hello and welcome to a new episode of design for the times i'm your host richard christopher's kaderi i'm very happy to have with me live in studio someone i just met recently although i previewed her work and it's just amazing we're going to talk about something today which people are asking me for more and more and that is more sophisticated storage solutions or s s s and with that i'd like to introduce check check email now sure and she's with  wednesdays are my media day and often a guest will start with me in studio and we do radio every wednesday which we did today live and we talked a little bit about the closet systems and so on and the history of it and how things are are changing and then we go to studio here where we actually can show and i'm very excited because when i look at some of your work and really delve into closets systems and way people lives and so on but i wouldn't want to for our our viewers to talk a little bit about how you got into closets i know you were in corporate america for a long time and then there was sort of a life change there must have been something in your in your personal history though you know for me when i started my dad was a general contractor and he built our home and i remember being five years old running through the the house when it was first being framed and loving the opportunities the things that you could create that had stay with me and i began to work with him for you what was the impetus of change making a life change and getting smaller because people had less clothes right correct now people have like i have every this is terrible i have every closet in the house loaded with clothes i even have a dressing room so i think some of us don't throw things away which is another thing because it's typically you know in an older house we talked about the classic six foot closet right one door the six foot closet and you're lucky if you have that right i didn't know that they had a little tiny like the cubby hole twelve inch deep yeah yeah yeah so you went into business as we said seventeen years ago so that would bring it to about two thousand to two thousand to right and you said you started out in new jersey i can borrow ok so in the space that you're in now i know you went from erickson barrow now you're in bridgewater in that facility you do you have sort of a sale center and manufacturing the manufacturing is done there act yeah we do everything in one place so talk to us about the process let's say let's say i'm selling my house which i am right now and thinking of going into a new smaller space and i'm used to having a very big space probably that would be the impetus for me to call somebody like you to take a smaller space and make it work what is the impetus for most people in quality when somebody's calling you about a closet  there's always a catalyst they are moving either to a bigger war to smaller ok so it's a move all that or or they're having a baby that ok that's a big one like change right at and that rings them to you yes to the realtors refer you to a lot of times you know  sell a house and i say well you know like you would think that yeah you'd think you'd be a natural but right thinking about houses i guess you know i guess that but to me i one of the biggest things people are looking for is more stories often the reason people move is for what not enough room not enough storage and often you know i stayed chausse as for the realtors what we often do is i tell people to take half their clothes out right off and harass it because people in fact when you go to sell your house they're going to go through your closets yes they will look through your closets or they have to be now too most people if you had a new york city apartment this would be the apartment this is a this is a gorgeous closet or maybe even dressing room i would call it so tell us about this design and what you've done here now is this  space what is that actually a third floor dressing room most valuable ran out of space in their closet and a space for their formal clothing ok so everything is behind glass ok now i see that so i see everything is behind glass now some of the reasons i guess people would laugh because obviously you just have easy access to your clothes you don't have to go looking for things are there any benefits in temperature other reasons why people would want class other than the fact that you can see through it and of course it's pretty  lighting i can see which is a lovely chandelier in this space to people often put lighting with in a closet like that that has glass we we can we can do you know motion sensor we can do lighting throughout but most people honestly do get their own lighting and and you can see that this has plenty of lighting without us doing any sure now when i look at the the image there the there's a double rack  if someone is very tall we might go taller we just actually went back to a house where i was a former football player we had a guy gavriel thing down and put it all back up to the ceiling wouter for his shirts that that was the exception ok and then i see you have a center island there why do people choose the center aisle and i know it's very popular it's a great luck but what what's the practical reason people just essential reasons for that one it's a place to put your drawers and the drawers don't have to be high so then you can put your countertop on that people like it for folding their clothing yeah i like a lot of there yeah now i see there's like sort of a lower cabinet i don't know if it's attached but it's next to it what is that cabinet for that would be to sit down