Our Top Plant-Filled Home Tours | Handmade Home

[Music] inovation [Music] stories I'm Hilton Carter and this is my renovation story hi I'm Hilton Carter plant stylist artist author father and husband located in Baltimore Maryland do I have a fascination with plants I'm not sure does it seem like I do I'm more I would say in love with the idea of being surrounded by Nature my whole thing is to make sure I bring in plants that not only bring life to a space but connect with the individuals who live in that space my wife and I were looking to have a family so we wanted something that we would plant roots if you will um and and develop our family in this space for decades to come we wanted to stay in the city but we wanted it also to be Lush I grew up half of my childhood in the city a lot of concrete a lot of asphalt not a lot of greenery when my mom moved us out to the county where there was a lot more grass a lot more areas to run around and discover uh nature I wanted my kid to have that ability to just go out into the world and see nature but still be in the city our agent had decided to plug in a few homes for us to look at this one kept coming up it was on a market for months um during a time where where everyone was scooping up and grabbing whatever they could possibly grab at that time instantly I was like why isn't the outside the exterior of the front of this house the first photo that they put on this site because I was taken away the silhouette of this house is so beautiful that I love it already it was fine to instantly move into but what I saw was the bones and the potential our home was built in 1905 and immediately we had to make sure that we changed electric it was knob and tube wiring and that is just not safe so we knew we needed to replace that wiring so we have a lot of walls coming down the biggest room in the house that would need the the most attention was the sun room it just didn't have what I needed which was a lot of light the ability to have a lot of light come in from that southern side of the house and a lot of light coming from the Eastern side there were small fixed windows you couldn't open these windows there was carpet on the floor all right the sun room is I want to be uh held caressed by as much Greener as possible so this is the sun room there was a lot to do here not only did we have to open up the space bigger doors more windows but we also had to remove the floor we had to strip away parts of the ceiling the thing that I needed to make sure happen happened in this space was that everything connected to Nature so let's start with one the slatted ceilings now this slatted ceiling Red Oak you'll see these slats tie in not only from the sun room they'll make their way into the kitchen and they'll work their way into the powder room as well now from the ceiling to the flooring let's talk about that wanted to have a tile because of course this room would have the most amount of plants now I also wanted to make sure that those tiles those colors tied in again with the natural elements the other colors the other I would say patterns that we're going to mix in throughout the home so you'll see a mixture of terracotta uh concrete Grays uh slate colors mixed in some uh taupes this is what I like to call bright indirect light and having that ability to bring in Greenery is going to be based on how much light how much exposure you have coming into a room and so I took full advantage of just having a full wall of melted plants in this space and over here I decided to do not just plants in dirt but propagations cuting that are in vessels and water that will develop and grow roots this exact same size door frame was here it was a door frame exact same size here with two French doors that opened up and if you open them up they would open up into this space which was the dining room now you can see if there was just two doors here how closed off it might feel but now because there's such a nice flow you're able to just be in the kitchen you can serve stuff here and you can make your way back into the sun room it becomes a full space and even if you're further back even into the dining room you can still see the presence of the sun room the one thing that I told my wife when we moved into this house we were going to do these Renovations was that regardless of where we stood on the first floor I wanted to make sure that wherever you were standing 180 degrees from this point all the way to this point that you could look and see out of three windows that kind of made it feel like you were almost in a terrarium now we are in the kitchen this used to be the dining room why would they waste a Southern Exposure for a room that you're barely in you're always in the kitchen whenever you have a party your guests conjugate to the kitchen they fill it up the kitchen was in the north side of the house very small not much room to entertain and my wife is big on having people over cooking knowing that we were going to swap the kitchen and the dining room was going to be a big part of our Innovation you're moving Plumbing you're moving gas lines you're moving vents the kitchen was there all the way over there so of course a lot of things had to be moved one one thing you're going to notice off the top as soon as you walk into the house would be the slatted Hood you saw the slatted ceiling in the sun room now we're bringing that here that attention here Not only was that a big focus in here concrete more porous material same types of materials that I would pot plants in the same types of material that I grew up around I wanted to bring that sort of element into my home I love the texture the tooth as they say the tooth of this material other things that really are happening because we moved out kitchen here is that we're able to have again more plants vine plants another aspect that I love about this kitchen was building out these fronts these cabinet fronts this is the tie in to that Scandinavian look that I was such a big fan of to save us on money yes we did have all of the fronts custom made but inside it's just Ikea boxes there was a point where we had all this shelving out here and we had no idea what would go into this open space luckily I have a wife that loves wine she said well there's no reason to have a opening here let's put in a wine fridge here we need a storage to put away all of our glass for