Holidays Decorating Trends 2010

I recently wrote a little article on Holiday decorating trends for the Home and Garden Shows here (Go to "Tips and Trends, the click on "Design & Decor"). Stay tune for some mood boards (hopefully soon!)

Designing the man cave

My latest article on the Ottawa Citizen was published this weekend. Designing a man cave would be really neat. Here's a picture of the shelf I was talking about from Fusca, based in Mexico. I really like it. You can have a lot of fun with it and it would be great in a library or in a bookstore !


photo: Fusca

Tips for small spaces

My latest Ottawa Citizen article is out. I discovered a few interesting items that help in small homes. I was really impressed with the Goliath table from Resource Furniture. I wish I had discovered that table before I bought mine. It's like condo dweller's secret weapon for entertaining.

Espace-Loggia's bed are really neat too. And despite the fact that they're based in France, they ship to Canada. These would be great in those 500 sq ft downtown condos.

It's too bad the pictures for the closet under the stairs didn't make it in the article. So I thought I'd share it here. Designed by David Money of David Money Architects and built by Mick Coates. Isn't it neat?


photos: Resource Furniture | Espace-Loggia | David Money Architects

Cool ceiling fans

While searching for original ceiling fans for a client, I came across these unique and modern ceiling fans that I thought were interesting. Which one do you think they went for?

EVO1 PREVAIL

The EVO1 Prevail from FANAWAY is a retractable fan. The blades disappear into the lamp when not in use, which gives the fan a completely different look.







RIBBON

Designed by Benjamin McMahon, an industrial design student from Australia, this fan can be retrofitted with an existing ceiling fan.





DERVISH LAMP

Dervish Lamp by Philippe Malouin was inspired by the brushes from a car-wash. It's a very interesting take on the traditional ceiling fan.





ARTEMIS

The Artemis ceiling fan from G Squared Art is almost invisible with its large translucent blades. The fan come in a choice of finishes and colors.





SYCAMORE

Sycamore fan from Sycamore is a futuristic looking one blade fan reminiscent of Zaha Hadid's architecture.




FIORE

Fiore by Vento is a neat ceiling fan similar to a flower that opens up to reveal its petals when the fan is turned on.

Revisiting the layout of a kitchen

I'm almost done with one of my kitchen projects where I was asked to help my clients modernize their small kitchen and make it more functional, without getting into major renovations. Below is what the space looked like originally.

As you can see from the "before" picture, one of the main challenges was that three of the four walls had limitations : two of the walls had openings and another one had a large bay window that was about 30 inches from the floor. So there wasn't a lot of space to add counters using the original layout.

The plan view of the original space also shows that the 13-inch deep pantry was covering a portion of the window. We also didn't have enough space to push the wall back and allow for more counter space. Quite the challenge!

The solution was to close one of the openings which wasn't really needed, widen the opening facing the window to bring more natural light and use the added wall space for more counters and cabinets. We rotated the fridge and transformed the L-shape kitchen into a corridor kitchen. This way we were able to increase the square footage of the workspace by adding 12 inches deep cabinets with counters on either side of the fridge.

I love this kitchen. It's not often that homeowners ask for a bright red kitchen cabinets. We we went for IKEA's Abstrakt high gloss red cabinet with white quartz countertops. Here's a sneak peek of the space. Almost done :) Stay tuned for the results and more details on the finishes.