- Hey everybody. Welcome to Houzz TV Live
Today we're talking to Laurel and David
from Infinite Home.
How are things going over there guys?
- Going great.
- Doing good.
- Yeah, we're doing good.
Just cooped up in the house a bit
but other than that (Laurel laughs) we're doing great.
- [Rick] Everybody is sort of cooped up
so we figured we'd talk to some pros,
see how they're still working with clients,
learn a little bit about design, their homes,
interesting solutions for working from home.
And you guys are married and you have a couple kids
and you're still trying to run the business.
So you're kinda the perfect couple to talk to
about work from home and dealing with kids.
You're homeschooling the kids or the kids
are doing distance learning right now with their schools?
How's that working out?
- Yeah--
- Distance learning.
- Yeah they're doing the digital learning.
So they're, it feels like homeschool. Um (laughs)
- [Rick] It feels like,
well they're always there, right? (laughs)
- Yeah, yeah, exactly. (laughs)
So, yeah, so we've got their workspace upstairs
where they do their,set up their laptops
and log in and do all their work.
- [Laurel] Yeah
- [David] Have a printer and whatever they need.
- [Laurel] Yeah, it's pretty, pretty wonderful.
You know, they are liking getting up
and kinda rolling out of bed
and not having to get, you know,
fully ready and off to school.
And they like having lunch at home with us.
- [David] Got a USB right here
so they can charge their phones right off that.
And there, we actually
have their printer under here as well.
See it has some plans on it that I printed earlier actually.
I'll grab those after this.
- [Rick] Nice, nice.
- [David] So I've got all that accessible.
It's a creative space too. They love LEGOs.
Actually here's some of our architectural LEGO sets.
Kind of blend our profession and our fun hobbies here.
- [Rick] Yeah, I'm noticing that
he's doing a nice job on those.
- [David] Yeah, yeah, they are very, very creative
- [Rick] You've got a whole city, whole city building there.
- [David] That's right. (laughs) We got some--
- [Laurel] London
- [David] Little bit of London, some Italy,
so a little bit of everything.
- [Laurel] There have been challenges
like the other day we were on a company (laughs)
we were on a zoom call with our company
and it was
facing, the background was facing a hallway.
Well, our youngest comes downstairs (laughs)
in his underwear and just walks right by the screen.
We're like well, there you go.
- [Rick] (laughs) That's, hey, that's,
they're getting the full picture. Warts and all.
Whatever happens, you, you know.
- [David] Right in our house.
(Group laughs)
- [Laurel] Yeah, gave everybody a laugh
- [Rick] Oh my God,
so let's take a look at your home office.
What did you do for your home office?
- I'll flip you around.
So we've got a nice big table here
- And you're doing the social,
you're doing the social distancing
at the table I see.
Is that to keep your sanity?
What's the strategy behind
the opposite ends of the table there?
- [David] Well she can't kick me if I say something wrong
is really the big deal,
but it's about an eight foot by four foot or five foot table
so its a good size.
Sometimes the kids will come
and pop here in the middle if they're, you know,
just wanting to be near us, you know,
or need some help with their work they're working on.
But, so it gives space for that.
But, you know, trying to keep it neat and organized
and you know,
we've got it where we can pack it up quick if we need,
if we want to actually eat at the table
or just not look at it for awhile. So
- [Rick] Nice.
- [David] We decided not to bring our monitors and printers
and all that stuff down here.
- Let's talk about the kitchen while we're in there
a little bit. I'm looking at the concrete floors...
- [David] The concrete was just, to us,
a nice way to kind of bring in
another kind of structural element into the house
with our modern farmhouse kind of styling,
but you know I like in the summertime especially
it really keeps the house cool. It's cool on the feet
when you walk around. It wipes up, cleans up easily
with the kids and the dog if they trek in water
from outside, we're not stressing about the floors.
- [Rick] Right.
- [David] So, all those aspects have been good.
- [Rick] Good option for a active family
who live in a hotter part of the country, possibly.
- [David] Yes, yes.
- [Rick] The concrete yeah it's just not--
- [David] The only thing I would do different in the future
is I would probably put the radiant heat piping
in the slab for the winter time if we were to do this again
but in the summer it's fantastic.
- Now tell me, I'm seeing a lot of
I'm seeing some cabinets in there and seeing some drawers.
Did you do anything unusual?
- [David] We do a lot of drawers.
So, we like the storage space,
a lot more accessible,
things don't get buried in the back you can't get to.
So you'll see tons of drawers in our kitchen.
Only a couple standard cabinets. Even in the island here.
One of the things we did too is our upper cabinets are,
you can't even tell looking at them, but, they're
14 inches deep instead of the standard 12
and that allows us to get, you know,
a little more space in here.
You know the big wine glasses you can go three deep
and that's important right now during Coronavirus time.
- [Rick] Yeah I think we've all,
we all need a few more extra wine glasses
that's for sure.
- [David] (laughs) And it also works good for like
big, large plates and platters
and things like that, so.
- [Rick] And the material? You did a quartz in there?
Quartz countertop?
- [David] We did. We did a quartz throughout the house
so this quartz obviously mimics like a Carrara marble look,
but is has all the, you know all the nice properties
of you know scratch resistant, stain resistant,
you know, antimicrobial which is real important right now.
Cleaning disenfectant.
And not worrying about germs sticking around
so its going great.
- [Rick] Are you doing more quartz in clients homes as well?
Are you seeing more of that?
- [David] We probably do 90 to 95 percent quartz
over any other hard surface materials.
