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Entries in Kim's renos and decos (142)

Tuesday
May032011

Exterior house plans

Things are moving along with the plans for my house - and on Sunday night I was ecstatic to find an email from designers Dylan and Thu (of Vok Design Group) with their ideas for the exterior. (For a recap, check out this post of the interior plans). Before I show you their mock-ups of the exterior, I snapped some quick pics of the exterior yesterday evening when I realized I had no decent photos (probably because the exterior is slightly embarassing it's so freaking ugly and boring) that I should share.

BLEH. So uninspiring. Wait until you see this....

Click to read more ...

Sunday
Apr032011

Update on my house plans

In case you missed my previous mentions of what's going on at my house, we're planning some rather large additions to what we have discovered is a house FAR too small for 2 people (especially when one likes to collect furniture and lamps) and 7 cats. At the beginning of February I blogged about some initial plans we had gotten from our architect. We had discussed simply adding on a section to the side of the house (luckily we have a rather large lot for a house in the heart of the city) and replacing the old addition at the back of the house that has crappy insulation. This seemed the most feasible because dealing with construction when you have 7 cats is a nightmare. So we were going to live in the old part of the house while the work was happening. Before we left on vacation to Mexico, I received an email from the fabulous folks of local design firm Vok Design Group (Dylan and Thu) who wanted to help with the exterior plans. When we met with Dylan and Thu they also expressed interest in coming up with suggestions for the interior and we were SO game. We met Friday so they could show us their interior ideas before they delved into the exterior. We were rendered completely speechless. It turned out to be WAY more work than we were anticipating but it makes SO much sense and will make this house incredible.

Let me show you what they came up with for the main floor.

Here is a photo of the initial plans from the architect with a couple minor changes made by me. The existing house is marked off in red.

Click to read more ...

Sunday
Feb202011

Exterior ideas

I am in panic mode now - my trip is less than a week away and I have hardly crossed off any items on my TO DO list. AH WELL. As a result I did not have time to travel around blogland looking for my favourite photos of the week to post today. Rather, I had to spend some time digging through my photo stash looking for photos of the exterior of homes because my architect emailed the other day wanting to know what we were thinking of (we're replacing the ugly-ass siding on the existing house too so it will be a BIG job with a hefty price tag) . I have no freaking clue what to tell him - all I know is because it's pretty much 2 flat 2-story rectangles perhaps some of the windows could protrude a bit and at least 2 different materials could provide some visual interest. I have never had the opportunity to deal with the exterior of a home before so I figured we could just send him some photos of inspiration and he could figure something out for now. I narrowed it down to the photos below. If anyone has suggestions please feel free to leave them in the comments (plans we have so far for the new house are here).

P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!!!

Hillery Priest
Charles & Hudson
Hus & Hem
Buttrick Wong
Dwell
Carl Dahlstedt

Click to read more ...

Sunday
Feb062011

Some press, new house stuff, and a cat

As Jo mentioned yesterday we're back to blogging on weekends. I think I'll stick with the theme I had ended off with back in December of my blogland favs of the week as that was relatively painless to accomplish in the midst of my usual weekend activities of laundry, groceries, house chores, parental visits and whatever else popped up. But I will be breaking that up with random posts, like for example, new work going on at my house. Today is a random post as I had a busy week and wanted to share a few things before the work week starts up.

Thursday was quite eventful. It started with a little party after work for the launch of the 2011 Interiors issue of Ottawa Magazine. I was SO STOKED because as you may recall back in the beginning of December I mentioned in this post there was a photo shoot at my home. I was interviewed and photographed for this issue of Ottawa Magazine, which happens to be the first time I've gotten a shout out locally for being a blogger with some degree of success. And Thursday I finally was able to get my hands on a copy. The story is a page and a half with a rather large photo of me in my kitchen, as well as a shot of my dining room. The photos were taken by Dwayne Brown, who is super talented and SUPER nice, especially when he found out I was interested in photography. He gave me some tips, explained everything he was doing and let me watch as he tweaked the photos on his laptop. And writer Patrick Langston stopped by the house one afternoon and hung out with my husband, myself and our herd of cats and we had a lovely chat about moi and the blog. He also sent Jo some questions are a couple quotes from her and included in the article. Despite having been featured in several magazines around the world, I have to say this one I'm most proud of. Thanks to everyone at Ottawa mag, Patrick and Dwayne!!

***UPDATE: The story is now up on the Ottawa Magazine website HERE!

I had to leave the Ottawa mag party a bit early to make it home for a meeting with our architect who was going to show us his first set of drawings of the additions we want to do to our house. More excitement! It was so great to finally get a visual of how the house is going to look. We talked for a while and came up with more ideas for my husband and I to ponder. He left some drawings with us, and I scanned them and showed my parents and the next day got some feedback from my father. I really liked his ideas so I tweaked the drawings of the main floor to incorporate them. Below are the drawings so far. The red lines delineate the current home (our current office at the back of the house isn't delineated in red because it needs to be torn down and rebuilt because it is not adequately insulated). We haven't discussed details like window placement or exterior/interior finishes yet so windows you see on the drawings are just there as an idea. I cannot wait for this work to start - THIS HOUSE IS TOO FREAKING SMALL!!!

The title of this post ends with "and a cat" - so this is the cat part. Most of you should know by now that I am a huge lover of animals, and I must since I have 7 cats in that tiny house above. I'm always willing to help out a cat in need of a good and forever home when I can - and I almost brought this poor little guy home from PetSmart the other day for my parents who are currently pet-less but the timing could not have been worse so no happy ending there. But I would like to help out a reader here in Ottawa, Elfriede, who first emailed me back in October. Her son rescued a cat whom he dropped off at her house saying he would find her a home and so far has not. She asked if I could take her in because she didn't want to have to take her to the shelter and although my answer was NO WAY, I told her I would be happy to post some photos on the blog in the hopes someone would be willing to give her a home. Elfriede would keep the cat but her new husband has asthma and cannot be around cats. Here is a bit of info Elfriede told me: My son has named her "Gretchen". I took her to a vet a few months ago and he determined that she is female, 10 years old, and a mixed breed (himalayan and tabby). He gave her all the shots and a check up and issued a clean bill of health. What I know about the cat is that she is totally lovable, very affectionate, and in winter, when she stays inside, she is content to just sleep or watch cat-tv through our picture window. In the warm weather she prefers to be outside and explore. She never ventures far from the house. She likes to be around people and likes to snuggle up to anybody who wants to participate. If anyone out there thinks they could provide a home for Gretchen, please email me (desiretoinspirekim@hotmail.com) and I can get you in contact with Elfriede. Gretchen is SO CUTE and I wish I could take her but that could mean the end of my sanity. Here are some pics:

Sunday
Dec052010

Freezing cold days and a little photo shoot

It's freezing cold here in Ottawa and I hate winter with a passion. But yesterday my mood was uplifted with a visit from a photographer at my home for a little photo shoot. It was alot of fun and I was especially stoked that he really wanted to get some of my cats in the photos (which turned out to be hilarious, trying to get 7 cats to sit still). It worked out great amazingly and I can't wait to see it in print. For the shoot I did a bit of redecorating around the house - necessary as my home has been in a bit of a state of disarray since my husband moved in back in May (with all his crap stuff). When the photographer left I took the opportunity to snap some photos while the house was clean and fur-free.

That was just a teaser photo...you'll have to click over to my page to check out the rest. :-)