UNIQUE CRAFTSMANSHIP
Westmount apartment doubles as mini-showroom for online firm selling made-to-order furniture
Shelter is a weekly series featuring a conversation with tenants or condo owners. Occupants: Laurence Charest, 26, and Ethan Maharaj, 27 Location: Lower Westmount Size: 780 square feet (plus a balcony) Rental: $1,295 Been there: June 2017
HELGA LOVERSEED
Laurence Charest grew up in Westmount, but instead of going to university in Montreal, she headed to Los Angeles, where she earned a master’s degree in film production at the New York Film Academy.
While studying on the Los Angeles campus of the school, she met her film producer fiancé, Ethan Maharaj.
When Charest came back to Montreal, she started a company renting drones to television and film-production units. Unfortunately, while there was a need for such a service, her company didn’t last long. Renting drones, she explains, is a fiercely competitive business and the technology is “very expensive.”
Although that particular business didn’t bear fruit, Charest wasn’t done with being an entrepreneur. Her family has ties to the Eastern Townships, where she often spends weekends, and one day she ran into Alex Cunnington, a professional welder, whom she’d known since she was a teenager. Although Cunnington had worked on industrial projects, such as on ships in Montreal, he’d always created artistic projects on the side and now he wanted to start a company specializing in made-to-order furniture.
Charest agreed to help him do that and, in 2016, they launched Cunnington (www.cunnington. ca) — an online company that combines the welder’s skills with Charest’s knowledge of running a business. Cunnington is based in the Eastern Townships. Charest has a home office in her apartment in Westmount.
Charest and her fiancé moved there in June after having lived for a while in downtown Montreal. Their freshly decorated rental apartment has an open dining room and kitchen, two bedrooms — one of which serves as a den — and a balcony. The flooring is blond wood and the colour palette is white with touches of grey, charcoal and black.
Q What brought you back to Westmount? A Having grown up here, I love the area, but also because most of our clients live in this neighbourhood. Since we’re not a brick and mortar business — our furniture is all online — our customers, or the designers they work with, can come here and see some examples for themselves.
Q Are you telling me all of your furniture is made by Alex? A (Laughs.) Well, not all of it, but quite a few pieces.
Ethan and I bought some of his furniture at a discount because we agreed it could be used as a marketing tool for the business. Some of the photos that are online are of the pieces you see here.
(Charest points out a glasstopped side table against the wall and the dining room table, which has metal legs and a white marble top.)
Q Is this Carrara marble? A Yes. It is. The marble came from a distributor, but Alex made everything else.
Q And the black leather dining chairs? A Oh, those are finds. We have quite a few of those. My mom came across them somewhere.
Q Your wine rack in the kitchen shaped like horseshoes? I presume that’s Alex’s handiwork as well? A That’s just for fun. Alex’s girlfriend rides a lot, so he welded these shoes together so they could hold bottles.
(The open dining area is beside the kitchen, next to a tall wood shelving unit in the middle of which is a free-standing desk — Charest’s work area. The shelves are filled with books, photographs and ornaments. A couple of houseplants add a touch of greenery.)
Q Another Cunnington piece? A No, it isn’t. I actually designed this myself. Ethan helped me to put it together. I made all the measurements and so on, including for the desk. Since starting the company, I’ve learned a lot about furniture making and I’ve developed a real passion for it.
Q I’m curious to know why you decided to install your home office in the dining area instead of using the spare bedroom.
(As we talk, we walk toward the back of the apartment. The room in question leads to a balcony above a parking area, where Charest keeps her pickup truck, used for furniture deliveries.) A We’ve turned this bedroom into our den — our living room really — but we also wanted to be able to accommodate guests. Our sofa doubles as a bed and there’s a door between here and the hallway, so if somebody is staying over, they can enjoy some privacy.
At the same time, I can work at the other end of the apartment without disturbing them. Q But most of the time it’s an area where you and Ethan can relax? A Exactly.
Q Where did the black leather sofa come from? A It was Ethan’s, but I’m not sure where he got it.
Q And that’s an interesting little metal zigzag shelf. (Tucked into a corner, it’s mounted halfway up the wall.) I see you’ve used it to display some ornaments, but it looks almost like a piece of sculpture. A Alex’s handiwork again. He really is a master of his trade.