plates snacks I love coffee needed to have a space to put all of my coffee and then hide it in the dining room there's not a lot of available space to just have a bunch of plants outside of all of our Windows there's so much Greenery that still provides that sort of connection with nature while sitting in a room that maybe doesn't have as many plants as another room and we figured that it would be a space that our kids once they would come home from school they could hang out there do their homework before and be closed off now it's opened up cuz we took down that wall and I can walk you right into where we entertain guests and sit down with our family and have holiday meals sometimes it's my uh office cuz I'll bring my laptop out and work here this is kind of where we see our kids doing their homework and working on school projects now I will say when this was a kitchen you can imagine uh counter here here all here I think there was a sink here so you can look out the window now the window obviously was a bit higher to fit that counter height I believe there was a range here and a refrigerator here so the space that you could available space for walking around was probably the size of the actual dining table itself now in here again with the concrete again with the wood red oak or walnut here in a light fixture bringing in those nice warm colors those tones that make individuals when they sit in the space when they're just sitting here make them feel at home when it came to out powder room there was one that was already on the first floor we just moved it we just nudged it to the further back side of the house what was very important in this situation of having a powder room on the first floor in the space was that it made sense with the rest of the home tying in not only texture not just color but how the space itself when you sit in that space how it just feels I wanted to feel as if every decision in that small space was just as well thought out well planned as every other room in the house who doesn't want to relieve themselves in here it's the perfect space to just have that small moment it's like a vignette of what's Happening throughout the rest of the first floor and then of course the greenery that is mounted on the wall cut a new opening and add an additional window to this part of the house none of you seen the powder room let's go take a look at the living room during the process of demo as they are removing walls and electrical lines from one room to the next there was a discovery of inactive termite damage and a lot of that was happening under the floor of the living room it it felt like a punch in a gut wood floors when we walked into the house was one of the appeals of this home and we loved it floors are just perfect love this wood and the fact that we're going to have to rip up the flooring and buy new foring was um unexpected it wasn't something that we wanted now we're in the living room the same ideas and tones whether it's colors and material that you find in other spots and home you will find here one of the things that is happening in here currently is that we have a leak in our upstairs bathroom so other things are happening and working as we talk right now the renovation process is never never complete so at one point there was just a hole here that went directly to the basement I said to my wife it would be really nice if we could just have it almost have like a spiral staircase from the basement up so that this room was just large it's a big tall room and that we just put a tree in the center of the floor just growing up and she was not a fan of that idea not a fan of that idea so when the flooring in the living room was compromised and we knew we had to do flooring throughout the home I was like all right let me bring this idea one more time this time a smaller plant in front of this window she was like perfect so we planted a pot into the floor that's connected to the plumbing so now this beauty can grow out of the floor so some of my favorite aspects of the inovation would be the inflor planter for one the amount of Windows we added uh to the home obviously the accordion doors that now move out to the deck the deck itself one of my favorite Parts about our renovation was having these accordion doors bringing the outdoor in allowing us to expand the space making our deck space in our sun room one single room that was important and as you can see the doors fold back and fully bringing the outdoors indoors and vice versa some of these tropical plants once it becomes a bit colder outside make their ways back in but then you can expand that sort of space so that's the beauty about having uh an opening like this that you're able to just allow all of it to just pull you in to grab onto you and you can just flow from one to the next to the other it was also necessary to have a garden having a kid kind of guided Us in what our garden would look like having a little sensory spot where my daughter could touch and smell and really see blooms develop so we have this little bubbling Boulder which my daughter calls the water rock it brings a lot of birds to my yard but it's pretty interesting to see how much more enjoyment she is getting from having all of these really cool features in our garden when people come into the home I want them to feel like they're at home I want them to feel caressed by every single part of the space I want them to feel as if nothing's too delicate for them to explore or to touch I want them to feel as if what is mine is theirs and that it isn't a museum if it's great to be on this side of a renovation it's a beautiful thing to be living in the space that you spent so much time designing and waiting for but I will say it's it's it's even a a better thing when your idea of what would be great for you and your family to live in surpass your expectations of what it can be at the end hi I'm summer rain and this is my handmade home in Brooklyn New [Music] York my name is Summer Rain Oaks and I live with my pet chicken Kippy and I am the creator of Homestead Brooklyn which is a Blog and a YouTube series to really connect People Back To Nature particularly people living in the city I think I have a little over 750 plants the last time I checked and I have to like update my spreadsheet cuz I'm nerdy like that um it's probably a little over 400 different species or cultivars or varieties