What is your one favorite element in your small, cool home? The light - It comes from a combination of white walls with original wood floors stained a dark honey colour and reclaimed wood ceilings stained red. Its a designated building dating from 1914 and the access to natural light from tall windows in every room are a hallmark of historic buildings. Touches of black and a sense of "contrast" rather than "matching" contribute to a bright atmosphere. Frosted glass in the bedroom doors and a sheer curtain diffuse the strong sunlight of Saskatchewan and convey a sense of relaxed, soft light.
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What was one of the biggest challenges you faced in furnishing your small home? I had a collection of furniture with several Canadian Modernist pieces from the 1950's and 70's along with a few nice Herman Miller items, that I did not want to give up. The generous ceiling heights allowed me to suspend some of the chairs and placed the Eames plywood chair in a niche on top of the kitchen cupboards - the strategy treats them as sculptures and lends an and edgy, surrealistic note to the space.
The new dinning table and desk are from a Canadian company called EQ3, headquartered in Winnipeg.
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I love the curtains covering the whole wall behind the bed! What a great way to balance an off-center window, while still allowing the light to come in.
loooove your bathroom! and love how you've hung the chairs so they look like they're "sitting" on the walls! if you're not using the eames lcw...can i have it?? hahah
i'm no stranger to hanging chairs on my walls, either. good to see someone else doing it. :)
i can see the practicality of hanging extra chairs on the walls, but for some reason it just disturbs me!
cute place, though.
Love the wall/ ceiling hung chairs-- they're as beautiful as any sculpture on display in a museum, perfectly appropriate displayed as 'object'.
(Oh-- and I envy the wood ceilings.)
Great place-- looks like an adult lives there!
definitely droolworthy furniture!
REGINA?
Wow. THIS is amazing.
Those suspended chairs? Holy $#%@.
This needs to win something.
Congratulations Bernard, you just totally blew my mind.
Yeah! can i have the eames LCW on top the oven?
Fabulous. So so nice. You definetly benefit from the most unique amazing "bones". The architecture is incredible. I would love to see an outside shot of the building.
this is definitely my favourite smallest coolest so far.
Your ceilings are drool-worthy, as is that entire bedroom. I adore the idea of treating the chairs as sculpture; it emphasizes the very things that make them classics of modern design to begin with. I'm curious as to how you attached the chairs to the wall, though. I don't see any supports on the one in the bedroom. Is it hung on wires from the ceiling?
I love this place! But, unlike most of the commenters, I find the chairs on the walls distracting. But it's just a matter of personal taste I guess. I don't like rugs or kimonos on walls either...
I love the table and chairs for dining - where did you get them? Really gorgeous space!!!!
Stunning, and bookmarked. Not only are the bones of your apartment gorgeous, the simple but bold colours you've chosen stand out beautifully. You had my thumbs up for the first photo with the chairs, and the rest of the photos didn't disappoint.
A for the deco, the style, the staging, and the photography. Thanks for showcasing your beautiful home. :)
Absolutely the BEST so far. You won me and I am a tough critic :-) Break a leg
awesome. love your extra chair storage. how easy is it to get them up/down?
More a question than a comment: Do visitors have to traipse through your bedroom to use the bathroom?
Love the bathroom (which is amazing, and which you are going to have to provide more info about as well as more pics), love the combination of materials, especially love the ceilings.
There is only 1 thing I don't love -- the living room rug (thin, slippery, and just wrong). But that is just a very small thing!
I am thrilled that you are showing this crowd what great stuff can be found in Saskatchewan (this crowd doesn't know about all the cool artists who live there)!
-- a former prairie girl (Camrose, AB)
This is minimalism I can warm up to. Wonderfully edited. Thanks for sharing!
Yeah, I am loving your place too! Hanging the extra chairs is genius - and I love how you've matched them to the color scheme of the room.
You're getting my first thumbs up!
simply the best. beautiful kitchen too.
This is my favorite so far. Mostly because of outside-the-box solutions to the inherent problems of living in a small space, but also because it feels both clean and warm.
It also doesn't hurt that Bernard went through the trouble of making a floor plan detailed enough for the average city's permit department! That kind of dedication gets major points from a detail-oriented Virgo like me.
Love those purple living room chairs!
Great job, it looks bigger than a 700 sq ft entry I just saw!
Where did you get the purple living room chairs? They are just beautiful!
Your place stands out above the others with its unique look and plenty of wonderful, fearless color. I've been planning to redo the bedroom doors in my vintage house the same way, and now I know it will look great.
