Finding fabric in Halifax

I am very far from being any kind of seamstress extraordinaire but I can (occasionally) sew in a straight line and have taken on small home decor projects like roman blinds, pillow covers, and curtains. The one thing I do know for certain is that Halifax has a limited selection of interesting home decor fabric at affordable prices.

I only know of three fabric shops in Halifax that sell fabric on bolts: Fabricville, Abby's at Bellisimo, and Chintzy's. The selection at these stores is not the best. I would rate Abby's the highest because they do have the most contemporary selection and a few unique prints, and Bellisimo is one of those stores I wish I lived in. Fabricville has amazing deals but it would be really rare for me to find something I love - the selection is a little meh. And honestly I haven't set foot in Chintzy's since it moved from its location on Birmingham St. to Oxford St. a few years ago so it is possible I am missing some treasures there.

Halifax is also home to a growing number of interior design shops (e.g. 31 Westgate on Agricola) that have swatch books you can peruse and select special order fabrics from. I am not a fan of looking through swatch books. There are just so many, and the prices are never listed so you often have to choose all the ones you want and then go ask for the prices. It's just not an easy way to shop for fabric, and the fabrics in the books can be pricey.

So a couple of years ago when I was thinking of tackling a slipcover for an old chair but couldn't find any nice, affordable fabric options, I turned to the internets for help. I love, love, love Sarah Richardson and she always seems to find her fabrics in a giant store where she just whisks through rows and rows of samples and pulls out something amazing. After checking out the source guide for her show, Design Inc., I noticed that a lot of the fabrics she was using came from a store in Toronto named Designer Fabrics. I checked out their site and was happy to find out they lend out swatches for free.

I really recommend that you test out your fabric choices with swatches before taking the plunge. The computer screen can do funny things and fabric can sometimes look wayyy different in person. At Designer Fabrics you pay $4.00 for shipping each way and you get to keep the swatches for three weeks (side note: do NOT keep the swatches longer than you are allowed - they will charge you for them).

This opened up a whole new world of interesting fabric for me.  Take a look at some of the pretty prints they are carrying right now:

 
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After searching the interweb a little more I eventually came across a little online fabric boutique, also based in Toronto, called Tonic Living. Tonic Living is an amazing store with a big selection of fun and interesting home decor fabrics. Tonic Living's swatch system also allows me to indulge in my swatch-hoarding pastime (I also have a paint fan deck hoarding issue but will leave that for another day). You get to purchase a swatch for $1.00 and keep it FOREVER. The swatches are a good size - often about 6"x6".  I am well on my way to amassing a collection of swatches representing all the fabric that Tonic Living carries. Check out some of these beauties:

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The prices are great - I think the most expensive fabric is under $30 a yard. The drawback is you won't find many super heavy-duty woven fabrics, but for projects like slipcovering, pillow shams and draperies the selection is perfect. In the coming months look for fabrics from Tonic Living and Designer Fabrics in many of my room "refresh" projects.

I would love to hear any Halifax fabric-finding secrets that you may have. Am I missing out on any fabulous fabric sources?


Update: I can't believe I forgot to mention this. Amazing textile artist, Jesse Harrod, recently told me about Spoonflower. It is a site where you can design your own fabric or choose from thousands of fabrics designed by others. You can have it printed on the fabric weight of your choosing. If you create a design and someone buys it, Spoonflower will give you a commission on the sale. I'm not crafty enough to design my own fabric but there are some amazing and unique designs available. It is almost overwhelming how many there are. I am going to try it soon and will report back on the experience.

Our home on Almon Street

It was really hard to convince Kerry to sell the big house on Lucknow Street. Once it was listed we had an offer almost immediately that fell through, and then it sat on the market through the slower summer season. We hemmed and hawed about taking it off the market. There were no houses for sale that we liked and for Kerry to agree to move, we had to be moving somewhere A-mazing.

Finally one day in July we got an offer on the house. It was a really good offer with a flexible closing date, but since we had nowhere to go, Kerry wanted to decline it and not sell the house at all. July is usually a slow time for the Halifax real estate market and the pickings were slim. One fabulous little house had come on the market a day earlier but we wrote it off because it was a) small and b) belonged to good friends of Kerry's parents, which we thought would make it weird if we bought it. Putting our reservations aside, we decided to go take a look at it with our long-suffering real estate agent, Ainslie MacNeil-Campbell from Domus Realty.