of plants and um and this has been kind of like years in the making I've lived here actually for 14 years so the space was pretty Barren when I moved in and I think now it really really feels like a home to me one of the first things that I wanted to do to kind of warm up the space I ended up getting a ficus Lata which is a fiddly fig it was about you know maybe 3 or 4T tall when I when I brought it in and it just completely transformed the space Kippy oh you're so tall you're so tall you want to get down okay soft landing on the cushions this is my first plant this is my fidi fig I actually cut it back by about 2/3 I've had it for probably now my 10th year going into my 10th year so it is a beast and it holds a special place in my heart because it's the first plant that I got and that's part of the thing that I like about like this place is that the plants have really made this their home as much as I have um so it's it's nice to be able to find these like little pockets for these particular plants this is more of a cacti and succulent corner so the bedroom was actually used to be my office space my goal for that space had always been to create a vertical garden on that wall giy do you want to be in this want to come up here H hold on she's going to poop it goes straight into the compost if you're [Music] wondering all right sorry about that it's like having a encourageable child living with a chicken is full on it just is it is what it is it just adds to the weirdness but that's that's good you just got to own it [Music] sometimes so this is my sub irrigated green wall basically these are glorified gutters sitting on rafts in felted pockets and the sub irrigation system mean that the water comes from below and so how that actually works is that there is a tube up here that cuts through to the back of my house into the sink and I could turn it on from there and then the water comes through the pipes and feeds it on the bottom and then once that one fills up on the top then fills to the second row third row fourth row and fifth row this is uh reinforced whenever anybody wants to think about building a green wall in their house they have to consider the amount of weight that's going on the wall so this actually used to be my closet it just seemed like a waste of light because all that window light was coming in and I would try to block it away from my clothes and so that it wouldn't bleach my clothes and I was like this is stupid like I should just move my clothes out of here and just turn this into a garden it may seem a little taxing to have to water all these but what's great about it is I have these things on humidity mats so these are mats that kind of you water and then the water comes up through the bottom of the terra cotta pot cuz terracotta is [Music] porous my favorite DIY project that I ever did was my first DIY project that I did with my dad with which is the Mason jar Garden that's in the kitchen I really love that one in particular because it is my first like fatherdaughter DIY project my dad is so fun to do DIYs with and it was a totally upcycled project like it was just found wood uh Mason jars and then I think the only thing we bought were tapcon screws and hose clamps so this is my kitchen space and there is a lot of handmade elements within this kitchen even this countertop was just made basically for this space this has a hole cutout in it because I could throw my compost in here when I chop up vegetables and take out the compost put it in the freezer and take it to uh the Green Market this was my old stove so instead of tossing it basically turned it into a sub irrigated planter if you look up here this is a flexible flyer turned into a plant shelf but also a place where you could hold your pots and pans and your cups and if you look over here this is a swingable shelf like vertical garden this is actually inspired by this broom handle so this broom handle was sitting in the corner of this area forever since I moved in here I wanted to create like a green wall but I still wanted to see the space of the exposed brick these are all upcycled boards hand cut holes just some rope and some zip ties and the [Music] broomstick being able to like actually try to grow plants that typically wouldn't be considered a quote unquote house plant even though that's a totally human construct um is very interesting to me and sometimes I fail and sometimes I don't and sometimes I try again it's a lot of trial and error and experimentation I get a lot of um people who come in they're a little bit slack jawed you see they just like oh my God look at all these plants um but a lot of times people say this really reminds me of my grandmother's house there's some element that feels like someone is coming [Music] home I do think that the plant shop by my house like gets a lot of business afterwards because I think of people like get inspired and they're like okay I'm going to go get a plant right now thanks again for stopping by my home I hope you enjoyed the tour and I'll see you again later our plants are like our kids and so when we saw this room I was like they have a home hi I'm Andrew and I'm Latoya and this is our handmade home in fville Georgia so if I had to describe our house in three words I would probably use the words light eclectic and ours but it's also destructible cuz we have four kids so nothing can be too precious right yeah when people walk through the door I want people to feel warm like I want them to feel relaxed I don't want it to be too stuffy so this is our living room um when we first bought the house this room was what did you say Valentine's Day red it was very very very red um but thankfully the homeowners left the window treatments and window treatments going to be like so expensive so decided to really design the whole room around the window Tre treatments and I also had these two amazing pieces of art from a local artist here in Georgia the two pieces went together really well and so we use that as the inspiration for the whole Space one thing that every home needs is Art I think a lot of times it's an expression of who we are whether we're conscious of it or not you know I always tell people like go from your gut when you're picking things because there's something about that that's res with you whether you're in touch with that or not so I just think art is so important yeah cuz I think