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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

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

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

Omer Arbel - Cory Dawson

Omer Arbel Explores Vancouver His Way

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Internationally renowned designer Omer Arbel burns, illuminates and drives his way around Vancouver.

Omer Arbel - Cory DawsonEvery so often Vancouver produces a superstar— like internationally renowned Vancouver designer Omer Arbel, touted by Wallpaper magazine in 2003 as one of the 15 designers of the future. His bubblelike cast glass pendant Bocci lights, just five years old, are already iconic, as much a design staple as a Noguchi coffee table or Eames chair. He has designed everything from furniture, interiors and electrical sockets (see below) to the 2010 Winter Olympic medals in collaboration with aboriginal artist Corrine Hunt. His numerous awards include the Canada Council’s Ron Thom Early Design Achievement Award, International Design Award and the Design Prize of the German Republic.

Omer Arbel’s 5 free, cheap or worth it things to see, do or buy in Vancouver 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

Half Price—And More Than Worth It!

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THE TURN ON: High-style solid rosewood furniture for wholesale prices.

WHAT’S THE DEAL: The sign says Closing Out Sale but this is really a pop-up store, where the merchant keeps overhead low by taking a space on a short-term lease. Once the lease ends, the sale really will be over—at least in this location.

WHY WE ARE EXCITED: Simple, clean-lined rosewood pieces ranging from coffee tables and consoles to beds and buffets would shine in any décor; traditional Indian styles are also available. All are made in Rajasthan of Indian rosewood, aka sheesham, harvested from a plantation in the Punjab. A 39-inch-square Parsons-style coffee table is $495, a Shaker-style buffet $950.

HOW LONG WILL THE PLEASURE LAST: As long as there’s stock up to the end of August.

WHERE’S THE F SPOT: In a former car dealership at 1177 Marine Drive (between Pemberton and Lloyd) in North Vancouver. Open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sundays. To check out the furniture or keep an eye out for future sales, visit www.exoticrosewood.com.

—Submitted by Rosa Woods

Shell Busey’s Got Home Maintenance Solutions

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Want to conserve water, obliterate ants and pesky weeds? Vancouver’s home improvement expert Shell Busey explores maintenance on the cheap side.

Shell BuseyShell Busey, host of the Home Discovery Radio Program broadcast on the Corus Radio Network throughout Western Canada, is one of Canada’s best known experts on home improvement. Shell also leads the HouseSmart Home Services Referral Network, a free service he created to help homeowners find qualified and reliable tradespeople, suppliers and products for their home improvement projects. For more information visit thehousesmart.com. Read more

Hack Jobs

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The real beauty of IKEA products is that they aren’t precious, which makes them ripe for reinvention.

Ikea Hacking 017

 

MAKEOVER  MATERIAL I used to think there would come a time when I would live an IKEA-free lifestyle, when every room in my house would contain only  “Grownup Furniture” —you know, just antique or artisan made pieces mixed in with factory efforts from glamorous Italian manufacturers. And I do have a few of these items in my life. But I also continue to have some IKEA because, let’s face it, the pieces are well enough made and their design is considered, sometimes even by the boldface names (in downmarket mode) whose work I see in fancy furniture shops. Read more

How To Combat Teenage Towel Waste

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Here’s a surefire way to combat teenager towel waste.

MOM LOGIC  | Have you ever experi- enced Dis- appearing Towel Phenom- enon? This occurrence is not to be confused with Disappearing Object Phenomenon, a docu- mented paranormal event where random objects mysteriously disappear and then inexplicably turn up later. In the case of Disappearing Towel Phenomenon, the objects are neither random nor their whereabouts unknown. Parents of teenagers know precisely where to look for their vanished bath towels: in multiple soggy piles on the floor in their offspring’s bedrooms. Read more