post and beam cottage Archives

Project Lake House | Introductions

When your favourite client of all time calls and says she’s just purchased a new Lake House and would like your help with a bit of decorating, the qualifying questions to get to “yes” are few and far between. Add to that a beautiful post-and-beam structure as the starting point, and you can understand why it’s not too much of a burden.

One of the first rooms we will be addressing is the kitchen. I’ve recommended that the clients paint out the wood cabinets to provide some relief and contrast to the wood ceilings, log walls and post-and-beam structure of the cottage. It’s always a tough one for people to consider as we’re all a bit precious about wood, aren’t we? I understand that, but I really do think this seemingly courageous move will help to define the kitchen area and break up the visual monotony of all that wood.

That said, there are other changes we will be making to transform the space either way. We will be installing a rustic splitface slate grey backsplash to tie in with the granite countertops and the floors; the cabinetry hardware will be replaced with something with greater contrast; the super-high raised breakfast bar {it’s almost chin height when you stand in front of it} will be coming down; and the lighting will definitely be addressed as well.

The previous owners had a serious love for all things green, but green is not my client’s favourite colour. Gratefully, the floors and granite counters in the kitchen are a more neutral palette, and in almost all of the rooms of this beautiful property we can remove the green accents without great effort and take things in a much more modern direction, befitting of my very sophisticated clients.

{All “before” cottage images via Royal LePage}

I actually love all of the grey and sandy tones in the natural slate floors, so we will be using that as our jumping off point for the colour palette for the soft furnishings, starting with a custom rug.

In fact, we’ve already got our strikes back! Strikes are samples that are made up before finalizing the order for a custom rug. Allan has taken very good care of us as usual. We fell in love with a more contemporary feeling Ikat pattern and customized the palette on site at the Lake House using wool and silk poms to reference the colours in the floor. We chose to have two strikes made up – one a combination of wool and silk, and the second 100% pure bamboo silk.

You can definitely see the dark and the light side of the bamboo silk rug more clearly than with the wool and silk in this case. The image above shows the light side of the bamboo silk, and the image below shows the dark side.

Here are the initial fabrics we are working with…

…which led us to the obvious winner: the 100% bamboo silk. The client and I both prefer the lighter side of the rug, so it will be installed such that it is what you see when facing the focal point of the stone fireplace. We love the airbrushed, softened effect of the striation the weavers used on the silk piece. It is still modern but bridges the masculine and the feminine very well. I can’t WAIT to see it in place!

In the meantime, the furniture is on order, including some custom designed pieces that will suit the rustic and organic vibe of this cottage while elevating it with more of a modern aesthetic. I’m so looking forward to updating you on our progress in the weeks to come!

xo
s.

Update 2 | Project Debonaire Young Sir

OK, so you may remember me mentioning that Noah has a fondness for a somewhat Scandinavian aesthetic. This likely conjures images of mid-century modern teak furniture and lots of white. Well, the white would be right – he’s already sophisticated enough to love white walls {that’s my boy!} – but the rest of Noah’s Scandinavian reference is different from what you might think. Think Scandinavian lifestyle – animal skin rugs, rugged outdoor activities and the like. That is the Scandinavian influence he loves! Fun, right?

As you may remember, just before Christmas I had an unbelievable, pinch me if this is real opportunity to take a whirlwind two day trip to Copenhagen with a lovely and very generous friend. With Noah in mind, I picked up a beautiful reindeer skin rug similar to the one pictured below while I was there. {The rugs were the by-product of animals that were naturally raised for organic meat}.

{Image source}

Despite the rug shedding terribly recently {apparently this is normal and will cease shortly}, this will be the anchor for his otherwise bare hardwood floors. I just love the natural colour palette, and he loves the soft landing when climbing out of bed in the morning! I’d call that a win-win.

The next hit of “Noah’s Scandinavia” is super fun and will be the focal point above his headboard. I love that it creates the feeling of a hunter’s cottage without any actual animals being harmed in the making of this particular feature. You may have seen him in magazines. I just love his whimsy and modern simplicity. Friends, meet Bucky.

Noah had a blast assembling his new cardboard forest friend, and we can’t wait to see Bucky proudly standing guard with his stoic, gentle silence over Noah’s sweet and sophisticated little nest.

Next on our list? Finishing Project Ugly Duckling. These two rooms are connected and we’d really like to get the bathroom done first. Drywall sanding {the messiest part} should hopefully happen in the next week as the drywaller fits us in between other bigger jobs, and then we can get to installing baseboards and crown, etc and then painting in prep for that glorious Fornasetti wallpaper!

The truth is that the sanding would already be done if we hadn’t tagged along on one of Graham’s work trips to Boston this week. After he had already been in California for two weeks for work, we decided we needed to eat dinner together more than one night in a row…so…Airmiles for flights and an already paid-for hotel room led to an easy decision to just go with him! Even though he was still working like a madman most of the time, it was really nice to consistently eat dinner together each night. Noah and I enjoyed exploring a bit of Boston {including some very patient tagging along on his part to the Boston Design Center}, we took a very inspiring tour of Harvard {Noah is now seriously fired up about the dream of studying architecture there – yahoo! for inspiration!} and most of all we were just grateful to all be together.

Now that we are back I am actually busily working on a fast-paced decorating project for my favourite client’s new lake house/cottage. It’s a beautiful post-and-beam structure that simply needs some furnishing as the previous owner’s choices were…well…a little too rustic cottage-y for this client’s tastes. Let’s just say there was a lot of hunter green and tapestry going on. Not so fabulous. We are trying to get it done quickly so that they can start enjoying it as soon as possible with their large family. Here’s a sneak peak at the place…

The view of the lake is total serenity now. Just gorgeous! I’ll try to share some of the details on Project Lake House with you next week. Much of the furniture has already been ordered, so we’re going full steam ahead! Think calm and modern shades of grey mixed with neutrals and naturals, some texture and some gorgeous custom wood pieces. Knowing that custom furniture orders take time, there’s still lots to get done in order to have this family sitting around their new dining table in their new cottage for Thanksgiving this year! It’s so gratifying to work towards creating a beautiful environment for this family to connect with each other and make new memories! Makes the job much more meaningful.

That’s it from me for now…I hope you are having a thoroughly inspiring Thursday!

xo
s.