Interior Design _ A Renovated Home With Genius Storage Solutions And Organization

This house tour is brought to you by Squarespace. We're in Midtown Toronto. We're in Forest Hill. We have one of the original houses that we've changed the layout of the entire interior, but we've kept the exterior exactly as it was. When we first went through it, I had no kids and I was shocked to know that there were four boys living in this home, but it was in its original state. Small kitchen, oversized living room, the old way of planning your home. And when I came into it, I saw so much potential and knew that I could grow my family here. We were having kids quickly. We had four kids in four years and I really wanted to update the size of our fridge because it couldn't hold enough food. And the fridge turned into the kitchen and the kitchen turned into the family room. And then I wanted a pantry. And then as many renovations, it turned into the entire house. Everything in the house was chosen specifically for kids. But at the same time, as a designer, having that elevated look that kids and our family could really live in. I'm also in real estate and whenever I redo homes, I know that simplicity will always sell. And so we went with a white kitchen and I could change things over time, whether that be my hardware or artwork. And I knew that if I ever wanted to sell the house one day, that most people would like that as well. So the countertops are porcelain. Our island is the hub of our family. Kids are in and out having dinner, doing homework, and so it had to be indestructible. This material has saved my life with permanent marker. It's held up just as I expected it to. It still has that timeless marble look, but has way more durability. And I went with a backslash that went all the way up because we're just wiping things down and I want things to look like they are brand new. So our family room is really special to us. It's where we spend all of our time. We did an oversized sectional. Housing this many people just needed tons of seating. The fabric is all pre-treated and sprayed, so any spaghetti fingers easily wipeable. And we topped it off with four gorgeous pictures of our kids that we love. When I was taking the photos, originally the photographer thought I was crazy. I said I only want photos from behind. I wanted them to be timeless. They don't date as quickly. And I think it's one of the staples that when people walk into my house they look at me and they're like oh my god these photographs are so gorgeous. Funny enough, my house is always very tiny and everyone kind of laughs at me and they're like there's no way that this house always looks this good with four kids. I try to create routine and routine is everything for my work-life balance, but it also comes into the design of this home. There was a reason we created that pantry and that's for routine. They know when they can go into the pantry and grab snacks. They know when they can't. Welcome to my pantry. Everything had to be a pullout, but one of the special parts about this pantry is I didn't want to lose any space. So you can see here that even though there's a corner that's left behind, I made sure that back corner was always accessible as well. So you can pull everything out from every angle. Our favorite part about this pantry is our cereal bar. So I try and switch it up for the kids, but they know they go into the drawers and grab their bowls and they fill up the cereal themselves and they're on their way. For me and our lifestyle coming and going, there's just tons of kids in and out and I wanted to be able to still keep the things that we needed on an everyday basis without them being seen. This closet has always been one of our favorites. It obviously serves as it being open all the time, but it's morphed with the ages of our kids. So originally it had all the bottles and all of the cleaning supplies for when they were young and now it's really turned into their homework station where they get to come home, pull out what they need. There's tons of hidden storage in the house. On the opposite side of our family room, instead of showcasing shelves and pictures, I decided to hide everything. We love to keep everything organized and all four kids have their own bins and they know exactly where to go when they want to play with board games or magnet tiles or whatever they're looking for that day. When things are put away, it really does create a sense of calm and so I think it's good. They appreciate the decor of the house as well. I'm Bona from House and Home. We really hope you're enjoying this house tour. We just want to take a quick minute to thank our sponsor, Squarespace. For those of you not familiar with Squarespace, it's an all-in-one, easy-to-use platform to create, manage, and market your very own website. 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I took out every wall except for this one where I wanted to divide the kitchen from the dining room just to give the dining room a little bit of breathing room when we have guests over, we're not directly in the kitchen. But in terms of the front entry, I wanted to overlap that dining room with beautiful art. So the dining room really did become part of the foyer and it kind of surprises everybody when you walk in how grand the table is but how inviting the home should be. The principal suite, I really tried to keep it hotel-y. That's my space among this whole home that's just mine and my husband's. I kept it a lot more neutral and tonal because that's what calms me and so you'll see a lot of whites and textures. I had to be very creative with storage because I do like my shoes. We had to build out some built-ins, still keeping everything tonal and making sure that when we walked into the room it was our place of calm. We have lots of kids, obviously four of them. The girls do share a room. I decided to make one big headboard and have the two twin beds coming out of it and we did it in a fun boucle fabric just to keep it young and easy to clean. In my son's room, because it was a bit of a tighter space, we decided to make a custom cornered bed and that was just to allow for him to have a proper size twin bed but still feel like he was cozy in his space, warming it up with some plush headboard fabric and again I did it in a really soft fabric that was easily cleanable. In my other son's room you can see again we did a little bit of an oversized headboard. Underneath there's actually four drawers that come out so in a house that needed a little bit more storage we were able to gain that in that space as well. It's not a big house but I tell all my clients with proper planning and talking through the function of a home, that's what makes a small home feel big or a big house feel small. You want your house to feel like a home. It has to be livable for whoever, how big or small your family is and I think that when you can walk into a space and things have a home and things look beautiful, ultimately you'll be calmer and happier.