LoveMyPlace.com - Renovation, Design, Real Estate

It’s 6:15 p.m. on Tuesday and you’re regretting the last-minute dinner invitation you made to your boss/mother-in-law/neighbour, having just remembered that your housecleaner has the week off. So you a) phone your would-be guest and say that a sudden onset migraine is forcing you to cancel, b) exhaust yourself with a frantic attempt to tidy up or c) disguise the disarray by dimming the lights and bringing out some beautiful candles and your favourite holder. Read the rest of this entry »

Induction cooktops were big news at the Kitchen/Bath Industry Show held in Las Vegas last May. That’s because they offer they offer “the best of both worlds,” according to Mathieu Sabbagh, marketing director for Bosch.

“It has the convenience and clean lines of an electric cooktop with the responsiveness of gas. It’s also very safe,” says Sabbagh.

An induction cooktop is basically a large electromagnet panel that quickly transfers or “induces” heat onto any magnetic surface, such as a cast-iron skillet, placed on it. Since the heat transfer is between the electromagnetic field beneath the cooktop and the magnetic surface with which it makes contact, only the pan heats up. So there’s no wasted heat and no part of the exposed element that can burn fingers, or send unused heat into the air. Read the rest of this entry »

The fall colours are gorgeous this year — burnished reds and glimmering golds, with vivid splashes of deep purple and hot orange. I hear the leaves are turning pretty colours now too, but I’m too busy picking paint colours for the bedroom to go out and look. Read the rest of this entry »

In my constant desire to acquaint you with all that is hip and hot, I assembled, during a recent western jaunt, a master list to help you shop when you find yourself in Canada’s western gate. Read the rest of this entry »

Summer is officially over, but that depressing fact can still be ignored for a little while longer, especially if you concentrate on squeezing every last moment of summery pleasure out of your deck or patio. Read the rest of this entry »

When Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Do what you can…where you can…with what you have…” he probably wasn’t talking about home décor—but it makes perfect sense. Working with what you have is the idea behind the emerging trend of interior redesign, making it an affordable, less time-consuming, alternative to traditional design. Read the rest of this entry »

As we all think more “green”, we become more conscious of how our daily habits affect the planet we share with all other living beings. For instance, once you become “conscious” of the life of a spider and learn to appreciate all the good these creatures bring with them to your home’s environment, you become aware that killing it will affect many things. But you don’t want a house full of spiders and their webs. So do you kill the spider or do you capture it and move it outdoors? Life has just become a little more complicated, but you have started to “awaken” to your true impact on this planet. Read the rest of this entry »

Small appliances are mainstays in most homes—toasting bread, brewing coffee, and making any number of personal grooming tasks easier. So what do you when your favourite gadget is damaged or broken? Read the rest of this entry »

The person who invents the self-cleaning floor will — deservedly — become a millionaire, and possibly a saint. Read the rest of this entry »

The showers that first appeared in North America homes in the 1870s were primly utilitarian devices, consisting basically of an inverted watering can and a hand pump. But it wasn’t long before design flourishes were added to this new-fangled accoutrement to hygiene, according to The Elements of Style, an architectural dictionary edited by Stephen Calloway. Read the rest of this entry »