Tomorrow Lindsay gets to see her grandmother's new place
I don't know if I've mentioned it here, but a couple of years ago my aunt decided to build a new house on her property for my grandmother. And not just a boring plain guest house, oh no! They contracted out to have someone build a Japanese sukiya-zukuri style (I think) house. I was doubtful about how it was going to turn out since they were having some problems with their contractors and stuff, but the final result is AWESOME. It's nestled into a part of my Aunt's place, that is filled with tall trees and lots of greenery, and they used somewhat luscious materials - real slate for the roof, thick wood planks for the large front porch, solid maple cabinetry with black granite countertops, shoji screens that run the length of the large room...
At first my grandmother asked me and Bryan to come over and give her design advice, since she liked what we did with our place so much - which I thought was REALLY flattering, especially since the vast majority of what we use came from Ikea or very reasonable furniture sources. I admit we dilly-dallied a bit since we're still working on our own place all the time, and during that time my grandmother wrote a letter to Kenneth Brown, who has a show on HGTV, and he decided to come and decorate the interior of her house for his television show. It's done, now (the process took months), and it'll be aired sometime this Spring. Funny enough, guess what he used to decorate the majority of the interior? Yup. Ikea. and Crate and Barrel. Go figure.
And I still haven't seen the darn thing! But I'm going tomorrow, and I'm going to take a ton of pictures. A TON, I TELL YOU. Be warned.