Unbelievable Home Makeovers: Before & After Design Secrets

3.7 million new videos are uploaded to YouTube every day. That's 500 hours of content every minute. And here's the chart that says there are 8 billion, not million, billion videos on YouTube right now. Right here where it starts to pop up, that's when COVID happened in 2020. And people were staying home and watching videos and it has exploded this platform. And this chart shows you when I started YouTube in 2008, there were 3 million people a day logging on to YouTube to watch videos. Guess how many there are today? 83 million viewers on YouTube daily. So why am I telling you all of this? Because YouTube has become such a huge platform that a lot of good content gets missed. So I'm gonna take it into my own hands to serve up some of my older video content because it is good and you're likely never gonna find it or see it unless you go search for it. This should be fun. Let's take a look at some epic living rooms. All right, let's take a look at the beach house. Now a lot of you have seen the beach house and this was your first impression when you walked in with the fireplace in the middle. And it is an exercise in symmetry. You see the built-ins over here, a corner television over there that took up a lot of space. And that's how I changed it. So we still have the fireplace in the middle, really cool cable lights in the ceiling, window treatments with transoms over the windows. This was just a faux finished sponge kind of, it was supposed to look like plaster. Now we have the shiplap on the sides. It was already in the ceiling and we painted that. So yeah, made a big difference. This is the same room looking the other direction. I think this is one of those, is that the same kind of room type of situation? This is one of my all-time favorite light fixtures I've ever designed. It has candles that light down in here and then the pendant lights here. And then these guys right here, they're kind of like little solid dongs, I call them, of glass, heavy glass, that literally are meant to just pick up the light. I did custom built-ins on either side that are kind of on the, you know, don't take it too seriously kind of thing, like the pipes that you would see under, you know, someone's basement or something. And then the light wood cabinets and shelving. All right, this is what the living room looked like in the house that I bought in California. This is 22 years ago I did this project. This was the living room on this side. Then as the wall went around, it was on this side and there was an opening door here to my office and an opening here to a dining room. I changed that and this is what my living room looked like by the time I had been there 18 years. Custom built-in that not only steps up like this, but it also bumps out like that. A custom painting right here to fit exactly where my old tube television used to be. And this is where that door was. So with a pair of lamps, this is like such perfect symmetry. I finally got the right pillows. These are my good old tried and true sofa and love seat that I've had forever. I think I figured the other day I've had those for 20 years and they've been reupholstered and reshaped three times. I think this is a really interesting one because I think this looks quite a bit different and here's why. The clients wanted a living room. It's a living room, dining room. They wanted something beautiful and I was, look how many windows are in this room. So many windows. Windows are great. I mean, it's, most people want windows. You hardly ever get rid of windows. But in this case, I felt like, you know, you have a lot of windows. Plus this looked right onto a stucco wall which was their neighbor's house. So do we really need to see that? Maybe not. I wanted to make this a beautiful upscale living room and so what I did was I asked them if I could close these windows in and make this a solid wall. Here's how you do this. If you ever want to do something like this, close your shutters or shades that are in your window to look like if you were home, you just had your shades closed. You board over it and drywall it and move on with what you're doing. From the outside, it just looks like the shades are always closed in those windows. But it's not like we went in and got rid of the windows. That's a much more expensive option. I think if I'd have asked to do that, they'd have said no. Now look at me here. I can see here. I feel like all of these photos, I have learned things as I've gone along and I can see here, I wish if I had to do this over again, I would have brought that rug out probably another six inches. And the thing is, this was a custom-made rug. I could have easily had it six inches bigger. So I understand when you guys get smaller rugs and maybe you regret it like I did. You'll notice here that the pattern, I lined up the pattern of this geometric shape. Look, the lines on the rug there match with the legs perfectly, which went right up. And you can see what I did. Having closed in those windows, I was able to panel the wall. All right, here's an example. This is the model home for a house that I was hired to do and the clients were building the house. And I was able to make a lot of decisions for them. So right now, I'm standing in the living room looking back at the entryway. It's the entryway that I want you to notice. I actually brought in a ceiling. I put a floor across here to create a library up here and a door opening here that came from the media