Showing posts with label Lighting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lighting. Show all posts

Tuesday, 6 March 2012

Wednesday ... Room of the Week


 ♥  The huge textured light shade
♥  Faux fur throw and cushions
♥  Mirrored key table
♥  Neutral yet warm colour pallette
♥  Glamorous



image via thisisglamorous

Tuesday, 7 September 2010

Bedroom HELP......

Ok all my friends and design savvy bloggers, I need lamps for my bedroom and whilst I have my thoughts about which one I am leaning towards I would love to know your thoughts, PLEASE!

Firstly here's a sneak peak into my bedroom is it's raw, unstyled manner. The lamp I have currently is an old Ikea lamp that performs it's literal purpose (light) and has no aethestic purpose.





I love my bed cover and pillows but they are as girly or "soft" as I want to go. And the butler's tables will stay as my side tables. The cushion I am getting for my bed is this one...


Table Tonic

Now for the lamps, what do you think and be honest..


1. Decor Lighting



2. Freedom



3. MRD



4. MRD


5. Decor Lighting


Well, what do you think?
If you have any other suggestions let me know or email me a pic.

Thanks, I appreciate the feedback xx

Monday, 1 December 2008

Lighting completed

This blog chronicles my entire kitchen renovation from start to finish. Greentea Design has provided me with their solid wood kitchen cabinets, and I'm taking care of the rest.

If you'd like to be brought up to date, check out the archive in the sidebar for previous posts. I posted recently about the arrival of the appliances and some other odds and ends, and now for the completed lighting.


The lighting and wiring in my new kitchen is FINALLY completed. Everyone always says how key lighting is in a space and guess what? They're RIGHT!! The kitchen looked great once the cabinets were in but now that it's properly lit, WOW - the cabinets look even more fabulous. What a difference from the old kitchen, with one ceiling fan with 3 lights, and a lamp on the counter. Now I have 9 potlights, 3 pendants, 2 wall lamps and under-cabinet light strips. Funny thing is now that the kitchen is so well lit, all the other rooms have such crappy lighting in comparison.

Here are a few photos of the kitchen taken right after the electrician finished up (hood fan was mid-installation).



The pendants I bought at Crawford Alexander turned out to be a perfect fit with the look I was going for. They are industrial and fun and quirky...and since I have no dining table yet, everyone is cursing them because we've all bashed our heads on them numerous times. I have regular bulbs in them but because of the shape of them they give off hardly any light so I have to pick up some floodlights to use instead.



I am so happy I finally decided to purchase Tolomeos. I have always loved them but never splurged until now. And I am SO GLAD I did. I love how they look on either side of the stove and they provide great task lighting. The following photos also show the stove in place, the hood fan and the stove's backsplash installed.


Note on the backsplash: The one I had seen at the appliance store was over $500. I had this one made for $150. I need to find some shelves to attach to it to hold spice jars, utensils etc.

Potlights are a must, as I quickly learned. I had no clue on where they should go or how many I should have, so I got alot of help from my electrician. There are 9 in total, strategically placed over the sink, the stove, the fridge, the pantry and a few others. They illuminate the cabinets and appliances beautifully. They were a headache to install because the drywall and wood panelling in the ceiling had to come down so they could go up, but it was well worth it.


There are also lighting strips installed under the upper cabinets that are great to illuminate the countertop on that end of the kitchen where I will probably end up doing the most prepping. The uppers are not built with an overhang so my contractor has built a simple valance to hide the lighting strips and wires but hasn't completed it yet because he has to re-stain it in the hopes of matching the cabinet colour. There are 2 strips, and they have a low setting that gives off a yellowish light and a high setting that gives off a bright white light. Hard to photograph but here's the idea.




Later on this week I'll show you what all this looks like with the countertop installed. All I can say is WOW. And WOW.

Thursday, 13 November 2008

Update on kitchen progress

This blog chronicles my entire kitchen renovation from start to finish. Greentea Design has provided me with their solid wood kitchen cabinets, and I'm taking care of the rest.

If you'd like to be brought up to date, check out the archive in the sidebar for previous posts. I posted recently about more demolition and work begun by my contractor. Now for a bit more demolition (seems to never end) and some of the progress with the walls going back up and plumbing/electrical.


Work continues to progress in my kitchen. I am SO looking forward to finally having a kitchen again and being able to cook. I have never eaten so much pizza in my life and as much as I love pizza, I am tiring of it fast. But things are moving along, and as you would expect in a house of this age, unexpected work kept popping up (along with things I realized at the last minute needed to be fixed - and luckily my contractor is a patient guy). It seems the ceiling needed to be removed to allow the electrician to wire it for my potlights and pendants. The problem was it wasn't just drywall that needed to come down but more wood panelling, which is why it had to come down - he couldn't install the potlights in the panelling. And there was 100 years worth of dust and cobwebs that came down with it. It was TERRIBLE - such a huge mess, and the guys were covered in it when they were done. There was black dust all over the house. (In the left side of the photo below you can see alot of cobwebs - I think I took this after I vacuumed most of the beams).



The contractor discovered what we're thinking is horse hair in the ceiling (just a few chunks), which maybe 100 years ago was used for insulation??


And as a result of taking down the ceiling, the pile of garbage on my driveway grew to new heights.


The electrician was here in the evenings to get all the wiring for the lighting and outlets done, and I can't wait to see how that turns out once all the fixtures are in place. This house severely lacks decent lighting, and now I've got potlights all over, pendants and wall sconces to lighten things up.

This is the wiring done before the ceiling was re-drywalled.


This is the box to house one of my Tolomeo wall lights.


Here is the ceiling completed with the potlights wired up.


