- Welcome back to Houzz TV Live, I'm Rick Spence.
And with me today
is Noz Nozawa with Noz design in San Francisco.
Doing amazing beautiful work.
And you've won multiple awards over the last six years
for design and service.
So, so great to have you here.
We have a few spaces to talk about
in your beautiful Tahoe cabin.
And let's start in the great room.
You've brought it back to life.
What did you do with this space?
- So this cabin, it's 2,016 square feet,
most of which is concentrated in the great room,
which includes the kitchen.
The bones of the main great room were amazing.
There was a lot we didn't wanna touch.
So, much of the great room,
was actually just me cosmetic doing things.
You know painting, decorating, adding some art.
But the kitchen and the near adjacent bar area
were a total gut renovation.
- Tell me about your color choices,
what you did with the ceiling, the vaulted ceiling,
and some other things.
- Totally.
So, we loved the vaulted ceiling.
That was actually one of the first things that we knew,
we just wanted to keep it.
Actually funnily our contractor wanted so badly for me,
to be convinced to either drywall over the open wood,
or drop it with some other kind of faux wood.
The beams though were painted a funny brown,
and the brown had oxidized like it was poor quality paint.
The brown had become sort of that dusty purple.
So we painted all of that, Benjamin Moore Onyx,
which is one of my favorite true black paints.
And then on the walls, we had kind of that buttercup yellow
and it didn't look good.
It made everything kind of feel a little sickly in here.
So, I wanted to explore dark walls.
One of my favorite trees out here, is this one pine tree.
When you walk out into the forest,
you see mostly similar color trees,
and then there are these various bright blue ones.
And so that blue undertone green
was what I was going for here.
And, this is Benjamin Moore Deep River.
And we put it up, and at first I was like,
"oh god what have I done?"
(Rick laughs)
But I gave myself a week, which I always tell clients,
give yourselves a week to think about the paint
and live with it,
before you decide you've made a mistake.
And here we are, I love it.
- It's a really great color.
And I think, your advice about putting it up,
letting it you know breathe a little bit,
seeing it as the light passes
through the home as well. - Totally.
- How does it change throughout the day.
Because you might love it in the morning,
hate it at night, and you know whatever,
but that's such a Tahoe-y color to me.
What's not to love?
Beautiful.
Now a lot of your choices in terms of fabric
and what you did to the space,
tell me about how you balanced beauty with function?
'Cause it's a cabin.
- One of the original vision, like necessities,
from my husband from the get go
was, nothing can be precious,
and everything has to be comfortable.
And everything has to be optically comfortable.
Meaning, even if a couch is super super comfortable,
if it looks uptight or it looks too formal, it doesn't work.
We can't have it in here.
So, I wanted to create a space that,
just as soon as you walk in,
it feels like you're getting this like,
hug from the cabin.
The sofas here, I wanted them to feel like a giant pillow.
Like you would just sort of like flop.
And one of the things I always watch for,
as a designer and also just a host,
is, what do guests do when they walk in?
And, every single friend that we've ever had here,
without fail, looks at the couches,
they all say "oh my god that looks so comfortable."
And then they flop.
And then a lot of times they throw their feet up
and then just lie down on the couch
like it's a giant day bed.
And that for me was just, such the sign you know.
They're definitely not avant garde,
but I love that they have a slip cover.
I love that they are, just super warm and you know,
they very much achieve that vibe.
And then the art, is also kind of the same vision.
These pieces from Megan Shemet.
They look like a giant, happy hug.
And I just, I love how all of this has been coming together.
It remains a work in progress, but,
to the extent that the vision of creating
a comfy cozy cabin that you just wanna flop into and relax
as soon as you arrive.
To the extend that I think I've done
a good job of that so far, like I'm jazzed.
- [Rick] Beautiful space.
I could flop on that couch in a second
and pass out. - Oh yeah, come on over.
- Tahoe, love Tahoe.
So in the great room you have some fun things too.
You've got like a, sort of a deer above there.
What's his story?
He looks like
a fashionable deer head. - Oh my gosh.
- That doesn't look traditional to me.
- So I love a hunting aesthetic.
But I just kind of couldn't stomach the idea
of having an actual deer head in here.
What we wanted to do,
was find something that could be very much a center piece
over the fire place, but that felt artistic.
So I was so so lucky to find Chase Halland
who is an artist out in Idaho,
who makes these amazing Pendleton fabric covered deer heads.
So it's a deer mount, it's like a trophy,
but it's actually styrofoam.
And what he does is he meticulously cuts Pendleton fabric,
and then makes ears out of that same fabric.
And creates this deer head.
