apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I'm so glad I found AT.

Wonder if you all could offer some advice about selecting architect and interior designer.

We finally bought a condo but as newbie homeowners, have absolutely NO idea how to find the architect and designers needed to turn the place into our dream home.

Had hired a Canadian designer (one-woman shop) who took our downpayment, submitted a rough sketch and then stopped returning phone calls and emails. Eventually she returned our money, but we were so disappointed by the negative experience. Definitely don't want to make a mistake in our next selection.

Yesterday we met with the director of interior design for a reputable company and he asked us to submit a brief, after which his team can will give us a written proposal.

But we're interested in looking at sketches rather than just a written proposal and quotation. He said that's possible but that clients usually pay about US$1,000 for sketches like that. Is this standard procedure?

gekko - where are you located?

Hi Seema,
I'm in Thailand, but I figured that there must be standard procedures/good tips for identifying and selecting architects and designers. I wish there's a primer for people doing this for the first time.

Number of bids? How judge if architect/designer would be a good match for project? budget to expect? etc.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

in the usa - i always point everyone to www.asid.org and conduct a search in your state for a designer. in thailand, do you have an interior design association?

I spotted a few links in last week's NYT Home and Garden some of which relate to recent discussions on AT, so I thought I'd post them here:

Murphy-style wall beds by Sico (sico-wallbeds.com)
doors doubling as cabinets by Niche Doors (nichedoors.com) jewelry closets by Mingo Custom Woods (www.mingocustomwoods.com)
Murphy-esque "ironing centers" by Iron-A-Way (ironaway.com)

Does anyone have any suggestions for how to distress a mirror so that it looks antique? One of our corners has an angled wall that is mirrored (about 5 feet wide and to the ceiling height). We don't want to remove the mirror, but thought that some kind of treatment to it would make it more interesting. If anyone has been to balthazar in nyc, we like how those mirrors look. Thanks for any and all advice.

hi susan.
You have to remove the mirror to distress it as the treatment is done to the back side of the mirrored surface.
You can either scratch up the whole thing with a putty knife or there is an acid you can buy and paint on. Then you paint the surface a blacky-silvery-grey and voila.
I think at balthazar's they def. used the acid.

Susan,
one of my favorite tricks with mirrored walls is to hang artwork over them. Treating the mirroed wall like a regular wall will diffuse the starkness of the mirror if that makes sense.

me and the mrs. hit the resoration hardware white sale this weekend and on the advice of a friend, we loaded up on their Paradigm 802 towels. BUY THESE TOWELS. It is an incredible indulgence. Really brings that luxury hotel feel home. these things are incredible.

Susan -
If your "mirrored wall" is like the one in my old apartment (which actually kind of made the smallness of that space much more bearable, because of how much larger it made it feel), then it's a fairly permanent professional installation, which would have to be professionally UN-installed if you were to remove any of the mirror-ing which is really on the BACK of the mirror.

By the way, besides whatever acid process you used, I have to say that there is a spray-can version of Zip-Strip which is a very good paint stripper, and which I think I've used to take mirroring off with (although I can't remember the project!), and the thing about it being a spray is that it might work in about the random-looking kind of way that you might expect of actual aging.

If you really want those guys to come in and take them down, then you'll have to have your way with the back of the mirros and then have them come back in a put them back up, which sounds like kind of a lot of work and probably kind of a lot of money, because there's really no guarantee that the mirrors will survive that whole little process.

I'd say that your best bet might be to just hang some pictures in front of it like A.L. suggested. I actually did that, myself, when I had that, I liked how that worked. In fact, I hung a fancy mirror on top of that mirrored wall, which was amazing. Actually one reason I put it where I put it was because when I sat up in bed, the seams of the mirrors where right in front of me and had a really bad "The Mirror Has Two Faces" kind of feng shui about it, so that fancy mirror bridged that seam very nicely.

Another way to soften the look of the mirrors might be to put a sheer curtain smack-dab in front of them, so that there ends up being a little smokiness in whatever color direction that sheer ends up being, and which might seem to push back that reflected image even farther? Then, you could still put other pictures in front of that. This would work especially well if your wall is as mine was: where immediately above the top edge, there was a picture rail. Picture rails are great things from which to hang such things, because the curtains can get hooked right onto them, and so can the pictures, with those fancy gold cord things that you can buy from Gracious Home for about $12.

The effect would be KIND of like the Hall of Mirros in Versailles.

I think she said the wall was angled so it might be difficult to hang things on it (if I understand correctly what she means by angled).

I've always been a big fan of hanging mirror over mirror. Framed artwork would be just as cool. You could also build a great frame around the existing mirror. Solid black, bleached out wood, gilded gold, whatever - you can give the frame the same feel as you would have intended on the mirror alone. And I like Curtis' idea of a sheer hung over it.

I saw a mirrored wall over the sinks in a bathroom and the owner hung ornate mirrors over it and it looked amazing.

Does anyone know the best way to hang artwork on a mirror or morrored surface? Obviously, I can't use a nail.

on that note, does anyone know how to securely hang artwork on an angled wall, mirrored or unmirrored?

Does anyone know how to hang a sheer curtain from a 112" mirror wall? Can't find a tension rod that long. Anyone know how to make one?

Anyone know what's involved in removing mirrored walls? I just moved into an old condo that's covered almost entirely in mirrored walls. It's like living with my silent twin and it's frightening. Is this a do it yourself, or definitely a professional job?