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A few weeks ago it was my friend Lindsay‘s birthday. She had been having a rough couple of months dealing with her diagnosis of Graves Disease (you can read about it here, here, and here). So I really wanted to do something to try to make her feel a bit better.

Lindsay has a great studio space for her long arm machine in a part of the building that houses her husband Greg’s screen printing business, but it needed a little perking up. So I called Greg and asked if it would be ok if I came in and did a little work.

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One wall is all brick, so I took a big risk and picked a pink paint colour for the walls. I knew she wanted pink because those samples had been up on the wall for a while, I just wasn’t sure which one. I ended up going with Benjamin Moore Hearts Delight in matte Aura paint. (As an aside, Aura is seriously amazing. This stuff covers like NOTHING ELSE. It is flat out my favourite paint. It is spendy, but sometimes you can find a $5 off coupon, and you end up only needing to paint one coat in a lot of cases, so you use less paint. And it is totally worth it for the time you save.) I was very thankful I ended up only having to do a coat, as it took quite a while with the doors, rough brick, and other mechanical items that I needed to paint around.

Once the painting was done, I did a couple other things to tidy up and fix a couple of things. Greg had been storing some things in the room, so he moved all of that out, and what was staying I tidied up in the corner. I fixed a table that was a bit wobbly, painted the door, did some cleaning, and picked up a new cutting board and rotary cutter on Greg’s behalf. I also hung a quilt that I had made for her, but I will do another post about that later on.

Overnight Greg printed a little sign for the door, and installed a doorknob. He also reassembled Vada’s teepee that had been in the corner, but had sort of been flopped around a bit. My friend Amanda made an amazing red velvet cake and we called a couple of friends.

The next morning we all snuck into the studio and Greg schemed to get Lindsay there. Turns out Vada let a bit of the cat out of the bag, so she knew that I was going to be there, but she didn’t know why. I think she was still surprised!

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Thank you Greg and Amanda for helping me to put this together. Somehow it still managed to be surprise even with me pulling into the parking lot behind Lindsay by accident (not once, but twice!) and a toddler starting to spill the beans.  You are a great friend Lindsay and you deserve to have a space to work in that you love <3 :)

Later this week – more details on the quilt!

Grey is one of my favourite colours, despite the fact that I grew up in the Toronto area, where grey is a permanent fixture in the outside world from Nov 1st-April. The right kind of grey can be warm, inviting, and cozy. It can be soft and rich, heathered and earthy.

TJ’s Mom asked me to make some twin quilts for the two beds in her guest room, the one often used by my parents when we all get together. (Yes, my inlaws and my parents get along and we all hang out on holidays. Yes it’s unusual. Yes I love them for all being so awesome. Yes I am the luckiest woman alive). She had seen the quilt I had made for my friend Amanda, and she loved the Aviary 2 line of fabrics that I used. She wanted to design her whole room around the mustard and grey colours in these fabrics.

A wee bit grainy, but here are some before shots of the room.

It was a pretty, soft green, quite feminine.

Lovely leaf prints on the wall, some satin-y spreads on the bed, a very well put together room. But she was tired of it, and wanted something more modern and masculine.

With the room emptied out, a coat of Benjamin Moore Pewter went up (in their Aura paint. That stuff is the bomb. One coat baby! I am seriously in love with this paint. Worth every penny of the cost. A tip though, check the BM website before you buy; they often have a $5 off coupon).

Once the painting was done in the room, I worked on painting a small side table that we had found in a great second hand store. Then I made a set of tab back curtains from some great Ikea fabric. One the room was loaded with the new bedding, it looked like this!

(Don’t forget that you can click to get a larger photo). What do you think? Here is a close up of the quilts:

One side of the room has yellow sheets,

and the other side grey. Sort of a “his and hers” theme. You can see on the quilts that I used the Aviary 2 fabrics, but also some other fabrics as accents.

The back is Anna Maria Horner’s voile, in pastry line. I missed snapping a picture of the actual backing, but this is what it looks like.

I’ll tell you one thing, I will certainly be using voile for the backing on my next quilt. This stuff is amazing! It is soooooo soft. It’s almost like a satin. I am not sure that I could imagine making a whole pieced quilt top out of it, as it is quite slide-y, but as a backing it just makes you want to bury yourself under it and never come out.

T’s Mom also painted out this great vintage dresser in Benjamin Moore Stuart Gold. The key to painting out furniture like this is to put a coat of water-based polyurethane on any surfaces that will have things sitting on them. This keeps them from sticking to the paint and leaving marks.

This little chair was in another room in the house, but it fit perfectly into this spot AND already had the right colours (both in paint and fabric).

There are a few things that need to be done still in the room, like some more decorative items, but I think it turned out really well. I think I need to make a quilt like this for my living room!

What favourite colours have you been working with a lot lately?

A couple of weeks ago my friend Whitney asked if I would be interested in helping her get her littlest one’s nursery together. She was having a bit of a block, both with ideas and moreso with time, as far as how to go about finishing it. And when the room is for someone this cute, how could you resist?

(Photo from a shoot I did with her at 5 weeks. What a cutie)

The room was currently being used mostly as storage, but it had some great things to work with.

There is a fabulous old textured wallpaper on the walls, right over the original lathe and plaster. We knew that was going to stay, but I thought it would be good to touch is up with a fresh coat of paint. Check out that light fixture, isn’t that amazing?

Whitney had a lot of family heirloom and special items that she really wanted to have incorporated into the room.

