I haven’t been much of a blogger this year. Things got busy… very busy. My company is growing and I’m grateful for all of the new and exciting projects (both past and present) that have come my way. I got engaged in April and married in May. I took two awesome trips to Israel and Greece and honeymooned in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. We renovated our basement and when time / budget permits (hopefully soon) we plan to tackle our kitchen and maybe our main bath. I’ve been taking lots of notes and photos along the way and promise to share everything and make this blog a priority once my new website launches. Since I am designing the site myself my clients take priority, but I’m working hard to get it launched by summer. In the meantime I thought I’d pop in and share this quick update which was inspired by this video. I’m still working on improving my green thumb… maybe this will help:
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Art be like…
I’m a winter person… or at least I was a winter person. Perhaps I was a winter person when winter involved building snow forts at recess and snowboarding on the weekend. Once you start working full time, winter in Toronto tends to take on an entirely different meaning. For me, I feel like the past four months have been a constant cycle of waking up to grey skies, forcing myself out of bed to make a coffee, getting back into bed while drinking said coffee and answering morning emails, forcing myself out of bed again, throwing on my most comfortable jeans and coziest sweaters in rotation, completing daily tasks while searching for parking on streets filled with 5′ snowbanks, constantly brushing up against my filthy car and ruining every jacket I own, getting home when it’s dark, eating chips, watching Netflix, drinking wine, and never leaving my house on the weekend. ugh. winter.
There is, however, a bright side. Spring and summer come after winter. And spring and summer are wonderful seasons in Toronto filled with nightly ravine walks, drinking on patios, lounging in parks, jumping in freezing cold lakes, driving with the windows down, hosting delicious bbqs and most importantly, looking alive.
Now that we’re starting to see sunny skies and temps above zero, it’s gotten me thinking. Why not fill the walls of your home with summery art to help brighten even the darkest winter days? Here are some of my current faves. All of the links can be found on my Art Pinterest board.
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$285 Basement Bath Refresher
While renovating our basement we added a brand new 3 piece bath next to the laundry room (more on that later). The reason for this expenditure was simply because adding a shower to the existing 2 piece that was already down there would have been more costly than starting from scratch… lots of technical stuff involving cement blocks, foundations and supporting walls. Since a larger chunk of our reno budget was now going into the new bathroom, we wanted to spend as little as possible sprucing up the old one. We started with concrete floors, an old toilet and vintage sink (both of which we reused) and a whole mess of exposed and ugly pipes. It didn’t make sense to drywall over everything or box them out because again, this bathroom (which is directly off the downstairs walkout and recroom) is only used for the occasional tinkle while watching a movie. We gave the walls a fresh coat of white paint, sprayed all of the pipes matte white, and added inexpensive 2 inch matte black porcelain hex tile (actually from Ciot in Toronto) with frost grout. I styled it using stuff we had lying around the house and a couple inexpensive items from Target and Ikea (all of which, new and old, added up to about $100) and the bathroom is now a tiny black and white beauty. Throw in a little rustic wood and greenery and you’ve got a winning combination that’s just my style all for $285… and what a huge difference it makes. Check out the before and after:
Mmm that plunger really adds the the dreary before photo. It looks so delicious and inviting!
Pretty dramatic difference for minimal cost / effort, don’t you think?
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Elew Mompittseh says: I only use latex paint, but tend to go for high gloss for trim and cabinets......
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