Remodelling your home can be stressful, complicated and exciting all at the same time. There are many moving parts to a remodel and it can be difficult to keep track of what is going on every moment. To help you through this, here are a few key tips to avoid any issues that may arise:
- Set a Renovation Timeline. Start by selecting what day you would like your renovations to begin. With that decided, you can then work with your contractor to plan how much time the whole project will take. One key thing to remember here is to account for shipping dates! These can cause some delays in your plans, so it’s important to set your end date with a few days of buffer in case this happens.
- Remember the Big Picture. Remodelling your home isn’t only about choosing the most beautiful finishes and cutting costs to stay within your budget. It’s also about taking a step back and thinking about how well this remodel will sustain over time. Will these cabinets last many years to come? Thinking ahead can save you time and money in repairs and maintenance.
- Keep Resale in Mind. There are a million choices when it comes to picking a style for your remodel. However, when making these decisions it’s important to keep resale in mind. If you’re thinking you won’t be in your house five years from now, consider having a simple design that would appeal to most people. It can be difficult for some to resell a home that has been remodelled to fit a specific taste.
Let us know if you have any remodelling plans in the future. We have a few under our belts and always happy to share our perspectives. Just remember, breathe through the valleys and look forward to the finish line!
Whether you’re getting ready to sell or you just want to put a fresh spin on your decor, staging is a great way to breathe new life into your home. Just some simple adjustments can add that
“wow” factor to your space—and you don’t even need to break the bank. Here are three tips for
staging your home to look its best:
1. Use clean, simple bed linens. For any bedroom, the bed itself is typically the main focus.
It’s best to avoid intricate or overly complicated bed sheets and covers. A clean, simple bed
layout gives potential buyers the look and feel of what it’s like to stay in the bedroom. When it
comes to home staging, less is often more!
2. Strategically place plants. Incorporating greenery into your decor always works for bringing
colour and life into any space. From potted plants in a home office to fresh cut flowers on the
dining room table, adding greenery to neutral tones creates a contrast that offers a bespoke,
inviting look for potential buyers or your next house guest.
3. Use appropriately sized furniture. Furniture can make or break the staging process of your
home. One aspect to consider is the size of furniture. Always ensure the size of your decor is
appropriate for the room, or even small for the room to make your home look more spacious.
Large, clunky furniture in a small space only serves to make your home feel cramped in
comparison.
Are you thinking about selling your home, or are maybe just looking for a spring refresh? Try
using these tips during the staging process and see the difference! We would love to hear about
how you’re staging your home for spring.
With winter soon leaving us, we can finally give a warm welcome to the spring of 2021! With all
the time we spend at home, it’s important to create spaces that are comfortable as well as
functional. Here are three spring trends you can incorporate to create a comfy, vibrant and
bespoke looking home!
1. Add earth tones. Adding calm earthy tones can bring the feeling of nature to your home.
Colours like sage green, inky blues and pale pink all give a sense of uniqueness to rooms.
Along with this, it can make any space feel like the ideal nature setting that will give a calming
feeling and leave you with a smile on your face.
2. Curved furniture. The 2021 trend is to move towards more curved furniture and rounded
interiors. For instance, love seats and corner sofas with curves are more welcoming. This type
of furniture is great to add for office spaces as well! Adding a small curved single seater sofa
can provide a perfect comfy spot for you to take a break and sip some coffee. To add the
finishing touches, add a rounded carpet and footstool. Enjoy your renewed comfy space!
3. Give luxe some love. Every home is a mansion, and this is just the trend designed to
provide you with that very feeling! The simplest way to bring a sense of luxury into your home is
by starting with smaller accessories. Pleated cushions or a new centerpiece can add the luxe
feeling to a room without breaking the bank.
Are you doing any redecorating this spring? We would love to hear what you have planned to do
this season.
If you’re anything like us, you’ve likely spent much more time in your bedroom than usual over the past year. Being kept indoors truly forces you to evaluate your living spaces and what they’re contributing to the sense of comfort in your own home. Whether you just retire to your bedroom in the evening or if it’s been doubling as your home office, here are three design trends to keep you cozy this year.
