Small is Beautiful!

For a beautifully renovated small bachelor in Toronto, our client chose to have the bathroom door be the sliding barn door.  It saves space and it's a stunning piece to greet the guests and the owner as they walk in the front door. As you can see, the barn board colours goes so well with the colours in the bathroom...such a nice flow!

A look from inside the bathroom.  I just love the contrast of the cold tiles to the warm wood.

 

This door is special in that the barn boards are alternating to create that nice colour tones.  Usually, barn boards are grey on one side, and brown on the other.  The grey side is the side that is exposed to the sun, and the other side faces inside in the barn.  By alternating the boards, you have both sides of the door the same, instead of grey on one side and brown on the other.  I have to credit this to the creative thinking of our client!

Rock always has to be somewhere around the finished installation.  Yes, we know you good!

Are you ready to add a beautiful barn door to your space?  Contact us and get one custom made just for you!

Custom Home Office in Forest Hill, Toronto

This is not your ordinary home office, it is made with much thought and style. The dominating wood element here goes very well with the location of the house, Forest Hill! 55Design.ca came up with the design of the entire office and contacted us to have it built, from the sliding barn door, to the shelves, to the desk and the counter top, to the installation of the units and lighting, we were asked to make it happen, and look! It happened. After completion of the installation, it took two days and lots of hard work to mae this happen

 

Look from the other side and seeing the other wall with cabinets, a counter top and shelves.

closer look at the the wall with the counter top.

closer look at the desk.  It is the most distressed piece here and it sure does make a statement.

 

Feeling pretty good after the installation.  Do you wonder why the room looks so clean after the install?  it's because we clean up after ourselves every time!

Now are you inspired enough to get a home office going?

 

The Walnut Sliding Barn Door Version II

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Armed with the 4 feet x 10 feet walnut dining table in the beautiful home, our client asked for a walnut sliding door on the Stainless Steel hardware to complete the look!  Since this is a multi-level house, it's really nice to see the table on the main floor and the door just a few steps below. But there is something different about this walnut door, it's not the slab door you are used to seeing with our work, it's made with walnut veneer, and solid walnut edging banding around.  This definitely makes the door a little lighter to handle and it looks beautiful in its own way.

Pretty.  Notice the edge banding of solide walnut

Closed.  This walnut door with the stainless steel hardware has a hint of art deco in it...which I noticed with the walnut table and a few other things in the house.

 

Somewhere North of Barrie, in Waubaushene is a Door Sliding on the Heavy Metal

We are driving North again, and again with a door on the roof and the sliding hardware inside the SUV, we are cruising to the destination on a beautiful Friday afternoon. Once we arrived, there was a beautifully just-built home in the middle of a forest!  And this house needed a sliding door made of pine for the en-suite in the bedroom upstairs to go with the rest of the pine architectural beams in the house.

As you can see, the house is newly--super newly built.  It still needs to be primed and painted...but the sliding door has got to be in first!

All can see is the forest when you look out.  So romantic.

Installed.  This is before the door gets stained to match with the rest of the pine.

Beautiful even before the room is painted!

Sliding in the Mudroom

Our client just sent in a photo of the finished installation of her two heritage doors using our Heavy Metal sliding barn door hardware.  Looks pretty good!  If you want to mount without the wood block behind the track like this one, it is much better if  have a solid beam running across above the opening.  Our client had the room built from scratch, so she was able to have the solid beam up before the drywalling. They are gorgeous looking!

The Chalkboard Wardrobe

Looking for a free-standing wardrobe for the front of the house to store the kids jackets and shoes, our client came to us asking for a design that brings a little fun while still maintains the formality of the house.  More importantly is the durability factor--kids! We drew this 3D design before making it, and the only difference between this and the real thing is the colour of the handles, the vertical is yellow in real life and blue in the drawing!

In place after delivery.

For the fun part, we suggested to have the panels of the doors painted in chalk board paint, and the handles to be of bright colours, different lengths, and installed one vertical and one horizontal.  For the durability, we suggested to go with white oak since our client wanted a lighter wood because the house already has many dark wood elements such as the floor.  White oak is modern and beautiful, and it has the colour of bamboo, and bamboo is quite the "in" thing these days.

A portable mudroom!  Pretty convenient.

I thought the wardrobe should have legs so that it doesn't look too heavy, the legs are made of walnut so that it blends in with the dark floor to give the wardrobe a floating feel.

Look!  It's me actually doing some work (cleaning the chalk board before delivering the wardrobe). I've been waiting for a picture like this to show that I, in fact, do work at the shop.   That's my father in-law making sure I don't screw something up.

I hope the kids (and parents) have fun with the chalkboard.  I can't wait to see what it looks like with chalk play on it!

 

Walnut Slab Sliding Barn Door Finds a Home For Itself in Bracebridge, Muskoka

Remember the beautiful slab walnut door we made for a Toronto home?  Well, the walnut door wanted to explore new worlds, and find itself right at home in this modern condo in Bracebridge.  Sliding on the stainless steel barn door hardware, it looks just as gorgeous as it sounds..."walnut slab door"...mmmm. This is to cover a recreational room so that it can be used as a second bedroom in the future.

French doors were originally the doors for the entrance to the room.  But how can they compete with a walnut slab door sliding on stainless steel barn door hardware?

View from the hall once closed.  It provides a a simple yet stunning focal point to the condo when you walk in.

View from the inside on the room.

 

Walnut door in the making.

Rock and rollers :)

 

Painting With Barn Boards in Mount Pleasant, Toronto

I'm just updating on a new project completed.  The client had purchase the barn boards awhile back for this particular project.  He asked us to make the doors using these barn boards in this painterly way.  You don't need to go to an art gallery for these paintings! These doors are for a large closet opening.  Because there isn't enough wall space on the both sides for the doors to slide into, they are hung on the by-pass system.

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Our client also had a simple door on the Heavy Metal hardware for his work/living room upstairs.

IS IT BIG ENOUGH FOR YOU?

If you have the space for a 5 feet by 10 feet long walnut dining table, then why not!  A little intimidating to sit for dinner at this table, but think about all the food it can hold...oh, and not to mention all the guests you can have.  Be prepare for some envious eyes though. The table just got finished waiting to be delivered at our workshop.  Rock is very proud.

It started out because our client up-sized to a big house from a condo downtown Toronto.  So the dining table they had looked a little midget in the large dinning room.  After getting the walnut slab door on sliding hardware from us for their master bed,  it just makes sense to get a walnut slab dinning table suitable for a long feast!  Yes, the table is the same one we have in our dinning room and we called it "The Long Feast", but our kitchen and dining room combined is 200 square feet, so our Long Feast is a little short and small compared to this Long Feast...so we all called it the Extra Big and Long Feast!

We had a little photo shoot of the table at our workshop, can't help it, it was fun!

Simple lines of this table is what makes it versatile.  Our client is thinking of putting Eiffel metal base chairs to contrast with the massive amount of walnut wood.

This is one of my favourit picture of the table.  To me, a big dinning table means family and friends (I think to most people, I shouldn't be egocentric), so a nice solid table in the house is very grounding for the family and so naturally, very good Feng Shui.

This is my other favourit picture of the table because something as functional as a dinning table can be stylized down to just lines and shadows.

One last picture before we part with it (it's very painful for Rock).

You must be wanting to see it in the client's house by now.  Look below.  It took 3 moving men to carry it it in and one Rock to assemble the legs to the table top.  I'm always, of course, prancing around, not doing much (but not much gets done without me though).

Wait!  Sorry, I can't find my SD card with all the pictures in it!  Stay tune...getting it to it soon...I know I'm torturing you.