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Colour in Tiles

10 Steps For Planning a Timeless New Build

01/26/2018
41 Comments

Are you building a new home? There’s a lot of decisions to be made and you may be wondering what you need to choose first. Here are 10 steps (and more importantly, the order of decisions) for planning your new build.  {source} In January and February we’re unusually busy in our eDesign department working on…

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How to Avoid the 5 Most Common Kitchen Mistakes

05/11/2017
51 Comments

Tricia Firmaniuk, my fabulous Virtual Design Assistant, wrote this great post about kitchens. Let me know what you think! ______________________________________________________________ How to Avoid the 5 Most Common Kitchen Mistakes Here’s a kitchen I found listed on Zillow that has clearly been recently renovated. And while the outcome is not terrible, I don’t think you will…

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Ask Maria: Can I Combine Faux Hardwood Tile with my Oak Floors?

03/01/2017
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via pinterest “Maria, I have oak tongue-in-groove hardwood floors which connect to white tile in my white kitchen. With my upcoming kitchen renovation (in which the kitchen will stay white), I want to replace the white tiles, but I am not comfortable extending hardwood into the kitchen. I really do prefer tiles in a kitchen! What do you think about…

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Help! My New Kitchen Makes the Rest of My House Look Old

10/21/2016
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Source This post is written by Tricia Firmaniuk, my design assistant who handles my eDesign: So often people find Maria’s blog AFTER they have already made some costly mistakes in their renovations; when they realize it’s not coming together the way they had hoped, and they go looking for answers on Google. DIY design has…

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When to Break the Rules Around Choosing White (or Cream)

10/17/2016
135 Comments

Pinterest Trends are always moving. You can’t pin them down. When you’ve been in the colour business for as long as I have, it’s fascinating to watch. And it’s also the reason I’m so jaded about each new tile trend fad that comes along. I’m talking about hard finishes because they are the most permanent. I really…

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Trendy or Classic? Ask Yourself These 3 Questions

09/12/2016
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Photo by Maria Killam at Maison & Objet When I wrote my trend report from Maison & Objet last week, truthfully, I was kind of depressed that all evidence points towards black as the next trendy neutral after grey. In this case, I hope I’m wrong. It seems that in my 20 year colour career I’ve now…

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How to Save Money (While Renovating) With a Second Opinion

05/12/2016
48 Comments

Home Bunch Sometimes I think people get fixated on the wrong things when they’re renovating. They spend wildly here, then get stingy there. Even worse, if you’re doing a renovation on your own without the input of a design professional, you’ll swing back and forth even more. For example, you’ll think the more expensive fireplace insert is important, but then…

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Tread Softly When Choosing a Plain (True) White

03/24/2016
36 Comments

  Notice the background of the roman shade is cream along with the carpet but the trim, walls and chair is WHITE. Image via pinterest So the renovation that I mentioned here is starting next week, hooray! Habitat for Humanity is coming to remove all the espresso cabinets in the kitchen and bathrooms and install them somewhere else. So everything is moving…

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Encaustic Tiles: Should You Embrace the Trend?

02/06/2016
87 Comments

From Apartment Therapy Those of you who have been reading my musings about accent tile for years now could have easily predicted that this post was coming. Well, here it is. First, you should know that I did not even know how to say Encaustic before January of this year? I still worry when I say it…

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The Timeless Flooring Everywhere in Italy

10/14/2015
46 Comments

It’s hard to take pictures for a blog on a trip because I never know what I’m going to talk about until I start gathering photos for a post. Then I start thinking “Darn, I wish I had taken more pictures of floors.” But it wasn’t until the end of the trip that I noticed…

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