The Basement: Wallpaper Wants

With the basement reno, we plan to take out some walls and create a bigger open space. When you have a big space, it becomes important to have some focal points to draw your eye. One way to do that is to create an accent wall and we're planning to do that here:


You'll see this wall when you come down the hallway into the main area. Lucky for us, one of my favourite designers Amy Butler (I swooned about her rugs here) is coming out with a line of wallpaper for Graham & Brown. Maybe one of these lovelies will grace our walls and bring some life and whimsy into the space. Aren't they all so fun?

Pattern Frenzy

Now this is a lot of pattern... I like it but wonder how long it would be before I got tired of it.


Hampton Designer Showcase found via Beach House

So Fun

"Carrie" wallpaper from Olli & Lime

Paint Me Pretty

What a doozy. It was non-stop snow Friday to Saturday night and when all was said and done, another 15cm of the white stuff had fallen. Judging by the snow in the backyard which sits almost level with the 42” fence, Mother Nature has been busy this winter. Seeing as we were housebound all Saturday, we decided to knock a few more projects off our list. Though we’ve made plans for the kitchen, the deck, and the guest bedroom, we decided to jump right in and tackle the home office instead. We hadn’t really planned out this space yet… all I knew was I wanted to paint. And paint now! A few months ago, we had stripped off the ugly wallpaper border. This left the room a boring baby blue with exposed pink patches where the border had been. Here’s a before just as we started moving the furniture out of the room.


And here’s the after. Two walls were painted Benjamin Moore’s Decorators White and the other two were painted Brookside Moss. You’ll see my cute bird print from munieca. The green in the first pic is probably truer to the colour of the paint.


We made a little shopping trip to Ikea and planned out the rest of the room. Basically, we’ll have an L-shaped countertop that runs underneath the window wall and down the right-side wall. Above the right-side wall, we’ll place two of these bookcases. One will run horizontally attached to the wall, and the other will run vertically and sit on the countertop. It was a cheap solution – the bookcases are only $99 each and you can buy small doors and drawers to fit in the cubby holes. The countertop itself will be supported by brackets/table legs and file cabinets at either end.

Now to take this home office from “functional” to “fantastic”, we’re going to do a few things:
- back the bookcases with wallpaper! Found a green and white modern damask from the Home Depot, similar to the one pictured below.
- On the long white wall, we’ll do a picture wall inspired by this photo below. All the frames will be black and white. It’ll be a great place to display some family and honeymoon photos.
- hang a curtain with a great print, like this black & white one, in front of the window.


There you have it. Another room almost done. I’ll post some after pics once the room is finished.

Green with envy

How much do I love this wallpaper? Oh so much. The kelly green is so fresh, so vibrant. It would be great in our home office.

Trellis wallpaper from Ballard Designs.

Wallpaper, you say

Sometimes, in home renovating, you have to take a leap of faith. You can plan and ponder, measure and re-measure, research, contemplate, and consider... and no matter how sure you think you are, sometimes you just have to cross your fingers and hope for the best. That's the best analogy I can give to describe HandyMan's and my foray into the land of wallpaper.

I've always loved wallpaper. Just touching it transports me back to our house in Georgetown, with its 1970's flocked velour damask and fake wood panelling. Nothing makes a room stand out more than wallpaper. And having come from neutral toned condos, sick of the Gluckstein-esque look of everything nowadays, we knew we wanted to rebel against the sea of beige beige beige.

We started safe, venturing into our local Home Depot to check out their selection. We briefly considered a green and white damask in an enlarged pattern, a modern take on this old-world style. After some thought, we found the pattern too fussy, too 2007. We then looked at some larger floral prints. One contender was bold with cream, slate grey, and black florals. On an off-white background, it would contrast (not in a good way) with the white wainscotting so that too was a no go.
Finally, a trip to Metro Wallcoverings brought us the answers we were seeking. We decided on a pattern that was graphic and modern, colourful and young. It is a bold floral that sits somewhere between Asian contemporary and British colonial...perfect!

Bling Bling

With the wainscoting up and the wallpaper down, our dining room has the equivalent of a pretty black dress on... now its time to add some jewellry! In the dining room, that translates into pattern, shine, and light.

For the shine factor, I've already moved

my beautiful mirrored cabinet into the corner. On top will sit the Tiffany crystal decanter and rock glasses we got as a gift from HandyMan's boss...so pretty!

To make the room all sparkly and shiny, we've ordered this nifty little light fixture from Universal Lighting. Its the Chase model double pendant by Robert Abbey. More typically used over a kitchen island, it'll do just as well over our oval dining table. Since the barrel shades are hung off a t-bar, the view from the living room through the back garden window won't be impeded. The light has a nice antique nickel finish, lending to the traditional air of the room.

And what would a dining room be without a bit of "drama". For that, we've gone the wallpaper route. We wanted something bold, colourful, vibrant, and graphic. Finally, after months of looking (okay, not really ;) ), here's what we are going with... Tobago by Arte Wallpapers.

Since we're also putting plantation shutters on the garden window, the whole room will have a cool-breeze, british colonial kind of feel which is just PERFECT because I have big plans for the adjoining deck. The two rooms will have a similar style. The deck will painted in white from floors to ceiling, have a beadboard roof, and breezy curtains blowing in the wind. But I'm getting ahead of myself! Let's get one room done at a time :)

Break out the power tools!

HandyMan and I decided to tackle the dining room first. Its a good sized room, 11x14, we're not tearing down any walls or anything, and it would a be a good room to try out our new power tool prowess in. Oh how I love wedding registries! We got most everything we asked for on our Canadian Tire registry - our mobile table saw, sander, drill, nail gun (HandyMan's favourite new toy), and the router (my favourite new toy). I've already got a long list of things I want to build with these puppies!


To prep the room, we needed to first remove the wallpaper. Lucky for us, there was only two layers and those came out fairly easily with the wallpaper steamer we rented. Who knew though, that old plaster walls + hot steam = big crumbly patches of plaster. Oh well, good excuse to practice our plastering skills. Tools in hand, we set out to create our own wainscoting from scratch.


First, HandyMan created a nice little CAD drawing, figuring out the dimensions of each panel. Then, because the walls were in such bad shape, we decided to attach flat pieces of hardboard to the wall as the base. Woohee, that nail gun sure made that an easy job. After the base was on, HandyMan cut MDF strips for the vertical and horizontal panels. I requested a little mitred corner on each end of the verticals just to add some interest. Once the panels were up, we painted them with two coats of primer and a coat of Benjamin Moore paint in "Distant Grey".