our previous home - the guest room

I can't be the only one who feels that the past year has simultaneously crawled by and passed in a blur? It feels like I finished this room ages ago, and yet, I can hardly believe it's been an entire year, practically to the day. Nevertheless, what a year it's been.

Anyway, regardless of how much time as passed, I'm happy to finally be sharing it with you. I think it's my favourite room to date. 

 

First, and most importantly, the colour. After much consideration, I decided to go with my instincts and actually select a colour I fell in love with - Farrow and Ball's Calke Green. In the past three homes we've owned, I haven't strayed from my usual Simply White. But a guest room is a unique room. I feel like it's a room that needs to be a little more special. And because it was a room that wasn't used each day, I felt like I could go with something a little more bold. It was a room with lovely high ceilings, and two massive original windows, so I felt it carried the colour well. I also felt the green, while natural and still neutral feeling, was also serene and inviting. I decided to paint the window frames and all the trim work to match the walls, and in my opinion, this is what makes the room. It adds a richness to the space and it feels more historic. I also painting the cabinet and the bed frame Farrow and Ball's Old White which works beautifully with the green, without feeling stark.

The green reads slightly more sage and a bit darker in this lighting, but you can get an idea of it's vibrancy in the window sills.

I am still absolutely in love with it and I plan to use the colour again (or one of a similar tone) in our new house. I love how it feels with the warm natural woods, and I love how the blue and white looks against it.

I'm not surprised I settled on green. When I started looking at some of the pieces I had collected, it was clear there was an underlying theme. 

When thinking through the layout, and how I wanted the space to be used, I decided it needed not just a sleeping area, but a sitting area as well. I wanted it to be a retreat for our guests - a room not just to retire to, but their own space in our home where they could get away and read, or spend some time alone.

Every piece of furniture in this space was something we had previously had. The sofa and chair set belonged to my inlaws. In fact, it they used it for about 40 years of their married life. I always liked the green damask, and was happy to use it in this space.

To give the space some character, I started collecting things to display - little things found while beach combing, old books of historic significance, all the rusty treasures we dug up while gardening. These are the things that add depth to a room.

Then I added things that would make a stay more enjoyable. A collection of some of our favourite videos,  baby items, candles, fresh flowers on the night table and lots of extra linens and pillows.

                                 

I like having a lighter quilt on the bed with the option of a heavier, warmer duvet, as well as both firmer and softer pillows.

With travel restrictions, we didn't have many opportunities to use the room before we sold the house, but we did find ourselves occasionally sneaking into it to quietly read and enjoy some quiet. And while I do miss the room, I now have an entire little guest cottage to plan, so I'm not too heartbroken.

I'm looking forward to sharing more on that space soon.

dinner in - a lobster boil

When I imagined having guests stay with us on the East Coast, I imagined a beautiful guest room to put them up in, serving a large breakfast on the island, buffet style as people awoke, and at some point in their holiday, a trip out to the harbour just on the other side of the mountain. We'd show them the Bay, and how low the tides sink, and then we'd pop into the fish market before heading home with our prized lobsters. Later, as the sun was sinking, we'd open a bottle of wine and enjoy the adventure that is a lobster boil.

A lobster boil, for us at least, is such a fun experience to share. They're such interesting creatures and it's such an anticipation! Watching them turn bright red when boiling, then the mess of learning how to crack into them and all the laughs, it's really a lot of fun. And also delicious... So delicious! Having my sister and brother-in-law, and our four nephews, here for spring break was the perfect opportunity for all these things. A highlight was on one of our last evenings when we had a lobster boil. It was all I hoped it would be!

We might as well have taken the boys to the aquarium! It's so much fun watching them admire the lobsters and be able see them up close.

Of course, something as special as a lobster boil deserves it's own special table! And really, it just adds to the whole experience.

For the place settings this time I used some oval ironstone plates as they fit the lobster perfectly. Then a napkin, which is very much needed when one enjoys lobster! A nautical bread plate just felt like an obvious addition and a couple other interesting pieces, like little saucers my sister gave me and tiny bamboo cocktail forks which worked well for dipping pieces of lobster in the clarified butter.