- Introduce pops of colour. Neutral spaces have been all the rage in recent years, but adding pops of colour will help bring warmth and comfort to your bedroom. If bold colours aren’t your cup of tea, that’s fine; try introducing soft, warm hues into your decor for a more relaxed, nurturing atmosphere.
- Bring the outdoors in. If you’re spending less time outdoors, then perhaps the outdoors needs to spend more time inside with you! Bringing some greenery into your bedroom promotes a calming, ethereal feeling. If you don’t consider yourself to have a green thumb, there are plenty of low-maintenance plants out there for you.
- Up the atmosphere with soft lighting. While having some beautiful light fixtures will add style to your bedroom, the type of lighting you choose is just as important. Avoid harsh hues and instead opt for something more inviting. Soft lighting by your bed is especially important to put you in the right mindset for a restful sleep.
Will you be looking to update your bedroom this year? We would love to hear about the changes you have planned for your home. If you’re considering selling, we would be happy to guide you on what updates will bring you the most return once you come to market.
This year may be a different Christmas for many of us due to the current circumstances but I believe that many will still wish to celebrate the holiday and perhaps with a smaller number of people. We have some decorating tips to keep things light and fun that you may wish to consider:
1. Pay attention to table décor. The table is the basis for any holiday dinner. It’s where we come together to sit, eat, laugh and spend time together with our loved ones, so putting together show-stopping table settings is a great place to put your focus. For table mats, consider something softer like linen, cotton, or even canvas. As for the centerpiece, pick something long, but colourful—we recommend Chrysanthemums or something green!
2. Colourful Christmas trees. Two years ago, pink Christmas trees were suddenly popular—now, gold trees have risen to the spotlight! This style is great for decorating the tree as the golden glow compliments silver ornaments. Along with this, gold Christmas trees give a fancy and luxurious look that would brighten up any holiday photo. Why not try something outside the box this year?
3. Blue and silver hues. This year, people are switching from the usual red and green to less traditional combinations like blue and silver. Non-traditional Christmas colours allow inclusivity for those who celebrate other holidays this time of year, like Hanukkah. The colour blue also gives a cool and calming effect, which lends itself well to various patterns, ornaments and decorations.
These three trends are a sure way to make your holiday décor unique this holiday season. We would love to hear from you to see how you’ve decorated for the holidays this year! However you decorate this season enjoy, be merry and stay well!
The weather is getting warmer and as we approach Canada Day it really feels like summer.
We have family friends coming to Ottawa to stay with us to experience the celebration of Canada Day in the Capital; an experience that every Canadian should have.
We love to walk along Sussex and go up to the Hill and take it all in.
This weather makes me think of gardens, pools, cottages, docks and everything that goes with all of those experiences. One of those is of course sprucing up your gardens, decks, dock or pool and that means furniture.
I am always on the look out for handsome classic Muskoka Chairs which are hard to come by. There is the Muskoka Chair company of course but by the time I get the order done and decided on a colour it will be Labour Day! My husband and I were driving up to the country and found beautiful classic Mukoka chairs made by a local craftsman Donat Chevalier in Low, Quebec. We purchased 6 of them and are going to have them stained in perfect time for the long weekend and the beginning of summer.
That was a real find for sure. Donat mills the wood and fabricates furniture for interiors as well as garden furniture, cabinets and a variety of other items. His work is fine and reflects a sense of pride every artist has in a work they are so committed to.
The real estate market in Ottawa has been inconsistent with bursts of activity and then a quiet period and then another burst of activity.
Properties in the upper end of the spectrum in the top 10% of the market ($750,000 and up) have enjoyed brisk activity in certain neighbourhoods while in others, they are lingering.
This may have something to do with a desire in many buyers minds to have a strong walkability scale. They have reduced themselves to one car and are thinking very green.
Neighbourhoods like Westboro, Old Ottawa South and the Glebe remain hot tickets and when priced well, they’ll sell quickly.
No matter what you are thinking of doing it is best to have representation form a qualified and competant professional who is available to advise you on the ins and outs of real estate investment.
Many fail to see that your real estate is likely your single largest investment. Doesn’t it make sense to put the management of that asset in the hands of an experienced professional in order to get the most amount of money, with the fewest challenges, in the current market? A skilled agent can save you problems on the sale and purchase end that as an inexperienced investor you may overlook.
