Melissa and Halina share how their individual styles, come together to create their trademark, relaxed sophisticated designs. In this article for 24hrs Toronto, they talk antiques, vintage classics and how they began as childhood friends and neighbours.
Melissa sat down with Extraordinary Women TV’s host Shannon Skinner to share a behind the scenes look at HCMD Design and her work on HGTV’s Income Property.
Income Property typically has us creating 2 units in a previously single family home. We add an income suite, as the name suggests! This episode was exciting from a design perspective, because it was an investment property and kept as a single family home. What that meant was all above-grade, and more elevated finishes to attract a high-end renter. Room to stretch our designer legs!
The kitchen is the show-stopper, here. Melissa worked with IKEA Abstrakt white cabinets, to create a custom kitchen on a budget. The counters are a really beautiful crushed glass composite that’s extremely durable and has tonnes of visual depth. By using an inexpensive 2×8 white tile, in a random pattern below the wood shelf and vertical straight pattern above, it added a great contemporary look, with a bit of texture and interest. The floating shelves are standard IKEA oak butcher block counters, cut to size and mounted on hidden, Lee Valley brackets.
Get a full list of materials, colours and trades used on this episode here >
All Images [SKIT]
This Episode was a typical dark dated basement, with a tight budget. This is a great example of turning the seemingly ugliest features into the biggest assets with a little cosmetic fix-up.
We maintained the old parquet floor and I had it stained dark [1 part special walnut, 1 part ebony]. The old kitchen was salvaged and Melissa reworked the cabinets to fit her new design, and painted the entire thing out the same as the general wall colour a nice soft grey [ICI Frost Grey A1942 30GG 52/011] The walls themselves were ugly brown paneling, but once painted took on a casual cape cod appeal. The most dramatic transformation, is the fireplace. Simply giving it a clean white coat of paint made it the room’s focal point (in a good way!).
Check out the full resource guides for colours and specs here >
All Images [SKIT]
