The post Explore The 2024 Toronto Interior Design Show appeared first on House & Home.

JOIN US FOR HOUSE & HOME SUNDAY ON THE COSENTINO STAGE

House & Home Sunday is on January 21st, 2024, from 11am-4pm at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, North Building. IDS Toronto is celebrating its 25th year!

Get your IDS 2024 tickets today!

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See Lynda’s latest interview with Colette van den Thillart, H&H’s 2023 Designer of the Year. Discover Colette’s iconic moves, what’s inspiring her lately – and even the trends she’s over. Plus, get a behind-the-scenes look of her client’s vibrant Rosedale house, as seen in our December issue. Watch now!

The post Interview: Colette van den Thillart On How She Creates Her Lush And Layered Look appeared first on House & Home.

Save your old fabric and use it for gift wrap! In this DIY video, H&H Design Editor Bona Kim shows us how to gift wrap using a bojagi (traditional Korean wrapping cloth) which is a sustainable alternative to using paper. Pick up the November 2023 Holiday issue of House & Home to see more great holiday crafts, including Emma Reddington’s version of a green Korean-style bojagi.

Here’s What You’ll Need: 2 squares of matching or contrasting fabric • Sewing materials • Scissors • Elastic bands

Watch the full video to learn these easy steps!

The post DIY: Korean-Style Fabric Wrapping appeared first on House & Home.

Lynda Reeves reflects on the joyful journey of reimagining The Lakehouse. 

“It’s the last Sunday morning in October. I’m up before sunrise, sitting in the  kitchen of our almost-finished lakehouse. Tomorrow morning, our photo crew returns for the final day of shooting, just in time for this issue. Soon, I’ll be able to enjoy this beautiful house without all the intense fussing for the cameras. Today, we’re having friends for lunch, and I’m about to make a tarte tatin. Michel is peeling apples and I’m rolling out the puff pastry. Last week, I brought up 40 years’ worth of recipes from our city house to my new country kitchen, where I plan to sort and file, and cook up a storm for years to come. Can I tell you how much I love this house? It’s so grand, and yet casual — warm and inviting, supremely comfortable and totally romantic. Yesterday, I told Michel that I didn’t recall the lake ever being so calm and serene as it is now. He reminded me that we were never up here overnight in October until this year. I couldn’t believe that, so I looked back over the photos and videos from the fall of 2020 and was stunned to see that, a year ago, this house was a construction site with no kitchen or bathrooms or finished rooms! And here we are now, totally settled in, and feeling at home.”

The post The Lakehouse: See The Big Reveal! appeared first on House & Home.

Our lakehouse has been the subject of a 10-part video series chronicling 18 months of construction and decorating. It airs here on Houseandhome.com, on our YouTube channel, and on IGTV. I wrote about our journey winterizing a one season 100-year-old cottage in a regular column during 2021, and featured the main floor of the finished house in the January 2022 issue.

Here are some extra shots that we couldn’t find room for. That’s the beauty of digital!

Follow me on Instagram @lyndareevesdesign to see my fun candids coming up soon.

The post Lynda’s Lakehouse: Everything We Couldn’t Fit In Print! appeared first on House & Home.

This is my story of designing our renovation of a century-old lakehouse in Ontario. Each month, I’ll offer a new chapter on the challenges and solutions, and a peek at our progress. You’ll be able to see the actual house come together on new episodes of our video series The Lakehouse.

When we bought our lakehouse and I realized that almost every room would present an envelope of caramel-toned wood walls, I needed to get a formula going in my head. What would the main elements be to furnish and decorate this house? The all-wood interior was new territory for me. One thing was for certain: old kilim and low-pile rugs would be a big part of the scheme. What better backdrop for the subtle beauty of those soulful rugs than the soft, light tones of the old fir floors?

My collection is composed of vintage rugs from Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Afghanistan and Tunisia, with names like Herki, Khotan and Kars. Most are circa–1920 to 1950. They’re mostly kilims or “flatweaves,” and they’re usually classified as tribal rugs because their makers were members of nomadic tribes migrating through North Africa and the Middle East. I love them for their soulful patterns and soft, subtle coloring that natural dyes and years of gentle wear will produce. If you plan to collect and decorate with vintage rugs, choose by color palette and find patterns that look good laid side by side. Then, move rugs around and around your house until the sight lines reveal a pleasing array, and a great view clicks into place.