- [Rick] Nice. What's? Laurel!
What's that little, that little nook off,
that little nook off to the side of this room? Yeah.
- [Laurel] Oh yeah.
- [Rick] Yeah, what's that little space over there?
- [Laurel] One of my favorite places in the house.
We call it our morning bar and evening bar.
- [Rick] Oh, I like that.
- [Laurel] Yeah, we have our coffee--
- [David] Coffee station.
- [Laurel] And you know we were talking about tea earlier.
It made me think of like my favorite thing
that we did in our house, was this instant hot water
because we drink a lot of tea too
so we have this fun, pretty little--
- [David] Tea drawer here.
- [Rick] Oh, nice.
- [Laurel] And we can do the instant hot water bit,
and then evening this is where David keeps his bourbon,
and we have our wine collection as well.
- [David] Our wine over here.
- [Laurel] This, this has turned into
like this little intimate gathering spot
when we have friends over.
- [Rick] Yeah I love that. That looks,
I think I'd spend a lot of time in that space.
- [Laurel] Yeah (laughs)
- [Rick] In the morning and in the evening. (laughs)
- [David] I'm sorry. We got a little drink cooler down here.
- [Rick] Hey back to the hot water
so you put some kind of filter on that, on the hot water.
- [Laurel] Yes, it has.
- [Rick] That's a great feature
I think a lot of people would love.
How, what are you looking at cost wise
and maintenance wise with something like that?
- [David] The...
- [Laurel] The appliance itself--
- [David] I think the appliance is around,
depending on the one you get, five, six hundred dollars.
'cause it has a lot of I don't know,
it's probably too dirty under there to show you
but its got a water filter,
its got a little one gallon hot water tank,
and it you know,
so it's a little bit of extra labor
as well for a plumber to install.
It's about, it about doubles the labor
for the, you know,
what you'd normally do just for a sink and faucet hook up.
- [Rick] Gotcha. Is that another quartz,
like soapstone quartz there?
- [David] Quartz made to look like a soapstone.
- Now awhile back, you guys did a celebrity video,
one of our my Houzz videos with Deshaun Watson
and tell me a little bit about that
because he seems like just a quality young man
when you watch that, you see what he did for his mom,
everything his mom's been through, how he was raised.
What were some of the things that you really enjoyed doing
on that project in particular that just,
you know you guys are very focused on functionality,
I mean you make a lot of beautiful spaces
but one of your mantras is "hey, its not just about bigger,
it's about make it work better".
Tell me a little bit about how that went down
with that home.
- I'd say our primary focus was you know
not just making it updated and beautiful
which we absolutely did
but it was really making it work for the family.
- [Laurel] When they saw the you know, completed project
and how you know, it really allows for traffic flow
throughout the space, and family gatherings
in the kitchen and living room
and everybody still feels a part
and not just conjoined.
It was a great, great project.
- How are you working with clients now?
How many projects do you have active
at any given time typically
and how are, you know, dealing with this,
having to be social distanced and all that kind of thing?
- Sure, so we typically have you know five or six projects
that are in construction or are in production
if it's a design project, but, and then you know
or if its our interior design project,
but then you know in our backlog, in our design,
we might have, you know, three, four, or five more projects.
So not being able
to meet at our office
or go into our client's homes as much, it,
you know we've been utilizing zoom
just like we're doing here
because it lets us get face to face
it lets us, you know
if we're in design we can share our screen
and show them the plans or the mood boards we put together
- How are people using Houzz and their ideabooks
and how are you connecting with them on Houzz
for this right now too?
Are they spending a little bit more time
coming up with the ideas before you go into a project?
It seems like this is an opportune time
for people to kind of really,
you know get their ducks in a row
so to speak, kind of really think about what they gotta do,
what they want to achieve.
What's the best way to kind of work with you
before they might engage with you?
- [Laurel] Sure, Houzz ideabooks are fantastic for that.
You know, we have two custom home projects
that are coming up
that, that's been their homework,
to really,
sift through some of the,
you know sometimes
we have clients that'll build an ideabook
and they have 80 photos in there.
So we'd like them to, you know.
Because they've been thinking about their project
for a long time, many years sometimes,
so we like them to you know pair those down
to about 20 to 30 photos per space
and then we can go from there.
But yeah, I agree, it definitely is giving a lot more time
to really process what's important to a client,
for design, and what spaces are needed in their renovation,
and Houzz is a great resource for that.
- Any final tips for folks who are kind of stuck at home
maybe design tips or just kind of keep your sanity tips.
- I mean I'd say, you know, light,
put some music on in the background while you're working,
light a candle,
that one that you might be saving for guests,
you know, because you deserve it,
and get outside and walk every couple hours,
you know, just to bring some sanity to your day.
- Yeah, you know, take this time to really,
you know, connect with your kids, connect with each other
as a family, and , you know,
this is a unique time
where life has slowed down
and its gonna get back
to the normal busy hussle and bussle before we know it
and you know, there's going to be aspects of this whole mess
you know, but, you know, get out and exercise,
and just, you know,
start doing some of those things you've been putting off
and, you know, kind of get away from life,
so I think it's a good opportunity to reconnect to all that.
- [Rick] Yeah, I love it.
Well hey, thanks for being our first here on Houzz live
and we hope you have many more, have you guys back
do something with you in the future,
and keep doing great work, and thanks again.
- Absolutely, I had a blast.
- Thanks Rick.
- [Rick] See you guys.
- Bye
- [Rick] Buh-bye