Scheming

... for yet another project.



Now that we have the furniture pieces for the family room in place and the old sofa and loveseat have been moved and set-up in the loft, I am now ready to put some colours in the three rooms - kitchen, family room, and loft. I know, I know I've been playing "safe" with our colours in the home. And I am not to do any different in these 3 rooms as the colours will be mostly on the fabrics for the cushions and drapes and accent wall. The big pieces are still neutral a.k.a. beige-brown-white-grey-blah. But I think once these pops of colours will be used, it will not be as blah anymore. Let's see.

Updates on some of our latest renos:

• Shelves in our walk-in closet have been installed and I am loving it. I told MDH it feels like I'm shopping for clothes whenever I choose what to wear in the morning :). There are still a few items that we need to finish up like putting the baseboards back, putting up the mirror and wall hooks for my blings, and adding 2 shelves and racks. But overall it's close to being a finished labour-of-love reno ;).

• I found the perfect fireplace for our bedroom and will order it soon. In 2 weeks, we'll re-paint our bedroom with BM Stonington Grey (same paint colour that we used in our walk-in). 

• We've managed to amp-up a bit the coziness in the loft.  Just a tad bit. We removed the work table and the desktop computer as they aren't used since MDH, MDK, and I have each our own workspaces. The study for MDH, the guest-room-slash-mini-recording-studio for MDK, and the chef's desk for moi. The sofa and loveseat that used to be in the family room are now in the loft. MDH says it's a perfect spot for napping so we now call it "the napping station." He's even thinking of replacing the sofa with a sofa-bed. I said "NO" so that's the end of that discussion hahaha.

So how about you my darlings? Any new schemes?

Have a wonderful week ahead.

My Not-so-LOFTy Pics

We've finally painted the 2 walls in our loft. Colour blocking is probably the least expensive an inexpensive way of putting umph in a room. And that's what we did for our loft. We used Prairie Lily by Benjamin Moore for the paint. It feels very cozy!

We've installed a white desk and white shelves to designate a work area. Love, love the contrast of the walls and the fixtures btw.

Not to scale :). I had to come up with a rough drawing to show to the boys.

For the pics above the desk, here are the pics I came up with. The dominant colour is white. Again. What else is new :). I also made use of the knick-knacks we have around the home as photo subjects. Needless to say, I like how they turn out.

I took the pics, made use of the stuff we already have around our home.

Here are the pics, up close:

BTW I call the loft walls my "happy walls." They make me happy every time I stare at them. Colours do have an effect on me.

Next on the list to do: paint the master bedroom and ensuite. The colour will be the exact opposite of what we've picked for the loft. Grayish blue is what we're planning to use in our bedroom, grayish brown for the ensuite.

For the Loft of Music

This is what you'll find in our loft - MDK's drum kit and some.

One of the things we share as a family is our love for music. And naturally, when we planned for things that we'd like to put in the new home, we made sure that music will become an integral part of it. The long term plan is to put a music/entertainment room in the basement. As of today, the basement is still unfinished. No work has been done in it and it has become one big storage area for our things that we brought with us from our previous home and we still couldn't find spots for them in the new home.

But...but...we asked a dear friend who is quite a very good architect to draw up a floor plan for our future basement. I am not a big fan of basements but as soon as I saw the floor plan that he came up for us, I fell in love with it and I couldn't help but get excited. I am hoping that next year, we'll be able to start some work for the basement.

For now, we're using part of the loft as the music area. It can be pretty noisy especially when either of my boys (MDH and MDK) start banging the drums but I really don't mind. MDK is into creating music as well. He has a mixer midi pad control unit in his bedroom which eventually will be placed in the basement. MDK has created some pretty cool stuff with it. One time, I was pretty amazed at how he came up with the reggae version of Tracy Chapman's Fast Car after listening to it. And it didn't take him very long to create it.

We will put shelves and a desk as MDK's work area in the loft. But before we'll install them, we will paint the 2 walls. I'm hoping this week, we'll be able to pick the right colour and start painting the walls. We are looking at red-orange colours, all by Benjamin Moore.

Here are the colour samples up close, with a close-up bonus shot of MDK's drum. I think either one of the paint colours will go well with the colour of his drums hahaha.

Stay tuned for some updates of our kitchen. One major item in the to-do list in our kitchen was crossed out this week. I'm one happy camper this weekend!

Painted House

Yay! The house has been painted. I've been stressing out wondering how my color choice would look like in the new house. Overall, I'm liking it. The paint colour is called "Antique Linen" by ICI. I would have wanted Benjamin Moore paints but the builder does not use Benjamin Moore. For sure, I'll use BM for the accent colours in the house.



They're almost done the brick work outside. This week maybe.

Five more weeks to go!

When life hands you a lemon...

... have some calamari with it.



Okay, here's the truth -

Figuratively, no lemons have been handed over.
Literally, I have a bagful in my kitchen.
Generally, life is good.




Yes, life is good.

House Updates:

Most of the baseboards and trims are already in place. And yay! We are loving the details they put in in every spot. The baseboard by the way is over 5 inches high which is waaay better than what we have in our present home.

All the doors have been installed.

And looks like painting is about to start.

And so here's how the kitchen looks like now -



And a portion of the nook (and loft) viewed from the family room -



And here is my other fave part of the house, the LOFT -



DK calls it "lobby" in the second floor and he even suggested we put seats in the area so it becomes a lounge area. I told him we plan to put bookshelves in the loft and his workspace. He said he does not want to work in an open workspace. So I guess the den will be DK's work area and DH's will be the spot in the loft :). We'll see how it goes.