On the left wall is a sketch of the baby’s namesake, which definitely needed to stay. The crib wasn’t going to move, as this was the best spot for it, and the small doll and toy trunks were to stay as well. The couch, which is used as a pullout guest bed, would be staying as well.

From the other direction you can see that there is a large shelf which held all kinds of good stuff. But a lot of it. My idea was to pair that down to the favourites.

The changing area, which was a kitchen cabinet, needed to be more incorporated into the room and more functional as well.

Whitney really wanted a “vintage baby” kind of look in the room, which is completely appropriate for her house style. She also knew that she loved the quilt that I made for her, and wondered if we could work those fabrics and colours in. Also, the room needed to function as a guest room in a pinch, or for another baby in the future. With all that in mind the design came together. It is great when clients have a good idea of what they would like to see, but leave the details of the design up to me! The whole design needed to be completely on a very tight budget as well, so I needed to keep that in mind.

Many hours of painting, sewing, framing and install later, I finished everything up on Wednesday and did the big reveal! (as always, click for larger pictures)

I went with Benjamin Moore Hancock Green HC-117 on the walls, as it was important to Whitney that the paint colour be from the historic collection. Furniture placement remained the same, but pretty much everything else changed. I put up an antique clothes rack in front of the crib with the two handmade baby blankets that were given to the baby.

The crib area is my favourite spot. Whitney had a book that she said she would like to have some of the pictures cut out of and framed. They work perfectly above the crib.

Each one has a ribbon tie at the top, and I used fabric from some of the other pieces in the room to create the matte. I used spray starch to stiffen the fabric so it wouldn’t sag and then attached it to the print using double sided tape. It was just the perfect colour of green to go with the prints.

Inside the crib is the quilt that I made, and two pillows that Whitney made out of our collection of fabrics. Aren’t they great? Whit knew that she had enough time to be able to make those, but left the other items up to me. Like the curtains.

Because the crib is right up beside the window, I didn’t want to make a full length curtain in case the baby decided to try to pull on them or climb them when she got a bit older. So these sweet little tied valances soften things up and add some brightness to the room.

For the changing area, I picked up a curved changing pad and made a patchwork cover for it that is removable and washable. I put some hardware on the cabinet to make it fit into the room better (I also switched one of the doors, which was swinging the wrong way).

Donovan could not be left out. :)

Over the changing table, I painted out a simple wall hook piece and hung the vintage shoes as well as a handmade sweater. I figured this would be a great place to hang little things as the baby gets a bit older.

Way over the changing area, the large room length shelve was pared down and turned into three vignettes with only the most important items.

The light fixture of course remained the same, but it looks much prettier against the soft green paint.

The final touch was to add some pictures from our photo shoot in the corner along with the sketch of the baby’s name sake. A rug that we repurposed from elsewhere in the house finished things off.


And that is my nursery on a budget! For those of you who are local. KSC Designs (aka, me) is now available for design consultations. If you are interested in having me come and look at a space in your house, feel free to email me. Thanks Whitney for the chance to work on your lovely home! You can see this room and all the other rooms in Whitney’s place this weekend on the historic home tour in Rocky Mount VA.

Just because Mom’s are such a special group (honestly, I don’t know how you all do it. I would be a wreck) I thought it would be fitting to have a Mother’s Day Sale in the shop. All of my photo card sets are on sale until May 7th. No need for a coupon code or anything fancy, just check out my sale link in the the shop.

And as an aside? Our bedroom was featured on Shelterpop yesterday. Isn’t that neat? Thanks to those who are stopping by from there!

Before Christmas (wha? how was that three month’s ago?) TJ and I found this incredible deal on tile at the HD. Of course we were looking for something completely different, but these things happen at the home improvement store. But seriously, this glass mosaic tile was ~$40 a square foot the year before (according to the guy at the store, so who knows if that is accurate) and it was on as a special deal for $4.99 a square foot. $4.99!! We were pretty sure that it was going to be a perfect match in the kitchen, but our local HD’s didn’t have very much of it in stock. So we bought one sheet to bring home and try, and of course we fell in love with it. So after tons of searching around, we found out we could drive to Greenboro NC (a little over 2 hours) to get enough to do the kitchen backsplash. Roadtrip!

When we were down at the Greensboro store, we decided since we were going to be covering up the wall that we could install under-cabinet LED lighting and wire it to one of the dozen or so switches we have in the kitchen. (As an aside, our builder LOVES outlets and switches. My little kitchen has 10 boxes for a total of 20 places to plug things in. And that doesn’t include the ones in the seating area). So TJ, being the master handyman that he is, cut apart the wall and wired in our awesome lights. Here is the closest thing to a before shot of the kitchen, post light installation, with the lights turned off.

Then the tile work began. And just because it is fun, we thought we would make a time-lapse video of the process. Make sure you turn your sound up. (And you can click the button that looks like 4 arrows in the bottom right hand corner to watch the video in full screen format. Just hit Escape when you are finished.)

Fun, yes? I have rewatched it a couple dozen times and have laughed at the stupidest things – like watching the handle to the kitchen faucet move. I think I need to get out more.

Anyhoo, after all the work we are super stoked with how the kitchen turned out. The red in the tile was exactly the colour of the cabinets, the grey is the same as the countertops, the gold is the same as the walls and the olive green is the perfect accent.

And we even managed to get it done before our guests arrived for Christmas.

That was the last house reno project we did, and I am absolutely itching to start another one. In April we are basically going to be gutting the living room, so I will have lots to show you soon.