summer reading series: good bones, great pieces

Summer Reading Series: Good Bones, Great Pieces: The seven essential pieces that will carry you through a lifetime.
By Suzanne & Lauren McGrath

Mother-daughter design duo, Suzanne and Lauren McGrath, take readers through several stunning and unique spaces that incorporate each of their seven essential pieces. With an array of eclectic rooms, seamlessly combining new and vintage furniture and accessories, there is something to inspire the traditionalist, modernist and everyone in between.

Each chapter dedicated to its own piece of furniture and readers are given a brief history lesson, what to look for when sourcing, price ranges (affordable pieces exist and are featured), proper naming conventions and small tidbits of information behind their clients and their room’s inspiration.

Hailing from New York, Suzanne and Lauren have gained the praise of Martha Stewart, been featured countless times in Domino magazine and run a beautiful blog, as well as a successful business: Suzanne McGrath Design. This book will leave you itching for a garage sale, second-hand store or even a dig through your basement looking for those old tables you can now impressively refer to as ‘demi-lunes’; because you will know that beautiful, comfortable spaces are created with a combination of pieces that range from cheap and cheerful to top-of-your-budget, and by knowing the rules, you can masterfully choose those that will carry you through a lifetime.

floral shelf DIY

A few years ago I had picked up a set of three metal shelves from Urban Outfitters. Marked down so low that they were practically free, I grabbed them all without knowing where they’d wind up. Fast forward a year and a bit and my new room had an empty patch that was screaming for a set of three metal shelves ;)

I’m terrible at documenting projects with photographs, but covering the shelves was fairly simple. I traced each side of the shelf onto the wrapping paper, cut them out and pasted them piece by piece onto the shelf. For the top ledge, I used a slightly larger piece and folded the excess bit over to the underside of the shelf for a clean edge.

Gently smooth out the air bubbles as you lay the pieces of paper flat—this is probably the most important step to achieve a clean and smooth finish. Easy peasy.

The final product is now the perfect place to showcase an eclectic mix of books, pictures and mementos that had previously been cluttering the dresser.

Up next: deciding on a colour to paint that pink table!

mood board: study space

And another school project makes its way into a post :)My favourite project this past semester involved finding some real-life clients with a space in need of some finessing. My sister and her hubs gladly volunteered their time and space for the assignment, and after a few quick interviews and assessments, I put together a few mood boards with ideas and options for their bachelor-style apartment. 

One of the mood boards featured a functional new study space for my sister against a 5-foot wall that juts out between the bedroom area and living room. Being a medical student, most of her time is spent reading, listening to online lectures, and whatever else being a med student entails. This layout allowed for a space to properly set up the desk, shelving for storage and displaying favourite objects, a spot for her waterfall bookshelf, and some fun ways to accessorize it (ie the DIY chair). Painting stripes onto the wall would be a cheap, chic and renter-friendly way to differentiate the space from the rest of the apartment and help her get into the mindset of studying (hopefully!) 

dining room mood board

It’s hard to believe my first semester at Georgian is three days away from being finished. Despite what feels like a mountain of homework and projects left to be completed, it feels so good to be in the home stretch!

One of my final projects involves the above dining room collage. It’s a little rough around the edges and needs to be touched up in PhotoShop, but it is turning out to be one of my favourites and thought I would use it to whip up a blog post to kick start the last week of class.

Looking forward to Christmas break and catching up on some other projects I’ve been meaning to complete, such as: my new black bedroom, the basement homework station I created, some holiday house tours I participated in, and some Re-Store finds : )

Tilda 5 Light Wood Iron Chandelier | Ameile Dining Table | Trophy Vase | Vintage Aivary Artwork I | Vintage Aivary Artwork II | Baxton Studio Halifax Arm Chair