Stunning bathroom. One of my favorite ever posted.
Not sure about the chairs. I think my friends drink too much for this look not to confuse them.
Loving the wall mounted chairs!
Thumbs up!
...But the chairs on the walls give me a creepy Exorcist vibe.
hells yea!!! I'm from Regina, too!! I'm so happy to see something so lovely represent! hooray for you.
I love all the different materials (don't know if that's the right word) for flooring, ceiling, and walls! What a great place!
the blue in the kitchen is amazing---but the chair in the bedroom unsettles me a little though. Thanks for sharing your wonderful home! You have my vote.
Madly in love with the humor of your hanging chairs! Very surreal and super clever and very fun. And the colors in your home are fantastic. Also, may I please have your bathtub?
What a gem of a place! The suspended chairs are a fav feature!
Looks huge, love the color
Great stuff Bernie!!
Suspending those chairs... very "David and Im," previous small/cool winner. I'm a big fan of this one. Thanks for sharing!
I adore the bathroom- its breathtaking!
Love the chair fetish =)
I love your place but the only downside is the bathroom is through your bedroom. Otherwise, I think this place is great.
It seems a lot bigger than 450sq ft! Charming, practical, welcoming - fantastic Bernie! Thanks for sharing your beautiful home with us.
Wow! I love this. I have no excuse to say I have no place for more chairs now!
Regina. . . wow that is the last place I would have guessed this is. It looks like a high-end downtown condo in some trendy European city. (that is a compliment).
Being from Winnipeg, I did recognize the EQ3 pieces. Way to support local designers.
Your kitchen is to die for.
Thanks everyone for the amazing comments - I'm a little overwhelmed!
What style you possess, Mr. Flaman. What style.
Bernie, you place rocks! My favourites? The spot on the wall with the hard hat!
i love love love the framed house print in the kitchen, and the fun bursts of color throughout the whole space. the hanging chair in the bedroom is especially fun and effective coordinated with the throw on the bed.
Love the ceiling and suspended chairs. Certainly a whimsical aspect of this wicked modern pad.
Love it all!
BRAVO!
Get ready to win - your place is super cool!!
Wow! This is the first time I had seen chairs suspended from walls, so that was pleasantly shocking. Tub resting on wood blocks is that your idea or is that something that's commonly done? Great entry!
love it.
Thumbs up!
If I came to your house I would be obsessed with thinking that the chairs were going to fall on me.
Glad it works for you. I couldn't do it.
Otherwise lovely!
wowzers, this place is sweeeet! can i live here please?
the chairs near the ceilings scare me a little bit..
Not a fan of the hanging chairs but I love everything else about your place.
Good Luck.
what a daring apartment! i like!
I want this guy to win - this is the coolest place in this years contest....
Well done; great space!!!!!!!!!!!
THIS RULES! You can stop the contest now.
Also, high-fives for AutoCAD.
WOW! This place is one of the coolest places I have seen. Thanks for sharing. I love the chairs.
Bravo!! The ceilings..genius.
Best here so far.
i looove the ceilings kitchen & bath! awesome place!
Spectacular!
love the chairs on the wall. are those arne jacobsen's 7 chairs in the dining room? that's just so cool.
Love the use of reds... my favorite has to be the bathroom, especially the standalone tub that's not quite a clawfoot!
hanging chairs on the walls? old shaker remedy for uncluttered space.
love it! I have almost twice as much space, and my place isn't half as cool. ;)
Love the bathroom and the red ceilings, not sure how i feel about the chairs from the ceiling its a cool concept but just seems a little strange ..... anyway, great space ...
So much to love about this -- the ceilings, the bathroom glass door, the chairs up high, the cool sophisticated kitchen.
The biggest beef I have with filling in small spaces is that it gets to looking too angular. For example, in my small space I have a coffee table that looks like a kidney bean because I eschew too many jutting corners in such a small space.
Maybe it is reminiscent of the days when the children were short totterers liable to bang their heads on corners -- maybe.
Love this, especially the bedroom & bathroom. Clean, modern, minimal, well-edited, and still warm, cozy, comfortable & inviting. And the chairs add a fun unexpected surprise element of wackiness, that still works with the entire scheme. Well done.
Thanks again, everyone - its really nice to read everyone's comments!
