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Woods that Pair Well Together

You’ve heard of blended wool, but have you heard of blended wood?

If you’ve ever walked into a room in which the furniture, flooring, and trim use only one wood species, you know that too much matching can backfire. Same, same, and same can make a room look flat and bland. It’s good to mix up woods in a room. It can also be good to do it within a single piece of woodwork—whether a piece of furniture, a banister, or cabinetry.

In our custom millwork shop, we blend woods into one-of-a-kind pieces all the time. Sometimes customers come to us with specific species they want combined. Mostly they look to us for guidance, and we’re happy to give it.

A Crocodile in the Kitchen: The Wild Side of Quartz Countertops

For a long time, Corian was the “it” countertop on the market. During those years, natural materials, like wood and quartz, remained popular but far less so. They were sent to wait in the wings for Corian to finish its fifteen minutes of fame. Well, that day has come.

Corian is still a popular surface—rightfully so, and one we proudly carry—but quartz has reclaimed the throne. Over the past year or two, it’s become the most popular option in our store. That’s not just because quartz is low maintenance. (It doesn’t stain and doesn’t need to be sealed.) It’s also because the finest manufacturers of quartz, makers like Cambria and Caesarstone, have begun to show off their wild side.

There’s long been a misconception that all quartz is highly patterned. True, it often has more swirls and churls than a tub of Rocky Road ice cream. However, many quartz countertop designs, like this one, are monotone with just a hint of speckle or flecks:

An exciting twist in quartz are some of the incredibly beautiful manmade patterns now available for backsplashes and wall treatments. These turn a lot of heads in our showroom. Caesarstone’s new Motivo collection offers patterns in everything from zebra-like stripes to antique lace to this incredible crocodile pattern:

Last, another misconception about quartz is that it’s all earth tones, blacks and browns, whites and grays. Not true at all! You can actually get quartz countertops in nearly any color, from candy-apple red to peacock blue and everything in between.

If you’re thinking about getting a new kitchen counter, stop by our showroom off the Beltline and see if quartz is calling your name, too. We know the construction looks like the seventh circle of Dante’s Inferno, but it’s actually not that hard to reach us: From Verona road, the entrance road toward Home Depot and Staples has been only slightly shifted. Just enter there, follow that frontage road that wraps around them, and you’ll find us tucked behind them where we’ve always been. No appointment is necessary, and design consultants are always here to help you if you want to do more than browse!

Former Glory: Custom Millwork for Historic Reproductions

The city of Madison is nearly 170 years old. That’s just a baby by European standards, but in its time, it has accumulated many buildings of historic architectural significance. Look to the Queen Anne, prairie-style, and period-revival homes of University Heights. Look to the 1920s bungalows of the Marquette District. Look the Victorian houses of Mansion Hill. In Madison, you can see the gorgeous work of Keck and Keck, George W. Maher, Frank Lloyd Wright, and other nationally known architects. In fact, more than two dozen architectural styles are represented by the many homes here on the National and State Registers of Historic Places.

Why are we telling you this? Because one of the things we do in our custom millwork shop is create historic reproductions. Homeowners and business owners who want to restore a home to its original architectural glory come to us for everything from mantels to balusters to wainscoting, moldings, and columns. Sometimes the original woodwork has been lost or compromised due to devil-may-care remodeling by previous homeowners. Sometimes it’s been significantly damaged by fire, water, or improper upkeep.

Whatever the case, we specialize in replicating historic and obsolete millwork.  For the best results, it’s nice to have an existing sample we can see in person, but we know that’s not always possible. So, even with an accurate to-scale drawing or a photograph, we can often do the job.

Did you know that owners of homes with historical architectural significance can get a 25 percent state income tax credit on the costs of rehabilitations? This applies to homes that are (a) on the National Register, (b) eligible for the State Register, or (c) deemed by the State Historical Society as part of the historic character of a National Register historic district. There are several conditions for receiving this credit.

