This story category covers home decor, home maintenance, garden design and garden maintenance.

Kelly Deck

Kelly Deck’s Top Sources For Home Decor & More

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Top Vancouver interior designer and media personality Kelly Deck shares great + affordable sources for stylish things for your home.

Kelly DeckKelly Deck has immersed herself in the spirit and lifestyle of the West Coast design community. When she opened her interior décor boutique on Vancouver’s Main Street in 2002, she began a successful foray into homes and backyards, developing a design presence that champions the integrity of coast living and the importance of design.

Now the director of Kelly Deck Design in beachside Kitsilano, her full-service interior design firm specializes in private residences. Her ideas have gained national reach through her Globe and Mail column The West Coast Way; her HGTV series, Take It Outside; and her appearances on Urban Rush, CityLine TV and Breakfast Television.

Kelly Deck’s 5 free, cheap or worth it things to see, do or buy in Vancouver Read more
Tennis balls

Clean Down Comforters & Jackets Easily—At Home

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Could it be any easier to clean your down comforters and jackets at home?

Tennis ballsSAVE YOUR MONEY | Have you checked recently to see what drycleaners charge to clean down comforters, pillows and jackets? Bloody expensive, this service! Drycleaners have their place to be sure, but paying them to fluff your down when you can do it yourself with minimal effort is silly. Read more

Alda Pereira

Shop With Alda Pereira, Designer Of The Year

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Frugalbits goes shopping with Alda Pereira, western Canada’s 2010 interior designer of the year.

Alda PereiraAlready considered one of Canada’s top interior designers with many awards and plenty of ink in glossy publications to her credit, Alda Pereira added another feather to her cap last month when a jury of her peers recognized her as Western Living magazine’s 2010 interior designer of the year.

While her private residential projects and multi-unit development interiors are always a delight to the eye, Pereira is no “shrinking wallflower looking to please multitudes,” commented Western Living editor Anicka Quin, who appreciates Pereira’s “knack for pairing the unusual with the well tailored.”

We love Pereira’s talent too—and her personality, which despite her early and prolonged success, is refreshingly unaffected. Pereira admits she loves to shop “Unabashedly. Period,” she says, “especially window-shopping. Did I mention that it’s free?” Here she shares a few of her favourite haunts. Read more

Chris Greenawalt Trespa Countertop - Kate McElwee

3 Stylish, Less Expensive Kitchen Countertops

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An expensive countertop can make a kitchen look predictable. We have the solution.

Chris Greenawalt's Trespa Countertop - Kate McElweeCHEAP + CHIC | If you were looking for a countertop material your design-loving friends would swoon over, would you pick granite, Caesarstone, another composite quartz, or marble from Carrara in Italy? These are luxurious and high-priced, but an expensive countertop doesn’t make a kitchen more interesting and could even make it look predictable. On the other hand, using an inexpensive countertop material in a creative way never looks cheap—only clever.

Right now our three favourite reasonably priced countertop materials ripe for inventive applications are Trespa, IKEA butcher block and glacier white Corian. Read more

Beautiful, Rich Compost

Nutrient-Rich Compost Is Free & Simple To Make

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Nutrient-rich compost is easy to make at home, plus it’s absolutely free.

Beautiful, Rich CompostIn the fall, I envy people who have red, gold and brown leaves carpeting their yards. Seeing them bagged at the curb makes me even more frustrated. With mainly conifers in my garden, I would love a convenient source of leaves to use as weed-suppressing mulch. Dried leaves are also wonderful for composting.

The best deal on earth, literally, may be compost. You throw in garbage and get back rich, black humus to use in the garden. And it’s not just for country folk and gardening fanatics anymore. A friend of mine just bought a compost bin for the roof deck of her downtown penthouse. Read more

Clothes line with colourful pegs

Why You Need A Clothesline In Your Life

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Save your clothes, cash and the environment with an indoor or outdoor clothesline.

Clothes line with colourful pegsWhat is it with us? We can’t wait to air our dirty laundry in public but scorn hanging clean laundry outdoors to dry. Years ago I lived in the heart of Montreal’s Latin Quarter yet had a clothesline running from my back balcony to a post on the lane—and so did everyone else. Here in Vancouver, I can’t remember the last time I saw laundry flapping in the wind. A 2007 StatsCan Environment Survey shows the percentage of B.C. residents drying clothes on a line or rack at just 54 percent; in P.E.I. it was 75 percent. Read more

Gravel Garden Path - R. Rule

Garden Lover’s Ground Cover: Pea Gravel

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The beauty of this inexpensive ground cover is that it complements whatever style of garden you have.

Gravel Garden Path - R. Rule

 

CHEAP + FABULOUS | Hardscape is pretty much everything in the garden that isn’t plants or water. It is the palette of materials a designer uses to create pathways and patios, arbors and decks; it is woodwork and metalwork and masonry. Hardscape elements are always best when they are linked together by a stylistic theme that is made better still when it is tied into the architecture of the residence.

One of my favorite hardscape materials is gravel. Read more

Ikea Nutid Counter-Depth Refrigerator

IKEA’s Nutid Fridge Wins The Cold War

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Two stylish counter-depth refrigerators are practically identical, but one {IKEA’s Nutid S23} is $1,000 cheaper.

Ikea Nutid Counter-Depth RefrigeratorSPEND SMART | Whenever you see a drop dead gorgeous kitchen in a decorating magazine, there is a 99.9 percent chance it will feature a counter-depth refrigerator. “CD” fridges, as they are referred to, are the coveted look, even if they don’t always pack the cubic capacity punch of traditional freestanding models, which can extend eight inches beyond the depth of standard kitchen cabinets. Read more

Large Black Chalkboard - C. Phaisalakani

With Chalkboards, Bigger Is Almost Always Better

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When it comes to having a blackboard in your life, it’s best to go big or go home.

Large Black Chalkboard - C. Phaisalakani

 

MONEY WELL SPENT | One of the best things we did the first time we renovated our house, when my now teenage son was small, was to put a gigantic black chalkboard on one wall in our dining area. We had to order it from a company in Ontario that supplies visual presentation products to schools because we couldn’t find anything locally that was the four-by-eight-foot size we wanted. The board was surprisingly inexpensive, but crating and shipping it nearly doubled the cost. And the cost doubled again when we ditched the anodized aluminum trim kit that can be purchased with the unit in favour of a custom-fitted natural wood picture frame we thought would look better with our hardwood floors and furniture. In the end, I think we paid around $800 for the whole thing, which isn’t dirt cheap but certainly less expensive than a framed artwork of comparable size. Read more

18Karat Vases - Philippe Martin-Morice

Frugalbits Giveaway

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Check this video on Frugalbits TV

 

Subscribe or Invite a a friend to Receive Frugalbits FREE daily email by MAY 06, and be automatically entered to win.

18Karat is Vancouver’s most original home décor store. While other retailers sell fabulous original furnishings and accessories, none of them offers modern, organic pieces—an entire aesthetic look if you will—sprung from the fertile mind of internationally recognized local designer Maureen Welton. Read more