Here is a response to some of the questions:
-yes, its true, one has to go through the bedroom to get to the bathroom. Its the apartment's greatest strength and biggest weakness. A strength in terms of space efficiency as there is no dedicated circulation space and of course a weakness as the bedroom is far less private than it otherwise might be. Originally, I wanted to remove all of the partitions, but decided to accept the plan as it is for historical reasons and to minimize waste and cost. I also had an earlier scheme that would have opened an entrance to the bedroom and bathroom where the closet is, effectively cutting it in half - in the end I decided to maximize storage space, enjoy the fantastic efficiency of the historic layout and recognize that the privacy issue for the bedroom goes with the "small space" territory.
-The chairs; there are four that hang from the ceiling and since the ceilings are very high, it doesn't feel threatening at all. The lightweight chairs are attached in a very simple way; just with a hook and some twine. The upholstered chair took a bit more planning and I'm not sure how successful it is.
-The two chairs over the dining table do come down from time to time (just like the shakers did!) to provide extra seating, or more often, to go to dinner parties hosted by other friends who need extra chairs. They are not by Arne Jacobsen - not sure who the designer is. They have a stamp on the bottom that says BOWA Denmark - they are great!
-The print over the dining table is by a Saskatchewan artist named David Thauberger. If you do a google search, his work and the galleries that handle it come up. Its a screen print called "bungalow" and I bought it years ago. While I would love to say that it inspired the colour scheme of the apartment, truth is, it was in storage while I was doing the work and I got a pleasant surprise when I finally brought it out!
-I really should have cleaned up the plan drawing before posting, but I just grabbed a scan that I already had. Yes, I am an architect and its a simple autocad drawing. I often see projects, especially small ones, that move forward without the most rudimentary drawings being completed. Its always critical to define the scope of any project and answer the fundamental question - "what do you want to do".
Hope I make it to the finals next week!
Chair nerd.
I am just loving it. Seriously, one of my favorites ever. It feels homey, stylish, funky, unique and restrained - all at once! While I have seen these chairs (along with Neslon Bubble) over and over and over on AT - to the point that I feel they lose the appeal (everyone has 'em), you use them in a fresh way. Bravo!
Congrats on your beautiful apartment knocking mine out in the first round. I'm originally Canadian, so you're now my favorite to win!
These rooms have a quality of (good!) modern art to them. Well done!
Thanks dangerdan - that is very gracious of you!
Too many chairs..should get rid of them instead of hanging them on the wall in (almost) every room.
Other than that, your place looks very relaxing & neat!
I love the chairs everywhere! Brilliant! But, hmmm...is this place really 450 sq ft? My apt is 650, and this place looks significantly bigger than my own. Maybe it's a nod to bflaman's creative skills, but I call foul. Still voting for this place cause it is inspiring, but...foul!
it's definitely 450 sq ft. I know, I've stayed there. It feels spacious because there are no corridors or wasted space. Before you call foul, just look at the floor plan if you have doubts orchidday. It's dimensioned so you can do the math.
Lol, like the design loving loser that I am, I actually looked over the dimensions, and still can't believe so much was able to fit in there and no look squeezed. really impressive.
Can you tell us all of your paint colors, including the white you used!!!? Looks great and I would like to copy. And how about where you got that awesome bright red blanket on your bed. Love the pop.
Love your entire place! Notsomuch the hanging chairs though!
This was my favourite house tour of the year, So inspiring so cool! Best use of midcentury, outstanding kitchen, great pieces. A !
I think you were my favorite, Mister.
Thanks everyone for the great comments;
Colours are as follows:
-all paint is from Benjamin Moore in various levels of gloss, the living room and bedroom are "ulti-matte"
-the colour in the bathroom and kitchen is Ralph Lauren Waterwheel Falls
-Bedroom and Living room are Ben-Moore Oxford White
-Grey wall behind the kitchen is Ben-Moore Asphalt
-Trim and Painted doors are Ben-Moore Designer White
Oh, and the red blanket is a Hudson's Bay Blanket - the stripped version is more recognizable, but they also come in this great red colour.
They are made in England of high grade pure wool and are still available at Hudson's Bay Stores in Canada. I have a "four point" size.
Hi Bernard
Love the space utilization and the colours. The blue is brilliant in setting off the whole living space. Also the tap pointing away from the drain board looked different. Am building a retirement village with 350 square foot studios. love to have your suggestions on colour for the same
Sathya
melurmeadows.com
Wow Bernard! That is a very nice home you have there. I am from Regina as well and think it is great to have some local pieces displayed on this site. I too, with real estate prices being what they are today, am looking for a small, older home in a decent neighborhood. I'd be very happy if I could get my place to look as nice as this one. Great job!