Displaying posts labeled "Kim’s House"

When Christmas was over I was itching for a house project. I wasn’t looking for anything major as I only had a few days to really get into it before the new year, so I decided to give my dining room a makeover. I wasn’t really feeling the colour scheme I had gone with of grey/taupe and pale pink. I found it a bit cold and lifeless, especially when I love cozy, dramatic dining rooms. And since my dining room can be closed off from the rest of the house I knew I could go with something bold. I’ll start with a before photo. And for those of you who lean towards subtlety you may prefer this to the after. 😉

I went looking through Farrow & Ball colours and kept going back to terra-cotta shades. They seemed so warm and inviting. So I went for it! I did a bit of a random colour scheme of pink, terra-cotta and mustard.

I thought this room could use some dramatic curtains, and thought some crushed velvet in a mustard shade would do the trick. After a bit of digging on Etsy I found the most incredible set of very heavy, vintage curtains that were absolutely perfect. (I’ll include sources for everything at the end of the post)

Because the curtains weigh a ton I opted for a short rod on each side for them and found some sheer fabric and had them made into panels that we could easily slide across for privacy. (We live on a busy road so having something that could close so the city of Ottawa can’t watch us eat was crucial). I feel like a legit grown-up now with this curtain set-up, complete with tassels! That scalloped edging at the bottom is also along the inside edges of the curtains and is such a pretty detail.

A few weeks ago husband and I drove to Montreal to check out our favourite flea market and I found the art in the photo above (and a third one which you’ll see later). I almost didn’t buy them but thought they were so fun I went back for them without knowing where I could use them. I realized they would be a bold addition of colour in the dining room. I am SO glad I ended up scooping them up.

There isn’t much wall space in my dining room so I opted for a gallery arrangement on the only decent sized wall in the room. I had fun coming up with this. 🙂

The gorgeous girl with the orange hair and the print of the lips in the previous photo are of my Instagram friend Kelseyanna who kindly sent me copies which I had blown up and mounted on acrylic. The other gorgeous girl is a print by Mel Remmers. Love her!

At the top is a canvas painting by another dear Instagram friend Andrea. Below it is a lightbox my husband built for me. Inside is a photograph I took that I turned into an x-ray. Unfortunately it is hard to photograph when turned on but I LOVE how it turned out!

To my amazement I managed to find a rug that had shades of orange and pink in it to bring in the 2 major colours of the space. And it’s a perfect low pile rug for a dining room so sliding these heavy tulip chairs back and forth and cleaning up cat messes is no biggie.

There are still a few things I want to change in here. I found a darling vintage fabric to cover the chairs with (might not have enough to do all though dammit); I want a smaller, oval dining table because this one my husband built is a bit too big; I want a new buffet that is ideally 7′ long like this one. Regardless of those items I am really enjoying this transformation. At first when my husband saw the colours he thought I was insane but he quickly grew to love it too. I also had him on board with the curtain situation despite it taking hours to install/hang everything. Hope you all like it!

>>>SOURCES<<< wall colour: Red Earth, ceiling colour: Nancy’s Blushes, alcove colour: Picture Gallery Red, velvet curtains: AuDelaVintage, fabric for sheers: bettiecouture, curtain tassels: FabricsTrimsPillows, curtain hardware: Cozzy Coverings, 3 pink and purple signed and numbered prints from Montreal’s St. Michel flea market, vintage radio converted into a Bluetooth speaker by my husband: Daff Design, purple vase on radio & glass owl vase on dining table & most of the vintage ceramics on buffet: Vanier Moderns, plate with semi-circle hanging on wall in alcove & bowl below it & 2 small bowls leaning against books: Le Lou Ula Atelier, plate with flower: L’Arbre et la Rivière, brass reed sculpture & brass plant stand: The Pale Blue Dot, wooden stool plant stand & purple vase on dining table: Highjinx, rug: eCarpetGallery, Hay Denmark blanket and Ferm Living orange pot: The Modern Shop, framed canvas abstract painting: Andrea @hunt.and.scavenge, photos on acrylic: Kelseyanna Fitzpatrick @kelseyannaf printed by PosterJack, print of girl in black/white: Mel Remmers

