Better Than a Bunkie

Designer Emily Griffin creates a gathering place for family and friends on her Kawarthas property.

RRAP MUSIC, midnight bonfires and wandering packs of teenagers. It wasn’t exactly the relaxing experience designer Emily Griffin and her husband, Norman Howe, a travel exec, were hoping for at the Balsam Lake cottage they share with their three kids, Grace, 19, Max, 17, and Oscar, 14. Desperate to turn off the lights and the teenage joie de vivre by 9 p.m., the couple set about planning a separate, barn-inspired great room and sleeping loft to help keep the peace. “Norman and I spent many nights lying in bed thinking, We’ve got room to build a separate structure….” They found an ideal spot at an out-of-earshot distance from the family’s cottage (an original Pan-Abode kit from the 1970s), and designed the 1,600-square-foot space using mostly scrap materials from the property.

The land has been in the Griffin family for more than 100 years. Today, it houses a number of cottages, including a main residence and icehouse turned cottage built by Emily’s great-grandmother, Mabel Griffin, daughter of Sir William Mackenzie, the transcontinental railway builder who also turned Toronto’s horse-drawn trams into TTC streetcars. The lot was later divided between her grandfather Anthony Griffin’s four sons. Emily and Norman occupy the Pan-Abode she summered in as a kid.

Emily’s grandfather had the land zoned as agricultural, so they applied for a barn permit. When the frame was up, they filled the barn with repurposed windows, doors, wooden shelves, vanities, side lights and staircases sourced from the oldest cottages on the property, all while organizing regular raids at Dunk’s Junk in nearby Coboconk, Ont. Emily’s historical Canadiana touches brought it all together, from the colourful rustic kilims and pillows covered in vintage camel blankets to the old-fashioned skis and family-owned vintage snowshoes she hung on the whitewashed pine walls.

RIGHT: Vintage green glass vases are filled with blooms amidst a gallery wall of family photos. BOTTOM RIGHT: The kitchen is not a working kitchen — yet. “It’s more of a bar right now, but we plan to install a range,” says designer Emily Griffin. The desk was one of her first-ever junk shop purchases. Captain’s chair, Kate Thornley-Hall. OPPOSITE: Emily (pictured beside Norman, with Max, Grace and Oscar above) repurposed the barn’s windows, doors and side lights from older cottages on the property as they were being renovated. Exterior door and trim colour, Copley Gray (HC-104), Benjamin Moore.