it's how we can kind of bring ourselves into our space so the big picture windows are amazing because they really are like artwork you look out into the yard and whenever the seasons change you're able to just see these amazing things we kept the color palette neutral in the space because we wanted to be calming we also wanted to create a more modern for us type feel I think every time I I move into a new house like I really feel it out and I'm just like what do we want this space to feel like and I think using those neutrals we already had the leather couch we already knew we were bringing those natural organic plants into the space it just seemed like the way to go one of the things I really love about this space is all of our plants this is like the kind of the showstopper plants that we have in here and they're some of my absolute favorites yeah plants are so important to me in my house because I think plants teach us so much A lot of times plants teach you about resilience I had one plant that would die before a new Sprout would come out and kind of this cycle of life is that sense of mindfulness that they bring you you have to really pay attention to your plants you have to listen to them and when you just take a break out of your day to just focus on that it just calms The Madness of everything else going on so another thing I loved about this room was having builtin shelves so they were just begging for things to put on them so I've had the opportunity to design everything from residential homes to commercial spaces um but I've always done it within the context of fair trade ethical Global so we've gotten a chance to travel together a ton and um and I think through our travels through my travels I have just come to love handmade and I think it is a way to show and to appreciate culture and I think it's also something that we wanted to expose our kids to the world is a beautiful place let's bring it home so that they just like grow up seeing this stuff and it's normal to them this is a wedding vase from an artist in New Mexico named Angie yazzy um it's just so beautiful and it's shiny and it has this wonderful texture to it so it's made out of mic clay which you can only find in New Mexico so Angie literally goes and mines her own clay brings it home and builds each piece by hand we actually got the opportunity to go to her house um and to see her build some of these pieces and then we got to be a part of a very sacred ceremony which is when they fire the pieces the meaning of it is supposed to be because it has the two spouts is it supposed to have wine in the middle and then it's supposed to be like the bride and the groom drink from each side of yeah one of the most important things whenever I'm traveling if I'm going to bring a piece home is that I really want to make a connection with the artist so whenever I look at the piece and it's in our home I want to be able to see the face or the hands of the person that was working on it we really seek out the artists and meet them either in their workshop or at their home when you hold something that's been handmade you feel less alone because you remember your connection to that person and to that piece this is another piece that we love and uh what's cool about this piece is they actually mix the clay by hand and then they put faces that represent their zapot Tech Heritage so we're looking for those things that just like normal tourists probably can't just buy I really believe in just designing from your gut and from your intuition are there rules you know perhaps but I really believe that like bringing pieces into your home that you connect with like in your soul and in your gut I think I is the most important all right so this is our library so this is actually the first room that we put together when we moved into the house we just love it it's so warm and cozy I also think it's a great example of putting good design with the functionality of having a family so we use this table as like our game table and we make everything nice and kid height so we've got puzzles and games but another thing is that we try to be really intentional about our design so you're also going to see a lot of cool pieces that represent um African-Americans as a part of History um being someone who shops vintage and does a lot of thrifting I just very rarely find Art and photos that reflect that so we've worked really really hard to make sure that we reflect that in our home so this piece is actually my grandfather which I love and think it's really special so one of the things that really matters for us for our kids we have a very diverse household is that representation really matters so for them seeing images of people that look like them super important so whenever I saw this piece I just like I I loved it and then I love this piece which is her father he was a Vietnam War veteran but as you can see here's our very messy game but that's a huge part of our design philosophy is this idea that you can have layers that you can create a space that doesn't have to be so tidy and perfect and symmetrical it's like a snapshot of our life in one room um it makes me smile every time I walk by so the room behind me is my office kind of mom cave so it continues to celebrate my love for plants of course and then it also just has little piece in it that make me really happy um so I've got some great antique pieces that I've collected from Guatemala more plants and I also My Little Secret is I love collecting Funko Pops so I've got little Funko Pop collection and again it just makes me happy and then when I get time I also love to paint um and so the space affords me the ability to be able to do that so this is the plant room I guess if you wanted to get fancy the arborium arborium doesn't roll off the tongue but this is one of um this is one of your favorite spaces in the entire yes our plants are like our kids and so when we saw this room I was like they have a home I would say that we have probably about hundred plant so it's a lot to take care of like watering day is like a whole whole whole situation the fact that we can sit out here year round enjoy the sun enjoy our plants you know it also functions well for our family as sort of a mud room it's just such a beautiful just peaceful place to come and get away from the noise and the house and all the kids and just come and take care of our