The other day I realized I needed a project. Nothing too time-consuming because I have some work coming up on the house I want to tackle but something to tide me over until then. An idea came to mind, and luckily my husband was totally on board. Our guest bedroom never gets used, except for a place for cats to nap. It seemed like a complete waste of a room. We have 2 TVs in the house – one in the living room and one in our bedroom. Watching a movie in the bedroom meant one of us falling asleep within 5 minutes, and watching in the living room meant we’d each take a couch. Neither one an ideal situation. So we turned the rather small guest bedroom (10’x8.5′) into a media room. Every piece I used in the space was either already there, taken from other rooms or was pulled out of our 3rd floor storage room. And we LOVE IT!!! Here is what the bedroom looked before the transformation:

And here is what it looks like now. (Resource list at the end).

From trips to Mexico: wool rug on floor, everything on walls but large canvas, all pillows
Vintage: pots on coffee table, vases on white shelving, blanket on sofa, fabric used as curtains, stereo cabinet used as TV stand
Sectional sofa: Furniture Maison
Art over sofa: Madame Clamour by Villa Betula
Pendant light: Wunderkammer
Coffee table: built by my husband
Plant pot: Ikea
Table lamp: semi-built/semi-restored by a friend
Walls: Farrow & Ball Inchyra Blue (hallway wallpaper = Tourbillon)
Featuring 3 of the herd: Phoebe, Mimin and Felix 🙂

I have been on the hunt for some art for my dining room wall for a while now and wasn’t really sure what I wanted until the folks at Minted got in touch and offered me a framed limited edition fine art print. I was so excited to go through allllllllll the prints on their site. They have so many talented artists on board. I thought it would be an intimidating experience but I was immediately drawn into so many gorgeous prints and quickly realized their website is incredibly user-friendly. It’s so awesome I have to show you.

This is the print I went with – take a seat by Eric Eikenbary. When you select the size and frame you want on the right side, the left side shows you the photo framed, in a room, the frame close-up and how the print looks to scale. Freaking genius!!!! I seriously love this, and it’s great for people who are dimension-challenged and order items online only to receive it and go “huh, I thought it was alot bigger than that”. Now you can see before you buy! Anyway, they have lots of options for the frame material and borders/matting and all that good stuff. I went with a simple matt black metal frame and no matt/border. I am thrilled with my selection. It is so much better than the vintage metal sculpture I had there instead. I was hoping for something more graphic and I love photographic art so kudos to Eric Eikenbary for knocking this photo out of the park. I also need to share this photo I took on my phone just as I was digging into the package.

My framed print was soooo well packaged, especially given I ordered it in 30×40′ so I was a bit anxious to see how it was going to make the trip up from the States (California I think). It was completely unscathed, which is not surprising given their packaging methods. And the herd of cats lounged on the boxes for 2 days until I got tired of stepping over them. 🙂 Anyway, let me show you more of my new art!

I was so stoked about this new piece in my home I bought myself this gorgeous lily (?) plant for my dining table.

I thought you might like to see what prints caught my eye and made this a really hard decision.

