/Lewis Dolin

THE ONE ROOM CHALLENGE | WEEK FOUR | I Have This Thing With Floors

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 SugarplumI 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.

By |April 24th, 2015|3 Comments

THE ONE ROOM CHALLENGE | Week Three Update | Gold vs. Brass

Hello lovelies!

I hope this finds you all happy and inspired now that Spring has finally shown up on the scene. My body has decided to continue to do some “Spring cleaning” of its own by way of the nastiest flu I’ve ever experienced. Yes, I mentioned we had it run through our household last week. Well, it decided it wasn’t quite ready to break up with me and came back for an extra special bonus round. So grateful I’m the only one its clinging to, but that said, I’m working on my harshest break up lines as we speak. It’s not me, Flu, it’s you.

Gratefully, my amazing husband is currently picking up our incredible floor tile which has just arrived! More on that next week once we have it installed. I. Can’t. Wait!!

In the meantime, let me update you on the current state of affairs.

STONE SELECTED!

First off, thank you for weighing in with your thoughts on the Silestone countertop selection via Facebook, Instagram and here on the blog! The decision has been made and with a 25 year warranty, it’s a countertop that will definitely stand the test of time. I can’t wait to reveal it to you on Week Six!

THE GREAT FAUCET DEBATE

The decision of the hour relates to the great faucet debate. It’s a battle of gold vs. brass by way of two awesome faucet options. On the left you will see the more gold finish of the Delta Trinsic, and on the right, the more brass {dare I say slightly coppery?} finish of the Brizo Solna.

This is what I call a good problem to have, my friends. I love them both! But I want to hear from you. Which one do you prefer?

Here are the amazing Lewis Dolin pulls from Upper Canada Specialty Hardware that I will be working with:

As you can see, much more gold than brass. I really think the hardware makes the decision pretty clear, but I’d love for you to weigh in. Do you like mixing various tones and hues of metal, or do you prefer to keep it all in the family so to speak?

I have to tell you that Don, Ed and the team at Upper Canada Specialty Hardware have been an absolute dream to work with, and they’ve been instrumental in helping me to create a most beautiful solution to the ugliest problem in the laundry room using a phenomenal sliding door system. I seriously can’t wait to get it installed. More on that in the next couple of weeks!

If you follow me on Instagram you will have seen the video I posted earlier this week showing how ridiculously easy the DriCore SMARTWALL system is to mud. We’ve just got a few seams left to mud, but here’s how the room looks right this minute with the ceiling drywalled and the DriCore Subfloor R+ and DriCore SMARTWALL systems installed:

I can’t tell you how excited I am to get to the pretty part! Here’s THIS WEEK’S TO-DO LIST:

* Finish installing our CREE LED pot lights
* Paint the ceiling and walls
* Install the track for the sliding door system from Upper Canada Specialty Hardware
* Seal the tiles
* Lay them out to ensure the pattern is correct and we have what we need
* Cut and install the tiles and let them set
* Grout the tiles
* Paint the MDF end gables
* Install end gables and base cabinets
* Get countertop templated

Sounds do-able with a wicked flu and only a week to do it all, right? SO much more to be done once we make our way through that list, but we are just taking it one week at a time, one day at a time. I figure I can rule the world from bed with my laptop and iPhone at my side, and the plan is to be back on my feet as of tomorrow so I can dive in with Graham into the tile installation.

Be sure to check out what the other designers and bloggers have been up to and let me know what your favourite projects are so far! Stay well and have a wonderful Spring weekend!

xo
s.

Coco + Kelley * Jana Bek * Autumn Clemons * The English Room * Vanessa Francis * Greige Design * Hi SugarplumI 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!

By |April 16th, 2015|3 Comments