A Circa-1915 Toronto Home Pays Homage To Its Past

Hi House and Home. I'm Emily Griffin of Griffin Houghton and welcome to this beautiful home. This house was built in about 1915. It's an old Lawrence Park home and there'd only been about one or two owners before Dave and Belinda bought it. So it has tons of charm, tons of character and we really wanted to sort of play homage to that history and make sure that we integrated it into our design choices. They are a blended family with six kids. Six kids, did you get that? But they've all grown up, they've all moved out. So they wanted a house that was comfortable enough for when everybody was here but not cavernous when it's just the two of them and their two dogs. The front room of the house, it's flooded with light all day and it happens to be where Belinda has her home office. So she's in here all the time and Dave and Belinda like to sort of kick off their day here with coffees in their two sheepskin chairs. It feels maybe a little more modern than the rest of the house but that was really intentional so that the light and the greenery that comes in during the day are the heroes versus what's actually inside. And then the front part with the window seat, like literally the dogs live there. Doing one living room in a long narrow space is challenging so we just divided it up. So the front part is day-to-day Belinda's world and then the part facing the fireplace is more formal if you want to say that. But if you did have a dinner party it would be a place where you could actually sit. It's a little more traditional in terms of sofa, two chairs, coffee table. Steve, the architect, had already put in plans a double-sided fireplace which we loved. We just fleshed it out a bit and put the arches because in the original home, tons of arches in bathrooms on the second floor. So it was kind of our way to play Amish to the arches in the original home. It's a center hall plan which is very popular up in North Toronto and you've got front room on one side and then you've got this whimsical dining room on the other. When you walk in the front door you're immediately hit with this stunning French limestone tile. Interestingly enough that floor was inspired by Linda Reeves in her Highland House and I reached out to her and said where do I get this? It's so beautiful, it's French limestone. The dining room was where we kind of went a little crazy. We love it, the clients love it. It all started with this fabulous ferric mason wallpaper and then we didn't want the dining room to feel too formal because there's French doors out onto a front porch where Dave and Belinda love to hang out with a glass of wine or in the summer months a coffee and so it had to feel like a room that wasn't too precious. So we combined a whole bunch of different materials in that. We've got this killer skirted rattan console table paired with an antique table of Dave's and then we paired it with these fun cozy comfortable chairs from Anthropologie. We got interesting lighting up on the walls, we've got these scalloped oyster lights. It just feels a little bit like a bit of a mishmash and we kind of love that. We love secret doors at Griffin Houghton and I loved the idea of just papering the door with no hardware so that when they were entertaining and the lights were low and the candles were on, you didn't realize that there's a walk through a pantry into the kitchen. You move to the back of the house which is north facing and you kind of pick up a little bit more energy and color. It's where they tend to get together at the end of the day. Someone's cooking, the other person's hanging out on the sofa, maybe watching a bit of tv, reading the paper. It's just uber comfortable. It fits the whole family. There's a big television, there's a double-sided fireplace and the fabrics that we chose are all really durable because that's where they live. It's the sofa that is going to have a little indent in it because they sit in it the most. If you can separate television with fireplace, first of all your neck will thank you. I just think fireplaces, they're really beautiful additions to so if you can separate them, try to. The kitchen is pretty classic in its design, like it's a classic shaker. We painted it a beautiful pale blue Benjamin Moore color called Glass Slipper. I just love islands that are non-workable. Islands that can look like pieces of furniture and it's pretty stunning. It's a square, the legs sort of taper out a bit. It's a beautiful piece to look at and it is still a gathering spot. They can put drinks and hors d'oeuvres if they're entertaining on it but it's not working with appliances. The kitchen got installed, I just felt like the arch over the range. We needed something more handsome to kind of play against the prettiness of the kitchen, so we painted it this deep, sexy color called Popperhead and I just love how it plays off the lightness of the cabinets and then the beautiful Luz de Lige tile truly was the secret sauce. It looks so beautiful with the blue, it sparkles with the light and went with classic Carrara marble. I think it's coming back. At the top of the stairs, which is the second floor of the renovation, is Dave and Belinda's bedroom and bathroom and den. I'm a big believer in creating a bedroom that looks good on your skin tone. I know that sounds crazy but if you wake up in a room that doesn't look good when you don't have your hair done and no makeup on, it's kind of a bit of a shame. So I studied their palettes before pulling together that bedroom, as crazy as that sounds. It's very quiet, it's very serene, it's very soothing. It has some botanical drapes and then that great Christopher Farr lost and found fabric that Belinda had always loved. So we did a headboard in it and then a pillow and then of course it's enveloped in grass cloth, so I love putting grass cloth in a bedroom. The bedroom and the bathroom are light and airy and then the beautiful Zelige, the tile that we use in that, backsplash behind the range. We put that up and I didn't mind that we were repeating and I think it was a little bit of that game day decision that made a big impact. And then you take something like the den upstairs and it is dark and moody and really feels like an evening room. It's where they retire to after dinner, curl up on the sofa, maybe watch a game, read the paper, hang out. So we love doing that and I think this house really lent itself to doing that. We did everything, the trim, the walls, the ceiling and just kind of enveloped it in this yummy blue. When you have six kids and they've all moved on, the advantage is you don't actually have to create individual rooms for your individual kids, but you have to still have rooms for when the kids come home. So we had to decorate four guest rooms and one of them we knew was going to be the primary guest room. So when Belinda's mom comes to visit or a special guest from out of town, it is really fun. It is the one guest room that has a private ensuite and we kind of went to town. We layered it up with pattern and color. We have a raspberry trim next to a crazy Anna French wallpaper, pattern bedding, a mosaic mirror. I mean the list goes on, but we kind of like that. We had to redo the bathroom that is up on the third floor and we just love the idea of recreating a vintage bathroom. So we did black and white tiles on the floor. All the walls are in white subway tiles. There are pedestal sinks with chrome and then a tub shower combination and we just kind of love that little nod to the past and the original home. Powder rooms, what can I say? They're tiny. They're a chance to have a little fun. We found this killer marble at our fabricators and there was just enough to make a wall-mounted vanity and then we wallpapered the ceiling and the walls and then we brought the tile from the front hall in there. But if you have a powder room, go for it. It was a huge job spanning over 18 months and to be able to shoot it and finish it, it's a happy time but it's also kind of sad because I always want to live in the house as I finish.