1909 OUTSIDE, BUT MODERN INSIDE
Designer transformed traditional-looking Plateau duplex into bright all-in-one residence
As a child and a young adult, Janet Campbell moved around quite a lot. Her father was in the Royal Canadian Navy and he was posted to various places such as Halifax (Campbell’s mom is from Nova Scotia), Brussels, Hong Kong and Singapore. When Campbell was living in Ottawa, she took a gap year from her studies at Carleton University and went off to India.
However, home for the past couple of decades has been Plateau Mont-Royal.
Campbell came to the city to study history at Concordia University and while her initial plan was to become a high-school teacher, she has forged a career doing something entirely different, namely designing costumes for the television and film industry (planetjanetinc.com).
She recently wrapped up filming for CBC’s Bellevue (a mystery thriller series starring Anna Paquin) and Season 4 of APTN’s acclaimed Mohawk Girls.
For many years, the designer lived on the ground floor of a duplex in the Plateau, but in 2012 she decided it was time to move.
She didn’t intend to leave the neighbourhood (which she loves), but she wanted to be in a quiet building where there weren’t people living upstairs. As luck had it, Campbell found another duplex, not far from the first one — an early 20th-century building that she could fix up and convert into an all-in-one apartment.
From the outside, it still looks like a traditional Plateau duplex. There is a front door at street level and one at the top of the outside stairs, but inside it has a whole different vibe. Campbell has turned it into a bright, modern space with an open kitchen/ dining/living area.
There is a small front room that functions as a guest room/ home office (it has space-saving pocket doors) and on the second floor there are three bedrooms. She shares her abode with Scott, her 13-year-old son.
Q In buying this property, what were your goals? A Like my former apartment, the building is old. It dates back to 1909, but this time, instead of playing up its traditional features — I’d renovated my previous place — I wanted to go modern and to open up the space. I also wanted to have an inside staircase to connect the two levels. The duplex didn’t have that when I bought it of course, because there were two separate apartments. I actually lived upstairs while some of the renovations were going on.
Q How did you go about converting the building? A Well, it took a while to decide what to do. I met with various contractors and a couple of architects and they all came up with different ideas. One of the things that really helped me to decide was a software called Live Interiors. You can manipulate different floor plans so you can envisage what a space might look like.
Q Did you do all the renovations at once? A Oh no. They were done gradually over several years. I’m a single mom and I had a limited budget.
Q You mentioned that your all-white kitchen with the wood-topped kitchen island was actually a bedroom before? A Indeed. That was a bedroom and where the pantry is now, that was the toilet. The open dining/living room used to be one of those typical Montreal double parlours. This floor was all separate rooms. I took down a lot of walls.
Q So when you said you opened up the space, you weren’t kidding! A (Smiles.)
Q Given that this was an old building, was the insulation OK? A That was upgraded, as was the heating. Some areas have underfloor heating and I put in that fireplace.
(She indicates her metalframed, gas-operated fireplace which has been inserted halfway up the wall, between the dining and living areas.)
Q I see you’ve also got some oldfashioned column radiators? And they’re painted black! That’s different. A Actually, they’re not exactly as they seem. These are refurbished radiators but they’ve been turned into electric heaters. They’re called EcoRads and they’re much more efficient than those little baseboard heaters.
(We walk upstairs to look at the bedrooms.)
Q Your staircase certainly makes the apartment look as if it was built as one unit, rather than two. The wooden steps are attractive. What are they? A Most of my flooring is maple but the stairs are birch. Building the staircase was quite a challenge but I think the architect did a good job. As you can see, at the bottom of the stairs, he installed built-in shelving and framed it in wood, to make a feature of the wall.
Q Speaking of shelving, I notice you have some open shelving in the kitchen beside the window, rather than a closed cabinet. Was there a reason for that? A Yes, there was. I had open shelves in my previous kitchen but here it was more a question of limited space. A kitchen cabinet to match the others would have stuck out too much and blocked some of the light from the window.
Shelter will return on Jan. 13. If you would like your home to be considered for this feature, please contact hloverseed@sympatico.ca.