plants my favorite space in the house is our bedroom because it's calm and at the end of the day with four kids and two businesses you need to sleep and so I love the fact that our bedroom is a calm space l to had to really talk me in the very first time we did a black room she had to talked me into it one of my favorite paint colors in general is black black is just so warm and cozy and romantic and obviously that's what you want in the bedroom but no I think it's just dreamy and um and I think a lot of other colors pop off of black as well it doesn't feel like a dark room I think that's one of the things that like I wasn't a Believer when you first started telling me about Black I wasn't a Believer but then now I am because you see that it doesn't actually take away from the space it's super bright it's super beautiful but it also is not unapproachable like I feel like sometimes I'll see bedrooms and you're just like wow I like do I have to take 170 pillows off the bed before I go to sleep um and like like our bedroom it feels utilitarian but also beautiful we filled the room with some of our favorite artwork so we've got honest a here watching over us so this is a local artist um a just a gentleman named Christ but every so often he paints and so what he does is he paints over pictures that he finds and so he just reuses the canvas and the frame just creates these really Whimsical paintings that I just personally have fallen in love with so this is uh my grandfather's self-portrait I think he was 19 years old whenever he painted this his name was Leonardo and he was born in Italy and came here and uh him and I share a lot of a temperament and I think that I get my inspiration for like the artist that I am because of the fact that he came before me if you look at it it's actually really interesting because even though it's a self-portrait of him and you can maybe see a little bit of the resence um he it's also in the Italian sort of like um brutalist style so he has these lines he has the shading it is truly a very Italian piece of artwork in addition to being an incredibly meaningful kind of like heirloom for us as a family and so that was actually the first piece of art that was hung in the entire house right oh yeah art is meant to resonate with us it's meant to communicate what we value I think it's also meant to to give to us what we need so we've got this piece by another local artist named Kristen Ramsay and we've got a couple of her pieces in the house and what I love about Kristen's art is it always just has this positive message you know listen to your heart in the Stillness there is infinite wisdom and I just think that's just so beautiful and who doesn't want to be reminded of that like every day we don't ever want to be pigeon hold in our design you know this is a very modern piece next to a very antique piece to yeah the grand gold chandelier this is the chandelier that almost killed us and you know we try not to spend too much time underneath it um because it probably weighs like 1,000 lb so um but yeah it's real brass you can see in the detailing and um I mean it came out of a massive great room in a in a house and uh I think again it's a huge credit to her design philosophy of like how how do you see this in this space I can't see it but that's why I have to learn to trust her because it's going to be awesome we absolutely love this house yeah we feel really blessed to be in this place and this house is exactly right for our family and it's exactly right for us at this stage of life and so yeah we couldn't be any happier yeah it feels like [Music] home well hello darling I'm Christopher AKA plant Queen and this is my handmade home in Brooklyn [Music] darling basically plant Queen is a journey where I EXP ress myself as a non-binary fem and explor the wonders of plant Parenthood so my profession I'm an educator so plant Queen is about providing opportunities for folks to learn about the Wonders and beauty that is indoor gardening I got into plants uh with my grandmother she was really into gardening and it was a space for her to create moments of joy and healing and so when I was younger she would take me to some of her favorite nurseries in Philadelphia and it was a magical experience especially as like a little baby Queen you know looking at this luscious magical Jungle of a nursery and so she would let me pick some of the plants that she would take home and whenever I was over her house she would remind me to water them and so at a very young age my grandmother was nurturing to nurture in me and so about about 5 years ago I went out and bought my very first plant it's a marble Queen poo she was struggling and I made a you know promise to myself that if I could take care of this plant then I had something on my hands and so 5 years later she's 9 ft long I've propagated her multiple times so she's all over the apartment and she has over 200 [Laughter] sisters I like to describe my apartment as maximalist when it comes to plant and minimalist when it comes to Decor so I like the decor to be like very spaced I love blank walls I like like blank spaces people may find it weird but it's it's I don't know I think it's like a plant- parent thing but whenever I step into a space I whip out my phone and I pull out the compass app and I'm like oh what direction are the windows facing and so that was like the first thing I did when I got in here and I was like south facing Windows not one but five south facing Windows oh yes I was like let's go deposit already in application sent am I approved let's [Laughter] [Music] go one of the first things that I did when I got the keys uh was that I came here I cleaned the space I cleansed the space and I ordered food and I sat on the floor and I watched the sun move throughout the space it was so peaceful so calming had a little playlist playing I was like in a very Zin mood and as the Sun moved throughout the space throughout the day I Mark those particular spots and I was like oh this would be good for this particular plant the sun is here for this amount of time and so that was like the very first thing that I did I just wanted to get a a better grasp of the environment that I was bringing my plants into all right darling so we are currently in my little plant Nook and I have about 90 green girls in this particular space and and the very first thing that I did when