The Home Depot Archives - The Curated House

FATHER’S DAY 2015 – A CURATED GIFT GUIDE

Searching for inspired suggestions on what to get for Dad this year? The search is over, friends. I’ve curated a few very special finds that will have your Daddio feeling the love.

ONE // Does the Dad in your world love style, comfort and innovation? If so, the Noah Driving Shoe from Ron White is perfect for him. Ron took a year and a half to develop the layered technology in the insole of this shoe, transferring his All Day Heel technology from his women’s line into a totally sophisticated men’s shoe. Don’t let the relaxed styling fool you: this shoe offers incredible arch support layered with PORON, the Nasa-developed memory foam that is the signature in Ron’s shoes. Class and comfort combined, this shoe is perfect paired with jeans and a v-neck, but also amazing with a crisp linen suit.

{Don’t tell Graham, but these Ron White shoes are his Father’s Day gift this year!}

TWO // I love celebrating meaningful moments with the art of story, and what better way to do that than with a piece of original art? Elizabeth Lennie is one of my favourite artists because of her ability to capture the memory-making moments in our lives through her gestural, figurative work. Her subject matter revolves around outdoor Canadian pastimes like hockey or playing in the water out on a lake. I want to live the story she tells with my family, and I’m thrilled to have a couple of her small pieces in our home. Remind your man of his childhood love of hockey with Shinny 9 from Art Interiors.

THREE // For something small but special, why not choose a pair of handmade Rosewood Cufflinks from Jenny Greco via the One of A Kind online shop? They are a modern classic that will work with almost every suit he owns.

FOUR // Make your man the master of the grill with this Weber Genesis from The Home Depot. We have this grill on our wish list for our outdoor living room update this summer. I especially love that this Weber grill has a sear zone for crafting the perfect steaks every time.

FIVE // Use a daily ritual as an opportunity to remind him of how much he’s loved. This bespoke shaving set from Taylor of Old Bond Street in London is now being imported to Canada.

SIX // For the Dad who travels a lot, this gorgeous Bison Leather Dopp Kit Bag from Kaufman Mercantile is a practical luxury that will remind him of the family he adores while he’s on the road.

The reality is, the most important thing you can give to the Dad in your life is quality time together. Make him breakfast in bed, go for a bike ride or a hike in the woods, take him golfing if that’s what he loves. Whatever you do, make memories together and be sure to get some snuggle time in there, too. I know we sure will.

I’m beyond grateful for the amazing Dad that Graham is to our boys, and I can’t wait to celebrate him this weekend, Walker style. Wishing you and yours a connected and happy weekend together, whatever you do!

xo
s.

By Sarah Walker The Curated House|June 8th, 2015|2 Comments

THE ONE ROOM CHALLENGE | WEEK SIX | THE BIG REVEAL!

Happy Thursday design lovers! If you’re new to The Curated House, you’ve chosen a great day to stop by as it is at long last time to share the “afters” for our project for this season’s One Room Challenge. Do the last six weeks feel like a blur to anyone else? What an adventure! I’m so excited to share my little Luxe Laundry Room project reveal with you.

Before I do, I need to say thank you. First and foremost, I need to thank my incredible husband who has tackled this room on top of his extremely busy job as a software executive, all in his “spare time.” His perseverance, patience, persistence and incredible work ethic are the number one reason I have beautiful “after” photos to share with you here today. I am incredibly grateful to him and for him, not just in this project but in our real and everyday life together. I love you, babe.

I’d also like to thank Linda from Calling It Home for creating such a dynamic event. As a designer I can say that we all need someone to light a fire under our behinds when it comes to completing our own personal projects, and the One Room Challenge is the perfect spark. I plan to fan it into a flame with the Fall 2015 edition, and I hope more of my fellow interior designers will join me in taking on this design dare once again.

Speaking of design community and lighting a fire, I’d also like to thank my friend Lisa Canning for cheering me on with this little personal project. For years I’ve worked solo and been very isolated in my design business. Now that I have a design sisterhood, there’s no turning back! You are a gift, my friend.

A HUGE, heartfelt thank you goes out to all of my incredible brand partners, all of whom I will list with much gratitude at the end of this post. Without your generous support, this project would not have been possible.

Thank you, too, to all of you lovely people for following along and commenting on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and right here on the blog. I have loved having you weigh in on the selection details with me! You’ve made the process fun and engaging and I’m so grateful we got to do this together.

OK, so without further ado, here is our much awaited “after.”

Vases – Black Rooster Decor

Do you remember how dark and dreary our “before” was? The typical basement dungeon of a laundry room.

Well as Florence And The Machine would say, the dark days are OVER!

