FOREVER HOME
HOMEOWNERS GO ALL OUT FOR THEIR DREAM DESIGN
By the time most people start interviewing architects and designers to build a new home, they usually have at least some ideas about how it should look. Few are as clear-eyed as the couple who commissioned this Thornhill home by architect William Hicks, with interior design by Tomas Pearce Interior Design partners Tania Richardson and Melandro Quilatan.
“We’ve lived on this street for about 25 years, and about 10 years ago we bought another property down the street and held on to it,” says one of the owners, a visual artist who works primarily in acrylic on metal. “Then about three years ago, we decided it was time to build on it.”
The vision for their new home, she says, more or less started with a house they’d seen in Scottsdale, Ariz. that they loved. So she and her husband began to collect clippings, sketches and ideas; by the time they spoke to Richardson and Quilatan, she’d amassed a file of over 1,000 pictures. The home became, in essence, a portrait of them.
“They are a fascinating couple,” Richardson says. “She’s an artist and he is in the wood supply and millworking business (so) he was very knowledgeable about wood. That became our first inspiration: to use wood throughout the design, to make it modern, but with a rustic feeling.”
The front door opens on a short hallway that faces directly into the great room, with its dramatic, two-storey vaulted ceiling lined with walnut beams. A pair of steel étagères, set between the double sets of support beams that frame the entrance, showcase the first of several custom glass displays, illuminated by uplighting in the bases.
Under a big Ralph Laurendesigned chandelier with leather straps — a nod to the husband’s love of horseback riding — human scale returns in a roomy L-shaped leather sectional facing the fireplace, which came from the old house. “They had asked us to design around this sectional, so the room was oriented to this piece,” Quilatan says. Framing the sectional is a low set of closed storage and open shelving with staggered vertical and horizontal dividers.
At the side, a millwork entertainment unit, flanked by open bookshelves over walnut slats, offers more display for art glass and books. Rolling floor- length panels in leather hide the TV when the couple entertains, while directly above, a parade of bright hand-blown glass plates adds a shot of exuberant colour.
The standard arrangement in many open plan-homes is to place the kitchen facing the family room, but partly because they entertain so frequently, the clients wanted the dining room to be part of the main action. Richardson and Quilatan brought the ceiling down to a more humane 11 feet, and centred the dining table under a lacquered panel inset in the slatted ceiling; a fabulously squiggly light fixture that the owners found in Florida balances the rectilinear formality of the room. The generously appointed bar set off to one side is highlighted by a leather-wrapped and steel- edged panel inset with a smoked- glass mirror showcases the bottles.
While he’s outdoorsy, she is a skilled and enthusiastic cook, and had strong ideas about the layout of the kitch- en. Beyond the island at the working end of the room, inset with a downdraft cooktop (to allow her to face out and join the conversation while working), there’s another equally large work table. “She loves to bake, and this is a great place to roll out dough or prepare cookies with her grandchildren,” Richardson says. A live- edge breakfast table, under one of a trio of rustic- looking lantern fixtures, lends a relaxed and organic feeling to the room.
The house divides naturally into two zones, the public and the private. From the front hall, one can turn sideways to an open- riser staircase that leads up to guest rooms or down to an informal lower level (designed specifically for the grandkids to play in). Along the way, a custom chrome credenza reflects the grain of the limestone floor and flashes of colour in the glass collections opposite; hidden perimeter lighting perfectly frames her painting above. The staircase, in turn, offers a pleasing set of contrasts: walnut- slatted walls in the upper landing (custom sidelit for a painting that was a gift to the husband on his birthday); mosaic stone tile on the lower, with lighted niches to set off art-glass vases.
Turn the other way at the front door and you head into the couple’s own special hideaway, with his office, her art studio and the master suite and dressing rooms on the main floor. “We want to stay here forever, so we were thinking it might be easier to manage when we get older.”
The master bedroom sumptuously combines soft and hard textures. Walnut panels flank an upholstered headboard, while tiny LED lamps on articulated arms allow for late-night reading. His dressing room includes a wealth of hanging and enclosed storage, including a special place for the hats he loves; hers has glass display shelves for purses and shoes in a boutique arrangement, which, Richardson says, makes getting dressed in the morning almost feel like shopping.
Upstairs is one of the husband’s favourite rooms in the house: his library, lined from floor to ceiling with hundreds of well-thumbed titles. Inset among the books are lighted alcoves, set with items that have special meaning for him: a snapshot of him on the CN Tower Edgewalk, wooden toys, treasured family photos. The only wall that’s not lined with books features a collage of his wife’s paintings, adding a splash of colour in this soothing room.
Of all the carefully appointed rooms in the house, one of the most interesting is a small room on the main floor, the powder room. With walls of glass mosaic, coldrolled steel shelves and mirrored back wall, it reflects the calm, sophisticated decor that characterizes the interior as a whole; but the basin and the counter are carved from a single walnut log. “They thought we were crazy to design a basin out of wood — he’s an expert on wood and didn’t think it could possibly work,” Quilatan says. “But we thought, boats are made of wood! Several coats of marine-grade sealer, and it’s stood up very well.”
With the complicated task of designed this finely detailed project finished at last, they remember very clearly the day they moved in. “In our last house, it took several months before it really felt like home. But perhaps because we had all worked together on it for so long, it was everything we ever dreamed we wanted. So the very first night we spent here, I felt like I was at home.”
THE CLIENT’S KNOWLEDGE OF WOOD INSPIRED THE DESIGN.