Make the best use of your space so that you can enjoy it by analyzing how you use it first. This post contains tips for planning your room layouts around your life. While designing a room according to how you use it may seem like a very basic concept, often rooms end up being designed for their desired or named …
The Whys and Hows of Permits
Whether you’re doing a project yourself or hiring a contractor, getting the correct permits is an important step. As a designer, Lenore has worked mainly with professionals who wouldn’t think of doing work without the necessary permits. However, Carmen’s experience buying her first home exposed her to the reality that not every homeowner understands the importance of getting a permit …
How to Keep the Good Mess and Control the Clutter | ADHD strategies
Clutter is a real and persistent problem for people with ADHD, adults and children alike. There are strategies that help, but figuring out which ones work for us and finding the motivation to start can both be difficult. To make it worse, we often realize we need a new strategy when the clutter in our homes has become overwhelming. In this …
Professional or DIY Cabinet Painting | What You Need to Know
Have you ever wondered whether its worth the effort to paint your kitchen cabinets? Well, not all painting is created equal. Read on to learn about painting and lacquering cabinetry, with tips to help you plan a beautiful and affordable new look for your kitchen. Do it yourself or hire a professional? The do-it-yourself option is popular for low-budget …
Spring and the Urge to Declutter
As the spring days brighten, natural light streams into our spaces, showing us anew what has been cast in shadow all winter. With that can come a renewed awareness: dust bunnies everywhere! Things out of place! Why are there sixteen loose screws on this windowsill? Suddenly, the urge for a purge can be strong. And lately, it seems that methods …
Four Tips for Designing with Home Appliances
When choosing appliances, there are a lot of things to consider. Whatever the budget and features you’re looking for, here are a few additional things to add to that list. 1. How are they rated for noise? Kitchen appliances in particular can add a lot of noise to the home. Fridges, fans, and dishwashers can be particularly noisy, and when …
Office Design Update
Creating a supportive environment is not a quick fix, so as much as I want to do a big reveal of the new office, it’s still a work in progress. Today I’ll share what we’ve changed and how we’re going forward, because working in stages is important when designing for ADHD or any highly specific needs. (You can read the …
Repair or Replace? Kitchen Edition
When you move into a new home with an ugly kitchen, it’s easy to feel like tearing it out and rebuilding from scratch. But we recommend living with a kitchen for up to a year before making any major changes. Why? Because problems of style and problems of function are often very different, and require different solutions. The Good, the …
The Language of Lighting
Lighting can get really technical, really quickly. This post will get you started on the basics of residential lighting, so you’ll be ready to talk to a designer, electrician, or lighting retailer about your project. Colour Temperature (Kelvin) Colour temperature is a way of talking about the colour of the light, measured in Kelvin. Lower K values are a warmer …
Planning for Lighting
It may not be the first thing that comes to mind when decorating or renovating, but lighting design can make or break a project. Lighting affects how well we can use our space, and how we feel in it. So this week we decided to talk to our friends at Verve Electric, who are experts at installing lighting and automated …