Now it is bright and pretty, happy and practical, full of storage solutions not just for laundry, but also for calligraphy, art, sewing, gift wrapping, painting and all kinds of other fun and creative activities. I now think of this space as my laundry-room-meets-arts-room in the storage sense of things, and I love how the TooFifteen bins accommodate everything with casual elegance.

Remember the problem of the furnace and water heater visually dominating the room? Such an eyesore! Not anymore. The incredible sliding door hardware system from Upper Canada Specialty Hardware matched with the gorgeous rift-cut raw white oak solid doors from Metrie mean that this now feels like a feature wall when the doors are closed, while still keeping the furnace and water heater totally accessible when necessary. These raw, rift-cut white oak doors add natural texture and interest while hiding a multitude of sins {including the rest of the floor tile yet to be installed on the other side of the floor-mounted track!}. I now love this side of the room – when the doors are closed, of course! – and it feels harmoniously balanced with the feature wall.

Two of the design decisions you so kindly weighed in on that I waited to reveal until today include the countertop selection and the grout colour. In the end, I chose Silestone’s Lagoon for the countertop, which led to the selection of Silver grout from Mapei to pull out the soft and subtle grey tones in the counters. I’m thrilled with the final result. The combination offers just enough contrast to be interesting without competing with the stunning statement floors, and somehow the palette speaks to a quiet femininity that just works for me.

Woven Ombré Towels + rose quartz Rock Soap – Anthropologie

Another of the decisions I kept secret until today was the question of which faucet would win the day. If you’ve been following along, I think it will come as no surprise that the Delta Trinsic was the right faucet for our space.

Cucina Hand Soap – Anthropologie

The champagne bronze finish of the Delta Trinsic is absolutely perfect with the gorgeous satin brass Lewis Dolin pulls from Upper Canada Specialty Hardware, don’t you think? This faucet is extra special in that it features SmartTouch® technology. The proximity sensor allows us to use the faucet totally hands-free when needed, and just a touch of the faucet also allows us to tap it on or off. We can of course just turn it on and off the old-fashioned way as well if we choose to!

I decided to have a little fun with the storage for my pre-soak stain removal detergent and picked up the black faceted geometric terrarium you see below on the right from West Elm. Paired with an antique silver spoon it makes stain removal seem almost an elegant affair, don’t you think? Perfect to use with our amazingly deep and functional Blanco sink from The Home Depot.

If you’re a detail freak like me, you’ll notice there are little touches that have yet to be finished {like caulking in the corners along the edges of the cut tile} but overall I couldn’t be happier with this dramatic transformation. From the floors and brass details adding sophistication, to the white oak doors and floating shelf adding a humble yet modern warmth, to the vases and bins adding a feminine edge and sense of style, this little laundry room has a new lease on life and has successfully converted me into a laundry lover after all!

A huge thank you to Ashley Capp for doing such a beautiful job of capturing the space for me – you are truly the loveliest!

And once again, a massive and heartfelt THANK YOU to all of my incredible brand partners for making this laundry room not only possible, but ultimately a gratitude project:

Subfloor R+ and SMARTWALL system – Dricore
LED pot lights – CREE Canada
Casing, baseboard and white oak slab doors – Metrie
Brass cabinet pulls and sliding door system – Upper Canada Specialty Hardware
Cabinet, wall and trim paint – Para Paints
Trinsic Faucet – Delta
Blanco Sink – The Home Depot
Silestone Lagoon slab for countertops – Cosentino
Bevelled subway tile – Creekside Tile Toronto
White + brass vases for flowers and brass jack – Black Rooster Decor
Tyvek storage bins – TooFifteen

Now it’s time for me to pour over the details of all of the reveal posts from these amazing talents!

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 amazing “afters” posted today by the Linking Participants for the April 2015 edition of the One Room Challenge!

Be sure to leave me a comment below telling me what your favourite details are from our little laundry room makeover. I’d love to hear what you think of the final reveal. I hope you love it as much as I do!

Now, off to do some laundry! *wink*

xo
s.

By Sarah Walker The Curated House|May 7th, 2015|53 Comments

THE ONE ROOM CHALLENGE | WEEK 5 UPDATE | DETAILS, DETAILS

Raise your hand if the last 5 weeks have flown by in a sawdusted swirl of activity! My, how one little project – when added on top of two full-time jobs and two full-time kids for two full-time grown ups – can make the time simply evaporate! But here we are at Week 5 of the One Room Challenge and things are starting to get good.

If you’re only just joining in on the fun and aren’t familiar with what this madcap adventure is all about, check out my intro post on the One Room Challenge as well as my updates for Weeks Two, Three and Four.