Upgrade Your Deck with a Railing Makeover

Dreaming of getting a different deck? If your current deck plans have life yet in them, you may want to instead consider a railing makeover: changing the posts, hand railing, and panels or balusters. A revitalized railing can do wonders in changing the overall look of a deck.

A deck railing is largely what defines the deck’s style. It’s also a place where you can play around with details to get a unique look that suits you. New caps for posts, for example, come in a wide variety of styles, from arts-and-crafts stained glass to Victorian ball-style caps. Some provide solar-powered lighting. Some are very low-profile. Adding caps or changing the ones you already have is a great start to a railing update.

Deck railing need not match your deck. It should just complement it—in material, style, and color scheme. By using contrasting species, stains, or paint for your deck railing or within it, you can dramatically change the overall look of the deck.

Another great way to update your railing is to add a ledge or change the one you already have. A ledge provides more than just visual interest. It’s utilitarian, too: a convenient place to set down drinks, some potential real estate for built-in planters or, if it’s wide enough and has a lip on it, a unique bar rail.

Composite deck railing can be used to create many of the same designs that you can create with wood railing but not all. After all, wood is truly an artist’s medium. In the hands of a skilled millworker, a simple piece of wood can be formed to look like almost anything—nearly any size or shape you could want.

If you are ready for a change to your deck, we offer Madison’s finest custom millwork and have excellent deck designers on staff. We are here to help you find ways to fall in love with your deck again, and updating your railing is just one of those ways!

Closet Remodels: Think Like a New Yorker

In New York City, where a family condo can easily garner a $1.5 million price tag, flat square-footage measurements aren’t always the final word on livable space. Some buyers here would rather know a home’s cubic square footage. Where elbow room is at a premium—and, boy, is it ever—they simply can’t afford to waste vertical space. So, they think outside the box. You might even say they’ve mastered the art of using the whole box:

Can you find the two beds in this studio?
Photo credit: Porterfanna.com

Back in Wisconsin, where $1.5 million will get you a lot more than enough space to do a jumping jack and own a soaker tub, we can still take a lesson from the uber-urbanites of Gotham. And one place most useful to do that is in our closets. (No offense, New Yorkers, but some of you would feel like Maria Von Trapp singing the hills are alive atop the Alps if you stepped foot in a walk-in closet here.)

Start thinking like a New Yorker, and you’ll soon realize your closets are significantly bigger than their square footage implies. That’s because most closet designs—if you can call a plain, boxy room with some shelves and rods a design—really waste precious vertical space. The fix is customization. You can get better functionality and more bang for your buck if you move to a cubic-square-footage mindset and build a closet around your needs. This means exploiting the vertical space by adding things like built-ins, embedded storage, and pull-down mirrors.

It’s not just people in high-density cities who’ve figured out how to get big yields out of small spaces. Micro-homes like this 480-square-foot one are growing in popularity, too. They’re an equally good lesson in recognizing that a room’s space isn’t always as small as its footprint.

Brunsell staffs closet specialists who custom-design dream closet systems to fit particular lifestyles and budgets. With specialty software, they create 3D designs and show people how to give their closets the Manhattan-studio-apartment makeover. We can help you get a closet that feels bigger, holds more, and is more organized because it’s rooted in the cubic-square-footage mindset you need!

The Counterfeit Solution to Counters: Why You Shouldn’t Update Them Yourself

If you scour the Internet hard enough, you can find a DIY solution for just about anything. DIY, for the uninitiated, stands for do-it-yourself. There’s nothing coincidental about its popularity rising with the spread of big-box home-improvement stores. Add Pinterest to the mix, and you end up with a lot of people thinking it takes just a little elbow grease and a $50 gift card to turn this:

Into this:

Even if you could get a visual transformation like that, there’s still a problem: Most DIY “transformations” are Band-Aid solutions, severely limited in their performance and their potential to add lasting value to a home. This is particularly true with countertop makeovers.