and put your shoes on also that's sort of a bench a little bench if you will and then the bench has storage right so if you're putting your shoes on and so when you're getting dressed in the closet room that's what that's what i that's a very practical solution now it looks like in this case obviously because this is more of an almost a dressing room is the sheet rock they're painted a contrast in color from the trend i believe that it is very close  gray now so the colors of the closets the closet units themselves it almost seems to me as if the closet unit and then the the paint that was used for the trim in that room very very very pretty in the space so let's talk about the flooring in this closet do people want when in this case it's a little bit special because it's a third floor is the entire third floor that's usable space closet yes so is often the they redo them they might decide to put hardwood and so that's not going to match with spend in that existing in the house so it could be kind of yeah aren't and then i see to the right there there is a fold or so there's a place that you can have a full length right and then what's next to that is i'd also guess it's kind of hard to see what that is where the reflection of the island it is like i'm not sure on the other side which was on the right on the right side of the damage so where the full door is with the door knob and then what's next you know that's like a space we have three doors that have mirrors and then they can see themselves in all directions now which is a good thing i bet it's a blessing and a curse i was told by people is it often people prefer to have that  be a mirror as opposed to you especially if you have a smaller space as opposed to the glass itself of having the door be mirrored instead well only if you have the room to stand back like i said and do it and then i just want to point out on the left that's actually a slanted ceiling know it's sort of the eaves in the space right we made that work in that split well this is a very custom closet obviously so even if you have materials available these are kind of very specific to the roof lines here so a customer like this where you're doing something that's that's you know specifically custom to the space what's the turnaround time on something like this because you say you would imagine that you'd have to take very detailed measurements right well i would definitely take a while to design it and back and forth with the customer to make sure we're getting what they want but we do have a three d program people are pretty good at understanding that but let's talk about let's talk about the process per se let's say i decide that i'm not or maybe i tried to sell my house and i didn't sell and one of the things i was frustrated was i didn't have enough storage so i say you know what i'm going to call jackie it see if you come out of the house or somebody from your company from s s s and let's see if we can do something to maximize the space that we have to most people work within the confines of the space that they have or do people often had space pull from another part of the house what sort of story how sort of both ok either time they have called us they've already pulled from the house they were made that plan ok for the or they're about to do it and we love it when they call us before they do it should work is how we can tell them where to put the door right exactly exactly so in this case you created space that was unused space attic space correct correct into the space so there were a lot of options to go with so i imagine you have your first appointment you look at the ross space she takes the measurements now do you brings something what do you do do you bring a tablet or a laptop so again here from the single lovely in the space this kind of has all the bells and whistles it has the beautiful glass doors it has a mirror it has beautiful share to learn a space of this closet where your company handles the the the units themselves correct the built ins and then the installation correct do people ever buy the materials from you and then let's say they're building a house in the builder installs that from time to time they do not a huge savings in doing one now we just looked at you know this is an i went through i say about this is we have a little contracting top over by the window ok and so that just kind of sets it off a little bit but you know is that that sort of underneath the window there is that strong enough to sit on yes absolutely me in a bedroom i always put it least a chair or a bench if you're putting your socks or a lady putting stockings on you have that opportunity to do that because that gives you a nice wide seat there to be able to do that now i noticed underneath that bench there there is storage but it's not closed storage i kind of hard to make out what what actually i have a hard to say but i believe it's purses or purses i don't think i'm pretty sure that's what's under there some people like i'm up some like i'm down these people didn't have a lot of options because they had that window there let's talk about having a window in the closet ideally if you were looking for a space to add a closet would you prefer a space that did not have a window again it depends on the size i mean this this worked out perfectly here they obviously could have done more if that window wasn't there but they look like they have everything they want because you don't have solid wall when you have a closet so you're losing the you're losing the storage then when you do that right right ok but i guess the flip side to that is that you have