We have the pleasure of introducing Remodelista.com, the 2009 Homies award winner in the best home design blog category.

Remodelista.com (l to r) : Julie Carlson, Francesca Connolly, Sarah Lonsdale, Janet Hall

1. Tell us about Remodelista. How did it start?

Julie Carlson came up with the idea for Remodelista in the summer of 2006. She and her childhood friend Francesca Connolly were finishing remodels and comparing notes when Julie realized they had collectively amassed a huge amount of information on materials and fixtures. She and Francesca discussed the idea of creating a curated online site for like-minded people going through the design and remodeling process. By early 2007 they had started a blog on WordPress and were posting a few times a week. Julie then enlisted the help of two friends and fellow design enthusiasts living in California, Sarah Lonsdale in Napa and Janet Hall in San Francisco, and the number of posts slowly grew to several times a day. Today, the three Bay Area–based editors meet weekly with Francesca joining from New York by Skype, to discuss ideas and determine the weekly lineup of posts.

The four editors share a reverence for good architecture and design and have an eerily similar aesthetic—a shared design DNA, we call it. As a result, Remodelista has a very consistent, clean look and feel. We focus on residential architecture (our Architect Visit feature is one of our most popular), fixtures and fittings (sinks, faucets, tile, etc.), and well-designed products for the home. Our aim is to help readers wade through all the design choices out there; our Ten Easy Pieces feature lists of what we consider to be the best choices in diverse categories such as cabinet pulls, doorbells, table fans, kitchen faucets—the things you can spend hours trolling the internet for.

2. Is Remodelista more about interior design or remodeling?

That’s a good question. The answer is both – we see them as intertwined. We focus on images of interiors that provide readers with ideas and inspiration for their own remodels – or just a quick room change. We will deconstruct certain rooms to the level of specific products, fixtures, and hardware choices. The remodeling resources and products also set us apart from many other home design blogs.

Feedback from readers tell us that people use Remodelista as a source for large projects but also as an idea generator for making a small change that will have a big impact in a room.

3. Remodelista recently transitioned from a pure blog to an Integrated Home Design Resource. Can you elaborate?

The redesign of our website from a blog to a more full-functioned sourcebook for the home took us nearly a year. Our goal has been to achieve four things:

1. Maintain the clean feel of the blog and also keep the blog posts front and center. We want to ensure that readers see our daily posts in the main section of the homepage.
2. Make it easier to find old posts. Now you can easily search and browse the entire archive in Remodelista Daily as well as the Architect Visits, Steal This Looks, and 10 Easy Pieces articles in ways that the old blog structure did not allow. We also added ways to find posts that are thematically linked by color or room.
3. Create a sourcebook of products mentioned in our posts. All the products we cover are now organized by product category, making it easy to find our selections. So a reader can now quickly get to the Remodelista choices for Outdoor Benches, for instance.
4. Enable us to generate revenues from advertising so we can keep doing this. We did not run advertising prior to our redesign, and now we work hard to ensure that our advertisers are appropriate for our content and readers.

4. Remodelista offers a feature called “Design Files,” which we don’t recall seeing in any other remodeling blog. Is your audience using it? How?

Design Files is for readers that need an easy way to maintain a file of their favorite posts and products from Remodelista. We interviewed readers, architects, and designers to develop a tool that would be useful both as a long-term place to store ideas but also as an easy way for a client and architect/contractor to communicate ideas and choices when working on a renovation. In addition to having access to saved Remodelista content, readers can also upload their images to share in their Design File. After just three months, nearly 2,000 readers have created their own Design Files.

5. In addition to remodelista.com, you have a presence in Facebook and Twitter. What has been your experience with those channels so far?

We have found that Facebook and Twitter worlds help readers engage with Remodelista in their preferred medium. Initially, we thought of website, Facebook, and Twitter as being duplicative or overlapping media, but now we see that some readers like to get their information via tweets, others prefer email (we have a daily email digest of our recent posts), others prefer to engage with us on Facebook. We are working to customize our posts in each environment—publicizing short-term events on Twitter, for instance, or fostering active discussions on Facebook.

6. Your top four favorite posts.

That’s very hard – like being asked to play favorites among your children. However, some posts that come to mind when we think of the biggest impact or reaction they have had on readers. Some that come to mind are:

1. Steal This Look: Levenson McDavid Architect Kitchen
2. 10 Easy Pieces: Traditional Wall-Mounted Faucets
3. Steal This Look: Julianne Moore’s West Village Living Room
4. Architect Visit: Feldman Architecture in Bernal Heights

7. Remodelista features a lot of 10-item lists. Would you adventure sharing with us the Top 10 DON’Ts of Remodeling as per Remodelista philosophy?

That’s a great question – and it forced us to think about how many of our strictures can be formulated as prohibitions. Here are a number of rules that we believe strongly you shouldn’t do:

• Don’t do it by yourself - work with an architect. They have been trained to visualize space in a way that is impossible to replicate for the novice. Many people are averse to paying for design, which is counterintuitive. Contractors are absolutely essential to the process, of course, but there is a reason that there is the term “contractor’s special.”
• Don’t be rigid about your vision - Maintain an open mind. You may start a project with a definite idea in mind, but it’s pretty much a guarantee that along the way unforeseen circumstances will require you to adjust your thinking. Listen to the professionals; some of the best decisions end up being collaborative.
• Don’t overlook the details – doorknobs, switch-plates, towel bars all affect the look, feel, and functionality of your home.
• Don’t skimp on the items you touch and feel everyday. Spend money on well-made, high-quality workhorses in your home like faucets and fixtures.
• Don’t overlook outdoor space. Work on maximizing an indoor/outdoor feel; you can dramatically extend your living space this way.
• Don’t buy “throwaways.” We believe in purchasing well-made, well-designed pieces that will stay with you through moves, remodels, and redesigns.
• Don’t adhere to just one “style” (except your own). Avoid doing your home in the style of the moment, like Mission or Hollywood glam. Your home should reflect your personality and feature a mix of old, new, and collected over the years.
• Don’t be beholden to one source of home furnishings. Expand your horizons. Look at high and low, new and old.
• Don’t create a trophy room that isn’t livable or comfortable.
• Don’t feel you have to have all your precious treasures on display at one time. Consider rotating items—this reduces clutter, increases their impact, and freshens your space periodically.

Congratulations to Remodelista.com on its 2009 Homies Award.