Pretty in Pink

I spent a morning last week working on a room design for my youngest client, she's a 7 year old ballerina and like most little girls, she LOVES pink and ruffles and bows and candy stripes and fringe trims and pretty much anything frilly and girly.   She's never looked at a design magazine in her life, nor watched a single design show on tv,,,,,and has no interest in Philip Stark ghost chairs, Kelly Wearstler prints or Jonathan Adler furniture,,,,,well, unless its frilly or pink or sparkly then that's all she cares about.

This little girl and her mother are getting ready to move-in to their newly furnished house in about 4 weeks.  I've been working with them since October on completely furnishing and outfitting their entire 3 bed side-split and with most of the other living areas nearing completion I've been focusing on the bedrooms this month, along with a million other small details!!!   (this project in conjunction with furnishing the Bachelor's condo has been a crazy couple months of marathon shopping!)  The little girl's bedroom is tiny, measuring only about 10' x 10' with an 8' ceiling, a small window and has no architectural features at all.  The walls had just been freshly painted when I came on board, they're a light peachy melon colour and repainting was not an option so I'm working with it.  With a small budget, I decided to allocate a large portion of the budget to a custom upholstered headboard, bed skirt and window treatment.  

I made a quick trip to Designer Fabric Outlets and picked out a strawberry coloured velvet and a multi-coloured stripe.  The solid colour headboard will grow with her into her teens as will the stripe, the lighter peachy colour seen in the stripe fabric is similar to the wall colour and gives us the colour palette for the rest of the bedding which will be ready-made.   Next, I sketched up the design for the headboard and sent it all off to my upholsterer - fingers crossed it will all be ready before move-in!

With the headboard and custom skirt and window treatment being made the rest of the room will be filled in with some ready made, in-stock pieces and vintage finds.  I had a lucky day last week when I came across this french style dressing table in a consignment shop, painted white with a peachy glaze on the edges it was like it was made for the colour scheme of this room.   I scooped it up and headed off to the lighting showroom where I picked out a couple of sparkly pretty chandeliers,,,,I'll run these by my little client today and see which one she prefers....

All Photos & Sketches:  Carol Reed

Brian's Condo - Dining Room Update

The design concept for the dining room was created earlier in December and all the items except for the light fixture were sourced and purchased before the holidays (record timing!).  Its a small space which can't accommodate a lot of furniture so the the budget allocated for this area was tiny but yet I still wanted it to have big style.   Now I have to admit the dining area is not a space that's of much importance to Brian, he's not intending to throw dinner parties or be doing a lot of entertaining, nonetheless, some sort of table and chair configuration would be practical for the occassional dinner guest or weekday meal.  The fact that the LR and DR is one open space means that the dining table will have a perfect view of the large screen wall mounted tv in the LR - this feature seems to have heightened Brian's interest in the dining room design!  Now that I had his interest, I suggested that the best value and style for the money would be to find some vintage chairs and mix them with a simple modern glass table, this is a great solution for both small spaces and small budgets but the best part is it adds some originality and authenticity to the room.

My biggest find was scoring a set of 4 danish modern dining chairs the Sunday before Christmas.  The chairs had just arrived in the shop less than an hour before I stopped in and as soon as I laid eyes on them, I had to have them and they were bought on the spot (sorry to the guy who had been on a wait list for a year, but he was of the country for 3 weeks and I was there with cash in hand!).  Two days earlier I had found an amazing deal on an interesting chrome and glass table that was just the size we needed and in-stock, so suddenly with this set of chairs now purchased the dining room was just about done and we didn't have to special order any of it - another great advantage to buying vintage pieces.

This past Thursday was a big delivery day at the condo project with several key pieces arriving.  In addition to the mattress set, the sofa, the front hall bench, a credenza and the dining table,,,,,I also had to deliver the newly recovered vintage teak dining chairs....which was not so easy.  I'm crazy for these chairs and I grew quite attached to them over the past couple of weeks, honestly I didn't want to give them up, it was like suffering thru a bit of separation anxiety!

The chairs were in absolutely perfect condition, the wood is beautiful and the lines of the chair are so organic and sculptural looking.  For only $100 a chair, I don't think you can beat the quality and design.  With some new fabric on the seats, they'd take on a new modern look.  I picked out a charcoal coloured vevlet that I think is a beautiful compliment to the caramel wood tones.

An indication that the chairs were all made at the same time by the same mfg is the wood grain, on these chairs you can see the same knot in the wood, in the exact same place on each chair.  This also speaks to the quality of the pieces.

Here you can see the continuous wood grain on all the chair backs and not a single exposed fastener or screw anywhere on the chair.

The underside of the chair had a muslin type backing on and when it was removed we found the original mfg's label.

I was thrilled to see the Schionning & Elgaard for Randers label.  These chairs would have been made sometime between 1957 and 1960.

Thursday evening at Brian's condo,,,,,not quite ready for dinner.