And then uses shed antlers.
Like you know,
annually deer all shed their antlers every year
in case folks don't know.
And then you can just go out and forage for them
and bring 'em back.
I asked specifically for a mule deer antler set.
Because those are the type of deer that we have
here in Tahoe and actually most of Northern California.
They have much bigger ears than a whitetail.
And they're a little bit pointier on the antlers.
So, that's what we have.
- [Rick] I love that dude.
And he's dressed in fine material,
the Pendleton stuff is legit. - Oh yeah.
- He's ready for the elements. - I love it.
- I love it.
Okay so, tell me about your lighting in this space.
You get a lot of natural light in there
with the windows or whatever.
But at night time, it's gonna be much more of a challenge.
So what did you do in the space for lighting?
- You a thousand percent called the chief challenge Rick.
The lighting in this place was the hardest thing.
It remains actually, a work in progress
and a little challenging.
When we moved in,
decided we're not adding any recessed cans.
First of all that would've required me
to cover up the wood ceilings with drywall
to fit cans up there.
It felt too, residential and not rustic enough.
So we decided we're only doing decorative light fixtures.
So we have you know like a chandelier over the dining table.
We have a chandelier over the great room, living room area.
And then everything else is table lamps and floor lamps.
- All right, so let's hop into the kitchen.
Nice beautiful space.
Looks like you have, a pretty good sized kitchen actually.
Some nice space to work with there too.
- Yes.
It was a total mess when we got here.
It was one of the reasons why I knew,
this would be a really fun project.
'Cause it's a total guilt free renovation.
Tile countertops, and grout, plywood cabinetry.
It actually was just falling apart.
There was an electric range.
And then, there was no range hood over it.
So if you cooked anything that smoked,
all of that smoke just went right up into the ceiling,
and into the smoke alarm.
So we needed to address that.
And then the peninsula made everything cut off.
You know and we're a household that likes to cook,
and we love cooking together with friends.
So, having a peninsula stick out from the kitchen wall,
just made everything closed off.
It made it harder for multiple people
to be in the kitchen together.
So, those were kind of the things I wanted to address
when we renovated.
My philosophy with this kitchen was,
maximizing counter space, and maximizing openness.
And then, aesthetically, just kind of making it feel
like my version of a cabin.
So what that meant was a mix of darker on the upper cabinets
and lighter wood on the lowers.
Was kind of the first time I've done that,
and I loved it so much.
I thought it turned out really cool.
The countertops were, a major pain point.
I struggled so much with that.
I had just been kind of going through
all of the various quartz countertop,
and like centered ceramic countertop options.
Didn't find anything that was right.
So finally we went to this slab yard,
and then of course, this gorgeous white marble
that had tons of charcoal and gray veining
and flecks of iridescent and flecks of like wine red stone,
was there, it was just sitting there.
And it was exactly the sizes that we needed,
it was in stock.
So, we ran home and that pulled everything together.
It just makes the cabin feel so much more
like it comes from the earth.
And like it's a part of this environment.
And we love it.
- So what is the back splash?
You did sort of a,
double brick pattern. - Totally.
- Versus a traditional subway look.
You kinda like doubled up on 'em?
- The tile comes from Fire Clay Tile.
And it's their brick collection.
So, rather than it being just a ceramic tile,
it's already got kind of that textured brick look
where they glaze right over the imperfections of the brick.
So I thought, you know,
subway tile and that sort of 50 percent off set,
that feels classic.
But it's so, everyone's been doing it.
So by doubling the tiles, it just felt a lot more me.
And a little bit more unexpected.
And then taking it up over the range hood
felt a little more unexpected.
And then my final red boop tile, which I call the boop tile,
was just, I couldn't let it go.
Like I fell in love with that red so much.
I love red in the cabin.
It's probably the chief accent color around here.
And, yeah, I was like
well red in the back splash, is gonna be insane.
It's gonna be way too much red.
So, what if I just did like one single tile?
And it worked out.
It's pretty neat.
- [Rick] Beautiful.
All right, so what do you wanna show us next?
- Let's go downstairs.
- [Rick] This is super cozy down here.
- As soon as we saw the window downstairs,
I knew I just wanna lie under this window.
It just feels like such a cozy little nook.
We had the idea to sort of create built-ins,
that framed that window.
And it turns out the window is just slightly longer
than a twin bed.
So it almost felt like, this is meant to be.
We've added storage.
We also technically have now added a bedroom.
And there's a trundle underneath that main day bed.
So that we can even fit two people down there.
And now there's actually built in book shelves
for my husbands sci-fi and fantasy book collection.
