I really don’t want standard stock doors and trim. Much of our work as designers consists of helping clients select the finishes for their new builds: doors and trim, hardware, millwork, flooring, tiles, plumbing, and lighting plans.

I labour over finding an affordable design that fits, but also elevates, the era of the home and the style of the existing furniture. I try to avoid trends, but unfortunately, once something is on-trend it becomes easily available and cheap. It can be really hard to convince someone to spend more after they have already spent so much.

For my own home, I was also not prepared to spend too much more, but I do have some skills, a lot of will, and a very patient family.

One of the biggest differences between expensive engineered hardwood flooring and the cheap stuff is the size of the planks. The cheap stuff has a way of wording their sizes that make it sound bigger “full length 50%-75%“ , but if you map that out, one long board is 400% the length of a short one, so the language is a little deceiving. I must admit I was a little shocked at how many short planks came in a box. There was 1 long, 1 medium, and a ton of really short. You just can’t make these short pieces look good. They only work at the walls, making the appearance that they were cut. But there are many more than that.

I lied. The first thing I actually did when the contractors were out was tile the laundry room floor. In fact, they might have still been there. We had moved our old washer and dryer into the basement while the building was happening and the dryer broke about halfway though the build. We had always planned on getting new washer and dryers, but we wanted them to be delivered to the new laundry room on the second floor. Dragging new machines up from the basement just didn’t seem like a good idea. So we decided to wait. Hanging all the laundry felt like I was back in Berlin before I’d discovered ventless dryers.

Room by room, I started painting. If we were still working with the GC, the painting would have come later, but we were borrowing his scaffolding and he was going to need it back soon. I also reasoned that we could save time and money by not having to protect finished floors.

The painters were brought in by the contractor to do the primer and the exterior windows and doors and they gave me some tips when doing the walls and ceilings. They were adamant that I sand with a sanding pad on a telescopic pole between coats. They said to use 120 grit sandpaper after primer and 150 - 180 grit after the first coat. And to use a 15 ml roller.

When the subfloor was down, I moved onto the window trim. I really wanted drywall returns for some of the windows. A drywall return is a technique used in construction to finish the edge of a window opening where the drywall or plaster meets the window frame. Instead of using timber casings which are somewhat decorative, a drywall return is used to create a smooth and seamless transition between the two materials.

Besides getting a nice house out of this, the purpose of building our 1000sf extension was to learn from a client’s perspective what is involved, what to expect, and how to survive a major renovation. I wanted to see every step of the build close up. We sealed off half the house with double doors and insulation and moved to one side of house partly because the cost of moving out was expensive and complicated, but also to be close by. Although, in hindsight, I feel I get more honest responses from the various trades as designer than as a homeowner.

I haven’t written much lately for two reasons:

I’ve been busy building… exhausting, sweaty building. The kind of building that makes you just want to lay in a hot bath and ease your aching muscles. (Damn, I wish my bathtub was not still sitting wrapped up in my bedroom.)

Nothing is photo finished, and as an interior designer, it’s hard to translate the look without, you know, the look.

But, I realised that what I’m doing may still be as fun and interesting to read as it is for me to do. So I will be getting back to this blog with a few short stories about building some of the elements of my home. Over the past few months I’ve painted the whole house, built shelving, done drywall window and door returns, tiled floors, laid engineered hardwood floors, and hung doors and trim. For reasons I will explain, a lot of these elements are not done to industry standards. But they are done well. And as it all comes together, they are starting to look great!

hink the hardest part of renovating your own home, especially as an interior designer, are the costs of the things you can’t see.  The things that are literally inside the walls.  Insulation is one such example.  That’s going to cost what?! @#$%!  

A contractor recently noted that soon we will be looking back at this time and seeing the obvious trend of black window frames that is no longer desired. That’s when I started to loose sleep. I’m getting back window frames. Am I just following a trend?

I’m not a huge fan of Toronto suburban architecture; the garage is just too predominant. But it is what it is for a reason: You need cars, tools, and machines when you live in the burbs and the properties aren’t big enough to hide a barn in the back.

People often ask why a designer would own their own bar and restaurant. But what better way is there to develop your work, then to work in your design? What works on paper does not always translate well into reality. A designer can learn so much by studying how her space is used. And for every problem there is a design solution.

When we began planning our home renovation, it was with a pre-pandemic understanding of what money can buy. We decided to delay by a year, in hopes that prices may change. But, as things have not, we were forced to reduce our wants and make a plan that fits our budget as it stands today. Our full list of wants included an addition of 1000 sf above the garage, opening up around the stairs, re-doing the kitchen and bathrooms. We are now building above the garage… period. Everything else has been moved to phase two.

Epic Move _ Scaling BackContractors often tell you to start with your full list of wants and once the pricing comes in you can scale it back to what is more realistic, but after this experience, I think it makes more sense to go the other way around. Keep your dream list in your head, and if the numbers for what you need come in low, add to it from there. It would save a lot of time and money that way.The two biggest items that we scaled back on have to do with the brick. Matching brick to the rest of the house is complicated and expensive, so we decided to go with black board and baton on the extension.

When our toddler began collecting things from outside I thought it was cute, but also slightly annoying. Our house was becoming cluttered with rocks and sticks. Each one was so precious to him, I wouldn’t dare throw them out for fear of tears… and breaking his heart. I decided if we have to keep them then they will have to be organized. All rocks go here, all sticks go there.

Our logo for Aunt Benny, herein referred to as “The Bunny”, started as a sketch on a bar napkin. It might have been an 8 x 11 but I think for the sake of this story it was a napkin. Alexander and Kyla worked on the initial sketches with a clear and concise idea in mind. The Bunny launching, slightly over a hedge or other low lying field obstacle. Escaping something? Maybe being hunted ? Like I said: concise.

We began thinking about a move to Mitte when we realised that with Aunt Benny just down the road, we literally never went anywhere else. We decided to move when we were kept up all night again by our neighbours.  I found a listing for an apartment which had no pictures or address listed, but sounded great.  Jeremy thought it must be a dump, but I knew that a four room flat with crown-moulding, 4m high ceilings, herringbone floors, and a balcony only 1 minute from Hackescher Markt is worth checking out.

The Berlin 2008 café scene was an entirely different landscape to what it is now. Unlike other cafés in the city, it was important that the ordering and paying could be done at the counter, guests could seat themselves, and food could be displayed at the front. We wanted a range of seating options from a large communal table, cosy bench seating, a couple of mid-sized 4-tops, and pillows at the windowsill for the lone diner wanting an unobstructed view of the park. We added a plant wall to hide an awkward ledge in the space which, in-turn, added to the overall warmth of the design.

With a focus on craft cocktails and barrel ageing, the concept for the design of this bar was inspired by a meth-lab, ie a laboratory in the woods.  We repurposed old barn beams to create a looming bottle shelf that extended to the full hight of the ceilings. We had a steel bar-top made to support an old door as the front and custom-made a narrow teak mid-century styled cabinet as the backbar as seeming reminiscent to the junk one finds in an old barn.  The bar stools are standard issue American science lab and, therefore, were shipped from the States.  The cosy outhouse inspired nook was made entirely out of plywood and the lighting throughout was mounted on custom-made rusted brackets.  Stone filled concrete flooring and an antique radiator completed the look to create a popular and cosy bar.