I am always available to talk about real estate. In fact it is my favourite subject. I believe in the notion of educating and empowering our clients to help them make strong decisions regarding their investments.
Please if you would like to talk about your real estate needs, I am available to talk.
Until then, have a wonderful summer!
One of the many benefits of my job is of course the opportunity to see so many interesting properties. Everyone has their own personal sense of style and panache, if you will, and it is exciting to see the abundant number of creative ideas that there are. With home styling magazines such as Canadian House and Home, Style, Architectural Digest, Traditional Home and Veranda, to name a few, as well as all the great shows on home decor available, it is no wonder the creative juices are working in so many homes and many without the use of professional designers. In some cases this is not usually a positive but in the three recent cases I have seen it is extraordinary!
I have had the fortune over the last several weeks to see the homes of three good friends. Two are newly built homes in established neighbouhoods and one was a major renovation and addition to an older home in a well established hood in Ottawa.
All three are nothing short of spectacular. They are filled with luxurious options throughout and all three are completely different. One house on the water is a decidedly
Hollywood Regency design. I tell everyone that I am waiting for Candy Spelling to appear from the boudoir at any given moment. It is from a period in time when luxury and exaggeration were hand in hand. In this design the exaggerated forms come in ceiling height (12 feet instead of the traditional 9 or 10 feet), deep cove mouldings and base boards each with a minimum of 12 inches and are an exciting and dramatic feature, especially the dark brown stain on the dental moulding featured in the sunken family room. It compliments beautifully the dark wood toned flooring and gorgeous rich fabric draperies that are chocolate brown with navy and they frame the windows that look onto the expansive river front view beyond. This home is truly a one of a kind and although it sounds over the top it is actually quite subtle. It is obvious that a great deal of thought went into the design and the home owners were greatly assisted by none other than Andre Godin in the design of the home. The owner has collaborated on several projects with Andre and each one seems to out do the next. This owner knows exactly what she wants and spends all her free time in research about period in architecture, furnishings, fabrics and art. So each home that she has done has a very strong feeling of authenticity about it and it is just another side of her very creative self.
My other friends are just in the throws of completing their newest build in town and it truly reminds me of that house in the movie with Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton called Something’s Gotta Give. You may recall that Diane Keaton had a spectacular beach house in Montauk in this movie. Everything was white in it but it had such pizzazz. So does this home. Quiet and understated but the scale is actually very big for a so called “small house”. Big wide hickory floor boards, complimented with high ceilings and very wide hallways along with large entrance ways, all which help give a perspective that the house is much bigger than it actually is. The colour scheme is soft using grays and white in both the floor tiles as well as the counter surfaces.
The third home I saw is a home that boasts an addition as well as a renovation of the second floor. It is a home that has always had the appearance of being one of the great homes in the neighbourhood. The curb appeal has always been very strong on this home. Not only because of the outstanding landscaping plan that was designed by one of the owners, but also by the handsome appeal of the architecture. One knows from the outset that you will be taken into a world of beautiful things, lovely design both inside and out. The hallmark of this home is in the details. They are quiet yet expressive, in both the details in the millwork and trim as well as in the doors, hardware and light fixtures. The garden features its own maze or knot garden and has quiet spots in which to relax and meditate.
The recent renovation has created simply beautiful and relaxing boudoirs and baths with such calming effects that one feels like they are resting in one of the finest hotels available. The master suite is the absolute piece-de-resistance. It is very large, sunken and has a very grand and high cathedral ceiling. The room is surrounded by windows yet the light is soft and relaxing. There is such a sense of peace in the room that you want to leap into the bed and sleep!
The fact is that all three of these families have so much of their own influence on the outcome of their projects and that is why despite the scale these homes are all warm, relaxing and inviting. They all feature state of the art equipment in every way. Yet they are all family homes.
I am in awe of what all three families created with a huge portion of it coming from within themselves.
It left me with the thought that we all have a personal style and ways to create a nest for ourselves and our family and if we put our minds and our wallets to it, anything is possible. Right?
Now I will start pouring through my design magazines and continue to watch my HGTV shows and wait to be inspired again!
