modern living furniture

hi, i’m karin, i own the design firm karin bennett designshere in burlington, ontario. and i’m jackie, and i’m a lead stylist here at karin bennettdesigns. we’re in downtown oakville at our clients’ house. this is a historic home, one hundred years old. this is ayoung couple, they have busy careers, they also have two young children. so when we first saw this space, it was redon red, there was a little bit of yellow going on, and it definitely wasn’t what our client wanted. it was too dark fora space that needed so much natural light. so what we did was we lightened it up with some paint, that was a good oldfixer upper, we used some beautiful white linen drapes and it really just helped boost the natural light. you will notbelieve the transformation. because this is an old home, even though it’s a fairly large size, at 3,000 square feet,they still very much lacked storage space. we added this built-in storage. this wall…this living room wall actuallybacks onto the foyer. so when you first look at it this just

looks like custom built-in bookcases, but actually, below wehave closed storage. this is where the children house their shoes, their coats, their scarves and their hats — which isreally great since they have a small foyer to begin with. we really wanted to give our clients a space that they couldenjoy some entertaining. they love to have people over so we wanted some great seating so that they could sit, have a glassof wine. of course, we thought of side tables for that as well because everyone needs a place to put their drink down. and then, of course, the ottoman in the center gives some additional seating, while also being extremely practical, weput a large tray on the ottoman so they can also use it as a coffee table. when we first came to the client she told usthat she really liked neutrals, so we worked with that, but we didn’t want the design to lay flat, so we added white,cream, taupe, some beige and some grey. we also mixed in a lot of textures. we have this sofa that has a linen feel to it,but actually is a harder-working fabric, which is great for

a young family, and then we added…the walls are also anoff-white, which is really great. the draperies we had custom-made, they’re a white linen. now this might seem likenot something great that you would work with for a young family with young kids, but for this client she explained that thechildren really aren’t in this formal living room, so she gave us the thumbs up. okay, when it came to the fireplacein this space, we wanted it to stand out. it was the focal point of the room. the thing was, when we came here, when wefirst saw it, there was this orange, kind of terracotta tile and we needed to fix that. so a really great tip when you’redealing with an old, original wood burning fireplace is you can just paint that out. looks brand new, black, seamless so itreally ties in with the floors, and we’re so happy with the way it looks. to accessorize the space, it was wonderful, becausethe clients had a lot of stuff that we could use. they’re avid collectors of antique cameras, which was such a great idea,and we were really happy to use that in the built-ins.

as well, they also collect antique and old dough bowls, whichgives such texture into the bookcases, and then, they have a ton of books. they’re avid readers, so we used all their ownbooks, which was really great. at karin bennett designs, we don’t love putting picture frames on a bunch of differentsurfaces, so the way that we get around that is we ask our client to pick out some of their favorite photos of them andtheir family and we get them framed. you can see we’ve done a beautiful gallery wall that looks amazing in this space.

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