(Side note: if you are ever looking for a great realtor in Halifax I cannot say enough good things about Ainslie or any of the other agents at Domus - they are real pros that consistently go above and beyond for their clients. Also, Kerry designed their signs and website so you should at least check that out).

At this point we had already moved two times in the last three years. We were tired of doing renovations but recognized that since we are so particular about our style it would be impossible to find a house in our price range that was move-in ready. Until we walked through the door of the little house on Almon Street.

It's not as if we had never been in the house. I had visited once, and Kerry many more times than that. But something happened that day when we pictured ourselves living there and we decided we had to have it. Somehow we managed to get our offer through the door first. I think there was a line of buyers behind us hoping that the sale would fall through but it didn't and in the Fall of 2009 we moved in.

The house was almost half the size of our Lucknow Street home. We went from 5 bedrooms to 2.  But it was perfect. It needed absolutely no work. It was fully renovated in a style that was completely our own. Of course neither one of us is completely immune to the call of home renos and so we have been picking away at little things over the last couple of years.

We had the stucco exterior of the house painted before moving in. I think painting stucco may be a bit of a no-no but it had been painted in the past so we just chose a new colour and went with it. With a large lot, there was space for Kerry to fulfill his long-held dream of building a "pod" - a home office in a separate building in the backyard. Last spring I mostly won the fence battle with Kerry and we replaced the low, wire fence that allowed people to see everything we were doing in the backyard, often with comment, with a custom-designed cedar beauty. I almost worried this plan had backfired when, for about two months after the fence was built, we had a steady stream of people stopping to touch our fence and ask about who built it. It's not like it is that amazing, it is just different than most standard fences around the city. Our contractor took some liberties with the gate header, and I really don't like it, but we are stuck with it for now. It looks a little less ornate now that it is stained.

The Pod and fence have both been stained since this photo but I don't seem to have anything more recent. I will take one as soon as the sunny weather returns. We stained the fence a dark greeny gray to match the foundation and the Pod to match the house.

This past summer we finally put in some plant beds in the yard and this winter I have a list of little projects in each room that will hopefully provide fodder for this blog over the next few months.

Moving on

After we sold our house on Brunswick St. we made a quick move to the south end of Halifax near Saint Mary's University and also close to the neighbourhood where Kerry grew up. The house was a similar vintage (c. 1888) as Brunswick but about twice the size and with more original details - 4 stone fireplaces, huge crown moldings, pocket doors, giant old cast iron radiators - it was amazing. With 5 bedrooms we thought this was the house we would be in for the long haul. There was minor work to be done. Many of the old floors had been painted and the plaster walls were lumpy and cracked. The colours were terrible and the kitchen was very dark with black floors and a black counter.

When we were done with the cosmetic updates the house was beautiful.

And I hated it.  

*Photos by AMac Photography, courtesy of Domus Realty

That house turned me into a crazy person. In order to afford the mortgage we had to rent out the apartment in the basement. We had a lovely tenant but I just could not get used to living in such close quarters. The house was also semi-detached an identical house that had been split into two apartments. Sounds were carried across the wooden joists that ran the length of both houses and I found I just could not stand the noise of other peoples' lives. I became completely obsessed with it. The only solution was to move.

Poor Kerry - untroubled by noise he was perfectly happy there and loved the neighbourhood and the house. It was so central and just a few minutes' walk to downtown. But for the sake of our sanity he agreed to sell the house and in October 2009 we moved to our current home. More on that soon!

After!!

I really, really like a good "before and after". Mostly what motivates me with any type of home renovation is the  idea that I am creating some sort of spectacular transformation. I love the contrast of a new space or object with what it was. Our house on Brunswick Street was the most significant renovation we have ever, or will ever, take on and the before and after photos are astounding to me every time I look back at them.

