This or That: Mirror mirror on the wall

Thanks for all the wood shelf support last week :-) Unfortunately, hubby isn’t budging on his anti-wood shelf stance. Boo! Men can be so stubborn! But I guess I’ve gotten most of what I want in the room up to this point {hello sparkly girly chandeliers!}, so I suppose I can let him have this one ;-) I’m still at a roadblock with the horizontal vs vertical niches – luckily, I don’t need to make a final decision yet. And now there’s this new idea in the mix – what do you think of the curved surround behind the tub in this bathroom?

Image via Style at Home | Design by Victoria McKenney of Enviable Designs

This week’s This or That is all about mirrors…

 Image via Houzz | Lori Shaffer

 Image via Houzz | Design by Douglas Design Studio | Photo by David Whittaker

 
Image via Desire to Inspire via Nuevo Estilo

Image via HGTV Canada | Design by Sarah Richardson on Sarah 101, Season 4 

Image via Houzz | Design by Visbeen Architects

Image via Houzz | Design by David Howell

Do you prefer the look of of one long mirror that goes right across a double vanity, or a mirror above each sink?

My first PARA Paints Blog Crew project: The little chair makeover

Finally, my little chair is all done and ready to make its debut :-) And this is also my first PARA Paints Blog Crew project – Woot!

It’s been a while since I started this project, so here’s a reminder of how my little chair looked when I first got it from my cousin’s wife:

It had been sanded down except for that one side of the front leg. I used that colour as my inspiration for the new paint colour. I decided on PARA’s P5168-51 Time Will Sell.

The chair most likely had a gut wound seat, but I have no idea where to buy gut or how to make a gut wound seat, so I opted to go with a cushioned seat. I already had this fabric that matches the paint colour perfectly.

I wanted to preserve the wood with its bits of original paint here and there, so I decided to just paint some accents – the inside of the legs and the top of the back.

But I didn’t really love it – it looked kind of busy to me. I mentioned a while back that this chair is most likely an antique Habitant chair, made in Quebec around 1860. All of the Habitant chairs I’ve found online had originally been painted. Sometimes it’s cool to give an old piece a modern twist, but in this case, I decided to go back to the chair’s roots and just paint the whole thing Time Will Sell. Except for the inside of the front leg, I kept that just as it was :-)

I lightly sanded the edges to add just a touch of age and for the wood to peek out just a bit.

See how non-uniform the rungs are? :-)

I love the circle fabric {thanks hubby for the upholstery job!}

Voila! My new old Habitant chair!

Thanks PARA Paints for selecting me for your Blog Crew – this small project is just the start, I have lots of big projects coming up soon! And thanks to Susan for the chair and Heather for the fabric :-)

Linking up to…

At home with designer Dawna Jones

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Michelle at A Schematic Life posted a picture of a beautiful space on Facebook…

Don’t you just want to run up those stairs and see what other beauty is in store?! Well, you can! This is the home of BC interior designer Dawna Jones, and she kindly said Yes when I asked her if I could feature her home on my blog. Dawna had me at her front door…

And those stairs? They lead up to this gorgeous space:

How’s this for a room with a view?!

Not one, not two, but THREE gorgeous sparkly crystal chandeliers in the kitchen:

My dream home would have a wall of doors that open wide to a beautiful outdoor patio.

The black, white, & grey colour palette is carried throughout Dawna’s home.

The wood warms things up and adds a nice organic element to the rooms.

A beautiful change from the more typical white laundry room.

Such a beautiful and unusual sink in the powder room.

I love the look of the long horizontal window high up on the wall in Dawna’s media room.

That’s a view I’d love to wake up to every morning!

Thank you to Dawna for allowing me to share her beautiful home with you, and to Michelle for posting the picture of Dawna’s home :-) Check out Dawna’s web site to see more of her beautiful design work.

On another note, I was so excited a couple of days ago when I discovered that there’s a new Annie Sloan Chalk Paint stockist right here in Ottawa. WOOT! We may not have West Elm or Restoration Hardware or Pottery Barn or any other good home decor stores, but we have Malenka! I picked up three cans of paint and a dark wax this morning, so you know what that means – more furniture makeovers coming soon! And I’ll finally be showing you my little chair on Monday.

Happy weekend!

This or That: Horizontal vs. vertical

Our bathroom reno is getting close to starting. Hubby is picking up the building permit today, and then it’s demo time – WOOT! We have the toilet, tub, sinks, faucets, and floor tiles, and the shower tiles, in-floor heating system, and lighting have been ordered. I knew all along that I wanted a bubble-style chandelier. This is the one we chose. Actually, we’re going to hang two – it’s not a big fixture (about 12”D x 28”L):

Modern 4-Light Rain Tear Drops Crystal Chandelier by Evrosvet, available at amazon.com

Thanks to everyone who commented on last week’s floor tile layout debate. It took a bit of persuading, but I convinced hubby to go with… #6! Looks like it gets Squirt’s paw print of approval too :-)

The accent tiles that we were planning to buy are out of stock and won’t be back in stock for at least three months, so we chose a different Bianco Carrara marble mosaic for the strips between the porcelain tiles.

This week is a tough one – the tub filler isn’t wall-mounted, so we need to build a niche in the wall to where the faucet will be installed. Hubby keeps asking me to decide if I want one long horizontal niche behind the tub, or one tall vertical niche in the center of the tub wall, or one small niche for the faucet with two vertical niches on each side. So the question is…

  Image via Houzz

Imagine a faucet centered in this horizontal niche:

Image via Houzz | Design by Rachel Reider Interiors

 
Images via HGTV/Sarah 101 | Design by Sarah Richardson

Source unknown 

Our layout with the vertical niches would be slightly different than both of these options, because as I mentioned, the faucet needs to be installed in a niche. But I hope you get the idea!

The wood shelf in the next picture would actually be my first choice before either a horizontal or vertical niche, but hubby’s not going for it. Booo! However, sometimes when majority rules, he can be swayed :-)

Image via Dawna Jones Deisgn via Houzz 

Would love to hear your thoughts on horizontal vs. vertical. And if you like the wood shelf best, let me know!