Distinctive Spaces

This is by far the smallest condo I’ve ever done, coming in at barely 300 square feet.

To make it even more challenging, the owner was pretty much a shopoholic. With over 60 pairs of shoes, 12 pairs of winter boots, 6 bath robes, dozens of belts, the list goes on and on, a complete and total reorganization of the space was required.

When I arrived, she was using her bedroom as a walk in closet and sleeping on a futon in the living room. She was skeptical when I assured her that when I was done, she would have a bedroom, but in the end, she became a believer and if I recall correctly, she called me a magician.

Wow, is this condo ever small! Your basic box housing the kitchen, living and dining areas, virtually no counter space, no space for a dining set and the only wall where a sofa could go is where they decided to put the cable outlet.

A challenge for sure. I brought in a counter table with two stools to provide much need kitchen prep space and dining for two and hung three pendants lights to give the kitchen area some visual separation.

A small buffet fit nicely opposite the stove and the sofa unfortunately had to go along the patio doors, but, it all worked out nicely in the end.

One of the advantages of an older condo is that they are so much larger and easier to furnish. The big disadvantage is that many of them are hopelessly out of date and need a lot of work to bring them current.

This was the case with The Penrose, a huge mid-eighties condo at Bay and College.

The owner hadn’t done much to his unit over the years and had gradually accumulated an eclectic mix of furnishings, all of which he wanted to keep and incorporate into the new design. Ugh, seriously?

New flooring, new window blinds, paint, a complete kitchen makeover including granite counter tops, a glass and marble mosaic tile backsplash, a new faucet and undermount sink, all combined to bring this terribly outdated condo into the new millenium.

When the owner of this North York townhouse took possession, all he had was an air mattress, two lawn chairs and one request….a purple wall. Other than that, I was free to do my thing.

A beautiful colour scheme of silver and purple, with a little lime green thrown in worked perfectly with the neutral furniture.

Every now and then I do a rental. The thing with rentals is that nothing permanent can be done, so everything needs to be portable as much as possible and often the budgets are fairly small.

Here’s one that I did in Yorkville on a budget of $5,500. The only things we kept were the sofa and the bed, everything else is new.

Although I’m not a huge fan of the Yonge and Sheppard corridor (a little too congested for me), I’m a huge fan of this condo.

It was a challenge to furnish with it’s strange layout. The clients had decided to use part of the living area as dining, which made a lot of sense with it’s bay(ish) windows, but that left the dining area empty and us wondering what to do with it.

We had a custom bookcase built and created a sitting area.