We started on Thanksgiving weekend with help from many supportive family members and friends. The plaster walls were unsalvageable so they came out. We removed almost 10 tonnes of plaster and other construction and demolition debris by the end of the project. The house was semi-detatched so it only had three outside walls, two of which were rotten and so they were re-built. The wiring and plumbing were completely replaced. The wood floors on the main floor were rotted through in spots so we replaced them with a polished concrete slab with in-floor heating. I think this is the thing I miss the most about that house. Concrete floors are virtually indestructible, especially if you have an over-exuberant chocolate lab that likes to scrabble around. 

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In the end, we were able to save the floors upstairs, the beautiful hand carved banister,  the plaster crown molding in the hallway downstairs, and the door trim. My father and I spent countless hours burning and scraping the decades of paint off them to reveal the original details of the trim. When we were done I actually had my lead levels tested just in case (I may have a wee bit of hypochondria). We fought to keep the decorative molding in the living room but the carpenters damaged it in a desire to work from a clean slate. I am sure this is a battle many other people trying to restore heritage homes also face. We put in an IKEA kitchen, built a deck, and replaced the debris pile out back with a garden.

Although we moved in less than three months into the project, we did not finish all the little details for another year. In the end the house was a perfect mix of old and new. And then we sold it.

When you are living in a renovation all you see are the little details that still need to be taken care of, or aren't quite perfect. Everything you do that makes one thing or space look better seems to just make the undone projects around it look extra crappy in comparison. We only stayed on Brunswick Street for 18 months and I think part of the reason was because everywhere we looked we saw the little things we hadn't quite done perfectly, and the memory of the stress of doing such a huge renovation in a short period of time. We learned so, so much from working on that house and there are still things about it that we really miss but we had to move on. Looking at the photos I still see those little imperfections and mistakes we made and so it makes me glad that we sold it when we did.

Where it all began

The reality is I can’t even remember deciding to buy a house. One minute we were living in separate apartments, having just started dating a year earlier, and the next we were proud owners of a derelict (this is an understatement) townhouse in an up and coming area of downtown Halifax on Brunswick Street.

From what I know, in its glory days, Brunswick Street was amazing - or at least part of it was. It used to be two different streets: Barrack Street was the southern end that bordered Citadel Hill and Brunswick Street was the northern section where the more affluent set lived. One of my Halifax history books says that Barrack Street, mostly populated by sailors (go figure), was also known as “Knock ‘em down Street” due to its rough and tumble reputation.

In the early 19th century the north end of Brunswick was the suburbs of Halifax. Here you will still find traces of some of the beautiful historic architecture that Halifax is known for. There are landmarks such as the Little Dutch Church and St. George’s round church.

Parts of Brunswick Street were damaged during the Halifax Explosion, although many homes still remain. Unfortunately with the construction of the Cogswell Street interchange at the corner of Brunswick and Cogswell Street, the northern half of Brunswick Street was effectively cut off from the rest of the downtown. Some houses in the neighbourhood fell into disrepair and the area became known more for violence and other criminal activity. Even when we lived there we still heard of crime happening a few blocks north of us, but it wasn’t anything we ever experienced first hand or even worried about. With new townhome developments the area continues to be gentrified. Gentrification is controversial for sure, but it is still nice to see many of the big old houses being returned to their former beauty.

Enough of the history lesson. In October 2006, Kerry and I found ourselves to be the proud owners of this little gem:

The living room - our carpenter speculated the chimney may have been holding up the entire house.

The grand staircase

The kitchen and lovely bath. The caution tape was to warn about the part of the floor that was collapsing.

The tree growing out of the back wall. Our carpenter took it and planted it in his yard.

Every time I look back at these photos I am really not sure what we were thinking. We closed the sale of the house October 6, 2006 and we were living there by Christmas. The pace of work was insane and with Kerry and I managing the project and doing a large chunk of the work ourselves we nearly lost our minds and almost killed each other. Luckily we were able to hold onto our sanity and the results of our hard work and the hard work of our families and friends were beyond our expectations. Tomorrow I will post the after photos - right now I hear a baby calling my name…

Time flies...

….when you’re hanging out with a six-month old. I just realized a week has gone by without a follow-up post. Yikes, this blog business takes some dedication. And by some dedication I mean enough brain power to remember it even exists. I will blame the sleep deprivation.