The runner was from Target, on clearance last fall, and I snagged it for under $5.

I also used some copper pieces as they work well with the aged clay pots. This little saucepan was for warming the clarified butter and the medium pot worked perfectly for an wine bucket.

We also opened a bottle of a new favourite wine - Nova 7 from a local winery, Benjamin Bridge.

And obviously, with things as they are, I wasn't able to grab any cut flowers anywhere, but the grocery shop did have one potted pink Hyacinth (that wasn't completely blown open), and a mini white Begonia. They've been sitting on my island, but they livened up the table enough.

These aren't our usual chairs - they're actually our patio chairs - but we've been using them inside this week as there were twelve of us for meals!

My sister found a stack of these sweet little scalloped saucers with a tiny blue print at a thrift store. They work perfectly with Jenny's blue block print napkins. She also found these shallow blue and white bowls at the same time as the others and there are also matching saucers. These worked perfectly for the chowder she made to enjoy while the lobsters steamed. It was beyond! (It may have had something to do with it essentially being seafood poached in whipping cream and butter.)

And this sweet shell was from my nephew. He found it at the harbour and gave it to me especially because it was all white. He was thrilled when I showed him my collection of special shells from all of our favourite beach trips, and then tucked it amongst the others. Here it worked perfectly as a little salt dish.

All the dishes set out ahead of time - a lovely mix of blue and white.

Two large, two pound lobsters were perfect for the four of us.

The novelty of this is so not lost on us! We're always just as excited as anyone else we're sharing it with. The fact that we can drive 15 minutes to the Bay of Fundy to pick out freshly caught lobsters is still so surreal.

the family room

Being a large family of six, living space was quite high on our list of wants when we were looking for our new home. I don't mind sharing a bathroom. (Okay, that's maybe not entirely true. It would be so much easier if they could just put the lid back on the toothpaste and not touch my face cream. But I can live with sharing.) I don't mind small, cozy bedrooms. But having space to live as a family was important. Especially when we started thinking about how we saw ourselves living in our home. I wanted space for family and friends to come and stay comfortably, and sometimes that would mean lots of kids running around. 

Our family room in this house ended up being so much more than we were hoping for. The room itself is 25' x 25', and essentially, a giant square addition off the main house. It has four large windows and french doors that make it the brightest room in the house.

The room didn't seem to require much more than a good clean and some paint when we purchased it, but after further inspection, we discovered it needed a lot more attention than we realized. There is no duct work in this part of the house, and with little insulation, as we soon found out, this room gets freezing in the winter. The wood stove that was being used for heating was actually unsafe. (You can see all the smoke stains from improper ventilation in the room.) The cement pad from the original fireplace sits in the middle of the room and was decommissioned years ago, but just kind of left.

In the end, we stripped the room back and added proper insulated. Vents were added at the entrances to the room to help with air circulation. And then we dry-walled and refinished the floors. At the last minute, we decided to put in a gas fireplace.

Then there were these structural supports to the room. Originally our contractor couldn't see how they were needed, but as we opened things up, we needed to have some sort of support in place. If we wanted, we could run headers to remove these and make the space more open, but that was a greater cost, and also, more time consuming. So the columns stayed. I decided to just make the most of them and work them into the design. I knew we wanted to have a table in this room - somewhere as extra dining space as we got rid of the formal dining room, but also a place for us to play games and use as part of the family room. They kind of act as a visual divider of the dining space from the rest of the room, and with some detailing and paint, they add some character to a very plain space. This was also the reasoning behind us keeping the shake from what was originally the exterior wall. It adds texture.

Now, in an attempt to be transparent, most of what is on display here does not stay out all the time. If it did, my favourite blue pots would inevitably end up broken on the floor, and only my most favourite books would be doodled in. Half our boys are still very small, and anything I want to keep needs to stay further out of reach of their little fingers. Plus, we use the table, and it's just inconvenient to move most of this when we want to play a board game.

This old round table was a table I bought years ago and painted. Then it sat in our basement for the last seven or so years. I didn't want to get rid of it because I really loved it, and I'm so glad I didn't.