room. I made it look quite different. This catwalk up here with this custom ironwork, and look, the shelving on either side, a door to go out. There's a bench here and a beautiful mirror. It just gave them more square footage and more places to sit. And of course, the living room itself, you can see here. See how much drywall space there is between there? By me adding the transoms to this, it made that space there a lot smaller than what you see before. And then right here in between, I tried this lighting fixture I'd never done before. It's actually, you open up the drywall and the light fixture is recessed inside the wall. And then the drywall is smoothed out like this. So when the light hits it, it sends light out. Take a look at that. You don't even actually get the full effect because this is a daytime photo, but at night that sent out the coolest lighting onto the ceiling and those are around in several different spaces. And now some memorable kitchen renovations. This is my kitchen. Remember I showed you what my house looked like? Had a dropped cabinet here, and look, dropped fluorescent lighting. Who doesn't love that? And then this right here was an opening to the dining room. Well, I didn't use it for a dining room. I used it for an office, so we closed that in. And then I redid the kitchen. You'll notice the principle of flow. My tile goes underneath the cabinet all the way across the back up here, across the top, underneath, all the way around and across here. Subway tile, the most inexpensive subway tile I could get and not be cheap. It's a matte finish, so it's not all shiny. And it just gave it such a sense of flow all the way from one side to the other of this kitchen. So here's where you now get to participate. I know a lot of you have seen many of my videos, even some of the older ones. Are there any that are favorites to you? If so, I'd like to ask that when you finish watching this video, go and find the video that you remember that really stood out to you. And while you're there, copy the link to the video. Then come back to this video. Leave me a comment, tell me which video it is, and paste in there the link. This will make it fun and interactive for a lot of people to read through the comments and find what other videos people found interesting and memorable. Speaking of kitchens, one of my favorite kitchens I ever designed, here's one that looks very typical. And I hope when you look at this, you think, is that the same space? You know, a mixed mash of white cabinetry here and here, a bench seat like a banquette, and a white with the oak. I mean, it was quite a combination. And here's your island here coming out, you know, toward you when you walk in, and then a kitchen table here. I designed this, a big, beautiful, walnut, custom-made island. See how the cabinets now go all the way to the top? And then a beautiful, it's an undermount sink, and one of these industrial, like, chef's faucets. I used the subway tile here, and what you'll see is that it's off-white and warmer off-white. So it's not all white, and it's done in a, not in a brick pattern, but in a clean line, more modern look. When I designed this, I wanted to have some cabinets that you could see through. I wanted to get the, it was a very dark kitchen. That's the thing that the client said. It's just so dark in here. So we added lights, of course. But how do you really take advantage of light? You try to get natural light. So I thought, if I could have the builder, the contractor, install, you know, I'll give him my plans for my kitchen. I'll say, this is where the cabinets go, right where this cabinet is. You've got the measurements and everything. Put a window in there. I will be honest with you, he got the windows wrong. I was on vacation when I came back. They had to redo it, but sorry you can't, you can't read measurements on plans. Anyway, I just think it turned out great, and I do think this is one of those, is that the same room? Are you ready to see some great bedrooms? Not just an adult bedroom or a guest bedroom. How about a bedroom for a two-year-old? What do you do when you're doing a kid's bedroom, and you want it to look like, is that the same room? Okay, here's the wall. First off, whoever painted this room, I hope you're on Valium now. Some sort of like, I don't know, Ambien, or something to help you sleep. Change that. This is for a two-year-old boy who was in a crib, was going to be, I needed to get him a crib that would convert into like a junior size bed, and it was gonna be a sports theme, so here we go. That's the after of that same wall. All of these lines here, guys, it's all, every line on here is custom painted. It's all taped off and painted line by line. I broke it up and created sort of the pattern I wanted. I did something similar down here on the curtains. I actually used pennants. I bought pennants on Amazon, and used that as a valance over the top. These little lampshades were white, and we painted them, striped them. Here's the other wall. Now, here's the good news. This child had a very symmetrical room, which is great. Had a bathroom here and a closet here, and that's how that turned out. You can see the border hair that comes across with a stripe and how that all tied in together with the bed that transfers into a little boy bed. Right here, this is a great before and after for a bedroom. I think you'd look at it and say, is it the same thing? Some of the things I did, obviously I got rid of this big, huge arm wall on the