CENTRAL CONDOMINIUM : MIAMI MODEL STAGED

A couple months ago, I introduced the Miami floor plan from Central 1. The construction is moving along and a couple units are almost ready on the north side. In order to inspire buyers and owners, one of the unsold Miami units has recently been decorated by Central's main designer in Toronto. It's a great way to showcase what can be done with this space.

Here's a picture of the unit before when the gypsum board was being installed...


And here's a picture of the same space after it's been staged. In this unit you can see the Tuxedo cabinets, with the snow white countertop, the iron backsplash and the walnut floor.  In this case the accent color is red (you can actually see it from the street). Since the colors of the finishes are neutral, you can easily pick an accent color of your choosing to get a similar effect. Almost any accent color would work.


Here's the space from the kitchen's point of view before staging.


And here's the same view after staging. Noticed the sliding door is painted the same color as the wall. It's a good idea to paint the sliding door the same color as the wall for better continuity.


The color scheme continues throughout the space, as you can see below. This is a great method used in condos to help make them feel bigger.

cardboard wall at Bridgehead

Over the holidays I came across this neat little project in the Bridgehead coffee shop downtown Ottawa : Cardboard pieces attached to a wall arranged like art. As per the shop's blog, this is a nod to the Ini Ani Coffee Shop in New York designed by LTL Architects. They used cardboard on the walls as a way to meet their tight budget, site limitation and time frame (shown below).


Cardboard is a eco-friendly and inexpensive material to use in a space to add texture and interest. Check out these other neat spaces using cardboard on the wall.

Wall Wave from Splace and designer Tung Chiang (via Mocoloco)


Istanbul Santral (via tom$ Flickr)


Papercut shop by darchstudio

Show me yours, I'll show your mine ....

Here it is. Our little Christmas tree for this year is full of shiny disco balls! The holiday season has always been an opportunity to use our decorating creativity and I thought it would be neat to see how Ottawans decorate their trees for the holidays, so if you'd like to be featured on MOOT during the holiday season, send your picture to designer@m2jlstudio.com.

Thank you for reading and commenting on MOOT! Happy holidays!

For those who missed the tour

Habitat for Humanity-NCR received the biggest donation thus far: a nice home in a great neighbourhood. Called the Gift Home, it was completely revamped with the help of many local professionals in the building trade. Listed for $1,17M, the money will help build about 10 new low-income houses. For those like me who missed the tour there is a little video on it, and Design Ties posted some great pictures here.

Showroom Makeover

Earlier this year I taught a decorating class for graduating students at La Cité Collégiale. Since the objective of the course was to decorate commercial spaces, I thought it would be fun if I could find them real clients with real projects to work on. And I did! Andrew from Custom Home Interiors and Christine from Tripp Photography volunteered their spaces.

On a recent trip to CHI's showroom, I noticed that the space my students worked on for their project was under construction. CHI's owners were really happy with the design suggestions, so on top of rewarding the winning design, they decided to go ahead and implement a good portion of the changes proposed by the winning student.



The photo above shows how the showroom looked at the time my students were assigned their project. The client wanted to use that room to showcase flooring, window treatments and paint.

The winning concept makes use of the floor in the showroom to showcase some of the flooring available in the showroom.



It will be interesting to see the final result... more to come soon.

Recycled Design at Fresco Bistro's New Guest Room

Last Thursday was also the launch of the 2nd floor of Fresco Bistro Italiano. The new Guest Room is designed by Crawford Alexander, who used recycled and reclaimed materials in their concept. There were all sort of reclaimed items in the room: old windows, suitcases on the wall, wood shingles, reclaimed wood planks, funky lamp shades, etc.



There was way too many people in the space for me to take pictures of the entire space that night, but fortunately photographer Michael Davidson was able to take some pictures of the space, shown below. Enjoy!






Photo : MOOT | Michael Davidson

Designer's Touch at the Ottawa Home and Garden Show

Things are finally getting back in order after a couple crazy weeks getting ready and setting up for the Ottawa Home and Garden show. This year, as some of you already know, I really got involved with the show. My biggest project was to create and build four trendy dining rooms based on the 2010 spring/summer fashion trends and Benjamin Moore's 2010 Envison Colors. The rooms were named after each theme as shown below :



For the list of items in the Ode to Nature room click here.



For the list of items in the Popular Appeal room click here.



For the list of items in the Southern Comfort room click here.



For the list of items in the Light Tech room click here.

I also helped put together a mini art gallery on the way to the stage. I contacted Lisabel Filiatrault from Montreal and Jennifer Bisson from Ottawa to showcase their work.




On top of that, I also participated in the preparation for the decor of CDECA's booth and the Cameleon House and came up with the 30 Designer Finds.



It's too bad I didn't find time to check out all the booths from the show (there's just not enough hours in the day really), but I did notice that Custom Home Interiors did a great job decorating the Décor Stage. Same goes for the booths of 2Go Custom Kitchen and Corbeil who were nice to help us with the wood panels in the first dining room.



Doing the show was a great experience and I would do it again and even better (I got tons of new ideas). I got great feedback for the rooms from visitors and, as I suspected, quite a few of them said they wanted to see more finished rooms to show them how to use various items and inspire them to redecorate or redesign their own home. I hope more exhibitors will see the value in staging their rooms or hiring designers and decorators to help them out.

I'd like to thank the volunteers again who helped me set up the booths. It was really appreciated!

P.S. LSI Floors, Logs End and Bemz donated their items to Habitat For Humanity, which was really great too!

Photos : MOOT & Ottawa Home and Garden Show

Ottawa Home and Garden Show Sneak Peak

It has begun! The Ottawa Home and Garden show is underway and some of the booths are up, including the one that I'll be working on :). I hope it goes well! So far so good. Instead of the black curtains that I really don't like, there will be walls. It's an interesting system that just comes together like a puzzle, from a company called Event Design here in Ottawa. You can see their crew installing the walls from my booth below.




They had already completed CDECA's booth when I was there and it should be painted tomorrow as well.

Holiday Decoration ideas at the St-Laurent Mall

The folks at the St-Laurent Mall went beyond the generic holiday decor for a mall and created a neat lounge for shoppers to have their gifts wrapped or just to take a break. There are quite a few vignettes showcasing various arrangements that you might want to try at home. I like the use of ornaments in the vase and the gift boxes behind the loveseat. I think it's a great idea and a great initiative.

If you're looking for more ideas on how to decorate your space for the holidays, check out the latest post on M2JL STUDIO Blog and come back often for more inspiration boards.