Urban Chalet.

If I ever have a renovation, remodel or design project to do, I know who to call.

Angela and I met as cubicle neighbors at our banking jobs, in San Francisco, back in the heydays of the late 1990's.  We were in our 20's, single, and executive assistants to investment bankers.

She was a great assistant, because she was so good at organizing all the high end functions like closing dinners and client events such as trips to Napa Valley wine tastings, and "roadshows", where bankers traveled, looking for investors. She had endless energy, tons of ideas, very high standards and nothing threw her off.

While she had her day job in banking, she was busy remodeling her old Victorian house in the city. At one point she and her husband had the whole thing lifted up to fix the foundation.  They pretty much did it themselves.  I was impressed then.  She also did endless decorating and improving everything in the house, from bedding, to flooring, to window coverings. She liked things custom, high quality and unique.  It wasn't surprising that on her honeymoon to Indonesia, she ended up buying a crate full of custom made ultra heavy, solid wood furniture, (oh, and she did this while battling a horrible intestinal illness she pick up there, putting her in the hospital.)

People noticed her style and her work ethic. While she was still working at the investment bank, (she eventually became a financial analyst), clients and co-workers wanted her help and hired her to get things done.  She had high-end clients who needed high end help, whether it was party planning, decorating or organizing.  Word spread and she got busier and busier with bigger jobs, eventually leading to remodeling and designing multi million dollar homes.

She left the investment banking world and started her business which would be called Urban Chalet, www.Urban-Chalet.com.  From out of her San Francisco living room she helped clients with interior design, site design, project management and custom furnishings. She took on assignments in California, to Park City, New York and beyond.  She got her clients purely from word of mouth.

Urban Chalet kept growing, Angela's living room hasn't been large enough for her business for a while, and so Urban Chalet has expanded to several office spaces in San Bruno, San Francisco and New York City, with a total of 17 employees, including her brother and sister.

Angela, and some of her ideas...

Displays of design projects, ideas and concepts.

They are currently designing and managing over 25 projects annually, with budgets ranging from $10 thousand to $45 million.

I visited her recently at their San Bruno offices.  The last time I saw her office it was in her living room, and now it's in a large office complex with several rooms, everyone sitting at open desks, with large tables, shelving and walls full of samples and drawings and ideas.

Things to come; Urban Chalet is designing their own line of furniture. Miniatures on a shelf.

A beautiful coffee table book, of course.

Angela has an amazing sense of style, is one of the hardest working people I know, with incredible amount of responsibility and stress and yet she is always happy and laughs at everything. (I remember once I was with her when she got a call that a shipping container of materials she had to have at her work site in the Bay Area, pronto, was stuck in customs in Los Angeles, holding up the entire project. I was so stressed out for her when I heard this, yet it didn't phase her one bit. She got on the phone and worked it out.)

Angela and I are now in our 40's, have been in each others weddings (she did my flowers!) and have had a few kids.  But other than that, not much has changed, she's still the same hard working, positive person I always new.

I look forward to working with Angela and Urban Chalet one day.  Either for my own project or with a client. I know we'd all be in good hands and get amazing results!

Ideas on large tables.

Tiny Homes. Really Tiny.

I came across this movement of Tiny Homes.  Have you heard of it?  I don't know if "movement" is the right word, but it is a thing for sure.  Downsizing and simplifying, living small. People who build/buy and live in miniature homes, that can fit in a parking space.  Imagine that. 

About 320 square feet of living space, that's how tiny!  And they live in these homes, full time.

Tiny home (MoleculeTinyHomes.blogspot.com)

Cozy. Also from the above website. 

And by the way, when I googled "Tiny Homes" I also found a blog about a person who obsesses over decorating tiny rooms, like a dollhouse. She re-arranges furniture and re-designs the doll house rooms and takes pictures and blogs about it and she's quite popular.  She has lots of interested readers who want to know where she bought the furniture, or how she made that tiny throw rug. Who knew?  I love learning about quirky things like that. 

But these little houses for humans, are people's full time homes.  They are built on wheels, like a camper, to circumvent some kind of a building permit rule.  There are companies and contractors who specialize in building and designing these and their popularity is rising.  They are permanent homes usually even though they are on wheels.  They have little gardens and porches and almost always a cozy looking loft in the rafters for sleeping.

(From ecojoes.com/tiny-house-big-savings/)

I read blogs about people, and even families with kids, such as TinyHouseFamily, who decide to downsize their whole life and move into a home like this. 

It gets me thinking about my minimalist side.  I know that for me, having fewer things, and fewer things to take care of, clean, keep track of, put a way and fix, makes me feel better in general.  I feel less stressed, less anxious and burdened.   And yet I live in a largish house full of stuff, like most families do.

But on the other hand, I like to have things on hand, just in case. We are lucky enough to have a large storage area below our house (let alone we also own a self storage facility), and so I keep collections of things such as; various empty glass jars, a large amount of old towels and sheets, and about twenty different quart size containers of paint, because I'm convinced I may need those sometime.  I might needs those class jars for a kids project. like making snow globes.  And all those old sheets, I may need for Halloween costumes or a future sewing project.  And the paint.. I may find an old piece of furniture I want to fix up and paint.  I might.  

So I save all this stuff because I can and I have the room, but meanwhile it contributes to stuff and clutter in my house.   And that sort of clutters my brain.

And our clothes in our closet?  How much do we really wear?  

How much time do I spend shuffling my "things" around in my house?  I make a pile of things at the top of the stairs, to go downstairs, and pile of things at the bottom of the stairs to go up, another pile at the entrance of our storage space and a pile of things in our hallway that need to go to our garage. It's an endless cycle of organizing stuff.

I feel like a squirrel shuttling my nuts around my den, tucking things away.  Cleaning our house consists of moving things from here to there, to there and here.  

I wonder what it would be like to have to pair down your possessions to only have things you really, really want or need.  It sounds like a nightmare on one hand, (how would I decide what to get rid of?) but maybe it would free up my time for other more fun things. 

If I lived in a tiny house, then maybe instead of caring for and organizing my things so much, I would spend more time doing things I truly enjoy.  

But what do you do when you have friends and family over?  Most of these homes involve some furniture re-organization in order to reveal a tiny dining table.  The "couch" doubles as a storage container and bed.  There's just no place to hang out and sit.  I think that would be deal breaker for me. And also the fact that we have 3 kids.  There's no way living in a tiny home is possible with three kids.