RENOVATION BLUNDERS
GETTING ADVICE, HAVING A PLAN ARE KEY TO DECORATING WITH STYLE AND ON BUDGET
Don’t be the DIY husband who cheaps out on bathroom tile. We talk to the experts about how to properly plan a reno you’ll actually like.
Carolyn Munro still shudders at the memory. A wife’s tightly crossed arms and accusatory stare, while the husband in a million-dollar home in the Glebe showed off his renovation of the couple’s ensuite bathroom.
“It was a disaster,” says the veteran designer and owner of Carolyn Munro Design. The amateur handyman had found a deal on a corner, glass shower stall, modern grey tiles for the walls and old-fashioned Mexican tiles for the floor. “Nothing matched. The floors were cold, and tiling in the shower stopped an inch short of the glass doors. “He could have saved money and time if he had talked first to experts, spending a few hundred dollars for advice, instead of several thousand dollars on a renovation that will have to be done again.”
Now, the Mexican floor is being torn up, heating cables have been ordered and the hunt is on for agreeable tiles, says Munro, who was also hired to oversee their kitchen makeover. “He wanted to save the kitchen cabinets from the ’60s, but they will do better service in the basement for storage,” says the designer, who regularly sees design blunders by well-meaning homeowners.
Irene Langlois managed to step in and avoid a design blunder when clients called to ask for advice on how to make more room in their small home to better handle their young family.
“They wanted to finish the basement, easily spending $70,000 digging down to increase the height of ceilings,” says the interior designer, who recently gutted and renovated her own Glebe home. “We talked, and they soon saw that it wasn’t a wise decision because their young children would be out of sight.
“Instead, I came up with a plan to take down some walls on the main level and open up the space. The right time to finish the basement is later on when the kids are teenagers and you want them out of sight.”
One of the biggest design blunders is rushing into a basement renovation on the cheap, not understanding that it is one big job, says Norm Lecuyer, owner of Just Basements.
“It is absolutely the most economical way to do an addition to your home, but it deserves good, quality construction so it will be an equal partner with the rest of your house.” Lecuyer is waiting to hear if he has won national honours from the Canadian Home Builders’ Association for a basement renovation that is all about soft lighting, open spaces, high-end electronics and soft leather seating. “It is a much bigger project than most people think.”
He warns that finishing a basement is not for weekend warriors learning wiring, plumbing and drywalling on the job. “There are jobs where you should hire professionals.” He estimates it costs $75 to $80 a square foot to make over a basement, compared with about $250 a square foot for a main-floor addition.
When it comes to kitchen planning, it’s best to learn when to say no to an overly large island, says Kimberly Silcox, a designer at Laurysen Kitchens. Large islands are popular, but you need enough space to manoeuvre between counters. There should be at least 36 inches between an island and side counter, otherwise dishwashers, fridges and stoves may not be able to easily open.
There are also smaller, more cosmetic design blunders that shriek “amateur at work”, according to an informal poll of designers:
Get a game plan: Often people have no real concept of what they are doing and they believe every piece they buy will go together in one room, says interior designer Luc Crawford of Luc Crawford Design. “There is a way to put an eclectic look together.” If you collect rocks, put them together on a table, he says. Don’t scatter them around; it looks cluttered. A successful eclectic look requires a connecting thread, a common colour, shape or texture.
Too much brown: The eye needs stimulation and contrast, says Yvonne Potter, a designer, furniture maker and partner with the CKY Design Group. “It’s all about light hitting the retina and creating interest.”
She tells of having an “aha” moment in a third-year psychology course when the professor explained how German forces tortured prisoners by keeping them in a grey cell. “It drove them insane, partly because they had no visual stimulation.” A peacetime variation would be to have too much wood of one colour or too much brown in a room. “It’s deadly boring,” says Potter, who blogs at ckydesigngroup.ca. Introduce complementary colours to stimulate the eye and senses.
Away from the wall: It’s ugly and dangerous to your health to line up furniture in a straight line, says Potter. “You get a crick in your neck, having to turn to talk to friends.” It’s much better to pull furniture away from the wall and create L-shaped seating areas, where people can see and talk to each other.
All about scale: Don’t go cramming big sofas next to teeny, tiny chairs, says Crawford. The pieces have to complement each other. A blunder variation is cramming oversized furniture pieces into small spaces, warns veteran designer Michael Courdin. Or conversely, teeny tiny chairs into a large room and expect they will have enough character to anchor a space.
Just get rid of it: There comes a time when a room is too cluttered, says Munro. “You don’t have to keep a piece just because your mother gave it to you. Give it away, move on,” she says. This is called edit, edit and then edit some more, adds Crawford. “You want spaces to feel open and airy, and you can’t if there is too much stuff.”
Hem please: The days of heavy drapes puddling 24 inches onto the floor are long gone, says Courdin. Call up the seamstress and get rid of the extra fabric.
Irene Langlois talks about avoiding design blunders in a video at ottawacitizen.com/homes