I got this apartment was install the shelves if you know anything about moving into spaces in Brooklyn going vertical is the way to go because we just don't have a lot of floor space so nine times out of 10 giving your plant too much sunlight will cause Sunburn and so because I get direct light I have sheer curtains on the curtain rod to kind of filter out some of that light so plans aren't getting that harsh harsh Sunray um but are getting filtered bright light so that's always the way to go especially if you have south facing windows and so um one of my prize possessions is Miss monstera deliciosa this queen right here she's a bit of a diva and she's taking up a lot of space but she's absolutely beautiful and I actually started this queen it started with this one little leaf right here so I bought this Queen in downtown Manhattan in Chinatown and she was sitting in a vas and they were rooting her in water and I was like hm let me see if I can get this queen to grow and so I brought the queen home she struggled for a bit I didn't know if she was going to make it and I just allowed her roots to mature in the water and about I think it's been almost 4 years now and she's grown into this amazing Vine so miss Monera deliciosa is native to the tropical rainforest of Central America and uh if you notice she has these beautiful roots that are growing and so these are aerial roots and uh we have to remember that the green girls that we bring into our spaces are just small little miniature versions of their Majestic cell in the wild and so this queen is actually a Vine a very very large vine and you can kind of get that feel as you're looking at this particular Queen and so if she was in the wild she would be growing up a surface whether that's a tree trunk or a wall and these roots would be anchored into that surface she's not doing that right now because I don't have the space just yet but I will be applying a moss Pole to this queen sometime soon so that it mimic the natural environment and habitat that she would grow in in the wild I used use that space as an opportunity to just lose myself in my little indoor jungle and so sometimes when I'm having like a very stressful day or I just need to take a break from technology we all need a break from technology at this point I'll literally just go in there no technology close door and kind of just either engage in like some pruning um you know may Identify some vines that I want to propagate and so using mindful gardening as a opportunity to engage engage in meditation right cuz meditation could look so many different ways and it have to be you just sitting there with your leg cross it could be like whatever you need to do in order to be fully present in your body and gardening sometimes allows me to do that darling sometimes our green girls need a little haircut and that comes in the form of pruning and so what you'll find is that yellowing leaves like these um or Browning leaves basically decaying leaves are more likely to attract path and so the best thing to do to keep your green girl serving those Lush looks is to give her a little trim okay girl so we are now in my little corner of my living room and this is basically where I get a lot of my work done this is my little makeshift office space I have some random little instruments I believe the saxophone is such a sexy and beautiful instrument I do not know how to play it but you know I appreciate it from afar you know I put it on my playlist little saxophone instrumental moment we have some snake plants here we have this snake plant and then we also have this one over here this snake plant is one of my favorite plants because they're so easy to care for they're adaptable when it comes to different lighting situations and their wonderful air purifier and so always got to have a little bit of the snake plan in the area and so these are you know some of the green girls that keep me company when I'm working and I tend to have a plant buddy of the day where I'll you know place that plant on my desk and kind of just use it as an opportunity to inspect the leave and escape the screens and so it's a little practice that I do to help me Sak around it and root it so I love my bathroom um and the reason that you know I was particularly drawn to this bathroom was because it had a window a south facing bathroom window yes God everything I enjoy when there's like a creative element to how the plant is existing and so uh in my bathroom I have a stagghorn fern and I have a complicated relationship with Ferns and I feel like a lot of plant parents do people say that they're picky I don't think they're picky I think they just know what they enjoy and they're like girl if you're not giving it to me I'm I'm not going to thrive right and so you know uh ferns really really enjoy moisture humidity if you give them too much sun their leaves will burn so they're they're delicate queens and but if you give them what they need they grow so beautifully and so the stor Fern is a much harder Fern more resilient and so I have a stagghorn fern in my bathroom that's growing out of a coconut shell and I have had that plant for about 4 years now and she's had her ups and down but I think I found like a the perfect spot um for her in the bathroom where she gets filtered bright light and she gets a lot of humidity and moisture and so she's just been [Music] thriving I also have a stack horn Fern in my bedroom that's mounted on uh wood um and so it's literally like a piece of Living Art which I'm just like yes if I can incorporate that into my face lovely all plants are works of art she's gorgeous she's sturdy she's resilient and one of my favorite green girls in my bedroom well honey welcome to the bedroom this was one of the last baces that I greened up and I wanted to do so intentionally and really piece it together and not rush the process and so some of my favorite aspects of the bedroom has to be this green girl right here she is the Monera albow Bata she has these beautiful little white variegation on her Le and she's a hot ticket right now because she grows very slowly and that has to do partly because of her anatomy and that some of her leaves lack chlorophyll so she's just a little slower when it comes to Growing which also means that Growers and nurseries have to wait some time for them to grow and mature so she's a hot ticket I actually got her