Lee-Anne from Toronto wrote us looking for help: “I love your website and thought you might be able to help me with my design dilemma. We recently bought a home that was built in the 40’s that’s a bit of a fixer upper. It has wooden baseboards throughout and lots of wood trim. I am still hanging onto my old furniture but I am sooooo ready to redo this room!! I want to modernise it and add colour and texture!! My dilemma is that in almost all of the design pictures that I see, the baseboards are painted white. My sister has told me in no uncertain terms that I am NOT to paint the wood trim in the house. I am looking for inspiration where people have kept the baseboards a natural colour.” Below are some photos Lee-Anne included of her home.

At first I immediately thought “PAINT!!” but if I had such beautiful baseboards and trim, I would be terrified to paint it. So after looking at the photos, I would listen to your sister. But I would get out the paint can for a few things. I would paint out the fireplace (and lose that huge mirror above), the risers on the stairs and maybe the balusters (a photo below shows this). That’s it. But keep your walls light and if you were going to get rugs, I’d keep those light too. Or you could go with a warm bright wall colour (see the yellow wall below). So the following are photos of spaces with unpainted trim (except the last one but imagine it’s a dark wood).

Better Homes and Gardens	Better Homes and Gardens
Caroline Beaupère	Alexandra Rowley
Todd Oldham	Fox-Nahem
Canadian House & Home	The Selby

And to make your decision even harder Lee-Anne, here are some photos of spaces with painted trim, you know, to keep your options open. 🙂

One of the few rooms in my house that is somewhat finished is my home office. Back in May I posted about painting the floors and the frame of the door. Before I began the kitchen renovation I had managed to complete the space with some revamped furnishings and lots of vintage finds. I think it’s about time I share the progress.

It’s a pretty small room – 10 ft long by 11.5 ft wide, with a 5ft square bathroom in one corner, making the room L-shaped. One part of the L is my office, and the other part is an entrance from the back deck. Here is what it looked like right after I moved in.

It was awful. Pale blue walls, unpainted trim (the entire house had unpainted trim – WHY???), and the hardwood was totally uninspiring. It was a really fun room to redo and since it gets alot of sun I wanted it to be cheerful and bright. First thing I did was paint the floors, trim, walls and ceiling white. My pink laptop should be on the desk in the photos below but it’s a cold room in the winter so I’ve been working on the dining table since the kitchen was completed.

Below is in the left corner as soon as you walk in the room.

I love piles of fabric. I love piles of anything really. Fabric, books, magazines… (the 2 beaded boxes on top of the books hold the ashes of 2 of my cats that have passed away in the last few years)

The desk is an Ikea table top wrapped in vintage retro fabric, and topped with a piece of glass (some photos were taken before the glass was bought). The inspiration board over my desk is made from some trim I found at Home Depot that I spray painted and made into a frame and I nailed a large piece of cork to the wall behind it.

The chair is a vintage Herman Miller Eames that came upholstered in green fabric, that I found at a local antique market for $160. The souvenir pillow cover I found on eBay. It is now in the trash, as Felix, gawd love him, peed all over it. The lamp I found at a local mid-century shop for $40.

Below are some tchotchkes I have on my desk. The grapes I found on eBay, the dog letter holder in Etsy, and the clock I bought several years ago at an antique fair. I write with markers as often as I can.

Next is an armoire I spent alot of time reworking. I found it at a flea market in a town about an hour from here for $159. It was a darkish brown wood (see here), so I dry-brushed it with the
teal paint I used in my dressing room. I removed the door and built shelves for the section that you would ordinarily hang clothes in. I bought some vintage wrapping paper on Etsy and mod-podged it to the shelves. It stores my copier/scanner on the bottom shelf, and behind that is my modem/router and all that fun stuff hidden away. Everything you see is either from eBay, Etsy, local vintage shops and an Asian shop in the Byward Market.

I walk through Chinatown and Little Italy on my way home from work. I stopped in a shop in Chinatown one day, found the pot below and another one, and carried them home (HEAVY!). The yellow Eames shell chair I bought on eBay from the same shop where I bought the green lamp. The curtain fabric I found on Etsy, and since I don’t sew I used that iron-on tape to make a hem and used curtain clips to attach them to the rod. Easy peasy.

Jo had suggested I paint the frame of the back door yellow, and it is one of my favourite touches in the room. When the kitchen was renovated I tore out the only closet on the main floor, so this back corner is where I stash my outerwear. Below is also a photo I took standing against the window, looking into the (new) kitchen. (I haven’t gotten around to painting that little ramp into the office yet).

So that’s my office in its current state. It’s an addition to the house and since it’s not very well insulated, ideally I’d love to tear it down and rebuild it bigger and properly insulated. I may settle for making the powder room smaller, and building a closet where the coat hooks are (it’s currently not wide enough there to have a closet where coats could hang). The powder room is hideous, hence the lack of photos. So there’s still work to do. The list somehow seems to keep growing no matter what I get done…

Marit, a DTI regular, wrote us recently about her resort in Indonesia and we had to share this dreamy place with everyone. Those of you living through a terrible winter (like myself), I am warning you that the photos below might result in a few tears shed so I recommend having a tissue on hand. “Your blog has been a big inspiration to me as we’ve been designing our resort and home in West Papua, Indonesia. We’re an eco resort in the true sense of the word, using only reclaimed wood in the construction of our 11 cottages, dive shop, restaurant, and pier. I could go on and on about that stuff, but I think the aspect that might be of most interest to you is our Water Cottages, designed by UK-born but Australian-based architect Viv Faithfull at WH Architects in Melbourne. There are 8 of them built on stilts over a tranquil lagoon.”

“I designed the sideboard in the first photo and our Javanese craftsmen built it. It took 18 men to move it into place! The rattan furniture was made in one of the local villages. Together with Conservation International, we made a project to bring rattan artisans from Bali to Papua. The local villagers now have an income that doesn’t rely on unsustainable exploitation of marine resources. And we have great, locally made furniture!”

*sniffle sniffle* See? I told you! Thanks so much Marit for sharing your incredible home with us. Maybe one day….

Katia from Finland wrote this morning with the following: “Your recent post about the kittens in the sink inspired me to send you one of my favourite photos of my cats. Here two -of my five darlings- lounging on my daybed in front of Ikea Billy bookcases. And if you look closely, in the lower right corner you can also see what these darlings do to furniture…” WOW – someone with almost as many cats as I have! And Katia, your poor furniture – I always say they’re lucky they’re so cute…

We here at DTI occasionally post photos of cute animals on furniture – because we love animals, and we love furniture. I just received an email from Katrina who had this to say: “Here is something you might like. I foster kittens for my local rescue – the Anti-Cruelty Society. I was cleaning the kittens room and put them in our tiny little apartment bathroom to keep them away from the vacuum. This is where they decided they were most comfortable. Enjoy!” I think fostering animals in need is a selfless wonderful thing and I want to thank Katrina for opening her home to rescued kittens. And who says a sink isn’t a piece of furniture? 😉