New Beachy Turquoise Knobs in the Hallway

When we updated our main hallway with fresh white paint, some art, and new interior door levers and exterior door knobs, we found some small little knobs for the two closet doors that matched so well!

Unfortunately, I quickly learned that the quality was garbage and they started to spin.  They were a "t" shape and the horizontal bar actually spun whenever we touched it.  I was certain it would break off and it was just so frustrating to use.  But I couldn't decided what to replace it with until a Canadian company, Sparroh, reached out about working together.  The owner, Alana, was kind enough to send me that sweet little felted wool basket for Hynda that you saw yesterday, and she also had a solution for my knob woes: a beautifully curated hardware selection.

Without having to comb through an inventory of 1,000,000 knobs, I found the perfect ones: the ocean aqua knobs!  At only $8.00 a piece, they are a steal for such a quality ceramic knob.  I love the turquoise - obviously - and the crushed "beach glass" effect is so interesting.  I have such a passion for texture these days: linens, tweeds, velvets - give me any kind of texture over pattern!  So these were definitely the perfect fit for my lakehouse.

It took two seconds to switch out my old knobs for these and I just love the impact.  Visually, it's small detail and I'm sure that in photos of the hallway, only we would notice that the knobs are different.  In real life, guests oooohh and aaaaah over them and, most importantly: day to day it's just so nice to have our closet knobs do their job, as intended (#itsthesmallthings).

Why, oh why, do Hubby and I sometimes wait forever to tackle these little improvements that have such a positive impact on our day to day lives?

If you're a fellow Canadian, take a peek at Sparroh and maybe you'll find the answer to a decor problem too!  Did I mention there's free shipping and free returns?  I work with so many US-based companies so I'm really thrilled when I can help promote a Canadian biz - be sure to follow Sparroh out on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest so you can be the first to know about sales and new inventory.   

Now, help me feel better and tell me about a project on your to-do list that would make your life easier - but that you've been avoiding... I want to hear all about it!

A Good Knob Story

I never grow weary of the two-minute makeover.  I don't always want to spray paint or stencil something.  Some things are sentimental.  Some things were expensive gifts.  Some things look pretty good, as-is.  But some things have pulls that look like stripper tassels.  And some of these things have been waiting 10 years for a mini-makeover until, one day, when a knob actually falls off, and I decide to make a quick change.

My grandma bought me this little armoire, which houses my jewellery, scarves, spare pairs of glasses, etc.  I absolutely love it because the doors swing open and inside it has a million different compartments and mini drawers for storage.  We recently hit Lee Valley to find replacements for the stripper-tassel pulls, so I could love it more.  After a miss (luckily, LV has a great return policy), I found a style that works (here's the link). They actually only had four of the size I wanted, so I opted for a size bigger for the bottom two drawers.  A happy accident, because I think it works.

Our "tools": pocket knife and itty bitty screw driver.

We had to make a teeny slit in the felt lining to access the screws (hence the pocket knife, but an exact-o knife would do the trick), but otherwise it was an easy switch.

Here's the before.  Gosh, it looks sad.

An old photo, before I tweaked the paintings

A little side-by-side comparison:

And the after. 

I like how the knobs better suit the existing hinges . . .

. . . plus, the new squarish knobs look good with the headboard and also the square finials on the curtain rods, without being too matchy-matchy.

I love a good knob story (gosh, I hope that doesn't mean something dirty).  I am actually a compulsive knob changer: we changed every interior doorknob from brass to silver (except one in the basement, but it's on the chopping block), plus the exterior door, kitchen cupboards, half bath vanity and my filing cabinet all got a knob makeover.  I would have loved to have DIY'd some kind of makeover but, like so much in this house, most knobs didn't work.  Sigh.  Yep, I spend a lot of time with the Lee Valley hardware catalog.

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Filing Cabinet Mini-Change

Apartment Therapy had a great post about sprucing up file cabinets awhile ago.  I love this one:

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And this one:

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I also love this file cabinet makeover, from House of Sarager.  And check it out: we have the same greeting card filer - the orange thing on top of the cabinet.  I bought mine at a yard sale (you can kind of see it in this post - its on my expidit bookcase).  How weird is it that I see it on someone else's blog?

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Anyway, the file cabinet in my office is pretty boring.  I did buy a wood one, which I like better than the metal kind.  But it seriously needs some sprucing up.

A pattern like this would look awesome:

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But, for the time being I switched out the handles.  I think that little change made it look a whole lot less 90s "modern office-y".  I want to hold off on doing something bolder until I DIY the magnetic chalkboard I have planned.  If I paint the frame a wild colour, I might leave this as-is.  You might have guessed that change happens slowly around the townhouse . . .

With new handles

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