Cute Ikea kitchen commercial

Cute commercial for Ikea. 

Bright Bold Colorful Miami apartment

Cobalt blue is my favorite color of this season. I love how bright and rich it is. 

This room is painted in Benjamin Moore Aura in Pale Oak. It's a perfect backdrop for all these colorful decor. 

a swirl painting by Henrique Oliveira

A Lepere table and Tom Dixon chair

A simple Ikea bed works perfectly well in this bedroom

A painting adds splash of color in the bathroom

via housebeautiful

Renovation week 31 | Dark Grout Do's and Don'ts

Back to the kitchen again. Now we grouted the tiles with Pewter non sanded grout. The different between sanded and non sanded grout are sanded is for spacing larger than 1/8". Since my tile spacing is the smallest, we are using non sanded grout. I don't prefer the sanded grout because it's so bumpy and always hard to clean.

I have always wanted to use dark color grout. Not only  because I love that vintage industrial look, I also want to hide dirt. I used to have tile countertop with white grout, typical of 1920s bungalow.  (if you recall from my earlier post).

Beveled subway tiles, Pewter non sanded grout. Isn't that pretty?

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Dark Grout Dos and Don'ts

1. Don't go for the darkest shades because it would look darker on the actual grout. I went with Pewter and it turned out looking more like Charcoal. Lets say if you are thinking Charcoal, just dial back a few shades. 

via mercurymosaics

2. If you want that sharp contrast look, don't use stone tiles, use ceramic tiles. With ceramic tiles, they are factory made and they have clean edges. You won't get sharp edge on natural stone. Because of imperfection of the stones and the way it cut, you will end up seeing all these rough edges even more pronounced. Instead go with blended color on stone tiles. Try to match the grout color to the darkest shade of the stone tiles. For example I have carrera marble floor tiles. I used Platinum on those and they turned out so great. 

My bathroom floor

Here is a photo of marble tiles with black grout. I saw this floor in a restaurant and thought never to do this at home. When you go too dark, it looks dirty. 

3. Be careful of the corners. Putting grout on uneven edges, especially where the tiles are being cut, could make it look like dirty gunk stuck around in the corner. I had this problem around the corner areas. A way to fix it is to use white grout in the corners and around the edges. Check out some before and after photos below. 

If you look on to the right side, you will see these uneven lines that bug me so much. And with dark color gout, that line is more obvious. 

Below are the after we patched the line with white grout instead. That make the grout line in the corner look much cleaner. 

Breakfast nooks part 3

I'm back again with ever more popular breakfast nook roundup. 

Black and white breakfast nook

Artsy window breakfast nook

Breathtakingly beautiful tiles. 

Vintage knickknack

Modern and clean

Settee is a perfect fit for a nook

Gold and blue
photos via paloma81, sfgirlbybay, philiphousenyc, designsponge, habituallychic, domainehome, simodesign

Happy Chinese New Year

Chinese new year is right around the conner.

Happy Chinese New Year by beesahu featuring red rugs

Dimmable light / Tom Dixon black light / Foscarini aqua light, $1,150 / Red rug / Enamel coffee pot / Alessi drinkware, $12 / Serving bowl / Brass tray / Discipline serving tray, $215 / D L Co white candle / Eclectic by Tom Dixon scented candle, $105 / Y a Pas Le Feu Au Lac wood candle holder

Renovation week 29 | kitchen update!

Never mind the mess, we got backsplash! My kitchen started to look like a real kitchen. I don't have to imagine anymore how it would turn out because it's awesome!

I love the look of subway tiles because it's classic and it goes with our vintage style. We picked inexpensive beveled subway tiles we found at Homedepot. It was about $4/sqft. 

We finish the edge with left over Caesarstone we used on our countertop. I think like it better than using bull nose tiles. I just think sharp edge goes better with my cabinet doors. 

We haven't grouted the tiles yet, but it already looks like it has dark color around the tiles. Which I like. We would probably go with dark grout just because it's good for hiding stains. Any thought? 

Renovation week 28 | painting continue...

They told me painting would take about 2 weeks to finish because there are a lot of prepping involve especially for lacquer paint on my cabinets. So this week progress is just some primer. I actually love the matte look of the primer!

In the kitchen
My open shelves have just been installed. Oh have I told you about the drama I had with these? OMG it's so annoying. Before I end up with the shelves I wanted. Flash back to what happened last week. My contractor misinterpret the design on the blue print and gave me something looking like a cabinet with no doors. I made them rip it out because it's so ugly. 

Exterior

They are still prepping mostly. They are now putting finishing details like wood frames around the windows and doors. I specifically asked them to match the detailing to the existing part of my house. It seems pretty straight forward and you think I wouldn't have a complain during this process. Oh no you are wrong! Here comes another problem....

The new window frames that go around my windows are much larger than the window sill that came with the windows. Now they have to add a little piece of wood to extend the sill. If you look up close on above photo, you'll see a little line there. I'm surprised not even the window guy thought of this. So for those of you out there, you need to order the window and make sure they also match the size of the sill to your existing. 

Almost there...

Renovation week 26 | kitchen update (beadboard and moulding)

Now we are quite close to finishing. This week we are designing mouldings and trimming all around the house. We start with the kitchen where we run bead board all around the room to create continues line and to make the empty walls look finished.

We made some mocked up of how the rail is going to look. I have come up with a couple options below.

Option 1 is to continue the line from the countertop but adding a little line on the bottom to make it more refine. Thinner lines = refine, right?

Option 2 is very straight forward. We made the top rail the same thickness as the countertop. We have decided to go with this option just to keep it simple.

For the ceiling moulding, we just use flat piece of wood. No fancy moulding or anything. It's very inexpensive and it has that modern craftsman feel that I'm looking for. I also like that it makes the cabinets look completely built in.