styleNorth

What décor junkie hasn’t dreamed of having their home featured in a magazine? I pitched Toronto Life on the idea of covering our house in their Great Spaces column as a way to bring styleNorth to their attention. I never dreamed the mag’s editors would bite because TL invariably features million dollar properties not Bloor West semis. But bite they did and in late July writer Veronica Maddocks stopped by for a tour and a chat, followed in due course by photographer James Reid and magazine photo editor Liz Ikiriko (below left).

The photo shoots took much longer than I imagined–three to four hours per picture. As a blogger I point-and-shoot on the fly and make due with what I manage to capture. The world of glossy, shelter porn is quite another matter. After taking some test frames and tweaking the angle, James and Liz started adding and subtracting, placing and replacing, building up layers until the desired look came together.

For our dining room, side chairs were removed, a bar cart and lamp were re-positioned, the flowers we’d purchased were bounced—too much going on in the picture. When I saw what purported to be the final image I gasped—James and Liz had removed the lower pictures beside the breakfront because the glass was reflecting the newly positioned lamp. One of my pet peeves is people hanging their art too high so this did not sit well with me. Alas, that’s the shot that appears in the magazine (October 2008), which I can’t show here for copyright reasons; the online article, however, shows the art as it really is.

It was more of the same in the living room: Veronica’s article referred to a number of specific furnishings so James and Liz had to move things around until all the desired pieces were accounted for. And there was a casualty; a screen James was using to direct light toppled over and took a vintage floor lamp with it. Liz kindly offered to pay for a replacement.

So how does it feel to see our place in glossy colour? A little weird, actually, which surprises me because we’ve been sharing pics of our space on the internet beginning with last year’s Apartment Therapy Colour Contest. Being in Toronto Life has meant that my bosses at work and lots of other people on the periphery of my life are now wise to my private passions. I feel proud of the home Mike and I have created, fully aware that our taste won’t be shared by everybody who opens the magazine. And that’s okay, we’re the only ones who have to love it and we do!

In the end I’m glad the space has been captured for posterity. We have no photographs of the last place we decorated together and that’s a shame because we both recall it fondly. So thanks Veronica, Liz and James for giving our home its moment; all-in-all it was a great experience.