Friday Find – September 27th

I am desperately trying to find a space in my house to do this wall treatment.

Source:  www.bhg.com

What do you think?

Happy Weekend….Donna

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to create a home that reflects your style and your life

Friday Find – September 16 {MNO Pottery}

Friday again?!  Whoosh – did you feel that week go by?  Although, if asked I’ll deny it, I think it’s true what they say - as we get older gain life experience, life experience gains speed!!!

This week I’m going to share a discovery I made while visiting the scenic area of Browns Flat, New Brunswick this summer.  As I mentioned in a previous post on cedar shake shingles, we spent a week in a cottage in NB this summer surrounded by family, water (in the form of rain mostly), campfires, good food and wine and the occasional visit from friends. 

During our time in the area we happened to stop in at a local potter’s shop.  Darren Emenau of MNO Pottery (did you catch that slight of name???) creates some amazingly unique pieces from his self-built wood fired kiln on his property near Browns Flat.  We found Darren by stopping by his country store  on highway 102.

 

Darren produces a variety of pottery lines, some of which use local materials indigent to New Brunswick.  Here are a few examples:

   (I purchased a piece very similar to this)

Please visit Darren’s website www.mnopottery.com, and if you are in the area, stop by his charming country store to see his work in person!  I’m certainly glad I did.

Checking in on the Matawatchan Project

Recently, hubby and I spent the weekend with our friends at their log home property in Matawatchan.  You remember the Matawatchan project.  I wrote about it here and again here.  Well our friends A&N have been very busy over the last 18 months (yes it’s been that long since I last posted about this), and have made tremendous progress on the house, now with windows, doors, sunroom and screened porch.

Here’s a couple of shots of the progress we’ve seen:

The front of the home with a retaining wall that took A quite some effort to complete.

The front entrance and garden has a wonderful rustic appeal.

Here is the screened in porch where we spent a good portion of our weekend, with some great food and no shortage of red wine :).

Now, down to work…

One of the major areas they’ve been working on is the kitchen. Last we left off, we had settled on a kitchen layout that felt right.

Well, while we were reviewing the layout, we came across the fact that the stove would need a fan of some sort.  The first option was an overhead unit like this one:

Source:  Sarah Richardson Design (via Pinterest)

Not wanting to obstruct the views within the open layout first floor space, the overhead unit was vetoed. That left an integrated unit, like this.

Source: www.dacor.com

Two problems there, first, with a raised glass breakfast bar, the room for pop up vent was limited.  And secondly, where do you vent to?  After some discussion we decided to modify the floor plan somewhat to accommodate an outdoor venting of the stove.  Here is the new layout:

You’ll notice we’ve moved the stove over to the other side of the kitchen.  It’s now on an outside wall which facilitates the venting for the stove.  Not only that, there is now a really nice big space for food preparation.  A vent hood hasn’t been selected yet, but there’s plenty of room to house one now.

The next step for the kitchen is finalizing the cabinet configuration, that is drawers versus doors.

Currently A&N are trialling the new layout using a combination of cabinets they removed from their condo in the city with pieces they’ve used up to this point for their makeshift kitchen.  The reviews so far are good!

 

It’s a long term project, but I’m very excited to see the progress as we move towards the finished project.

In my next Matawatchan post I’ll tell you all about some of the issues we have with the master bedroom layout upstairs.

Friday Find - May 20

I've been seeing these for several years and love the look!  A nice mix of industrial and rustic.  I'm trying to figure out where I could incorporate one of these in my home.

Source: Smitten Design