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Once upon a time in a far away land (everywhere is far away if you live in Australia) lived a stressed out princess who really, really wanted to swap places with Sleeping Beauty if sleeping meant napping in these beds. The French seem so good at it. Rustic wonderlands with super comfy down filled, linen clad beds, sunny outsides and cave like insides. History, laidback luxury, warm winds blowing, great wine, fabulous food, warm pools for between nap dips and too cute pets. Move over Sleeping Beauty I’m taking over your bed! Le Logis de Puygaty, a fairytale of a getaway.

This is a long weekend here in Canada, to celebrate the Queen’s birthday. It’s the biggest party weekend of the year, as it’s the first long weekend of summer and everyone attends cottage parties and BBQ’s, as we Canadians love to enjoy what little summer we have! Yesterday was the first day the whole family got to spend time at my little sister’s cottage together. Jen and her husband Dave bought their cottage this past fall and have had a TON of work done to it and the major work was finally completed a few days ago. We spent most of the day getting beds set up, hanging curtains and artwork, stocking the kitchen and all that fun stuff. There are a bunch of little things that still need to be done but it is AMAZING how much work we did (while watching 3 small children), while still being able to enjoy a bit of the gorgeous weather we had and go for a couple of pontoon boat rides. So instead of my typical blog favs post, I thought I’d share some before and after photos of the cottage (there are more, particularly before photos in a Flickr set here).

Here is the cute facade (the porch stairs have since been rebuilt).

Now the interior was SO dark and dingy, with nasty industrial carpeting everywhere and icky varathaned round board all over the walls. I begged and pleaded with them to have all the walls painted white and they listened thank gawd. Here are a couple before shots of the kitchen area:

…here is the kitchen removed and carpeting torn out, and the adjacent living room…

You’ll have to see the transformation after the jump. 🙂

Here is the living room and kitchen now. Everything is white and bright, and a new laminate floor makes a HUGE difference. The living room is furnished with an old Ikea sofa from my parent’s house, a floor lamp from me, on old coffee table my parent’s bought at Ikea 30 years ago and other hand me downs. The kitchen is all Ikea. The cabinets still need the hardware installed, some bar stools, a new ceiling fan, hopefully a framed pegboard on the wall to hang utensils etc.

Here are before and afters of one side of the veranda (the 2 wicker chairs in the second photo are the only pieces of furniture my sister kept from the original owners, having bought it fully furnished) :

Before and afters of the main bedroom:

Before and afters of one side of the sleeping loft:

And a little shot of a corner of the bathroom (formerly painted lilac) and some cool light fixtures they bought at Home Depot for $9:

And a couple random photos taken yesterday…

It’s all about layering. Starting with a neutral base and adding texture, objets d’art, personal pieces, gallery walls, books, even colour as yet another layer. It’s definitely not minimalism but it is also stepping back from the edge of maximalism, of knowing when to stop. It’s about luxury with the everyday, comfort with contrast. It’s all about adding one more, carefully, just so. Sigh… yes just enough. It’s layers of meaning, of how the client lives. It’s all about interior designer Ashli Mizell.

Last weekend I stumbled upon the website of Max Levy, an architect based in Dallas, Texas and was immediately taken by his creativity. I discovered lots of interesting ideas while perusing his portfolio – my favourite being the watering can drainage system in the first 2 photos. How freaking cute and genius is that?!

Kim Jeffery is a very talented and relatively new photographer (I aspire) who has a very interesting name (mine is Kim, my husband’s is Jeffrey), has photographed for covet garden (one of my favourite online mags), is Canadian I think (me too!), is a huge animal lover and wanted to be a vet until she was 14 (me too!), and has a few cats (me too!). Seems like destiny that I blog about her and her pretty photos.