a lot of natural light command line during the day which is good and this that particularly h as back lighting there now as opposed to the other cause it where the the clothes were protected within the glass this is open correct now is it more advantageous to be opened or is it more advantageous to be behind glass doors well i if you are worried about dust which i don't think is a big big so slow that one of the reasons people do the glass closets is just the dust right and if you want to put doris you have to make all those units much we like a girl or a twenty four twenty four do you think you see by with a little bit lance it depends but if you're going to put a coat or a jacket if you're just putting pants or something that don't come out at you then it can be a little bit less let's talk about your hardware the poles are the poles typically metal we use only metal you use a specific type of men although they're all well they're all different colors we have a pretty big selection of colors of the dollars really about for again just somebody wants to put something back there and that glass actually has a leaf pattern on ice now look at that i'm looking at the corners because part of it obviously is on an outside wall because you have a window there i see when the corners yeah there's a hall to do people sort of looks like there's not actually clothes in the actual right to try not to go or not even though they're not using it so that's like what it was just me works well in this design right let's talk about inserts for shoes i don't  what this was and so you created closets with all built ins right so i guess you work you had some good ceiling heights there yes you can see again it's on a slant right we were able to go as big as we could before we hit that so this is also attic space no no i believe it must be like a bonus through were now i'm looking at the the doors there the toll doors which is nice they're mirrored so they're really going to a lot of opportunity  sort of check yourself out before you go out and then it drops on both sides so is this all the furniture there is functional furniture in this room so are people often using systems like this as furniture yes yes for sure they'd like to replace their furniture right now so far everything we've seen is white or people doing painted finishes that are not white like maybe black or grey grey so popular are we doing about it in a few actually gr believe she has all the desk there but right no furniture for clothing now because how deep does look pretty deep there almost like our morris how deep is a closet like that those are twenty four inches deep when i looked  drawers and doors next to them we made the structure that deep to match up but the drawers are not you can't do a twenty four even in your kitchen your drawers are not twenty four inches right let's go to the next image ok the when we can do this to any one style it can be bigger or smaller you don't have to if you don't have that much jewelry you don't need for pullouts we sometimes do a mirror on the top in the back and noting a couple of glass shel the inserts and very fine so if somebody you came with somebody came with a wish list you designed this and then you implemented you know well the installation ok that's good interesting i think it's a good look at the next image ok talk about all that about this so this is a region closet for a little boy of course this was in our showroom so there's no front was right he's got a little bit of a return wall bright you might have this much so it's just fun with the blue baskets and if you just think this looks like it's attic space right so this is somebody's attic space that was very unusable you can see that the walls go way out to the side so with brightness built on that wall you would have no any at all so you build within specific purpose it wasn't finished before you went there you know well it may have that bad but they finished it with the idea of putting a closet there and you have a variety of solutions there you have a built ins against the the wall there which are kind of nice and looks like you have some sort of a bench under the window that has close storage right and then the eaves i see there's an island but it's sort of having the island in the middle it's towards the wall right and sometimes we even come out further with like a peninsula so if you don't have enough room for an island we can somehow sometimes come out from the side to give you some drawers and space and a lot of hanging space i like clothes song i just personally i don't know what it is i like clothes hung i hang my jeans up which not everybody does that people often like to put their jeans but we talked about this earlier today about the crease that dorna free why does that happen over time well it depends on the hangar and how and how carefully you put them on you don't supply hangers we do not supply what type of hanger would you recommend to go with the system but it depends on what you're hanging a nice shaped wooden hanger if you have jackets and coats and things that you really want to keep the shape of right i like a hanger or they are they dresses hang differently i would sleep a pair of pants can be folded right a dress or again is going to hang very long you know i'm in suits not going to hang as long do you have to do i mean i get you to keep in consideration if a  you like a carpet in a closet or do you like a hardwood surface in the closet i think that the hardwood looks nicer but the carpet is probably nicer way more in my getting dressed sure the very cause it's where people had maybe some sort of