IN THE PRESS

http://blog.nola.com/reneepeck/2007/06/on_the_fourth_you_can_find_us.html

ON THE FOURTH, YOU CAN FIND US BY THE POOL

Posted by rpeck June 30, 2007 3:57PM
Categories: This Mold House
By Renee Peck
InsideOut editor

This Fourth of July, we'll be vacationing at home.

I suspect many other New Orleanians will do the same. Some of us are just too tired to hit the road this holiday week, with all the packing and planning it requires.

Others can't afford a travel budget, given Road Home and insurance waits and the inflated cost of not only gas, but also drywall, carpentry and copper pipes.

One couple I know finally finished their rebuild, and simply want to stay home and enjoy the refurbished digs. When you've lived for 18 months in a FEMA trailer, your new living room beats Disney World any day.

A colleague splurged on a fence and landscaping instead of furniture, and got home therapy as lagniappe.

"I can sit in my backyard and not see any of the ruined houses in Lakeview," he said. "It's green, beautiful and relaxing."

My own backyard has become an equally enticing vacation haven.

The wooden fence is still missing two boards -- one from Katrina, another from the tornado six months later -- but it does a respectable job of hiding the still-not-gutted house two doors down, as well as a couple of empty ones on the next street over.

Landscaper Matthew Ponseti, who bought a gutted house in our neighborhood after his City Park cottage went under, has pruned and weeded our yard and added flowers and bushes and saplings. (Matthew has his priorities straight, too; he landscaped his new home's front yard before tackling the wiring or drywall.)

more at: http://blog.nola.com/reneepeck/2007/06/on_the_fourth_you_can_find_us.html

NEW ORLEANS MODERN HOME IS CLEAN-LINED BUT COMFY

Posted by Karen Taylor Gist, InsideOut editor The Times-Picayune April 11, 2009 5:00AM

The front of the house has glass around the front door, but no other windows; the back of the house, however, is a different story. "It's so relaxing. We love it, " Jill Plotkin says of her contemporary home near the lake. "We find ourselves canceling plans on Saturday nights so we can stay home."

One look inside at the modern styling -- sleek, yet still cozy -- and the open floor plan that favors family interaction shows why the house is indeed 5,000 square feet for a family to love.

"There are not a lot of rooms, so it's manageable space, " Plotkin said. "The house is so big because the rooms are so big. We use them all."

The Plotkins -- Jill; her husband, Lee, a lawyer; and their daughters, Sydney, 14, and 11-year-old twins, Georgie and Sammy -- bought the house in June 2001 and did minor renovations.

Its dominant contemporary genes were inherited from Lee Plotkin's parents, who had designed and built the house in 1982.

"My mother-in-law designed all the openness; it's her vision, " Jill Plotkin said. "When it was built, no one was building like this."

But it was their interior remodel after Hurricane Katrina dumped in 8 feet of floodwater that continued the home's evolution toward the modern, making it into, Plotkin said, "the house it always wanted to be."

A wall of glass in the living area makes the pool and patio appear to be part of the same space, while the interior decor proves that modern and minimalist can also be warm and inviting.

CONTINUOUS COLOR

A new monochromatic color scheme emphasizes the feeling of spaciousness. The soft cream on the walls extends upward, onto the thick moldings and the ceiling, as well as downward, to the porcelain tile floors and the carpet in the bedrooms.

Even the pleated shades in the foyer, which cover the glass around the door, are the same hue, allowing them to virtually disappear when closed.

While the effect is soothing and clean, it's anything but dull, in part because the other major surface treatment in the living area is glass. Sunlight streams in here, flits across walls and floors there, adding ever-changing layers of interest. Windows also help provide colorful accents: Views include the dark-blue-bottom pool, which the Plotkins changed to saltwater after Katrina; the newly refurbished patio of stained concrete; and a built-in grill backed by a soft-hued mosaic-tile wall designed by Sydney Plotkin.

The landscaping is simple, Jill Plotkin said, "but in the spring there are flowers everywhere. Hydrangeas are about to bloom; agapanthas are about to bloom."

Matthew Ponseti, of Ponseti Garden Designs, "understood what we wanted -- something contemporary to go with the lines of the house. There's no formal garden. Bamboo is along the far wall. It's very clean looking."

And it's all visible from the great room, the living room and straight through from the glass at the front of the house.

More at: http://blog.nola.com/karengist/2009/04/modern_home_is_cleanlined_but.html

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