I love a great makeover, and I’m a sucker for sunrooms, so this is one before and after I had to show you. When Jenna Sue moved into her house, it had a sunroom, but it was pretty blah, as you can see, with beige carpet and vertical blinds.

But it’s boring no more, with new flooring, comfy seating, and lots of beachy blues to cheer the space up. Take a look!

She got these Brimnes day beds at IKEA. That metal end table was black, but she spray painted it Valspar’s Exotic Sea.

The new flooring only looks like wood–it’s actually tile, which is more practical for a room like this (wish I’d thought of that for my sunroom!).

She built the coffee table on wheels herself and says it only took 2 hours, “including waiting for the paint to dry!” (DIY details here.)

I think her black cat might be the best accessory in the room, though:

For more photos and all the details about the makeover visit Jenna Sue’s blog. She runs a design business in Florida and has more inspiring room makeovers you’ll want to see.

P.S. If you missed the before & after of mine: Julia’s Sunroom.

Hooked on Beachy Before & Afters?

• A Beach House Makeover on Tybee Island
  
• A Dark Living Room Goes Coastal
• A Beach Cottage Remodel
• See ‘em all!

Sharon Osbourne loves real estate. She told Architectural Digest that she frequently gets “itchy feet” to move: “We’ve never stayed in any place longer than seven years.” After Kelly and Jack left the nest, they sold their “Contemporary Goth” house in Beverly Hills (made famous by their reality show on MTV) and bought a place in L.A.’s exclusive gated Hidden Hills community.

“I wanted a house with the best views,” Sharon said, “and I got it.”

Last year it was reported that the Osbournes owed over a million dollars in unpaid taxes and might lose this house or the one they own in Malibu if the IRS chose to seize them. They were able to settle their debt in time, but they put both houses on the market.

The asking price for this one: $12.999 million.

The listing describes it as a “sophisticated Cape Cod-inspired estate” set on an “awe-inspiring 2.25 acre promontory with breathtaking city light and mountain views. Re-imagined by legendary interior designer Martyn Lawrence-Bullard, this magnificent home spans approx. 11,000 square feet.”

It’s always interesting to compare listing photos to how the same spaces looked in a magazine. For example, here’s the staircase in Architectural Digest:

The living room has trendy sliding barn doors and a reclaimed-brick fireplace.

Sharon collects antique Italian dolls and puppets that are on display. Here’s a photo of the room from AD:

I loved watching Martyn Lawrence-Bullard work his magic on houses on the reality show Million Dollar Decorators last year (and I was excited to hear that Bravo renewed it for a second season).

The house has 6 bedrooms and 10 baths. At first glance, the large Marie Antoinette chaise in the master looks like a second, smaller bed:

There don’t seem to be many area rugs in the house. Wonder why?

Sharon collects vintage Americana and displays some of it in the kitchen, including the antique cash register on the island:

The kitchen as seen in Architectural Digest:

There’s a cozy eating area with windows all around:

Sharon’s home office (and her Pomeranian named Bunny–one of their 12 dogs which, come to think of it, may be the reason there aren’t a lot of rugs in the house!):

Martyn Lawrence-Bullard also decorated Grey’s Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo’s house in the Hollywood Hills that you can see here.

Want it? Check the listing by Jonah Wilson for more photos and information. The magazine photos were taken by Roger Davies, and you can see the rest of them at AD.

Earlier this year, the Osbournes also had their vacation spot in Malibu on the market for $8.795 million, but it sold last week.

It featured a very shiny stainless-steel kitchen…

…and some pretty fabulous ocean views. (More photos here.)

While we’re dishing about Osbourne family real estate…remember the house they lived in when they were filming their reality show for MTV?

They sold it to Christina Aguilera in 2007 but it’s on the market again. Check out photos of how it looked then and then compare it to pics of how it looks now that Christina Aguilera owns it.

Out of these 3 houses that they’ve owned, do you have a favorite?

Click Here to See the Top 10 Celebrity Houses!

