Apartment 46 for the Home

My wife and I worked with Melisa when we bought our new house. She cultivated a style and look for our home that we love but would never have been able to come up with on our own. Our house, including our newly remodeled kitchen, is now a warm and inviting space that is also far more functional for our family.

Where do I begin?! From the very first meeting Melisa got our vision (and budget) for an unexpected kitchen remodel. Keeping our family/children, thoughts and ideas in mind, Melisa sketched up a kitchen we couldn’t ever imagine owning. And trust me, I’ve seen all of the fixer upper home shows, living in the Bay Area you can’t get those kitchens with those budgets unless you have Melisa involved in your project. Her attention to detail and creative solutions to unique spaces is impressive. She goes out of her way to find the best quality products for the best prices. She is thoughtful with her recommendations and provides opportunities for input. Melisa helped us navigate through a very stressful and difficult situation with our contractor. She advocated for us throughout the entire project not only with the contractor but also with subcontractors who did unsatisfactory jobs. She holds people accountable. And although we are no longer in a contract, Melisa continues to support us fight our battle with our contractor and continues to provide us with pieces of art that bring life and character to our home. We love the lighting choices she made throughout the kitchen and into our living room. She thinks about how one room connects with another but also ensures to create a different feel in each space. Melisa has an incredible eye for details and can point out the smallest inconsistencies that make a difference on the overall look/feel of a space. We love our kitchen and all of the details that make it so special. We can’t wait to move along to the next rooms (someday). Thank you Melisa for being you!

Melisa guided us through the process of decorating our living/dining/entry area. We are very happy with the final result. She communicates well and promptly (most of the time in real time). She adapts to feedback well, sometimes hold her grounds and push our comfort zone a little bit, to create an environment that are comfortable and refreshing at the same time. Her design is thoughtful and coherent, while incorporating our preference and house's character. She pays a lot of attention to dimension, function, fabric maintenance and kid friendliness, which we appreciate greatly. Melisa keeps our set budget religiously and used google spreadsheet to keep track of all expenses. She is well informed of industrial trends, has numerous sources in different budget levels. The art pieces she select for us is tasteful, some of them are sourced very creatively. This is our first experience working with a designer and we are very happy with it.

My husband and I hired Melisa to help us with our very first remodel. We live in a condo with a difficult HOA and we needed to make our kitchen, laundry room and surrounding spaces more functional for our family all while staying in a budget. Melisa was able to add details we never thought of - like extending our counter to a waterfall edge adding seating and counter space we now can't live without. Melisa recommended small changes like painting our floorboards, adding new light fixtures and changing our mantel and hearth, all details I never thought could make such a difference in the end result. She guided us through the dreaded Ikea ordering process for our cabinets and then showed us Semihandmade doors which added a high end farmhouse look we never could have achieved with Ikea alone. While we struggled with her recommended contractor, Melisa was a great go between and helped me communicate my needs and expectations. We are so happy with our end result and hope to enjoy it for years to come.

I have been working with Melisa on a complete furniture overhaul. My family moved into a new house but could not figure out how to furnish it due to lack of storage and lots of open spaces. Melisa came up with wonderful ideas to use the space and make the awkward nooks look and feel intentional. She gently encouraged us to move beyond our comfort zone for furnishings, sussing out our aesthetic style when we did not even realize we had one. Working with Melisa, we were able to create a living room, dining room and foyer/concealed office space that works for our casual lifestyle but is still high-quality (including gorgeous built-ins) and is fantastic to look at. She also transformed my kids' rooms, coming up with creative solutions to fit all their belongings in oddly configured space,, and harnessing their personalities. She also took care to source furniture and accessories that can grow with them. Additionally and overall, when we had problems with vendors, she took care of everything, which included getting us discounts and returning a "non-returnable" item. Thanks to Melisa, I have my first ever "grown-up home"! BACKYARD UPDATE: Melisa also has worked with me to redo our backyard. After much indecision, I gave Melisa free reign to design, and the results are incredible! She zoned the backyard into specific areas—eating, fire pit, living room--and filled the rest of the space with colorful, drought-resistant plants, fruit trees, and cool rocks. My backyard literally looks like something out of magazine, yet it is still fun for me and my kids to hang out in. Just seeing my yard through my back windows makes me happy! Even better, she managed the whole thing; we used her garden team, and they did wonderful work and a reasonable price. We were about halfway done when my family went out of the country for two weeks, but we returned home to a a backyard oasis. My family has already spent more time in our yard in one month than we have in the two years we have lived here.

