OK, so I have a confession to make: I have this thing with floors. I have since, well, forever. Looking back on over a decade of design projects, I can’t think of a single house where I haven’t created a tile carpet or custom tile pattern of some kind. Quite seriously, in every bathroom, entryway and otherwise tiled room of every house I’ve ever done. Not for the sake of overkill. For the sake of custom design. And for the love of details. They are, after all, a love language.

So it should come as no surprise that when it came time to design my laundry room, the floor was front and central in my mind. So much so, that I scoured the earth {OK, so just the Americas} for exactly what I was looking for. And friends, I found it!

But I was not satisfied with just finding my treasure and keeping it to myself. No, no, I wanted to make sure this tile would be accessible to everyone – designer or otherwise – and so I called upon my long-time friend Enrique at Creekside Tile here in Toronto to see if he would be willing to be the importer. The awesome news is, he said yes which means I can now point you in the direction of an incredible tile purveyor who can help you access these amazing encaustic cement tiles {along with just about any other pattern of encaustic cement, marble, ceramic, porcelain or glass your design-loving heart could desire!}. Go see him. He will not disappoint you.

And without further ado…It. Is. IN!!!

I can’t wait to show you even more of it with the full reveal and proper photos. It is graphic and dramatic yet somehow feminine and classic all at once, and I lurv it. A lot.

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll know I posted this photo earlier today of the amazing Lewis Dolin brass bar cabinet pulls from Upper Canada Specialty Hardware.

They are so pretty I want to bite them! Perfectly crisp, brushed brass bars of beauty. It’s a lot of alliteration, I know. They’re worth it. Who knew four cabinet pulls could make a girl so happy?

That of course leads us back to the Gold vs. Brass debate of last week. Here’s how our Delta Trinsic and Brizo Solna faucets look with the Upper Canada Specialty Hardware Lewis Dolin pulls:

They have their backs to one another because they know someone’s getting voted off the island here.

Thoughts? I’ve settled on my selection but would love to know where you all land with it now that you can see the pulls and the faucets together.

As we speak, Graham is installing the base cabinets in prep for the counter template tomorrow. The counters take quite awhile to manufacture so that has been forcing Graham to burn the midnight oil. Can I just take this moment to say how incredibly grateful I am for my incredibly hardworking man? Seriously. He’s remarkable. This project simply would not have happened on our tight little budget without his faithful devotion to his family and to gittin’ ‘er done. Love him like mad. And dreaming up ways to reward him for all his hard work when this little luxe laundry is a fait accompli.

We had the drawer faces colour-matched in Para Paint in order to paint out our MDF end gables. This is going to make our builder’s box base cabinets look way more custom. And in prep for the counter templating we also picked up our amazing Blanco undermount sink from the fine folks at The Home Depot.

From soaking painting smocks after crafting with Tate to de-stinkifying sports gear after Noah’s games, this sink is going to be the workhorse sidekick to our washer dryer, and I’m thrilled it’s as clean and modern looking as it is functional.

The to-do list remains lengthy as we didn’t manage to get the walls painted this week thanks to a classic, slapstick “slip and fall on a hidden toy at the bottom of the stairs and spend the day in emerg with an evulsion fracture in my foot” moment I had earlier this week. Sheesh! It’s been quite the last couple of weeks, hasn’t it? These things always happen when it’s least convenient.

But that said, we’ve persevered and it feels like we really are rounding the corner to the home stretch.

This week’s to-do’s?

* Paint ceiling and walls after very carefully protecting the floors and cabinets {not my preferred order of operations}
*Finally finish installing our CREE LED potlights
* Install sliding door system from Upper Canada Specialty Hardware with our raw white oak slab doors from Metrie
* Install and paint baseboard and casing from Metrie
* Install floating shelf

So you know, enough to keep us more than busy here. Then of course there’s the styling and the photography and well…one day at a time, right?

Be sure to get caught up on what the other designers and bloggers are up to here and let me know which ones are your favourites:

Coco + Kelley * Jana Bek * Autumn Clemons * The English Room * Vanessa Francis * Greige Design * Hi Sugarplum* I Heart Organizing * Jenna Sue Design * Stephanie Kraus * The Pursuit of Style * Julia Ryan * Savvy Home * Simple Details * Simply Grove * 6th Street Design * Jill Sorensen * Swoon Worthy * Waiting On Martha * Kimberly Shlegel Whitman * and my friends and linking participants Lisa Canning and Abby M. Interiors. Go to Calling It Home to check out all of the 150+ Linking Participants for the April 2015 edition of the One Room Challenge!

xo
s.