One of my favorite blogs is interior decorator Brooke Giannetti’s Velvet & Linen, and I’ve been in love with her beautiful house in Santa Monica for a long time (I first mentioned it on my blog back in 2009). She’s married to the talented architect Steve Giannetti, and they designed this house together.

Now they’re moving on and this charming home, which was inspired by the shingle-style California cottages of the 1930s, is on the market for $3.995 million. Take a look!

The house has 5 bedrooms, 5.5 baths, and 4,235 square feet.

I told you about the book that they wrote last year called Patina Style. I love this photo from it:

The house has been widely published in magazines like Romantic Homes, so it might look familiar to you even if you haven’t read Brooke’s popular blog.

There was a great article about the house at Old House Online that has some gorgeous photos, too, like the kitchen pic I included above, taken by Eric Roth. I love this shot he got of the house framed between two tall trees:

Isn’t it lovely? For more photos and information about the house, visit Velvet & Linen and check the listing. (The status on the listing just changed to “pending.” I knew it wouldn’t take long for someone to snap it up!)

Love Seeing Where Decorators Live?

• Wendy Bellissimo’s Home (btw, Wendy wrote to tell me she’s staying put after all!)
• “Sell This House” Designer’s Modern Farmhouse
• Robert & Cortney Novogratz’s West Village Townhouse

Are you one of the many Twihards who stood in line to catch the latest installment of the Twilight Saga over the weekend? Breaking Dawn Part 1 pulled in a staggering $30.25 million on Friday alone. Wow.

I read all of Stephenie Meyers’ books in the series when they first came out and was frankly not crazy about this one (couldn’t get past the “baby” storyline). I was eager to get a look at Bella and Edward’s honeymoon hideaway on “Isle Esme,” though, so I tracked it down. It’s a pretty fabulous beach house. Wanna see?

They filmed the honeymoon scenes at Casa em Paraty, a luxury vacation home in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The setting is gorgeous.

The house was designed by Thiago Bernardes of the architecture firm Bernardes + Jacobsen. It was featured in the January 2011 issue of Architectural Digest. Here’s a shot of the front of the house that appeared in the magazine:

AD describes it as “a rustic beach house built for the Fernandes family on the Brazilian fjord of Saco do Mamanguá. The area is so remote that the family can only reach its house by boat or helicopter.”

These pivoting glass doors are so cool. They were designed to let the sea breezes blow through the house. Ahhh…

In this screenshot from the trailer, Edward carries Bella over the threshold by pushing the glass door open:

Architectural Digest recently wrote about this Brazilian beach house again, featuring an interesting interview with the film’s production designer, Richard Sherman. He tells AD:

“A number of the scenes that take place inside the Brazil beach house were actually shot on sets—a bedroom, bathroom, and courtyard—built on a Louisiana soundstage. The production team’s challenge was to create a seamless transition between the house and the sets.

“We see Edward and Bella arrive at the house at night. Then she walks through the living room, and the scene cuts to our set. You can’t tell the difference. It looks like a part of that house.”

Sherman says they even recreated their own version of the exterior of the house with visual effects when they arrive on the boat. “What you see of the real house is the front door, the steps leading up to it, the veranda, and all those glass doors.”

Rates range from $7,000 a night to $15,000, depending on the time of year. So, you know, not for the budget traveler.

I played chess on my honeymoon, too…didn’t you?

This walkway spans from the master bedroom on one side of the living room to more bedrooms on the other:

Bella walks into the honeymoon suite with the white canopy bed, which is actually a set built back in Louisiana (another crappy screenshot from the trailer–will have to wait until the DVD comes out to get better ones):

In the book, the house is on an island owned by Edward’s “mother,” dubbed Isle Esme. It was a gift from her husband Carlisle. It has “the pale-on-pale color scheme preferred by the Cullens.” In the bedroom is an “absolutely huge white bed in the center of the room, hung with billowy clouds of mosquito netting.”

There are 6 bedrooms in the house. This is the master:

I featured Bella’s house and both of the houses used for the Cullens in the past (different houses were used in different movies), so I was trying to figure out if they were the same sets in this one. Turns out Bella’s is the same, but they rebuilt the entire 3-story Cullen house on a soundstage in Louisiana, with exteriors shot in Vancouver.

