a june evening at home

Ottawa house tour: Kristen's classy two-bedroom Glebe apartment

I've taken a long break from blogging, so figured I'd come back with a major punch! Introducing my dear friend Kristen's fabulous Ottawa apartment (located in the Glebe) - the first of what will hopefully be many Ottawa house tours. Kristen has very elegant and classy personal style and that definitely comes across in her apartment. I'm very excited to feature her home on decorate it darling.

I asked Kristen to tell us a bit about her space, so without further ado, here you have her words and her beautiful photos:

Since my roommate and I moved in on Canada Day last year, I have been in love with this apartment. It has so much space and character, and it’s fantastic for hosting and having people over! According to my landlord, the building was constructed in the 1920’s or 1930’s, and since then it has aged with grace. I love how it feels so completely homey and cozy, but has an extra kick of elegance or something that more modern spaces, as beautiful and spacious as they may be, can’t capture in the same way.

I think my favorite thing about it is the choice of paint throughout the apartment -- it so completely finishes off the space, and as I'm no painter, is something I would never have gotten around to myself!


What I’ve done with it: To be honest, we’ve done very little to the bones of the space – our decorating has been all about careful furniture placement and attention to colour and detail. My roommate and I were lucky – we have very similar taste in furniture and style, so all of our separate pieces merged beautifully when we moved in. Every room has a mix of her pieces and mine, but they blend pretty seamlessly, which made setting the apartment up infinitely easier!

Each room seems to have one detail that really stands out and defines it – tall glass-paned windows in the kitchen, the mantle in the living room, the tiling in the bathroom – and we tried to place our furniture and accessories in a way that highlighted those details.


One DIY I’m pretty proud of are the sconces on either side of the mantle. When we arrived, they were painted a garish bronze. One was missing the shade, which was probably just as well, because the remaining shade was a really awful tannish-orange frosted glass monstrosity. A couple of coats of white paint and some vellum from the paper store for the shades have made all the difference in the world!


What I’d like to do with it: I’m always looking for new storage options. Old spaces are wonderful, but don’t have a lot of built-in closet space, so storage seems to be an ongoing project. I would like to see my bedroom painted (I really don’t like the yellow), as well as the TV cabinet, which really doesn’t match the rest of the room. But I actually hate painting so I have a feeling both will stay as they are! The other thing I really would like to do is introduce some green plants. Having never tended plants myself, the thought of figuring out which plants would be the best is a little daunting. Maybe this spring will be different…

If I were Kristen, I would start filling up her personal fire escape landing (accessible from her bedroom!) with potted plants. There's something about fire escape gardens that I just adore.

Thanks for the tour Kristen! To see more photos of Kristen's space, check out her flickr album.

i love you because...

(from Nylon's blog)

very little house on the prarie

'Small' article about small living in The Economist - I can't say it enough: I love, love, love the idea of scaling back, living with less and living smaller...

Feb 19th 2009 LULING, TEXAS From The Economist print edition
A new vogue for little living
Tiny Texas Houses
Squeeze right in

SEVERAL years ago Brad Kittel was living in the small town of Gonzales, Texas, running an architectural-antiques shop and feeling restless. He had the largest collection of antique door hardware in the country, and a warehouse full of salvaged material. But it was not shifting. So in 2006 he started Tiny Texas Houses, a building operation based in the appropriately tiny town of Luling, as a way of showing off his wares.

One of Mr Kittel’s current projects is a custom-built Victorian-style farmhouse with a green exterior. Most of the house is to be made of salvaged materials. It will have a full kitchen and bathroom, a loft big enough to sleep in, and a roomy living area with a vaulted ceiling. At 350 square feet (33 square metres), this is a fairly capacious model. Some of his tiny houses are half that size.

