Kim's personal links
MY FAVOURITE DECOR SHOPS IN OTTAWA
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kitchen remodel in my last house
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my twin sister's mostly kid's rooms decor blog
I am STILL on the hunt for hardwood for my house additions/renovations (see this post) and OMG it's tough when you're as picky as I am. I was just going through some of my photo stash and came across these photos...dear gawd if this flooring could be mine....
(photos by Birgitta Wolfgang Drejer)
A couple of weeks ago I blogged about my huge home renovation and addition project and my need for finishes for the bathrooms (and the almost non-existent budget we will have). Well, I am in the same boat with flooring. I would like hardwood flooring (could be engineered wood) throughout the house with the exception of the front entrance and bathrooms which will be tile. The flooring is another aspect of this renovation where we may be stuck with subfloor for a while if there are no funds for flooring materials - which is why I am hopeful that someone out there can help us out with a great deal on flooring with blog mentions etc. in return. I am thinking I would like to do something fairly light. I am a huge fan of Scandinavian/mid century/industrial styles and hope to mix these in my new home with lots of greys, black and white. I also have SEVEN cats and refuse to do white floors (been there, done that, didn't work out so well) or really dark floors. Both of these would be a complete nightmare to keep clean. We can always go back to the flooring we recently put down upstairs that you can see in this post.
I found some inspiration in my stash of photos, and my favourites are below. I did include one sort of dark floor (Luce Rosso) which I would reeeeeeeally love but if it were lighter. I love the idea of a light grey stain to show off the wood grain. And it's a bit unusual instead of typical clear sealed natural hardwood. If anyone has any suggestions for sources of flooring, or types of flooring you think would work, I'd love to hear about it in the comments or via email (desiretoinspirekim@hotmail.com). Thanks!
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| Bo Bedre | Sköna hem |
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| Bolig Magasinet | Luce Rosso |
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| Maison | Deko |
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| Sköna hem | Katarina Malmström Brown |
I am just DYING to have the work on my house started, but we've had to redo the plans to try and save a small fortune so my husband can get an extra 16" of height for his basement "man cave". While our plans are being finalized once again, we've started the quest for interior and exterior finishes and we frankly don't really know where to begin. It's a pretty daunting task for 2 people who have never really done any renovations before (except my kitchen a few years ago). We're going to need pretty much everything - a staircase, windows, exterior finishes, fireplace, bathroom fixtures, hardwood, tile and on and on... You guys help out our readers when they have design dilemmas so I thought maybe this time you could help me out. I am hoping you can give me suggestions on where to shop, design ideas etc. Since I am located in Ottawa some of the products should probably be relatively accessible locally (ie. staircase).
We also have another dilemma. This renovation is going to cost us WAY more than we initially thought, which means we're not sure we can complete the finishes in all the rooms (and I'm not even talking about furnishing them - there's talk about leaving the floors with only the sub-floor, completing only one bathroom...). This brings me to my next call for help. If anyone out there would like to help us with some of the finishes by offering great bargains for materials, even freebies (!!!) I'd LOVE to chat (email me at desiretoinspirekim@hotmail.com). There would of course be blog mentions/publicity in return.
So today's post is about bathrooms. We will have a master bedroom ensuite, another full bathroom upstairs, and a powder room next to the front entrance. (For a peek at the plans see this post, keeping in mind the layout of the bathrooms is totally up for grabs). I'd love to have some fun with the powder room and do something really industrial and I have a thing for black and white bathrooms so I hope one of the other bathrooms can be done in those colours. I went through my stash of bathroom photos and found some of my favourites. Any ideas/sources etc. that you can suggest, let me know in the comments or via email! Thanks!
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| Annette English | Martha Stewart |
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| Pappas Miron | Design*Sponge |
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| Adela Cabré | Hus & Hem |
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| Design*Sponge | Design*Sponge |
This is a long weekend here in Canada, to celebrate the Queen's birthday. It's the biggest party weekend of the year, as it's the first long weekend of summer and everyone attends cottage parties and BBQ's, as we Canadians love to enjoy what little summer we have! Yesterday was the first day the whole family got to spend time at my little sister's cottage together. Jen and her husband Dave bought their cottage this past fall and have had a TON of work done to it and the major work was finally completed a few days ago. We spent most of the day getting beds set up, hanging curtains and artwork, stocking the kitchen and all that fun stuff. There are a bunch of little things that still need to be done but it is AMAZING how much work we did (while watching 3 small children), while still being able to enjoy a bit of the gorgeous weather we had and go for a couple of pontoon boat rides. So instead of my typical blog favs post, I thought I'd share some before and after photos of the cottage (there are more, particularly before photos in a Flickr set here).
Here is the cute facade (the porch stairs have since been rebuilt).
Now the interior was SO dark and dingy, with nasty industrial carpeting everywhere and icky varathaned round board all over the walls. I begged and pleaded with them to have all the walls painted white and they listened thank gawd. Here are a couple before shots of the kitchen area:
...here is the kitchen removed and carpeting torn out, and the adjacent living room...
You'll have to see the transformation after the jump. :-)
I FINALLY completed work on my dressing room and I thought I'd share it with you all now...there was a slight sense of urgency to this post because if we do the renovations on our house that we're planning, that room is going to be demolished. *SIGH* For that reason I did not quite finish this room as I would like (ie. I wanted to dip dye the bottoms of the curtains, considered mod podging vintage wallpaper over the table in the center etc.) What's the point since I have no clue what I'll do in my new dressing room (which will have more space). So it's as done as it's ever going to get. And I'm so happy to have the space for my clothes (and my husband's), although it does mean we cannot have overnight guests because it's the only other bedroom besides the master. But a girl has got to have her priorities straight (particularly when it comes to clothes/shoes). LOL
Here are some before/during photos I had to show as this was a quite a bit of work, slowly over about a year. This first photo is the only one I have that shows most of the fairly small room (6'11"x12'6"), taken right after I moved in.
After that I decided to paint the room teal, which turned out to be a dumb idea in such a small room because it became very dark, despite the fact that there's a fairly large window (I blogged it once here - it was so hard to photograph I don't have many photos of that first transformation - but some are on Flickr here). With the newest version of the space, the closet was torn out (the doors were heavy pieces of wood that drove me INSANE), the walls were patched up, ugly-ass laminate floor was removed and new maple hardwood was installed (clickable - so thankfully we can reuse if we want in the new space). Here are a couple photos of the closet and floor demo:
And here is a photo of the new floor right after we installed it:
Some new baseboards, paint, rods and shelving installed, curtains (to close off the clothing storage; I kept my existing windows curtains), accessories and voila, a useful and kinda cute dressing room. A whole bunch of photos of the new room are after the jump. But here's a quick peek:
Tue, 16 Aug 2011