You can moor your boat right off the beach when you visit. Something to keep in mind when planning your trip!

Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson play lovebirds Bella and Edward. My husband was dragged went to the last installment in the Twilight series with me and complained that there’s at least a 5 second delay between each line of dialogue. He swears the movie would have been half as long if they didn’t spend so much time staring mutely into each other’s eyes. Ha. He has a point.

They created a big, open kitchen on a soundstage, but I couldn’t find any photos of it. Or the master bath, for that matter. Bummer.

In the novel, Stephenie Meyer set the honeymoon on an island in the middle of nowhere. That presented a challenge for location scouts. Hard to find something that remote. After four weeks of searching, they settled on this house, even though there are views of other tropical islands from here.

The aerial view of the property:

Have you seen Breaking Dawn yet? What did you think? Did Edward and Bella’s honeymoon house look the way you imagined it would? More photos and information at the Casa em Paraty website, Architectural Digest, and Casa Sugar. AD photos taken by Iain Kemp.

More Twilight Goodness:

• Bella’s House in Twilight
• The Real Cullen House from the First Twilight Movie
• Edward’s House from New Moon For Sale

When I saw a WaterColor cottage for rent on Western Lake in Florida that’s billed as “A new home designed after the house from the Diane Keaton movie Somethings Gotta Give,” I was pretty excited to get a look at it. The listing goes as far as calling it “a replica” of the famous Hamptons beach house.

The exterior certainly doesn’t look anything like the one from the movie, but I thought the interiors might look more familiar. See what you think.

I love this entry hall and staircase. Gorgeous!

In the movie, the staircase was off the living room. I can’t tell by the listing photo if the living room is nearby or not. Here’s the SGG version:

The living room in the listing is lovely, too, but very different. No blue striped rug in sight:

I’m not really seeing the resemblance to the Something’s Gotta Give house, are you? Here’s the kitchen in the cottage:

And the kitchen in the movie:

I like it, though. I wouldn’t mind spending a week of my vacation here, that’s for sure.

Diane Keaton’s bedroom in the movie had an upholstered headboard and windows on either side of it, too:

One of my favorite things that this one has that the SGG house didn’t is this sleeping porch off the master bedroom:

Did I ever tell you it was our dream to build one of these off our bedroom, above our sunroom? Um, yeah. The quote for that came in much higher than we expected, so the sleeping porch was a no-go. I’d love to have one someday, though!

The front porches on the WaterColor cottage are pretty wonderful, too. I don’t think a house can ever have too many porches.

So even though I’m not quite sure how this is really considered a “replica” of the Something’s Gotta Give house, I think it’s beautiful in its own right. And it’s a brilliant marketing strategy for it. It got my attention! Now I’m daydreaming about taking my next family vacation here.

If you’re daydreaming about it, too, you can see more photos and information at Vacation Rental Agent. Need a reminder of what the SGG house looks like? You can see all the photos of it here.

P.S. Check out this Something’s Gotta Give House on Martha’s Vineyard, which really does have an uncanny resemblance to the movie set, or the beautiful Something’s Gotta Give replica in Sun Valley, Idaho!

After I featured a lovely beach house with blue shutters earlier this year, a reader named Marcia wrote me, saying, “I thought you’d like to see the work of the company I work for, which is similar. We are a design-build firm on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.”

I went to their site–Polhemus Savery DaSilva–and this gorgeous summer house on the water in Cape Cod immediately caught my eye.

When I was searching for more information about the house, called “Champlain’s Bluff” on their website, I discovered that it was featured in a book called Architecture of the Cape Cod Summer by Michael J. Crosbie.

Crosbie writes that the owners wanted a house that was “historically rooted, as if it had always been there, but that would also comfortably accommodate contemporary art and furnishings.”