As I mentioned above, quite a few furniture items were delivered on Thursday including the dining table.  Unfortunately, I didn't hire delivery AND installation for the table thinking that it would be a fairly simple DIY project for the new homeowner!!  So when Brian arrived we opened up the box and pulled out the instructions, anxious to whip this thing together and see the new table and chairs complete.  Immediately we were both relieved to see that no tools were required, because he doesn't own any!  A dozen fasteners and an allen key were all that was required so we sat down and attempted to piece it together..........every which way we could imagine,,,nothing worked, after 2 hours of frustration, we gave up.  The instructions were useless, there were only 3 steps (ha!) but step 1 looked like a diagram of the solar system with no explanation.  Trying to figure out the base configuration (which kind of resembles the eiffel tower) was like trying to figure out a rubic's cube.  I started to understand why the table had been on sale and concluded at that point that even if it had been free,,,,,It wasn't worth the price.  We agreed to call it quits for the day,,,,,but Brian vows to return on the weekend to try and figure it out.  I hope he brings beer.

Test strip of digital print on canvas.

Since there's no room for a sideboard or console in the dining area I wanted to do something special on the wall to give the space some impact,,,so it wouldn't just be a table and 4 chairs in front of a blank wall.  Original paintings or artwork of a substantial size is out of our budget range so I opted for original photography in this case.  While its not cheap, it is less expensive than a large painted canvas and offers unlimited subject matter of your choice and can even be from your own photo collection.   For this space I'm having a black & white image of a city scene enlarged and printed on a huge canvas, this will provide a great backdrop for both the dining and living area and create a modern urban vibe.  A photographic scene like this at this scale adds a lot of depth and creates a great 'view'.   I sent a photo to Kevin at Elevator Digital and he's printing it on archival quality canvas and wrapping it around a stretcher frame.   I stopped in yesterday to approve a test strip - it looks incredible, I can't WAIT to see this when its ready next week.

West Elm Globe Pendant

The last element of the dining room that remains outstanding is the light fixture.  I LOVE this simple globe pendant from West Elm and think its perfect for Brian's place.  Its not overwhelming and it has a bit of an industrial feel to it, especially when a filament style bulb is used - perfect for the modern vintage style we're after.  Unfortunately, everyone else must love this fixture too because West Elm in Toronto is completely out of stock on these and they're on back-order until March.  Uuugghh.  Despite my sulking, pouting, and just plain old begging,,,,they wouldn't even sell me one of their 2 floor displays.  So now I REALLY want this fixture but its going to require some creative resourcefulness.  The West Elm on-line shopping site doesn't ship to canada, not even to the West Elm store here.  I'm currently attempting to purchase it thru that site anyway as I have a US address I can have it shipped to, however,,,,,I'm getting stonewalled in the process.  Even though I have a US ship to address, they can't process the order on-line unless you have a US billing address, in which case you have to call their 1-888 customer service no. to place the order.  No problem I thought,,,,,this will all work out perfectly,,,,,,,until I tried calling the 1-888 number which doesn't work if you live outside of the US.???  The quest continues......

Stay tuned for posts on the front entry and bedroom design concepts and progress coming soon.

For the floor plan and first post on this Condo project go here.

All Photos:   Carol Reed

A New Project - Brian's Condo

I started a fun new project at the beginning of December that's kept me so busy I havn’t had a chance to post about it until now. I was hired by a bachelor client to completely furnish and outfit (with all the essentials),,,,,an entire condo from scratch. The condo itself is 2 years old but has never been lived in - it was just purchased this past November by my client, Brian. For him its a chance to start fresh and move into a brand new home completely tailored to his needs, reflecting his personality and lifestyle. For me,,,,,well, I've been given the challenge of furnishing this entire condo for him in just 2 months with a budget of $20k.

The only items the budget excludes is design fees and........the flat screen tv's. While its not a huge budget, its one I think a lot of people can relate to - but it gets eaten up pretty fast so every dollar has to be planned for maximum value. At this point things are well under way and over the past few weeks I've sourced, purchased and ordered many of the main pieces. In the upcoming weeks I'll be racing against the clock to get everything else purchased, delivered and in place for February 1st.

THE CONDO is a 2 bed, 2 bath unit measuring approximately 1000 s.f.. Its appointed with fairly generic builder's finishes, the kitchen has upgraded granite counters and stainless steel appliances, but the rest of the condo is pretty standard. I like that the walls are all white and that there's lots of natural light. But you might also notice,,,the unit is made up of many odd angles, a common theme in new buildings which unfortunately makes for a lot of unusable space.

View of Front Entry

View of Living Room Area from Dining area.

Master Ensuite

Guest Bath

THE PLAN: For this initial move-in phase, we're not planning any new construction or on replacing any existing finishes. We will be replacing light fixtures, faucets and cabinet hardware, other than that,,,,the budget is entirely all for furnishings and accessories. The living room has to accommodate a large (very large) flat panel tv and the second bedroom has to accommodate a desk and a sofa bed. Based on that criteria I prepared several furniture layouts for Brian's review before we settled on the furniture layout below. Somethings may be slightly changed or tweeked along the way but this is the direction we're headed.

With the furniture plan agreed upon I set about sourcing and selecting items that would work together and create the kind of vintage modern style we were looking for.  We don't have the budget or timeline to do much, if any, custom work so with the exception of one or two pieces already on order, everything else I purchase for Brian needs to be in-stock or readily available.  This is when it becomes a real hallenge to create spaces that are unique and not 'catalogue' looking.   In the weeks ahead I'll post about each of the individual rooms,,,,,the before pics, the concept plan and after photos.  In the meantime, here's a sneak peak of the design concept for the dining area.