My husband and I worked with Melisa as our designer as we underwent a major home renovation, and we couldn't be happier with the results! We love showing off the place to our friends and family. Melisa struck a good balance of understanding what we were comfortable with and pushing us to try things that we would never even think of. She acted as a great sounding board for our ideas, and she really helped us speed up the decision making process. We can't thank her enough for transforming our space into a home and bringing our vision to life.

Unprofessional communication and the contract was not honored. Responses from Apartment 46 for the Home required more than one full week, and consistently opened with excuses for the delay. The contract states, "...upon termination, any unused design hours will be reimbursed." An email from Apartment 46 for the Home agreed to provide an reimbursement, and then subsequently failed to do so. Repeated efforts to contact this vendor for reimbursement had been ignored.

I've worked with Melisa on multiple projects involving custom cabinetry and woodworking. She's great at being the catalyst between the clients and I. She's really on top of her game, has a great eye for design, and I see that she's not only good with her clients, but they seem to be best friends by the end of the job.

We had a great experience with fabulous Melisa. She helped us update our living room, dining room and entryway to create a more unified and pretty space. Her idea book was full of beautifully curated pieces that were selected with our taste and budget in mind. She helped us select paint colors, new furniture, art, accessories, and a fireplace renovation that included sourcing a custom mantel. We love the custom sofa she helped us select. Choosing a custom piece allowed us to specify exactly what would work best for us. She also helped with choosing and arranging furniture to maximize our living room space. I highly recommend working with Melisa. She has excellent ideas and can execute an amazing project!

From the moment we met Melisa, we knew she was a great fit. Melisa has been working with us on nearly an entire house redesign. We have a small 2 bedroom home that was in need of some direction. We have an eclectic style inspired by our travels but also needs to be comfortable and durable for our 3 dogs. She really understands style and is able to blend new pieces with old while not compromising the function and feel of the space.. She's very fun and easy to work with. She's reliable, and available by phone/text in case questions arise. She keeps the idea book updated with great finds and is always surprising us with what we can do with our small space. We are budget conscious and she's been really good about picking pieces that fit our budget. We have been very happy working with Melisa and highly recommend her to anyone looking for some help polishing their space.

We recently repainted the exterior of a 3 story, 15 unit apartment building and looked to Melisa to help us with our color choices. Unfortunately we are straddled with the color of our foundation cinder block. Melisa's eye for color turned a boring maintenance requirement into a transformation. After stressing for more than a month over 10+ color combinations (our failing), we finally went with her INITIAL advised choices. I almost got lost going down the rabbit hole that the variations of white creates! Thank you Melisa for saving me from that quagmire! We would have saved a lot of time and effort had we just trusted her eye for color to begin with, but it was out first dealing with Melisa. She also has such great insight into the little things that we would have overlooked, like house numbers! The exterior looks so good that we retained her to help with redesigning one of the apartments. Her choice of subway tile, LED lighting, carpet color, bathroom colors, and floor tile have turned that residence form boring apartment beige to something that really stands out - on a budget!!! Again, thank you Melisa!! When the next opportunity arises, we will definitely be looking to Melisa's jedi design power to help us navigate that adventure! We now believe in your force Melisa!! Again thank you for your generous attention, inexhaustible patience and undeniably talented insight.

Working with Melisa has given us the direction we have needed to make our home a home. Melisa is knowledgable, creative and very personable. She has been very patient and flexible in working with us at our pace. Not only that, she is budget conscious; a major plus!