I like the look of this stone fireplace in such a sleek, modern kitchen:

The library:

Upstairs landing:

A fun boy’s room with a nautical theme:

The view of the water from the upstairs balcony is pretty amazing:

Thanks to Marcia for telling me about it! To see the rest of the photos, visit Polhemus Savery DaSilva. They just added more shots of this house to their Facebook page, too.

Click Here to See a Beach House with Blue Shutters

Ever since I posted photos of those fabulous Hamptons beach houses from the new TV drama “Revenge,” I’ve been getting emails about the chair in Victoria Grayson’s living room. Everyone wants to know where they can get one like it. Well, I had no idea. But then a couple of readers told me they found something similar at HomeGoods.

So, like Veronica Mars, I grabbed my camera (okay, my iPhone) and set out to investigate! This is what I found…

Sure enough, my local HomeGoods had a chair that was upholstered in a similar fabric. Here’s the photo I snapped of it:

It’s not as tall, and the shape of the chair itself isn’t as dramatic as Victoria’s, sadly, but hey. The price is right!

I bet Victoria paid more than $300 for hers. So if you’re one of those readers who told me you were desperate to find one like it, run–don’t walk!–to HomeGoods and see if they have any left. You know how fast their inventory turns over!

*This just in: Kathy tells me the one she found at HomeGoods is even closer to the one on the show, and she sent me a photo:

Kathy says, “Orig. $899; HG price $499.99; my clearance price $349.00!” Wow! She bought it before “Revenge” premiered. I imagine they’re a lot harder to come by now that Victoria made it famous!

She adds that she found the matching footstool at Steinmart and the matching pillow at Ballard Designs. (Thanks, Kathy!)

On a side note, I haven’t been happy with the photos my new iPhone takes. They’re all a little blurry as you can tell from these that I took of this chair. I was complaining about it to my husband Dave, who looked it over and said, “Well, it might work better if you took the plastic film off the back of the phone first.” D’oh!

If you know where to find a chair that looks more like Victoria’s, let us know! (Check the comments–lots of readers have spotted lookalikes and tell us where to find them!)

Oh, and for everyone who has written to ask where the real exterior of the Grayson mansion is located, I have been told by several sources that it was based on a real house (or houses), but most of it was Photoshopped. That would explain why it’s been so hard to track it down! Here’s how it looks on TV:

KatD tells me that they based it on a house designed by architect Peter Cook and then made it bigger for TV. They also added things like the solarium on the back. Here’s the model of it that she referred me to:

But Jim Wolfe tells me the house they based it on is “located on the corner of Further Lane and Cross Highway in Amagansett. They just stretched it, moved the pool and added a few extras.” Those of you who are familiar with that area will have to let us know if you’ve seen the one he means.

He pointed me to this photo of it (via Just Not Said):

*UPDATE: A reader tracked down interior photos of this house that you can see here. Thanks, Juliana!

In other words, the Grayson house probably doesn’t exist. The one we see on the show is very possibly based on one or two real properties, but most of it appears to be TV magic. (If you know differently, fill us in!)

The real interiors where they shot the pilot belong to a house in North Carolina (not the Hamptons) that looks totally different on the outside. (You can see it here.)

As for Emily Thorne’s beach house, a reader named John thinks he tracked it down in North Carolina. If it’s not the same one, it’s certainly similar! It’s no longer for sale, but check out the listing that’s still up on Trulia and see what you think!

You can see more photos of the “Revenge” beach houses here.

By the end of the summer when the new nighttime drama “Revenge” finally premiered on ABC, I was so sick of the endless commercials for it that I nearly didn’t watch. The only reason I tuned in was because there were fleeting images of beach houses with amazing woodwork in the ads that I wanted to see more of. And boy, am I glad I did.

Emily VanCamp (who you may recognize from “Brothers & Sisters“) plays Emily Thorne, a woman with a secret past and hidden agendas who rents this great little beach house in the Hamptons (“little” compared to the Grayson mansion next door):

This was actually filmed in North Carolina, which doubled for the Hamptons. We don’t see a lot of Emily’s beach house in the pilot, but I snapped a photo of the porch and water view…

…and the kitchen and living area when she walked through it with the real estate agent:

By the second episode, they began filming in Los Angeles, presumably on a set built to recreate the look of the original beach house. Now the main rooms have soft green walls, and you’ll notice the beamed ceilings are a little different:

They did a great job of giving the set the same overall look and feel, though. I bet most people didn’t notice the changes.

