Displaying posts from October, 2019

The owners missed Los Angeles so interior designers Maria Lindgren & Adele Lonergan of Covet & Noir created a little bit of California for them in this London home. A clever mix of new and vintage furniture, art and accessories it is full of light with a neutral yet warm palette. Monochrome has never popped so much.

Photography by Edmund Dabney

This ski house in Utah exudes so much exuberance and whimsy, that starts in the entrance with a dipped painting, and was clearly inspired by Josef Frank textiles. Mid-century vibes and lots of colours round out this home and make it such a fun place to chill. Designed by Redmond Aldrich.

Photos: Lindsay Salazar

In the spring my husband and I had several conversations about all the yard work we had to do this summer. Almost every inch of our property needed work, with the exception of our back porch and raised vegetable garden, which we built a few summers ago. We got started with some fencing in the backyard, and once that was done we started discussing the structure I wanted at the back of the yard. I wanted a place to hang out in over the summer months, and the conversations started with a deck with pergola roof, then turned into a covered roof so it could be used in the rain, then turned into a screened-in structure because I hate bugs, which then turned into a completely sealed structure so I could also store our outdoor furniture in it in the winter. What was maybe a 2-weekend project turned into a 3 months of weekends project. While this endeavour monopolized our entire summer, I look at these photos and I start tearing up. This she-shed is my dream come true. And we built the entire thing ourselves. (Before you start looking for step-by-step instructions, let me tell you that you won’t find any. We “winged” this and while it’s totally sturdy and meets all of my needs, we’re no experts). Unfortunately we finished it with only a few weeks left of warm weather, but the fact that we finished it with only working 1 day a week is a miracle.

I would like to thank the wonderful people at Farrow & Ball Canada for once again supplying me with paint for yet another one of my painting projects. This was built with basic pressure treated posts and a sort of bead-board style rough plywood for the exterior (and plastic corrugated sheets for the roof) so what were inexpensive materials and not very pleasing to the eye. I knew I was going to paint this structure and lawd half mursey was that ever an undertaking! I used their wood knot & resin primer in eggshell, then painted the exterior with exterior eggshell in Studio Green, and the interior with exterior eggshell in Yeabridge Green, and decided to stripe the floors with both colours. I will always sing the praises of Farrow & Ball paints, and now I can do so with their exterior paint. It worked like a charm and the rough plywood exterior thankfully only needed one coat. The colours are gorgeous and add drama to the exterior and a bright and cheerful vibe to the interior, whilst blending in with the tree and eventually the plants I’ll have planted next year. I could not be happier with how the paint turned out.

I mentioned to my husband one day that we should try to find some old windows for the front wall. Having no real plan in my mind we started searching Kijiji and Facebook Marketplace looking for old windows, ideally a couple leaded or stained glass ones to group and make one large window. Then husband stumbled upon a Kijiji ad that turned out was posted by Northern Art Glass, a stained glass artists’ studio a few blocks from our house, who were selling off about a hundred windows they had removed from a home (and replaced with newer ones). We went to look at them and were thrilled with how beautiful they were (despite being in rough shape) and they were selling them for $30 each! We had already built the front opening of the she-shed so husband took some measurements and realized that we could use 8 of the windows of a particular size and have them cover the entire opening. If that wasn’t enough of a miracle, when we went to pick up the windows they told us because we were buying so many they’d be $25 each! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! A whopping $200. Another miracle. And our house has all leaded windows so it gives the impression that the shed has been there as long as the house has (1940).

We had a bit of a hard time figuring out what hardware to use for the windows so they could all open and close without us having to worry about wind blowing and smashing the glass, but in the end we ended up with simple chain and eye hooks to prop open the lower horizontal windows, and my genius husband found some bronze lid hinges on Amazon for $12.50/4 that work perfectly for the upper vertical windows. And then sliding latches on each one to seal them closed.

On each side of the she-shed we installed barn door tracks and went to Habitat for Humanity Restore and found 2 gorgeous solid oak doors for $40 a piece. On the entrance side (the photo above) my husband built a screen door, and on the other side the opening is a screened frame so on really warm days all the windows can be opened, and both doors can slide back for air flow from one side to the other. With those openings screened in, and all of the windows having screened frames, and with the floor boards being siliconed in each of the seams (I told you I hate bugs!) this is a completely bug-free zone. So no matter how bad the mosquitos might get, I can relax out here and not fret. I should also point out that this area of the yard is shaded all day except for maybe 1.5 hours in the late afternoon so the clear plastic roof was a great choice as it keeps the space really bright and should not get too hot when temperatures soar.

Before I get to the interior, I will warn you that aside from the polka dot rug (H&M) and the floor lamp and basket (Homesense), everything else was sourced from around the house. With this project and the subsequent landscaping projects I have coming, there was really no budget nor time to do much else. The art I bought a couple of years ago from my friend Sara for I think $40, and all of the textiles and the hanging rope chair are brought back from past trips to Mexico. I’m hoping I’ll have some funds in the spring to have husband build a platform along the back wall and have seat cushions made, and then we can buy a projector and screen so we can have movie nights out here. When I dream, I dream BIG! In the meantime I have gotten as much use out of the space as I can before winter hits. I have even worked from home several days and spent it out here, and hope to get a couple more days in this week too.

The day of this photo shoot I dumped all of this black mulch around the she-shed to hide the dirt. We have lots of landscaping work to still do back here but you’ll have to wait until spring to see what we do. And the day before the shoot I picked up these sweet retro Solair chairs on sale from The Modern Shop. I was sooooo relieved because I’ve always wanted these, and wasn’t sure what I was going to put here that would look decent enough to photograph. Score x 4!

Throwing in a progress shot below. You can see why this was absolute hell to paint. Add in 8 windows to get the full picture of how much time I spent painting.

It’s no surprise we love New York based Aussie expat interior designer Tali Roth. We are constantly drawn to her chic, urban interiors with their emphasis on low clean lines, stylish comfort and fab art. Throw in layered textures and a restrained palette enlivened by pops of colour and this Howard St apartment is ticking all my boxes.

Photography by Nick Glimenakis

“The Beldi is a converted loft space in the heart of Shoreditch, east London, overlooking St Leonard’s Church and its surrounding treetops. The light and open plan of the space reflects its history as a shoe factory, and the patterned use of handmade Beldi tiles is used to delineate the space within. Simplicity and craft come together in this verdant volume, forming an oasis from the urban jungle below.”

I believe I have found my dream home  … by Chan and Eayrs.