Displaying posts from September, 2013

Check out this funky apartment by British architecture and interior design firm Daniel Hopwood. We designed this London apartment with the intention to create a place where the owners could entertain lavishly. The result was inspired by Halston’s radical 70s New York apartment, layered in tones of white with a limited palette of materials. I am a big fan of large art groupings, and the one in the dining space looks fantastic, especially how it mimics the windows. And LOVE all of the classic mid-century furnishings. Definitively a fun party pad. 🙂

And a few extras that caught my eye…

If you’d like to send me photos to include in next week’s “pets on furniture” post, please ensure your photos follow my basic rules: First, the pet must be on a piece of furniture. And said piece of furniture must be clearly visible in the photo, so it takes center stage rather than your pet. Think of it more of a photo of a great piece of furniture that you want to show off…and your pet happens to be sitting on it. And second, if the photo is dark or fuzzy then it may not make the cut. Photos, your name, location and a brief description can be sent to desiretoinspirekim@hotmail.comand PLEASE don’t send closeups of your pet! Thanks! 

This is Yoshi, our rotten little dog, laying out on the bright orange sleeper couch. The pillow was a gift from my in-laws. Basically, he prefers to monopolize any seating in direct sunlight. Here, he is staking a claim on my office lounger. What an adorable jerk.
– Lee (Portland OR)

Orange…the new black. Bo, Excellent Dane.
– Linda 

Pixel…Pixel just likes to sleep above the floor 🙂
– Karolina (Poland)

Please meet Ezra. At times I think he doesn’t touch the floor but jumps form the sofa to the armchair to our bed and so on… This is a house for which I’ve served as the interior designer
– Danna (Israel)

These are our two dogs Cassie (Whippet X) and Max (Jack Russell). They would so much prefer to be on the iron and brass bed but it’s way too high for them (Max has very short legs and Cassie is getting on in years) so they have to make do with the Ottoman.
– Maureen and Ross (Victoria, Australia)

Fossy is always patiently waiting for a welcoming lap.  
-Kate (Seattle, WA)

Sofie’s favorite perch
– Libbie

1 – This is our Aussie Toni just sitting at the breakfast table with us. Of course she wouldn’t normaly sit on the chair, but she just loves to be challanged, so we made her jump up and sit still, which she loved. Just being the center of attention, figures.
2 – Marie and her son Krümel on the top shelf in our living room. Maries favorite place in the whole house, up high and quiet. Unless she makes a noise and Krümel hears her. He just has to be where his mom is.
3 – This photo shows Moritz and Sophie just chilling in the kitchen and guarding the stove, who knows if something delicious will make it their way.
4 – It was warm outside, so I understand, sometimes you just have to hang in there. Moritz this summer on the chair outside on the porch.
– Sabrina (Cologne, Germany)

This is my cat Taro, and my Parker dining suite is his favourite piece of furniture in the house, he likes to sleep on the padded seats and rub his cheeks on the tapered legs.
– Wanjie (Perth, Australia) 

Another clever apartment design by Brazilian architects Ouriço. Panels slide and walls open. Doors swing wide and secrets are hidden.

This dark and moody apartment is in Rio de Janeiro may well be the nest of that spiny creature deep within the earth but no, instead it is the creation of Brazilian architectural firm Ouriço (Portuguese for hedgehog). Outside it may be bright and sunny and tropical but inside it is calm and cocooning with graphic punches and vintage finds. Love the hero wall of books, the industrial lights and the warmth of the wood. Like a den, a club, a nest.

I didn’t really know what to blog today and since there are a couple of new little projects around my house I thought I would just share that today (a sad day I might add – we’re heading to my sister’s cottage with the family to help close it up for the winter). Aside from the cat house and new paint job on my desk, I did more painting and some fabric dying which I had never attempted before. Fabric dying was quite the experience. Since I don’t have a big laundry sink I’m grateful to have a backyard with half dead grass where I could make a mess without harming anything. I have had a very large piece of white linen in my fabric stash for several years that I have been dying (pun intended) to do something with. I decided I would use a piece of it for a curtain over my desk and another for a seat cushion for a chair in my bedroom. So off to the fabric store for some black dye. All they had was ‘black velvet’ which I assumed meant a light black. I tested a couple of strips of fabric – one bundled up tight and wrapped in rope, and the other I dipped right in. 

I opted for bundling up the fabric and wrapping it because I wanted it to look really odd with faded parts. Unfortunately not knowing what the frig I was doing, I bundled it too tight and there were too many light spots, and the fabric didn’t turn out dark enough. So I had to do it all over again. 

After a second bath in the black dye the result was perfect! Much more subtle and dark but not too black. While I was at it I added all of my vintage doilies that I had dyed dark grey a while back but they turned out too blue. 

After washing and hanging them to dry, I balled up the fabric and left it like that for a while because I LOVE the look of wrinkled linen. 

In reality the lighter parts are not as bright as in the photo above. It turned out pretty awesome. My doilies are still fairly blue. Ah well. I have wanted to stitch them together into a table runner for ages but never got around to it. 

It was a rainy day today, and the added fun of trying to photograph towards a window made for kind of crappy photos but you get the idea of how the curtain looks. 

Next project. I have a vintage bamboo-like chair that I had painted Chinese red and used in my dressing room a while ago. Since I redid that room it has been in a corner of my bedroom and I had been wanting to paint it flat black. 

It is one of my favourite chairs as it is surprisingly comfy. And the cats love it so that is one less animal on the bed at night. It looks SO much better black. And since I can’t sew I just tucked the fabric around the old seat cushion, and grabbed an accent pillow from my linen closet. 

I had to snap a couple quick photos of my living room today for an interview so I thought I’d randomly share them too. 

When you don’t have room for a liquor cabinet…

Our next project is converting the back room, formerly my office, into a pantry. The room is an addition, essentially added on top of a deck so it is freezing cold in the winter and raccoons live under it in the summer. It is the perfect pantry space and coat closet since we have no closets on the main floor. The space is awkward as it’s square but the previous owners added a fairly large powder room to be used by someone wheelchair-bound. This means the room is annoyingly L-shaped. Coats hang on one wall by the back door and where my desk was we want to make into a storage wall. (These photos are several years old).

I never got around to painting that little ramp into the room after my kitchen reno so I woul like to finally get that done. And we will do something with the hideous bathroom as I have not done anything to it since moving in. My husband was talking about building shelving for the ‘pantry’ himself but I think he is now leaning towards buying cheap Ikea shelving. Whatever works! I want something we can take down and reuse when we get around to wrecking this house. Right now we have some metro shelving and other random storage pieces in there for extra food and small appliances and it’s been great but I can’t wait to have proper storage. Photos to come when we’re done!