One of my readers informs me that “most of the locations were filmed just south of Wilmington, in Southport and Oak Island. Tracked down one of the sailboats, ‘Carolina Breeze,’ which is moored in Southport. The sailboat ‘Amanda’ was renamed for the show. There’s also a scene in the pilot that was filmed at Fishy, Fishy, a local cafe in Southport.” Thanks for the local scoop, Maggy!

Porches wrap around the house, and one side is screened:

It’s no accident that the view from Emily’s porch is of the Grayson mansion next door–she wants to keep a close eye on her target. She believes the Grayson family ruined her father’s life and has come to get revenge:

“Queen Victoria” Grayson (Madeleine Stowe, who manages to be both beautiful and kind of terrifying in the role) looks out from her turret, checking on her new neighbor below:

The Grayson house had me at the foyer. I mean, seriously. Look at the woodwork in this place! It was a glimpse of this in the commercials that convinced me to set my DVR and check the show out:

Like I said, the pilot was filmed in real houses in North Carolina. This one is in Landfall, a community on the Intracoastal Waterway in Wilmington. Interior designer Elizabeth Reynolds Sheats tipped me off that it was featured in the Wrightsville Beach Magazine recently.

Here’s how that foyer looks in the magazine:

Gorgeous! I continued to ooh and ahh when I saw the living room and kitchen on the show…

Here’s how those spaces look in the magazine:

The exterior of the real house isn’t the one shown on TV, but it’s beautiful, too. The article calls it “West Indies-inspired.”

The other two rooms they filmed in were the master bedroom and bath.

There are great photos of the bedroom and bath in the magazine, including this one:

Head over to Wrightsville Beach Magazine to see the rest (photos by Joshua Curry and article by Shannon Darrough and Marimar McNaughton). Thanks again to Elizabeth for tracking it down for me!

In the second episode, I was eager to see how they’d recreate these rooms on a soundstage. Here are a few pics I snapped while watching it:

The sofas are different, but I recognize Victoria’s chair as either being the same or something very similar to one we saw in the pilot.

You’ll notice they also moved the staircase from the foyer so you can now see it behind the living room:

Although they’re shooting mostly in California now, they mix in plenty of location shots like this one of the Grayson mansion to make us feel like we’re really in the Hamptons…

Are you watching this show on Wednesday nights and loving the houses, too? (You can catch the episodes you missed online at ABC, by the way.) I have to say it’s better than I expected. I’ll keep watching not only for the real estate, but to see how the all the juicy drama unfolds!

*10/24/11 UPDATE: Searching for Victoria’s Chair–and the Real Grayson Mansion.

Click Here to See More Houses from TV Shows like “Brothers & Sisters”

Now that Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony have split, she’s making a fresh start, and her new shingle-style house in the Hamptons looks like the perfect place for it.  The nearly $18 million Mecox Bay estate where Lopez will live with cutie-pie twins Max and Emme (shown here in an ad they shot for Gucci) sits on 2 acres in the exclusive Water Mill area with beautiful bay and ocean views.

10/1/11 Update: A reader tells me this is all a “publicity stunt” for Jennifer Lopez and she hasn’t really bought the house. Whether the sites reporting it got the info wrong or not, it’s a fun one to look at. We’ll see if they start retracting the story in days to come, I guess!

The 14,000 square-foot house was designed by architect John Laffey and built in 2010. The rumors have been swirling that she might buy this house for weeks, but People magazine just confirmed it.

Looking up into the rotunda:

First Floor Hallway:

Living Room:

Dining Room:

It looks a little stark and cold since it’s empty, but I imagine it’ll be gorgeous once it’s furnished and decorated. I hope she’ll let a magazine photograph it like Veranda did with her place in California. This is my kind of house. I love all the windows and the woodwork. Wouldn’t mind the 7 fireplaces, either.