The plumber was figuring out where to put the pipes from the bathroom on the other side of the kitchen when we realized that because the corner where the 2 sets of base cabinets meet will be an empty space, he could put the pipes coming up in that space.


The walls are now all drywalled and need to be finished up.




My window has arrived and will be installed shortly. Today the hardwood is being installed and I've got to rush and paint the floors today/tonight in order for them to be good and dry by Friday when my cabinets arrive (and appliances on Saturday). More on the floors in an upcoming post.

Thursday, 2 October 2008

Lighting

This blog chronicles my entire kitchen renovation from start to finish. Greentea Design has provided me with their solid wood kitchen cabinets, and I'm taking care of the rest.

If you'd like to be brought up to date, check out the archive in the sidebar for previous posts. I’ve described my cabinets in detail, so now I thought I’d start in on all the fun purchases that goes along with a kitchen renovation. These next few posts I will cover things like the appliances, sink, faucet, countertop, backsplash and lighting.


I thought I’d start with lighting, one of my favourite items to dress up a space. I have always been drawn to lamps and pendant lights, so when I was planning the lighting for the kitchen, I wanted to make it a focal point. But once I decided on making lighting a feature, I started to panic a bit. There aren’t many decent lighting stores in this city, but I did check out a few. I started looking online as well but got a bit concerned about some of the shipping prices. One online store was quoting 20% of the purchase for shipping and other related costs. This renovation is going to have me in debt as it is, and my house needs a TON of other work, so I have a really hard time spending my hard earned money on high shipping costs. So I really wanted to try and find items locally.

Since my kitchen will be long and narrow, I will need a long and narrow dining table to be placed down the center of it (I have no dining room). I made a pretty simple decision to hang pendants over it. My first thought was a Nelson bubble lamp. I’ve always wanted one. But I really like the look of the saucer lamp, and I think that one would work better over a round table. I started looking locally and found something at a large lighting store called Multi Luminaire:


I liked the industrial look of it and it was similar to ones I had considered ordering online. They had 2 sizes, one for $80 and one for $120, and I figured I would get maybe 3 to hang in a row over the table. But then one day a couple of weeks ago I went to get my hair done on Wellington Street and on my walk home I came by a store I had been in once or twice before. It’s called Crawford Alexander, and it’s run by “designs by 2”, the interior design firm of Luc Crawford and Jamie LeBlanc. They currently have a small showroom (but are expanding – YAY!!) that has some really gorgeous pillows, lamps and accessories on display. I had seen some really funky pendant lights last time I was in there and WHATDOYAKNOW!, they were on sale! They were initially priced at $326, then marked down to $240. Then everything in the store was 50% off the lowest price, and included tax, as they were trying to clear their inventory for new stock. So I ended up buying 3 of these pendants for a total of $360!!



When I sell the house, I can take them with me and put up something cheap, and these are so versatile I can use them in any room in my next home. The only thing is they are not hard-wired, so I’ll have to get my electrician to work some magic on them before they’re installed. I love their industrial look and think they will contrast nicely with the style and colour of the cabinets. I could have chosen Asian-inspired lighting, but I prefer to mix styles and not be so matchy-matchy. I think I’ll bring in Asian elements in accessories instead.

Next is possibly going to be my favourite thing in the new kitchen besides the cabinets. When I settled on the design of the kitchen, I had an idea about lighting that stuck in my head and would not go away. When I decided to forgo upper cabinets on the stove wall, I knew exactly what I wanted to do on either side of the stove. I LOVE the look of a swing-arm wall mounted light in a kitchen, and I have come across a few that we’ve posted or seen on other blogs:

RemodelistaButtrick Wong
Elle DecoIsabelle
Inspace LocationsBarbara Weiss

There is a swing-arm light I’ve always admired, up there with Nelson pendants, and that’s Artemide’s Tolomeo. I thought since it will be a focal point of the kitchen, it would be worth the splurge. And they too are very versatile, so they are for sure coming with me to my next house. I went looking online for suppliers, and found a Canadian online store that carries them, and they do not charge for shipping. But I found a local store, Marchand Electric, who carries Artemide products. I figured it might be better to order lights through them than online, that way I would have someone to curse at if something went wrong. When I went to order them at the store (I chose the smallest one, the “Micro”), the salesperson told me they’d be $550 each. I had a small panic attack, then told her that I had found them online for $368 each. She said they’d sell them to me at that price. So I ordered them and picked them up on Monday...and I cannot wait to see them installed! I’ll have to make sure when I chose where to have them installed that they won’t hit anyone in the head when standing at the counter. (Except when I removed one from the box I noticed it has a cord with a plug on the end, as shown in the photo - these are supposed to be wall mountable. Maybe I'm missing something here...)


There will be some other lighting around the kitchen as well. The hood fan has a light of course that will illuminate the stove, and I want under-cabinet lights for the section of uppers by the fridge. That is really important because I think that section of cabinets is where I’ll be doing the majority of the prep work when I’m cooking. I also want potlights installed along the cabinet areas. Although I am not really sure how well they will light up areas so I don’t know how many I will need and where they should go. I will check with the electrician, but if you guys have any suggestions, about the potlights or any other lighting, I would love to hear it.

It seems I should be mentionning the eco-friendliness of my kitchen. In terms of the lighting, I always use those low energy compact fluorescent bulbs. And I hope to get the pendants on one switch with a dimmer, the potlights on another also with a dimmer, and the Tolomeos on another switch. This way I can have pretty decent control over the strength of the lights and only use the ones I need.

That’s about it for lighting. Next I think I’ll divulge the biggest expense so far in this renovation – the appliances. And wow, they don’t come cheap.