One of the most popular DIY solutions for outdated countertops is to just paint and seal them with products designed to look like stone materials. It’s all about first impressions without any consideration of quality. A countertop glazed to mimic stone may give a first impression of stone, but it absolutely will not perform like stone. For example, did you know that given basic care, a quartz countertop—which stands up incredibly well to stains and chipping—can last up to 50 years?

Performance of a countertop material matters just as much as appearance. After all, countertops’ reason for being is to provide work areas and eating areas. Therefore their surface area must perform well against heat, abrasion, sharp objects, and stain-causing foods and drinks. It must stand up well to moisture and to very frequent cleanings, too. Nothing does that as well as stone countertops!

If you are ready to upgrade your countertops, come visit us. In our showroom, you can see the many different countertop materials we offer, including granite, quartz, recycled glass, solid surface, laminate, and more. And while you’re here, you can also see how these materials look with different styles and colors of cabinetry.

Planning for Your Dream Deck

Decks are everywhere these days. You see them now on the backs of offices, duplexes, and even mobile homes. But let’s be honest. Most of what you see are just hard, level surfaces to have underfoot and over a portion of the yard. They can in some instances appear a bit cookie-cutter, and simply not given the same design attention that home interiors are given.

Decks should be functional, but there’s a big difference between being handy and being tailored to specific purposes and the lay of the land. Decks should also be aesthetically harmonious with yard and home, extending the beauty of the interior into the outdoors. Done right, they are not merely outdoor flooring. That said, the best place to start when planning your dream deck is with what you want the deck to functionally be, such as:

• An extension of your home

• An outdoor kitchen

• A place for social gatherings

• A surround for hot tub or pool

• Some combination of the above

In large part, this functional intent will dictate the height and size of the deck, as will your existing landscape. Function over form, as they say. The point is, that should not start on the aesthetics of a deck until you have pinned down its purpose.

Now, as we’ve just said, beautiful form is the secret ingredient that’s missing from so many decks out there. The next thing you will want to do is consult with a deck designer and visit a showroom. In our showroom, we provide brochures to spark your imagination, as well as displays and samples that allow you to see, feel and test these quality products.

We suggest that before you visit a showroom or designer, you take some photographs of your home’s exterior and landscape, even sketch out a lay of your land. A deck designer can look at your photographs and site information, take into account the functionality you want, and help you zero in on a dream deck that’s both feasible and exciting. Critical to that process is choosing best-fit decking materials for your design, which the designer will help you do.

Unfortunately, many people over the years have been under the impression that decks are made from one variety of lumber and have planks traveling only in straight lines. In actuality, as you can see above, that’s not the case. You can blend species, stains, and even wood and composite/PVC.  You can also incorporate curves, just as Mother Nature does. The effect is art, something that blends nicely with the outdoors, not harshly jutting into or over the landscape.

If you’re dreaming of a deck as you wait for the snow banks to melt, we invite you to visit our Madison showroom. It has an exterior deck with different brands of decking on it, so you can see how the materials perform in real life and real conditions over long periods of time.  When it comes to planning your deck, we will help you with that too.  Contact one of our deck designers. The sooner you begin to plan, the better: Come spring, you won’t be the only one coming out of hibernation to get exterior home projects underway!

The Front Door Makeover: A Face Lift (and Energy Saver) for Your Home

Like just about every other component of a home, exterior doors don’t last forever.  Before this dreadfully cold winter comes to an end—eventually, it will—we suggest you take some time to see how your exterior doors are holding up. Extreme weather conditions are an ideal time to test door performance:

Why Custom Cabinetry?

Before mass production of cabinets was possible, pretty much all cabinetry was custom-made—designed for a specific person, space, and function. Some of it was beautiful. Some of it merely got the job done. But all of it all was made by hand to satisfy the specific needs of the person buying it. The industrial revolution changed that.

These days, much of the cabinetry now produced en masse is beautiful, durable, and ultra-functional. But what comes off an assembly line will always be missing at least one thing: personal touch. The only way to get a personal touch into cabinetry is to have someone pour a little of themselves into the creation of it. That’s what we do.