Today one of our Clients came in and we reviewed a couple contractor submitted samples for their project: Wood Panels and Swarovski Crystal links…quite the combination.

First the panels:

Our specifications and drawings call out for a wood wainscot through much of the building. The wood species for the project is mahogany. Because our wainscot is a stile and rail construction, we will have solid wood on for the stiles and a veneer product for the recessed panel. Some wood has a heavy and wavy grain running through the material and others have a straight, tight grain. How you cut this wood affects the look of the wainscot.  There are a number of cuts to choose from when considering the look you are going for with the wood; plain sawn, quarter sawn and when cutting Oak, Rift sawn.  There are many great tutorials out there on all of these methods, so I won’t get into them deeply here. However, because this project is a historic looking project we are using the “plain cut/sawn” method, which produces some nice arches in the wood grain, called Cathedrals.

Our contractor wanted to produce some wainscot samples to confirm what we were expecting. Below you can see a couple of these panels and how the cuts of the wood change the look.

Second, the Crystal:

We have custom designed crystal chandeliers for this project and when we issued the drawings to the contractor for bid, we did so with concept drawings only. For the fixtures to work right, we needed to bring the contract awarded manufacturer to the table to finish the design. After submitting some general pricing, this contractor (Crenshaw Lighting) submitted some of the typical crystal strands made by Swarovski. Each crystal type is made with different characteristics so as to reflect light differently. It is similar to cutting a diamond: the more extensive the cut and shape, the more brilliant and “sparkly” (as my wife calls it, with a twinkle in her eye) it looks. We played around with different options and then landed on these two types of crystal combinations.  We are now waiting to find out if one of these crystal combinations will work with our fixtures and fall in-line with what the contractor priced.

      

Days like today are the actual “fun” days that everyone thinks interior designers are always having.