I always love a table styled with interesting books and collected items and pretty things to look at. I also look forward to having a large arrangement of flowers in the middle.

The patio doors lead to the back deck, which is multiple small levels, and is connected to the porch off the kitchen. It won't be staying come spring as it's not structurally sound any more. It's sinking in places and looks ugly. The covered porch will stay and outside of the doors I plan to build a couple steps down, and then have a patio area under some sort of pergola with vines growing on it.

The sofa is from Lee Industries and it was an amazing find on Kijiji. A couple in Toronto was moving back to NYC and needed it picked up asap. We literally drove there that night (it helps that Ryan had access to a Sprinter van), and I pretty much stole it for $400. It's in amazing condition. I will eventually order slipcovers for it, as well as a matching chair to go beside it. It's extra deep and perfect for watching TV, curled up in front of the fireplace. I will also keep my eye out for two chairs to go where the rocker is, antique wood ones with custom slips, that I can put squared off, opposite to the couch. The coffee table will also be replaced with a large ottoman.

Because it's our family room, we have toys for the little boys in here as well. The larger toys are stored away in this trunk. The beauty of this space is that it's so nice and open, and it offers so much room for them to play.

And then we have a small corner where they can sit and play as well, a few pails of cars and animals, and then two woven baskets for storage - one is filled with Hot Wheel tracks, and the other is filled with blocks.

Here you can see the temporary fireplace. We had planned to eventually put one in the same place as the original fireplace, but not for a while as it also meant adding built-in bookshelves to either side and having a hidden TV cabinet above it. We knew that if we added it during phase one of our renovations we would have to live with it in a very basic state for a while. Finishing all of that just wasn't part of our budget.

In this decision though, function beat out design and the fireplace was installed. A very basic box was constructed, and while it's quite ugly, we were very thankful to have it this winter. It kept this whole part of our house warm and comfortable, and in turn saved us a lot on having the furnace try to heat everything. It also meant we had a heat source in the event of a power outage, which is quite common here. Note the same tiny little television - a new TV will also wait to happen until we build the cabinets. Until then, we're making do, and honestly, I don't even mind.

We designed the fireplace around the existing cement pad. The original flooring ends here, at the pad, and these floorboards have so much character from being by the hearth of a working fireplace. We wanted to save that character, so we plan to install thin brick pavers on top of the cement. The fireplace seems quite far out, but with deep book shelves on either side, and a cabinet above it, it will seem more proportionate. 

I just love the little charred bits of the floorboards, where cinders have jumped out of the fire and sat smoldering for a while, leaving behind blackened indents.

This is also where I have my desk. Eventually I will have my own writing desk in my room, but for now I just use our computer in here. It's also handy for the boys to work on homework.

You can see here where it's open to the living room. Originally that was the dining room (the formal living room was where the guest room now is). There were saloon type doors here. We removed them and opened it wider so that it would fit a pair of standard french doors if we ever wanted to close it off in the future.

When we opened this doorway up, we had to cut into the exterior more, and what we found was a really old way of waterproofing the house under the shake. They used strips of birch bark as waterproofing.

There is also a small washroom in the large area, which is really nice, especially with little ones. It even has a shower, though it's the smallest shower we've ever seen - maybe three feet squared.

The butler's pantry is also off the dining area, which you walk through to get to the kitchen.

My mother in law has two more chairs to match these that she will bring in the spring. I will also look for two smaller occasional chairs on either side of the buffet and a rug to ground the table.

Because of the scale of the room, I wanted a large lantern style light fixture. Originally, when I opened it, I felt like it might have been too large. There were tons of tools and saws and building supplies piled into the room and it just felt like too much. But once everything was cleared out, and painted white and open, the fixture was perfect. Large, but not obtrusive.

I can't wait to see how this room will evolve over time. It will make such a difference when I hang floor to ceiling drapes on each of the windows, all on one long rod. I will add so much warmth. Then, as I find pieces to fill out the space, and more layers are added, I think it will be one of my favourite rooms in the house. It's definitely the room where we spend most of our time together.