Inside A Dreamy Seaside Home In Nova Scotia

Hi hosts at home, I'm Philip Mitchell from Philip Mitchell Design and I'm Mark Norsansky and welcome to the Lunenburg area of Nova Scotia. The thing about the south shore of Nova Scotia, there's something about obviously the environment that's here, it's incredible, like there's something about being on the ocean. There's the most incredible topography around, the environment changes dramatically from one coast to the next, parts of it are rocky and other parts have beautiful beaches, inland, there's beautiful wineries, like it's a really special province but what's really special about this province and I think part of the reason that we were the most attracted is there's something about the people on the east coast of Canada that they're unlike anywhere else and I feel like the people here are probably one of the biggest reasons why we were attracted to the east coast. This is our summer house in Kingsburgh and we're up at the top of Beach Hill and what it is, it's an incredible location that overlooks both Hurdle's Beach and Kingsburgh's Beach so on the one side of the house all you do is take panorama views of the ocean and hurdles and then you turn around and on the back it's just a whole other beach so it is probably one of the most amazing settings for a home. This is definitely a Cape Cod house, the architecture is very classic, it's simple but part of what we were attracted to was its location and the sighting and as Mark said this incredible location is so inspiring and every room has a view of the water, it's filled with light and it's just incredibly comfortable. We took cues from the architecture that was here, we painted walls, we sanded floors and we just sort of added little details to enhance what was already here. Bead board paneling, butcher block countertops, there was an assortment of things that we just kept adding to to make another level of detail. It just became this white palette where our things in it went in that all of a sudden it feels like home when it is a home that was built for somebody else. I would definitely describe our style as collected. We both love books, we both find a piece of something and then we just want more of it. It becomes kind of a passion to collect more of them which is this house became the perfect setting for all those things. When you first walk into this house for example, I'm a passionate collector of antique boxes so we have a collection of marquetry boxes from our travels all over the world. We also have some beautiful oil paintings that are seascapes that Mark loves. I love a dreary seascape. But what also I think about the foyer because it's the first place where you enter into the house, I collect snow globes. I'm originally from Niagara Falls, the land of tourists and I had one and out of that one grew 300 plus and so Philip designed this shelf for a group of them for here and so there's a display of all these snow globes that I've collected or people have given me which creates this whole sense of travel and journey and a bit of who we are between the boxes, the dreary paintings and of course by snow globes. You come up a staircase to where our main floor is that is where we live the most and that's our kitchen space, our living room, our where everybody wants to be. It's where Mark prepares amazing meals. We're mixing drinks and even though we have a bar, often people are in the kitchen because that's just where people go and we wanted to take cues from the original kitchen that was here and build on those so we kept all of the original beadboard cabinetry. We added a new faucet and new countertops and surfaces in certain areas but then we restored old butcher block countertops to keep the kitchen authentic and real and yeah it just feels like super super comfortable and a great kitchen to work in. For in a dining room I am a big believer that a round table is the best conversation piece because no one's at the head and everybody gets to talk to everyone all the time and as soon as we brought our round table here and put it in it changed the space to feel like a dining experience. Everywhere you're seated you're really looking out to the ocean again which is really kind of incredible and it's just one of the most magical spots for this house. It's amazing how our things fit into this home. There's a Biedermeier chest that has been with us through every home, found its perfect little niche and I think it's really a testament to Philip where he always has all our pieces and things in the back of his mind and he finds a place for them to belong. Our collection of martini shakers which if you know us we love a good martini adds an element of conversation too because it brings people a little bit of knowledge about who you are and what you like again. The house is situated in a way that you get this incredible panoramic view of both Hurdle's Beach, Kingsburgh Beach, Kingsburgh Pond. You're looking at water in every direction and so what's amazing is that the dining room leads into the living space. The living room has you know three exposures which is remarkable in a house. Incredible cross breezes in the summer. When we were looking to decorate the space we wanted to keep it as neutral as possible. There's amazing double hung windows throughout the house. It has great exposure but we also wanted to soften the space and we were lucky enough to reuse a number of window coverings that we had in a previous house that ironically fit the number of windows here exactly which was serendipitous. We're used to a fireplace with actual logs. We burn it and it's beautiful and it's romantic with the crackling but this place actually has a wood stove so it's it's actually an amazing source of heat and we've actually made coffee on the top because it's actually a wood stove and it works as a stove so it's a great asset. Truth be told Mark's actually even made breakfast with eggs on the stove. Yes. When we've had to. Mark is definitely the boy scout of the two of us. We play a lot of backgammon and we've always had a games table where we've gone which is sort of part about who we are and so this living room which has this really great sectional and a little spot to kind of relax with your friends it's a long skinny space and Philip's like why don't we take the other half instead of doing a separate seating area we don't need that why don't we put a games table there and then we can play backgammon here or scrabble or we can have people over if it's just a few people we can have dinner there so it's this really great use of a space because it really has these incredible views again. Upstairs in the house there are two bedrooms. The house was really a summer house when it was built so it wasn't really built for a primary bedroom it wasn't designed around the way we live so we took one of the bedrooms the largest of the two and made it into our bedroom which has beautiful views over the ocean and the other one which is smaller for a twin bed was obviously for guests or whatever we converted that into a closet there used to be a big window seat in the bay in the front but we never used it so we took that out and we put a games table up there for jigsaw puzzles and for writing and doing some stuff so we have used the whole upstairs to become our home and the way we want to do it so basically the upstairs became the primary suite. In addition to our house we have a little guest cottage on the property as well which friends and family stay out on a regular basis that's pretty cozy. It was originally a garage and a workshop and there was a small little flat upstairs and what we did is we didn't need a garage and we didn't need a workshop so we ended up converting the lower area into two bedrooms so it's a really great self-contained little guest house that has a living area dining area kitchen bathroom two bedrooms it's a cozy spot where people love to spend time and also too when you come up here as a guest everyone's nervous about disturbing the other person you can wake up at your own leisure you can go for a walk you can go down to the beach you can make a cup of coffee it provides the most privacy that you can possibly imagine and who doesn't like to be a guest in a guest house another amazing part about the east coast especially in the south shore is that there are so many artisans and so many shops filled with amazing talented people artists crafts people and we've come to the conclusion that we have a lot of things a lot of great things and not enough room for all those great things that we've collected over the years and so we've decided to open a shop which we've opened in Lunenburg Nova Scotia it's our home there basically a gallery showroom within our home and so which is unique to a regular store which is you go in and it's a lot of merchandise and stuff the rooms phillips set up as how you would live in them showing how you can mix modern furniture with traditional with the most fish plates on the wall things that actually give this whole sort of character that you can purchase from here or you can be inspired and do it at your own home so it's a really great kind of laboratory as well as a sales tool for us the inspiration for the store also is amazing that you can sort of display things in such a way that it feels natural to people that it feels comfortable it feels like a house or residential space that people respond to rather than just looking for the right candle or the right candlestick the fact that everything is in situ and it's displayed in a certain way it feels comfortable to people so that then sometimes i feel like they see something that they wouldn't necessarily have thought they needed or they wanted until they saw it in the space accessorized or merchandised in such a way where it felt very comfortable and real and that's something that people respond to as well we find we came here on a trip unexpectedly more than like two decades ago we basically came for lunch and bought a house and so we were like we'll buy this old house we'll restore it and down the road we'll live there well through the process of restoring the house we absolutely fell in love with nova scotia 100 and to the point where i never wanted to leave and so slowly went from occasional weeks to occasional months to we never left and then it became our home