for $50 back in the day about maybe 3 4 years ago you could not find her for that price but um She's mine I love her and she's adorable I really enjoy gold trimmings I don't know why but I really do and so I have these cute little gold shells I have the books on the floor and I have the plants on the shelves this shelf right here actually uh was a mistake as I was putting the shelves on the wall the second one lit down to like the slanted position and I was like oh this actually looked pretty cute and different and so I kind of kept it that way and then on the other side of my bedroom I have a little collection of cacti when I first began my journey I stayed away from cacti I was like oh they're rough they're uh I don't know if I want to get into them and then the more and more I study cacti I I realize how delicate intricate and really beautiful they are and so these are a variety of different cacti you have the spiral Cactus right there you have the prickly pear cactus right here and these Queens are you know Green girls that are really resilient and actually don't really need a lot of care they just need a good amount of sunlight and that you make sure you check the moisture of their soil because you want to make sure that they dry out completely [Music] you know I think of my plants as like my girlfriend they are beings that allow an opportunity for introspection for self-care for reflection and I think it's always good to have a good group of girlfriends to remind you to care for yourself and I feel like that's what my plants really do for me and so you know when I'm watering my plants I'm like am I drinking enough water if I'm like figuring out are they getting enough sunlight did I let sunlight touch my body today right um and then when I'm like you know making sure they have the nutrients that they need to grow I'm like well did I give myself you know my body being and soul the nutrients I need to like you know continue to spread my root so my green girls you know are a constant reminder of the various different ways that I need to constantly engage in caring for myself well darling thanks for stopping by my little Lush indoor jungle I'll see you next time [Music] honey hi my name is Corey and welcome to my handmade home in Brooklyn New [Music] York I have been making since I was a very young kid currently It's Paper plants which you'll see around the house um paper mâché objects for the home like boses and lamps and and trays and then also I've been doing sewing so uh I've been making lots of pants trousers I only said trousers because uh every time I say pants someone from the UK is is like gross it's trousers my grandmother taught me how to sew and make quilts and I also used to make lots of drawings portraits you know on road trips my brother and I would sit in the back seat and he would read Hardy Boys and I would sit there with a yellow roll notepad and just draw and draw and draw and draw so I it's always been my passion this place I moved in 10 years ago and so um some things are exactly the same as they were 10 years ago um but adding different things has just happened gradually sometimes just because I just follow my nose and I get excited about a different technique or um skill that I want to learn and it's hard for me to part with things and so I'm like well if I move this little bit I'll shove this new thing right here and work out working with paper was something that I picked up from my day job um one of the projects I had to do many years ago was make a life-size baby giraffe out of craft paper you know the brown paper and I was like oh this is like a cool Med you know it never occurred to me before this is a cool medium to make sculpture with because it's and expensive and it's ubiquitous and it's easy so this living room here it doesn't get any direct light so I can't have any house plants in the living room and I really wanted a fiddly fig which everybody you know what's crazy about fiddly figs you probably remember so I made one from paper and it was just sort of an addictive process and just kept making more and then yeah yeah that's how it happened you know my methods for making the paper plants have evolved over time so this one is like a little more cartoony but um yeah this is the beginning the first few were a little more um stylized in then just by doing a bunch of them I I started to see that they were becoming slightly more realistic looking this we have um ornamental yam theonia and a picture plant paper of course cordine that one's called it's smaller I think the the real one is a bigger experience this is a palea aonia I love Bon you'll see lots of Bonas in the apartment this is a chiraz maple which changes color throughout the season and then it has a moment when it is pink I don't know if it's quite this hot pink but with paper you get to take a little liberty so I've captured it at that moment in time so that's kind of fun Mother Nature's just like always giv us inspiration so I think I'll probably never run out of things to make with the paper plants especially Bonas I really like Bonas have a medium paper Oxalis and a Clos that is just an Ikea Clos but I painted the base oh here's my book handmade house plants came out 2018 um but it's available wherever books are [Music] sold I started putting the paper plants online social media and then the publisher reached out Timber press and wanted to make a book I really enjoyed it really you know some of the plants before the process you know I had already made them and then in the process of making the book I had to invent new ones and so um from here away we're about 15 minutes to the Brooklyn botanic garden so it's like one of my favorite haunts to go and find real inspiration in real life some things I made have been rare oh gosh like back in the day you couldn't find a pilea um which is what this one is it was like kind of a precious special thing and so that that was one of the early ones I started making from paper just so I could have it but now you know like 7 years later they're literally at the corner store grocery out front they have a little plant section and they have times change so one of the favorite paper plants that I've made is called Rex pagonia Vine I just really love the pattern on the leaf and so at some point I painted The Vines on this table that one is called an epam medium I believe maybe that one is