side here. We recessed the television in the wall, got rid of the ceiling fan, but you know what? This is only an eight-foot ceiling, and so I wanted to get more height. I'm all about height. That's why I take my window treatments to the top, which is a serious ropes-in-design or Rebecca ropes-in-design principle, and you hear me talk about it all the time, but let's take a look at what it looked like after. Right here, you can see that the ceiling goes up about eight inches. We added beams to the ceiling to connect it, lots of lighting. These are my all-time favorite light fixtures. It's heavy glass. I just think it's awesome. These look like they're vintage chests. We had them distressed, and they're custom-made, but they were distressed to look like they'd been around a long time. Then we installed these awesome antique mirror pieces that were divided by the black metal. Taking a look at it straight on, same kind of thing. Here you can see the reflection in the mirror of the television and the art pieces here, but doesn't this just look great? Why stop at bedrooms? How about bathrooms? Even closets. Here is a, what was a downstairs laundry room. We ended up moving the laundry room upstairs. A lot of people do that nowadays, and it's a great thing to do, especially if you have kids, because all your kids' bedrooms are usually upstairs, as well as the primary bedroom was up there. So this sink and washer and dryer had a new location. What were we gonna use this for? Well, they needed a powder room, so I designed them one. The new powder room. Put in this really cool dividing screen here, so the person using the Western has some, you know, not protection, but some privacy. And down here, this is kind of a cool thing. I don't know if this is working yet. This is a pull-out platform for the little girls to step on so that they can wash their hands, because they have a two-year-old. I think what was cool about this is this has a partition here. It's actually just like a French door. It wasn't even custom-made. It was just ordered to be the size we needed. That would give some privacy for the toilet area so that you'd have even more differentiation between. Look at this. How weird is that? I mean, I just wanna know, how often did they have to refinish this drywall? Usually, at least the tile goes up this high. Nobody, you know, most of these track homes, they don't take it to the ceiling, which they should. But this one is extremely low. It's not even as high as the window. It's crazy. So here you go. Here's your vanity. You're like, I don't know, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine lights across your vanity. Well, I'm sure our client had absolutely no problem getting her makeup on in the morning. She had really good light. So that's how that was to begin with. She's got her little shower niche. And looking back, here's the toilet room. It's kind of oddly shaped. And this was what their closet looked like before. And that's what it looked like after. Is that the same space, you say? I know, right? I love the fact that I was able to do these beams in the ceiling. I think that was the first time I had done that. You know, every time you add another element of design to your work, it just feels so good. You know, you finally get to do this thing that, because you, I think when you start off as a designer, you start off with really small budgets and then they grow over time. You get more confidence, you get more people see your work and they call you and, you know, people have more money and more money. So as I was gaining in my ability to have larger budgets, I was able to do this kind of thing. We put these windows in, raise the ceiling height. You look to the left and look, you come in here and there's an island with a bench seat, all the drawers and there's all their clothes and the shower is over here. And you look the opposite direction. This is not a door. It is a solid pane to be for privacy. This one is sliding doors. They are pocket doors. And when they pocket open, you go into the bedroom. Is that the same room? I think not. Yes, it is. All right, here's another closet. I like doing closets, apparently. So this is a typical closet, right? Just drywall and poles and everything else. Had two doors, entryways. I narrowed it down to only one. You don't need to go in through either side of the shower so we can get more space, but this is what I did with it. Total floor to ceiling mirror and then shelves, all, you know, all just gently angled. Of course, the shoes, we staged it to look so good. The husband's clothes, the wife's clothes are all around here. And this is the one that had like the pull down racks. So if your stuff is too high, you can't reach it. There's like a bar and you pull it down and your clothes come to you. That was super fun. I love what I do for a living. I just wish I got to live here too, but that's okay. I can live vicariously through everyone else. Honey, I'm ready. What if I told you that I've designed some jaw-dropping staircases? Let's take a look at one I did in 2013. I want you to see here. This is a staircase. Take a look, note the iron work on here. It was very whimsical. And as it comes down, so here's the thing. This is a spiral rounded staircase that goes up three floors. And here's the thing. My idea was we need some kind of like light fixture. A light fixture that can come from the ceiling and come down and go be long enough to span all three floors. Like you could see it on the top floor. You