- [Rick] Pretty solid book collection up there too.
- [Noz] So, we only bought used.
And they're almost entirely books that he or I have read.
- That's nice.
Hey, you can make that into a thing.
When people come to visit you
they have to bring a used science fiction book.
And if they-- - Oh my god,
that'd be so cute.
And they have to have read it.
- They have to have read it.
And if we all agree, it makes the shelf.
Like only certain books make it into the nook.
- Oh, and you can sign it so that we remember.
(Noz laughs) - Yeah, you could sign it.
I love it.
Tell me about some of your choices in this space,
and what you did to kinda bring it to life.
- So I wanted it to be both slightly experimental
as far as the ways that we played with paint and style,
and also resourceful.
So, one of the things that I wanted to do was,
figure out like, can I just actually use paint
that we've used throughout the rest of the house
to paint this room?
'Cause we bought too much.
So I thought, okay, the ceiling isn't perfect,
but I've always wanted to have a black ceiling somewhere
in a home that I lived.
So that kind of felt like the perfect place to do it.
It just makes it feel cozier.
It's supposed to be a cozy cave.
So, the black ceiling was something
that we had a ton of fun with.
Changed out the light fixture.
And then the rest of the furnishings,
it was a lot of fun for us to figure out,
where can we kind of meet quality with value?
That couch in there, I've had it for like 12 years.
And it's moved several times with us.
And then the rug came from Houzz,
and that was a really amazing deal.
I love that it's a plaid but it's also a shag.
The TV console was maybe my funnest purchase ever.
And we thought it was just so corny and fun,
to have a fireplace inside the TV console.
And then actually what ended up happening
is the heat that it puts out is meaningful.
So it's very very useful.
And that was like a 150 dollar add-on.
So that was amazing.
We, just had a blast designing this space.
It was one of those rooms
that was a little bit lower pressure
than something like the kitchen.
Where it's, the only kitchen
and it belongs to the most important room in the house.
Downstairs kind of always felt like a bonus.
We called it the bonus cave, so,
the fact that everything down there came together
the way that it did, was amazing.
- Okay so in this little space,
you have a little bathroom that you did off to the side.
Now was that existing? - Yes.
- [Rick] Did you put that in?
Tell me about this bathroom.
- When we first moved into this cabin,
it was the downstairs bonus cave, and that was it.
There was just a closet, a reach in closet.
Standard depth, 24 inches.
And I looked at it, and we only had two bathrooms before,
but we have four bedrooms.
So I thought oh my gosh,
what if we use this closet as a bathroom instead?
So what we did was we tore out the walls
of the reach in closet, extended it by 18 inches,
to make basically a 42 inch deep bathroom.
A little Japanese inspired.
So, my husband and I love going to Japan.
I have family there, my ancestors are from there.
So I wanted it to feel almost like a tiny little onsen.
Which is a Japanese sort of, you know bath house.
In the shower, and then the wainscot around,
is a wood look tile.
It's actually supposed to look like Yakisugi,
the charred wood.
Which is you know from Japanese tradition.
Really cool, I love it so much.
And then we added back all of the wood trim.
Because having wood trim everywhere
is actually also very much in the Japanese tradition
of sort of the you know,
the way that they construct residential homes.
And then, I just added a whole bunch of things at the vanity
that were sort of dream pieces for myself.
So this sconce over the mirror, is by Roll and Hill.
It's a porcelain antler sconce.
I'm so obsessed with it.
I actually fell in love with their chandeliers,
and I just could never bring myself to invest.
But the sconce was a cute little splurge purchase
that still fit within the budget.
And then the sink, I absolutely love.
It's from the Iron Plains collection from Kohler.
So it's a cast-iron sink,
but the way that they did it
is there is an interior shoulder,
so it sits up like a semi-vessel sink.
That felt really rustic to me.
I love a vessel sink.
But it was a little bit more practical,
because it only sits two inches above the countertop.
- Nice. - And then finally,
my most splurge-y thing, for what it is,
is the Rocky Mountain hardware
that I put on the vanity door.
It was like, 120 dollars for one piece of hardware.
And I know hardware can be anywhere from like,
you know 50 cents to several hundred dollars
depending on how luxury you go.
But for me, that was a treat to myself.
I was like, I have earned this one piece of hardware,
and I love it every time I'm in there.
I just touch it.
- Well that is just an awesome beautiful place
you've created there Noz.
I love it Noz, in full effect.
Appreciate you taking the time.
Beautiful space, and I look froward
to more of your amazing work.
- Thank you so much, this has been so much fun.
- Great, all right, we'll be in touch.
See ya, bye bye. - For sure, bye.