Books
10 Costly Bathroom Mistakes - by Ammie Kim
Most bathroom remodels don't go wrong at the tile store. They go wrong three months earlier, in decisions nobody realized they were making. Over more than twenty years as an interior designer, the same ten mistakes have come up again and again, and every one of them is avoidable if you see it coming. This is the book I wish I could hand to every client at our first meeting.
Inside:
- Ten costly mistakes, each with a homeowner checklist
- Floor plans, elevations and before-and-after photographs from twelve real projects
- A budget guide and a complete remodeling timeline
- Twenty questions to ask before you hire a contractor
- A material selection guide for wet rooms
You will see the drawings behind the rooms, not just the finished photographs: the plans, the wall elevations and the material boards that were settled long before anyone picked up a hammer.
Ammie Kim is the founder and principal designer of Ammie Kim Interior Design, a full service studio working across residential and commercial interiors.
Coming soon…
12 Costly Kitchen Remodeling Mistakes - By Ammie Kim
A designer's guide to what actually decides a kitchen remodel.
Twelve kitchens, the drawings behind them, and the decisions that get made whether you take part in them or not.
The kitchen is the most expensive room in most houses to remodel. It involves more trades than any other room, it has the longest lead times, and it is the room homeowners research the least well. Most people arrive with an enormous folder of images and almost no questions about ventilation, clearances, drawer construction, or where the countertop seam is going to fall.
That is not their fault. Nobody tells them. The information exists, but it lives inside the trade — in cabinet spec books, appliance installation manuals, code sections, and the heads of people who have built a few hundred of these.
Interior designer Ammie Kim takes twelve of those things out of the trade and hands them to you, in the form they usually arrive at her studio: as mistakes, already made, by somebody who did not know they were making one.
These are not tips. Each chapter is a decision that gets made with or without you, and each one has a price attached. If you do not make it, your contractor will, or your cabinet supplier will, or the stone fabricator will decide it on a Tuesday morning while you are at work.
INSIDE THIS BOOK
One complete kitchen followed start to finish, from plan to finished room
All twelve mistakes — the work triangle, appliances chosen too late, ventilation treated as an afterthought, cabinet quality, island size, doors where drawers belong, countertop seams, lighting, electrical, life without a kitchen, where the money goes, and details left to the job site
Coffee with Ammie — the questions asked at a first meeting that sound like small talk and are not
Behind the Design — real project drawings with the numbers written on them
Four appendices: the kitchen budget line by line, what happens and when, twenty-five questions to ask before you sign, and the measurements that matter
Written from more than twenty years of residential and commercial practice, in the voice of a long conversation across a table with the drawings between you.
For anyone about to spend a great deal of money on a room they cannot easily undo.
Ammie Kim is the founder and principal designer of Ammie Kim Interior Design and the author of 10 Costly Bathroom Remodeling Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them).
Coming Soon…
A Living Room You Actually Live In - By Ammie Kim
10 simple tips on how to create a beautiful and functional room
There is a room in most houses that nobody uses, and it is usually the nicest one. The best light. The good furniture. The pillows that get straightened when someone is coming over. It is also the room the family walks past on the way to the kitchen island, where everyone actually ends up, on stools, for hours.
Interior designer Ammie Kim spent the early part of her career designing exactly those rooms — rooms that photographed beautifully and that nobody sat in. This book is what she learned afterward, walking back into finished houses and finding out which decisions people were glad they made.
Ten living rooms, and the decisions behind them. None of it is about taste. She will not tell you what to like, and you should be suspicious of anyone who does. What she gives you instead is the small number of choices that separate a room people use from a room people admire on the way past.
Most of them are not expensive. Three can be acted on tonight, with no money spent and nobody hired. One of them involves moving your furniture six inches.
THE TEN TIPS
Plan the Room Before You Buy the Sofa
Pull the Furniture Off the Walls
Give the Television an Honest Home
Buy the Larger Rug
Light the Room at Eye Level
Design for Tuesday, Not for Company
Vary Everything, Match Nothing
Take the Fabric Sample Home
Give Every Seat a Surface
Let the Room Arrive Slowly
ALSO INSIDE
Behind the Design — photographs of the author's own projects, each captioned with exactly what to look at
Coffee with Ammie — the questions asked at a first meeting that sound like small talk and are not
What It Costs — real numbers in every chapter, including the chapters that cost nothing
If You Do One Thing — a single action at the end of each chapter
Four appendices: what things actually cost, the measurements that matter, twenty questions to ask before you place a deposit, and how to choose fabrics and finishes that survive daily life
Written from more than twenty years of residential and commercial practice.
"Nobody has ever told me the rug was too big. Nobody has ever regretted a dimmer. Nobody has ever wished they had bought everything at once."
Ammie Kim is the founder and principal designer of Ammie Kim Interior Design and the author of 10 Costly Bathroom Remodeling Mistakes and 12 Costly Kitchen Remodeling Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them).
Coming Soon…