Little Sherpa

We recently did a small living room update with Eternity Modern and welcomed the Little Sherpa Lounge Chair into our home. It’s something I had my eye on for a while, and I am so thrilled with how much warmth it has added to our space. I love the natural texture of the sheepskin, mixed with the classic mid century style legs.

Needless to say, it’s everybody’s favourite spot to sit - we couldn’t love it more.

Kitchen Renovation: Integrated Appliances

As a photographer, a lot of my design decisions were made through a visual lens. Whenever I photograph kitchens, the appliances can become focal points and distract from the lovely millwork and other design elements. So when it came to planning our kitchen renovation, my biggest wish list item was to have integrated appliances.

After researching different brand options, Fisher & Paykel stood out with the design and price point for their integrated fridge and dishwasher. We stumbled across a local supplier, Ben’s Appliances in Surrey and went to look at their showroom. After seeing these appliances in person, we were totally hooked and knew that this decision would be one that we would regret if we didn’t do.

We spoke with Matt, the president of the shop who helped us decide on the models that would work best in our space for the fridge and dishwasher, and he also recommended a Falmec hood fan for us which our plan was to build into a drywall box and paint to match our walls.

We had their team do the installation for us, which if you are buying integrated appliances then I would highly recommend getting them professionally installed. Getting the panels put on properly to integrate with your cabinetry is a little finicky - we had a couple small hiccups with that process, and Matt and his team worked diligently to install everything perfectly. We really appreciated the care that their team put into making sure everything was done right.

Now that we’ve lived with these appliances for about five months, I have nothing but amazing things to say! Having always had the smallest, and oldest fridges in all of our rentals, it feels like a spa experience to stand upright and open a beautiful 36” fridge!! And don’t even get me started on the genius that is a drawer dishwasher!!!! I will never choose anything else ever again. Not only is a drawer function completely brilliant, but it fits our dishes so much better than any other dishwasher ever has.

If you’re local, I would also highly recommend looking at Ben’s Appliances. They carry all the beautiful brands, and have incredible customer service as well as repair services that go beyond your warranty.

Planning Our Kitchen, with Kitchen Art Design

Our kitchen renovation became a serious plan in May of last year. Before then, we talked through many ideas on how best to use the space, what we wanted, and when we might be able to do it. I truthfully never imagined we would actually pull it off in our first year here, but 2020 was full of lots of surprises that I never imagined!

I can still remember standing in the kitchen in the early spring and saying out loud, “What if we just covered the countertop with plywood?” to my husband seated at his WFH set up on our dining room table. And as they say, one thing just lead to another.. and we ended up with a full blown, down to the studs, importing an Italian range, renovation.

I’ll start from the beginning, and do my best to break down what the process was like for anyone else who is thinking about starting a kitchen project.

We decided to do the interior design ourselves since it’s something I love doing, my husband Mark did the electrical and plumbing and we worked alongside Kitchen Art Design for our custom cabinetry, and Greycor for our contracting.

We chose to work with Kitchen Art Design because we wanted a custom design that would suit our kitchen best. We were paired with Kara Lindstrom who became our incredible designer and worked with us to bring our dream kitchen to life. We met with Kara and went over our vision for the design and space, and she started to plot it out. What I loved most about working with Kara was the expertise that she brought to kitchen design. I knew what I wanted aesthetically, but she had the experience that really helped in the areas that I was less familiar.

This is the initial inspiration for the kitchen. I wanted it to feel like bespoke English design. The elements I knew I wanted were: light grey/cream cabinetry, carrara marble countertops, a large window behind the sink, wood shelving, floor to ceiling cabinetry where the fridge would be integrated, a hidden dishwasher, brass hardware, and a large range.

We went over all of our needs with Kara: the storage we wanted, the hidden appliances, placement, and she plotted it all out with our specs. We went back and forth with several layout options, trying to make the most of the space we had while still fitting in all that we wanted. I can still remember laughing it off when Kara made the “crazy” suggestion to remove the existing window so that we could fit more in (didn’t she know photographers want all the light possible!?) But I came around on that one, and it was one of the best decisions we made.

It really was such a team effort to land on the final design. Mark and I really loved being able to trust Kara and Kitchen Art Design throughout the whole process. When it came time for the install, everyone involved really worked so hard to make it as smooth as possible. There were of course a few little hiccups that occurred (installing new cabinetry into an 100 year old house with uneven floors and walls helped with that!), but the KAD team worked as quickly as possible - paying attention to each detail to ensure it all was installed properly.

We are beyond thrilled with how it turned out. It truly is better than I could have imagined, and I can’t thank Kitchen Art Design, and Kara enough for helping us build our dream kitchen! I can’t recommend working with Kitchen Art Design enough. It was such a smooth process, and the quality is extremely high.

Now, onto the big reveal with some before and after shots!