Blogger friend Jamie Derringer’s Untitled 1b

Kate Ahn’s mother embrace

Misty Hughes’ burgeon

Clare’s Bywater

Qing Ji’s A White Peony

Elliot Stokes’ ebb and flow ink lines

It has been a while since I got around to decorating my guest bedroom and I finally found some time to snap some photos so I can share it with you. This room is annoyingly small (10’x8.5′) so it fits nothing really but our old queen size bed and a couple of small furniture items. I am tempted to do what the next door neighbours did and rip out the wall between it and the master bedroom and make an ensuite….maybe one day when I win the lottery. In the meantime if anyone wants to stay over, we have a proper bedroom setup which we did not have in our tiny previous 2 bedroom (1 bedroom plus dressing room/closet) house. As for the decor, after working on most of the other rooms in the house I came to realize that I had a bunch of things I had carted back with me from one of my many winter vacations in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico that did not have homes. Thus resulting in this Mexican theme space! At the end of the post I will list sources, but just about all of it are Mexico mementos. This room was a great excuse to try one of the new Farrow & ball colours – Inchyra Blue which I used on the ceiling and opposing walls to create a canopy effect. I LOVE this incredible blue/teal/grey shade and how cocooning painting those 3 walls are without going dark all over (I have enough dark rooms in this house already). I highly recommend this colour for anyone looking for something unique that is dark but not too dark. And as I have come to expect from F&B colours, it has chameleon tendencies and changes drastically depending on the amount of light.  

I had to share a photo of the incredible patterns this light makes when it’s on. So pretty!!

(Felix LOVES the rug/bed cover)

From Mexico: wool rug on floor and on bed, everything on walls, otomi pillow, blanket on Panton chair, trinkets on nightstand except blue pots, shells on window ledge
Vintage: metal nightstand, Panton chair, fabric used as curtains, plant stand
Moroccan wedding blanket: a wedding gift from Jo
Pendant light: Wunderkammer 
White lamp on nightstand: HighJinx 
Pillow on chair: VdeV 

The left side of my living room looked like this right after we moved in. This is a very long and narrow space (23’x11′) so while it’s easy to break it up into different zones on each end, it gets a little tough fitting in a really large sofa and TV cabinet and not having everything running along the walls and ending up with a boring layout. And while you may recall I had received a new sofa not that long ago, my choice of wool fabric was really not smart in a house with a bunch of cats so I moved it upstairs to the storage room and may use it when we convert the space into a library. Since then I did however score the rug of my dreams and that caused an entire re-arrangement of the space and I bought a few new pieces to go with it.

This rug is Fool’s Paradise by Marcel Wanders for Moooi Carpets from The Modern Shop. It is soooooo gorgeous, and pretty much ideal in this house of many pets because it is essentially commercial grade and very low pile so it will stand up to wear and tear and fur and constant vacuuming. The flower photo printed on it is SO sharp and the colours are incredible. I opted for round instead of rectangular (and the smaller of the 2 sizes) because I didn’t want to emphasize the long and narrow shape to the room. Even though my sofa is rather big and bulky, by placing it on an angle in the corner it makes it look SO much smaller and really opens up the space.

I had to find a new chair to work with the rug, and came across this Victorian grandfather chair at Yardley’s Antiques. I love the competing florals together. The glass sculpture on the pile of books and glass vase on a stand are from West Elm. The gold with marble top table is from Homesense. The star light under the table is from Gaslight Electric Sign Co.. The antique fireplace screen turned artwork is from Highjinx. The light is the Flos Aim pendant designed by the Bouroullec brothers.

This is a REALLY old chair, and I need to find some trim to cover those staples.

The vase and lidded bowl are vintage. That’s a watermelon peperomia plant. The leaves are adorable.

The art is this photo by Amanda Sebayang from Bali. I purchased a digital copy and had it printed on photoboard 40’x40′ by Posterjack, with a simple frame made by my husband. The fleece blanket is by David Fussenegger and plastic watering can by Qui est Paul? from Alteriors. Pillow from Homesense.

This rug also called for a new coffee table, and I wanted something small so I splurged and purchased an Eero Saarinen for Knoll black marble top side table from Alteriors. Kin tealight holders by Claesson Koivisto Rune for Skultuna from The Modern Shop. Bud vase from General Fine Craft.

More pillows from Homesense.

Vintage media cabinet. Lamp from Homesense. Table base by Pretty Pegs. Vintage wire sculpture from a shop in Montreal and Jieldé light from eBay.

These alcoves were awful. They had a piece of mirror down the center, and curved glass shelves on one side. That had to go. Husband patched the holes and built floating shelves. They are now filled with random trinkets – my cabinets of curiosities.