The idea is to offer a greener and cheaper alternative to the dread McMansion. And Mr Kittel is not alone. The Small House Movement has been around for years, encouraging people to think about how much house they really need. But lately it has attracted more attention. “It seems like a perfect convergence of a bad housing market meeting a bad economy and more awareness about global warming,” claims Jay Shafer, an enthusiastic advocate. His Tumbleweed Tiny House company sells small ready-made houses as well as plans for slightly larger ones. Its teensiest model, the XS-House, measures 65 square feet; ready-made, it costs $37,000. For several years, the company survived on a sale here and there. Lately, says Mr Shafer, interest has risen.

In one sense tiny houses are not a novel idea. Plenty of people live in small spaces because they cannot afford larger ones. And affluent Manhattanites could get lost in a 500-square-foot apartment. But the average American home is pretty big. In 1980, according to the National Association of Home Builders, the median single-family home sold was 1,570 square feet. By 2005 that had expanded to 2,235 square feet.

The indications now, though, are that the trend is to scale back. According to the Census Bureau, the median size of home starts dropped to 2,114 square feet in the fourth quarter of 2008, down more than 100 square feet from the first quarter of the year. And 100 square feet is a significant slice of space. Mr Shafer’s whole house is about that size.

send me your photos!

Hey everyone - sorry for the blogging hiatus. I'm back now and ready to start showcasing Ottawa interiors! (Okay, I won't say no to interiors from other parts of the world, but my emphasis is going to be Ottawa homes). So...that said, I have a few friends who are going to be receiving phone calls from me with requests to photo-document their living spaces and post them online for all to see, but the handful of apartments I already have in mind are only the tip of the Ottawa treasure-chest iceberg, SO, if you live in Ottawa and are pretty stoked about how you've developed and decorated your living space, send me some pics and a bit of your 'story' cause I'd love to blog about you and your space!

I'll be waiting at decorateitdarling@gmail.com!

dinner jacket looks inside

Dinner Jacket is a new(ish) online fashion magazine in Ottawa that has had a pretty impressive start up. If the rumors are true (and I heard them from an inside source), the mag will soon be available in print copies as well which is just fantastic. The online version is beautiful, so I can only imagine how pretty it would be in a hands-on glossy. Besides fashion, the magazine touches on other creative endeavors which, in their november issue, included the interior dwelling details of an ottawa local (although rumor has it, this ottawa native just relocated to Montreal). Anyways, enough of me trying to sound like I have the inside scoop on everything. Just thought you all might enjoy reading this article and seeing the photos of Jesse's place inside this great new mag.

Which got me to thinking...I was perusing some Ottawa blogs today and thinking about how maybe I should emphasize Ottawa a little more on this blog...which made me think that maybe I should start showcasing the interior abodes of Ottawa residents. Lord knows there are some fantastic old apartments in this city and I'm sure more than a few of them are filled with proud citizens who have just as much character, if not moreso, than their century-old museum-quality flats.

What do you think? Is there any interest in Ottawa interiors? (and there I go - doing what I always swore I wouldn't - inviting comments, making the reader feel ackward or guilty if they don't comment and making me feel lame if nobody comments...so comment!).

PS - I'm thinking about starting up another Ottawa-focused blog. Can you guess what the topic's going to be? (there, I did it again).

blue!

I totally love this blue bike - I want it! Seriously loving this cycle blog - it's become one of my favorite daily blog stops.

seriously modern tubs

Check them all out here: http://ow.ly/7W0. I really like the one above (althought not so sure about the tv(?) screen), but most of them are even more modern and space-agey looking. Pretty cool.

happy friday!

Have a fantastic and creative weekend everyone! I'm off to spend a tech-free couple of days in a cabin in the snowy woods. Leaving you with an image from ffffound, my new favorite inspiration haunt.

creative headboards

My friend Melody sent me a message this week telling me how stoked she was about her new self-created headboard for her bed. She was shopping at a department store and found this 4-panelled image in the clearance section. She liked the look of it and the price of it and figured it looked about as wide as her queen sized bed, so she bought it, took it home and voila! I don't have a 'before' photo, but it's not hard to imagine how much oomph has been added to her room by this framed image of trees. Sleeping beneath a forest - love it! Nice work Melody! To see more photos of her wall art turned headboard, check out her flickr stream.