I love this crazy stage of a design project, when the details descend upon the space and the “after” starts to take shape out of the dust and chaos. We still have SO much to do, but here’s where things are at right this minute:

Our amazing French Curves baseboard from Metrie has been primed and cut and is ready to be installed and painted. I love the dimension and elegance of this profile, and it connects so well with all of the paneling we have throughout the rest of the house. Très élégant.

The matching casing from Metrie is just as lovely and ready to be filled and painted. Getting there!!!

Now onto one of my favourite solutions in this space. As you’ll remember from our hideous “before” photos, we have a water heater and furnace in our laundry room that could not be moved. I wasn’t willing to settle for those elephants in the room, so I worked with the amazing Don + Ed at Upper Canada Specialty Hardware to come up with an elegant solution. We built a bulkhead to accommodate the header track and installed a matching floor track in order to allow us to install their beautifully functional and totally fluid Crowder sliding door system in front of the water heater and furnace. Using these gorgeous raw white oak slab doors from Metrie, we have now almost finished installing what will be a most elegant solution to a most unattractive problem.

It was the solution to that problem that led me to the design choice of the raw white oak floating shelf {above} instead of uppers on the cabinetry wall. I love the clean lined openness of it, and I love that it speaks to the humble poetry of the natural and unstained wood of the Metrie doors on the opposite wall of the room. We called an audible on this one and had my amazing furniture maker Matthew make it for us. We were just getting to the point where it was clear that we were not going to get everything done on our own, and it was the best decision we could have made, as it looks gorgeous! Our incredible contractor Pete came over last night to help Graham install it as it was truly a two-man job, and I have to tell you, I L-O-V-E love it!

Our CREE Canada pot lights are finally installed and they have transformed our dark little dungeon into a light, bright and airy space. I am extra happy about them because CREE pot lights are no ordinary pot lights. They are LED pot lights, meaning that they are so energy efficient we may not have to change a bulb for the next 20 years! Unlike LED’s of the past, these babies have come a long way and offer a warm, natural-looking light that is not at all harsh or hard to look at. My Eco-Chic conscience is very happy about this design choice, and my next house will have CREE Canada LED pot lights from stem to stern!

Our amazing Blanco sink from The Home Depot is in place and ready to be hooked up to the plumbing which is all kinds of exciting! This sink is so generous and will be perfect for soaking soccer cleats and stained shirts and cleaning out paintbrushes and garden tools and taking care of just about any other messy job we can throw at it. Just what every mom of boys needs!

On the organizational front, these incredible Tyvek bins from TooFifteen are being assembled as we speak and will grace the top of our beautiful floating white oak shelf with effortless style. If you follow me on Instagram you will have seen another photo I posted of a TooFifteen bin earlier this week. I am still swooning over their elegant simplicity. To me they embody a kind of Scandinadian {Scandinavian + Canadian} aesthetic that I’m crazy about. They are perfectly imperfect in their rumpled, casual sophistication, and they are remarkably sturdy and functional despite their paper-like appearance. They are equally as strong wet as they are dry which means you can even plant a tree in one if you’re so inclined {I already have plans to do this with my Christmas tree this year!} and they wipe clean really easily, resisting oil, grease and stains like a champ. They are the perfect mix of feminine and tough all at the same time. Totally my jam.

Again with the Instagram reference {go follow me there if you don’t already!}, but I posted a concept I had for the labels for the TooFifteen bins earlier this week. While I loved the concept, the black ink blots were too harsh for the stark and simple beauty of the TooFifteen bins, so I collaborated with my friend Aileen from Plume Calligraphy who gave me a calligraphy lesson earlier this week and helped me find my calligraphy-nib-soul-mate. At Aileen’s suggestion, I also played with some gouache instead of ink and landed on what you see above for the bin labels.

What do you think?

I still have lots to learn from Aileen in the calligraphy department, but I was pretty happy with the result. {You should follow her on Instagram too – her work is amazing!}

Speaking of following along, go check out what all the other beauties are up to as a part of the Spring 2015 edition of the One Room Challenge!

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!

And now I’m off to hit the to-do list with Graham, including:
* Hook up the plumbing to the sink and install the faucet
* Finish installing baseboard
* Fill holes and paint trimwork
* Finish installing sliding doors
* Install backsplash
* Style, shoot and REVEAL!

One more week! Can’t wait to show you the final “ta-da” and see everyone else’s transformations as well. Soon, my loves!

xo
s.

P.S. Couldn’t resist including a little teaser of the extra “bonus” room I decided to tack onto this design dare deadline. Marine blue + dove grey crosses = total eclipse of the heart. Swoon! More soon…