Library:

The house has 7 bedrooms and 9.5 baths. The master is so big I thought it was a living room at first:

Master Bath:

The “Junior Suite:”

Upstairs Landing:

There’s a fireplace and TV for people using the spa outside:

The side of the house:

Like it? More photos and information on the Corcoran website and this site set up for the house. You can also see the floorplans here.

If you’re a Jennifer Lopez fan, check out the house in Cali she bought when she took the “American Idol” gig. I’ve also featured the houses from her movies The Back-up Plan and Monster-in-Law.

(Thanks to all the helpful readers who wrote me about this, including Kim who always has her finger on the pulse of real estate news!)

Click Here to see More Celebrity Houses!

Pretty much the minute the romantic comedy Jumping the Broom hit theaters earlier this year, I started getting emails from readers about the house. When I finally had a chance to see it myself, I understood why there was so much interest in it.

Paula Patton plays Sabrina, a bride-to-be who’s getting married at her parents’ waterfront mansion on Martha’s Vineyard. And what a mansion it is! Let’s take a look…

Most of the movie was filmed on location at a house in Nova Scotia, Canada, which doubled for Martha’s Vineyard. The interiors as well as exteriors were used.

In this scene, T.D. Jakes (who was also one of the producers on the movie) meets with the couple as the minister who is going to marry them:

Jason (played by Laz Alonso) and Sabrina walk through the front gates and up the driveway to the house:

The groom’s family and friends arrive for the weekend and enter through the front door:

Set Decorator Brian Enman told MSN Lifestyle in an interview that the house was pretty much camera-ready when he got there: “The home was 90% there and very tastefully done.” He says he only had to add some additional artwork, accents, and greenery.

Angela Bassett plays Sabrina’s mom to chilly perfection.

I love Julie Bowen as Claire Dunphy on “Modern Family“ (pics of those houses here), but her character Amy the wedding planner in this movie was so irritating that I found myself cringing every time she was onscreen. I snapped this photo of her walking into the house because you could see the living room with the fireplace straight ahead.

When Jason’s mom, played by Loretta Devine, walks down the hall, we get to see the beautiful woodwork. Kind of odd how they hung the third framed photo (the ceiling is lower there, but it looks strange to me):

Mrs. Watson leads her guests into the living room:

Is it just me or do the furniture placement and sizes in this room look a little off? A production photo (via Sony Pictures) shows the corner close up:

The kitchen was shown mostly in close-up shots when it was crowded with people, so it was hard to get a good feel for the size of it. The silver tile backsplash really stood out against the stained wood cabinets:

In this shot you can see that the kitchen opens up into a large eating area:

Sabrina’s bedroom is pretty simple with white walls and pale wood furniture:

I wonder why the mirror over her dresser is so small and hung so high?

When I see rooms that are this sparse and undecorated, it usually means they were shot inside a real house. Sets built on soundstages always seem to look a little more “done” and layered.

The master bedroom is pretty plain, too, considering how much this couple (and their house) is worth:

Jason’s mom (who you may recognize as the actress who plays Adele on “Grey’s Anatomy”) stayed in a guest suite upstairs that featured this lovely sitting room with vaulted ceilings:

We get a glimpse of Mr. Watson’s wood-paneled den during a wedding-morning montage, which has a pool table and a record player:

The screened porch:

Wedding guests lounge on white slipcovered furniture on the lawn, overlooking the water:

The wedding tent (via MSN):

A peek inside:

The bride gets walked down the aisle by her dad (played by Brian Stokes Mitchell) in the backyard :

Paula Patton brought her newborn to set with her, having given birth to a baby boy named Julian a few months before. You’d never know it to look at her!

Jumping the Broom got mixed reviews, but hey, it had gorgeous actors, beautiful clothes, and a great house to look at–not to mention a happy ending. I always give movies points for things like that. Ha. What did you think of it?

Looking for the sets from one of your favorite movies? Click here to see the ones I’ve covered so far, in alphabetical order!