The post The Lakehouse: Lynda Reeves Chooses Vintage Rugs For Her Four-Season Getaway appeared first on House & Home.

This is my story of designing our renovation of a century-old lakehouse in Ontario. Each month, I’ll offer a new chapter on the challenges and solutions, and a peek at our progress. You’ll be able to see the actual house come together on new episodes of our video series The Lakehouse.

It was always in our plans to rebuild the original screened porch on the back of our lakehouse. I’ve never had a screened porch. I’ve visited friends’ cottages on buggy evenings and sat in theirs, happily unaware of the mosquitoes lurking beyond. Here, at our place, there are these tiniest of bugs called midges that swarm every time we open a door and are so thick you have to avoid swallowing them. I’m told they’ll soon disappear, only to be replaced by blackflies, mosquitoes, deerflies and the occasional bat. I can hardly wait.

It’s late May when I write this and the midges just evaporated! The screens are almost all in, the furniture has arrived, the rest of the bits and pieces are coming someday, and I can hardly wait for it to be done!

For months, I pondered what decorating style of screened porch would best suit our house. I looked at many inspiration shots and was always attracted to dark interiors with traditional off-black painted wicker furniture. But something held me back. I couldn’t imagine that scheme in my head for this house. So I parked that vision and decided just to worry about the envelope of the room.

The post The Lakehouse: Lynda Reeves On The Joys Of A Screened-In Porch appeared first on House & Home.

This is my story of designing our renovation of a century-old lakehouse in Ontario. Each month, I’ll offer a new chapter on the challenges and solutions, and a peek at our progress. You’ll be able to see the actual house come together on new episodes of our video series The Lakehouse.

You’d think that after decades of designing rooms, I would know better. Not so. With this lakehouse reno, I did exactly what I’ve always preached not to do. I jumped on a trend too fast, and now I think I may be “oversconced!”

Decorative lighting has become a huge area with too much choice and not enough information to help ward off mistakes. In my case, having rarely had wall sconces in my homes and after using them in moderation for clients, I was enamoured and certain that I wanted them in every room of our lakehouse.

Of course, I still needed pot lights in must-have areas, as well as ceiling pendants, flush-mounts, and table and floor lamps. Here are my best tips for choosing and mixing your light fixtures. The key, as in most things, is balance.

The post The Lakehouse: Lynda Reeves On The Dos & Don’ts Of Lighting appeared first on House & Home.

This is my story of designing our renovation of a century-old lakehouse in Ontario. Each month, I’ll offer a new chapter on the challenges and solutions, and a peek at our progress. You’ll be able to see the actual house come together on new episodes of our video series The Lakehouse.

It’s mid-March as I write this. A year ago almost to the day, we started the renovation of our lakehouse. We had luck on our side. Our building permit arrived within days of the cut off for residential construction, we found a great contractor willing to take on our project, and the journey began.

Just today, I said goodbye to our construction crew, watched as the tile installers packed up, counted the number of missing light fixtures that are on “permanent back order,” and stared at the long list of screwups, mostly mine!

For example, I ordered all of our closet rods and brackets myself. Fortunately, I was on-site as the first one was being installed. “Are they all this flimsy and silly-looking?” I asked our carpenter. “Not if you order closet rods. These are shower curtain rods.”

We’ve given up trying to get one basket-style drain that fits the sink in our bar area. The smallest one available is too big for the sink it’s designed to work with. After four tries, we gave up and just ground out the sink hole. Hopefully it won’t leak….

For the powder room, I ordered a beautiful solid marble console-style sink, plus the faucet shown with it. When it arrived, our contractor held the faucet spout in place. It looked bizarre. The spout is so short, there would be no room to actually put your hands under the running water. And since the faucet didn’t clear the sink edge, the water would splash everywhere.

I guess it wasn’t meant to be used. Beware of Photoshop! It’s just fake news for designers! And then there’s the saga of the lightbulbs and dimmers — everywhere. If you’re renovating, then you already know that some fixtures are dimmable and some are not, and that some bulbs are dimmable and some are not. And some dimmers won’t work with every fixture. It’s an endless game of trial and error. These are small things, though. The actual house is magnificent.

Finally, we’re at the magical stage when the shell is finished. The wood walls and floors are glowing, and it’s time for the decorating to begin!

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