could see it while you're in the living space in the middle floor. And you could definitely see it because it's the first thing you see when you walk in the house. But the challenge was it had a skylight. How do you put anything over a skylight? This is where you would normally put your J-box for the light source. Like how are you gonna put things all around here and then have nothing in the middle? So I had this idea and that was I had this, it was a branch that had little things for Hanukkah candles. I know, I bought it I think at Pottery Barn like I don't know, 30 years ago. And it was sort of my inspirational thing as I looked around in my storage. And I said, what if I designed a branch that could be attached around the edges of that skylight? From it, we could wire individual bocce balls. You know what a bocce ball is? It's a round ball like this. That thing was so heavy. They had to actually weld it to the center beam of the house, the beam that held the entire house up. It was a big deal. Electrician wanted to know what lengths do I cut these wires at? So we used water bottles with a little bit of water in it, enough to give it some weight to sit there and go higher, higher, lower, lower, lower. And then they numbered the bottles to go with the bocce balls. I mean, sometimes I feel like God gives me these like inspirational moments. And I come up with something so bizarre and unique and I think it's beautiful. You can see too that we changed the railing. Look at the iron railing, how much more straight lined and clean that is. But up here, you can see where it all comes from, the source and all these different wires and getting them all at the right heights to show at the right time. Pretty happy about that. So let's finish out this video with an outdoor project. Let's take a look at the most challenging outdoor space I've ever designed back in 2014. All right, this is the same house. You see this skylight? The skylight is, like I said, we put the branch on there and everything else, but there was a fourth floor on this house. And on that floor, there was actually a pool. Was actually suspended between the actual home and the hillside. So it was like almost floating. But it had travertine tile here and then it had glass railing around it. But there was a lot of this space up here. That was the roof that wasn't being used. I felt like this isn't very much space. So the clients brought me up there. I had already finished the house. They said, we want to do the terrace next. I said, what do you guys want? And they said, I want something that covers us. Gives us some, you know, like, if we want to be up here in the daytime, we don't burn all day, right? And the wife said, and I want a bathroom. And I was like, okay, you want a bathroom up here? And all I could think of was like this three story house with this rooftop, this cool pool, right? And sort of a cabana type thing and a bathroom. All I could think of was like an outhouse, you know, this little square thing that had a roof like this. I'm like, I got to work on that in my mind. I got to come up with a better idea. So I did and they let me do it. And this is how it turned out. Is that the same space? You bet your bottom dollar. Look at this. This is the covering living area here. There's the lap pool. Three gas bowls of fire. Here's the bathroom. It doesn't look bad, does it? And it has a shower. It's a pretty cool bathroom. And then over here, I actually was able to build, I needed, you know, can't have that. You got to balance it. So I said, let's put in a kitchenette and we did. So they can fully entertain up there. Then they have these heating sources. Pretty amazing property. You know, I did the whole ceiling in wood, but I left open a space on either side here and across here to have the, kind of that draped canvas look. You can see over here, the same tile that was used here is used here with the bar stools, the kitchen, and the barbecue. We actually even retiled the entire, I was able to pick out the tile for the jacuzzi. And this is a vanishing edge. It's like a water feature. I mean, it was so cool. Those are just a handful of a few of the projects. All of them have corresponding videos that I'd love for you to watch. So look in the show more right below this video, the description box, where you will find links to videos that match each one of the photos I've showed you today. I hope this video has been fun for you guys. It has been fun for me. Like I said, I've been going back through the archives of my old projects. And I think, man, some of my best videos are hardly ever getting watched anymore because they're just getting buried by so much content on YouTube. And please, while you're here, if you are not currently a subscriber, I would implore you to please consider subscribing. Leave a comment, give a thumbs up to the video because it always makes me feel like, hey, they liked this content. I hope you did. If you didn't like it, don't leave a thumbs up. That would be incongruent. That would just be wrong. That would be, mm-mm, don't do it. Okay, I love you guys. I look forward to seeing you next time. I've got some really great videos coming out very, very soon. Let me just remind you, be sure to watch the 25 Hacks that we did at Daniel's Place in Vegas. It is epic. And don't forget to go back and look at that curtain video. There's so much for you to learn about how to hang your window treatments. All right, you guys, I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.