perfect example – he is buying a new home in Florida, and was troubled after seeing the new model home because they didn’t like the colors or feel of the home after it was merchandised. It bothered them so much they actually considered canceling the sale. The colors and the lack of lifestyle felt like they could have been in any city in any community, but it didn’t have the warmth that they anticipated their home would have.

At Lifestylist® Design we focus on lifestyle, and what they buyer hopes to experience in his new life in your new home. We just finished doing a Lifestylist® Designed home for @home Builders in Baldwinsville, NY and I thought I’d share the thought process on how we came up with this home.

Timber Banks is a new incredible planned community near Syracuse, NY that features an 18 hole, Nicklaus designed golf course, river frontage with it’s own marina, clubhouse, and a stunning, natural beauty all around you that you can call home. It seemed only natural that I would bring this lifestyle and the colors I saw all around me into the design of the model. We went with some of the foggy greys, clear blue sky, river rocks and eco-greens that we discovered on our walks and as a result when you are in the home it truly pulls the outside in.  Plan a visit to the Timbers yourself and see what we accomplished – contact Teresa Carpenter with @home Builders for more information at:  315-635- 6006.

Tony Lucas, the designer for Palm Harbor Homes and I had a great conversation when we were in Las Vegas for the MHI Congress and Expo. We were talking about the green revolution and what consumers are willing to pay to “do the right thing” and Tony used a great term – Shades of Green. We all want to make a difference, we just do it in different shades.

Living and working in a 1942 factory helps you find out quickly how important energy efficiency is, and amazingly enough there were some ideas that were designed into my home that make a lot of sense today. I always wanted a concrete home, and the Idea Factory is made of cement blocks and stucco. It really helps with sound and it does tend to keep the heat in during the winter and the cool in during the summer. We had no insulation anywhere and with a flat roof it was hard to add but we did.

The Idea Factory came complete with a 1956 Carrier air condition that used water cooled freon – similar to what many commercial buildings still use. the water takes the heat away from the air by the freon, travels outside and is then cooled by traveling across fins that let the air cool off the water. The cooled water is then returned to the system and the process starts over again. This is a very amateur description of the process, but I knew nothing when I bought this place but after the first summer I quickly found this system was worth keeping.

Imagine doing the inspection of your new home and having the inspector see this wood, falling apart structure that is a main component of your air conditioner. Obviously they were not very excited – water and raw wood are not a great combination. I saw it as a Lifestylist® Designed challenge, signed all of the papers and it was mine! Fortunately I have great team members that are used to my ideas, and we came up with a new design sculpted out of concrete and metal that is not only functional but a work of art as well. With hard work, a lot of head scratching and even more creativity today we started it up and it is purring like a new machine!

This is my shade of green – incorporating form, function, elbow grease and paint to come up with a system that has cut my cooling bills by over 60%.  Plus it looks great and I love the sound of it outside my kitchen window. I can’t wait to do more green projects to my home, but until I can afford more I am very conscious of  how shade can help my bills and letting the trees overhang my roof, keeping the cooling up or heat down to save on utility bills when I’m not there, and turning off lights if I’m not in the room.

What is your shade of green?

What a busy, busy month so far! Three models and a design center for three different clients in three different states – it looks like the Lifestylist Designed concept is gaining momentum.
Yesterday I was out working on the new model home for American Custom Builders in Frisco, TX and was fortunate enough to have the very talented Lisa Stewart of LAS Photo join me to take some preliminary photos. The home isn’t done yet but we wanted to get an idea of what it would like like in photos. This has ended up being one of the more difficult homes that I’ve done, but I think it is going to also be one of the most successful. Using the Lifestylist Designed philosophy we have merchandised this home with items that can be purchased at stores within 10 miles of the home or online – all being within the budget of what a prospective homebuyer might want to spend. Drapes and rods are JCPenney or Bed Bath and Beyond, all furniture is from the Ashley HomeStores, and a lot of the artwork and accessories is from Wisteria – a great catalog resource. Pottery Barn Kids helped the children’s rooms come to life, IKEA helped us stay in budget, and we even found a very cool resource here in Dallas – a consignment pool table company that got us an incredible deal on the pool table and they even picked it up and installed it for us!
American Custom Builders will now be working with the Ashley HomeStores so that their customers can go in and purchase what they see in the model, and we will be providing purchasing information on most of the items in the home. More information and photos to come – I’d love to have your feedback on what you think of the home and our concept.