It's Earth Day

It is the West Coast after all

So you know... we do Yoga out here, hike the Grind and take the work week with a different pace... that's the Vancouver Life Style. Were different from the East.

That's why we take it in stride when we meet with clients and they share their vision of what an Organic Lime Plaster Mantel could look like. In this case, they made the rendering out of left over granola box - love it!
Nothing like a simple pencil drawing to hash out the details... good enough for us.
We can roll with this!


Next week we start on these 2 Lime Plaster Mantles, one will be in KCC 2011 - Kendall Charcoal Concrete, creating the appearance of 9' x 7' solid concrete fireplace in this heritage home, yet no real weight to the structural framing of the home since we are 85% lighter than concrete.
The other is custom colour to compliment the kitchen wall colours, should be fun! We will make this colour on the go as the build progress on site, it's best way to fine tune the fireplace colour in this case.

Cellar Dweller... but for a Good Cause

It's usually not a lot fun to spend the work day in a small dark cool room in a basement. Unless it is for Wine!
Yes a Wine Cellar!! Do you love Wine? I do and nothing better than creating a room to provide a little ambiance to where a collection of 'nectar of the Gods' will be residing.


For this project of course it involves Lime Plaster, specifically Marmorino and Intonachino will be my go to plaster for the ceilings and walls.
Also installing ceiling beams, the neat part about the ceiling beams is that we decided to incorporate some state of the art LED Lighting... it will be installed shortly. This type of band or rope light, is like nothing I have ever seen... I will take a picture and post it, crazy technology!
It's a perfect fit for what we need to do...

Beginning the layout

White Hot Winter Mantel

Our most recent Mantel comes finished just in the nick of time. Winter has arrived in Vancouver with a zest for sub ZERO. Now the owners of this updated North Van contemporary Home can enjoy the warmth of a White Surround for Winters to come.


What the customer wants - they get.
The client was very particular in the desired finish for the Lime Plaster Mantel, "I want zero reflection, make it as close as possible to dead flat" - so we did, by applying 3 layers of Lime Plaster starting with the coarsest stone first, then the medium stone 2nd and the 3rd the finest.

Each layer of Lime Plaster was compressed into the previous surface, this allowed for a very tight, flat and closed surface. The Result - super smooth without a polished effect.

You have got to love this organic product, there are just so many effects to be created!

"If you want a plastered fireplace, Randy Orr's your man"

Distinct Interiors Lime Plaster Fireplace Mantels featured in:



"Everything is not quite as it seems with Randy Orr's achievements: Beautiful, rich mahogany that's not actually wood, concrete that isn't, well, concrete..."

Bloom Collection

I was down at the IDS West show over this past weekend at saw some very interesting and refreshing styles/designs. I do attend a vast amount of trade shows and generally they are 50/50 take it or leave it. But IDS West was well represented with various 'new' booths and products, easy to navigate, in & out in minutes for traffic(on a Friday, that's pretty good)

One cool concept/product was MTH Woodworks, it's a distinct idea and organic in design. Very sharp and different.

On an Old Idea with a new Twist

This week we started the renovation of the new home for the Distinct Interiors Studio. Since there is always a creative opportunity when renovating your space, we decided to take a little architectural license and really re-think the space Distinct needs for it's new Home/Work/Rest/Play. So here we go: The ManShed.ca

Let's Get Physical! "Let me hear your body talk . . ." Olivia Newton-John

Do you remember that song, if you do, then you are product of the 80's and remember some really bad videos. But hey, that is what makes memories of the 80's great... we survived & MTV was born.
Ok, I realize that is a little different for an intro heading, yet it's the only thought that keeps coming to my mind as I try to describe our most recent feature wall project. It was very Physical to create, "no pain, no gain"!

BLOOM BOX: Heard of it?   . . . You Will

Not that this has anything to do with interior decorating, but it has more to do with sustainable living which may indirectly down the road(a long road at that) would certainly render more disposable income for other ventures at home.

Consuming less energy, means more energy for other things!

Beach Time ... anyone?

... easy as 1,2,3

I must remember this one, 'the key to building a warm environment (minus the fireplace) is to make sure you have a water view at every opportunity to place a mantle. Then just sit down, relax and take it all in.'

That is exactly what we have been doing for the past week and will for the next couple of weeks, since we are currently creating 3 very Distinct custom Lime Plaster Mantles.

You design it.  Spec it.  And we create it.