like pink lady something that one that one is called that one is a sweet potato vine it does have a specific name I forgot what it is I remember the names but I have made dozens of these plants I don't always remember the exact name it takes me a minute sometimes and then or then it's a thing where I have read it and then I'm like I don't know how to pronounce it cuz I've only ever read it but this but not in this case now this one is called a ornamental sweet potato vine based on the real thing paper of course Rex Theon Bine you'll recognize from the table and oh here we have sassa fras these two little things are sassa so this is a very simple one to make it's in the book so like for a beginner project pretty easy but I happen to like this plant because um The Roots um make re beer this is uh actually an invasive which is kind of a good reason for it to be made from paper it's called porcel and Berry Vine look I didn't even trip over it that time I said the name [Music] yeah this tapioca and another sweet potato vine and these are some paper mushrooms um these were in The Better Homes and Gardens papier-mâché tray okay so a bunch of years ago I don't know maybe 10 I did a project for my job and I made some papier-mâché cactus and it was really fun and I thought oh this I like this but I wanted uh less like sculptural things and more objects for my home so the first thing I made was a tray just a simple cardboard tray that I covered with layers of newspaper and glue and then painted it with acrylic paint going on like 7even eight years ago so she hanging in there this is called solar Clips plant yes this one I actually made using a silhouette cameo machine you know it's like kind of like an old school printer goes in and then it cuts it so made the files and then cut it on the machine this time just cuz it has this like surrogated Edge paint and gel pen and a lamp I made um again out of papier-mâché pendant lamp another papier-mâché project oh in this Frame no surprise it's another papier-mâché project but this is a picture of my mom that I really lik from in the' 70s and she has just got got a new bike and on the back her beautiful handwriting it says I tried to smile but the sun was in my eyes I don't know I just think this is kind of funny uh another paper mâché vas I think this is maybe one of the early ones I made um and the plant is a I have it I have it it's a drink it's a cocktail with mint no [Music] mojito this is an elephant ear mojito okay so this one exists in big earn at the Brooklyn botanic garden so this is an instance where I literally walked past the real thing and I was like look at those splatters look how magical and I had to make it and this is the same invasive porc Berry Vine from that I also you know stuck in the hallway she's just creeping around she keeps invading everywhere this one is kind of fun because um I made it specifically so that if I wanted to do a floral arrangement nothing's going to get ruined so that works out well actually this one is uh the same made to have just a 3-in cylinder inside so flowers I just think it's fun because you don't you just take trash cut it up covered it with papier-mâché paint it thing new thing okay so I have there's an entire set I think there's five of them but Prince by the artist Martin maora I'm such a fan of American music of all types from Old Dirty Bastard to L really all types of American music so uh I fell in love with these because I love that era of country music probably my proudest thing and it's just because it's sentimental and it's also not just the object but the process of making that is but when Ryan and I first started dating we decided to make cigar box guitars together like third date through sixth date kind of thing so he's a lefty so this is his and um this is mine um they still work I probably like my studio table the best you know there's nothing fancy about it but that's where I sit and do my work and have ideas so of course with uh the paper plant making I used tons of floral wire massage tape or floral tape markers and pens and gel pens and color pencils uh fun stuff um my Bolen board which is just like always changing and I just randomly pin stuff up there there's my little crush Corner over there we got Johnny Cash and Hank Williams and Donald Glover and Memphis mini oh this one is kind of fun has a funny name um it's called Sweet Caroline Bewitched after midnight that whole thing yeah it's a it's a sweet potato vine they're so many and you know it's kind of cool to make them out of paper because they typically only last in the summer you know that's the one everybody puts in their planter boxes and the window sill sweet potato vine so some years ago I left New York and I went to um work on an organic farm in California I spend the season there um and there was a dog called Rex's best dog so at some point I made a little paper puppet of him and I wrote a little song about him I'm going to show you Rex because he's very cute there is an old dog he's her favorite mut but tears through the garbage and he follows our truck he's a filthy old dog and he likes to run but if you go on after him he's dog gone it gone I just did it anyway even though I knew it was going to be embarrassing I just did it anyway yeah so like I mentioned before my grandmother taught me how to sew when I was pretty young and so I've always been sewing and then over 2020 stay at home times um I really just buckled down and designed pants that fit me which so many people know that by pants especially off the rack is like sometimes terrible there's always fit issues so I um came up with the Andre pants and put them on the internet people like them so now there's a pattern a sewing pattern um for people to make palm pants polka dots can't go wrong with polka dots this one has a side zip but these are my Freda cow pants see Gotta Love Freda I enjoy figuring things out whether it's pants or plant or whatever I really enjoy the process and once I've gone through that I also find it enjoyable to back up and then figure out a way to teach it to other people or just share yeah so [Music] trousers hey thanks for being here uh see you later

Channel: HGTV Handmade

Views: 104,149

Keywords: handmade home, hgtv tours, hgtv home tours, home tours, hgtv handmade

Id: dNlezDho0hs

Length: 60min 38sec (3638 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 28 2024