Featuring beauty

Animal sculptures animate home on Tour of Note

WATERLOO — Seventeen years ago, Peter Nosalik and his husband Richard Armstong were strolling though their neighbourhood when Nosalik spotted his dream house.

Armstrong didn’t like it. Then Armstong spotted his dream house and, well, “he loved it, I hated it on principle,” Nosalik said with a laugh.

It’s a bit of a Goldilocks story: two houses that weren’t quite right and then they spotted a bungalow at the end of a street in Waterloo’s Colonial Acres neighbourhood. This one was perfect, except for the fact it wasn’t for sale. At least not yet.

A few weeks later, the “for sale” sign was planted on the lawn and the couple ended up with their mutually agreed upon dream home.

Nosalik is a businessperson, Armstrong a retired engineering consultant. They both love world travel, poking around in the dusty, raw edges of exotic countries. Every space in their Waterloo home reflects the couple’s travels and perspective on life, from the animalthemed decorative highlights to an extensive Canadian art collection and artifacts from their travels, including fossils and a giraffe toe bone. Everything has a story, a memory.

The home will be one of six on the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Volunteer Committee’s 19th annual House & Garden Tour of Note on Saturday.

Though the home feels open and spacious, Nosalik points out “it’s only one room wide” but rather than making the home appear smaller, the unusual design has the opposite effect. Light pours in from the front and back windows, bathing every inch of the home from

both sides. The family room, living room, dining room, den and master bedroom are adjacent to each other, facing the backyard, and each one has its own sliding doors leading to the expansive patio.

There is something odd or interesting or quirky or sometimes all three in every corner of this home. A case in point is the beautifully taxidermied peacock that greets visitors; the bird’s back and that long lustrous tail facing the front door. It’s a show stopper until you look up and see a nearly full-sized gold-plated head of a rhino mounted on the wall.

Other corners of the home are adorned with cow and horse heads made from ceramic or metal. In the front garden are full-sized metal statues of a mare and stallion.

Nosalik noted that the 1960s home is the former family home of a businessperson who had some pretty innovative ideas, including a desk and kitchen with all manner of built-in electronics. There was also “shag carpet everywhere” and kitchen counters were blood red arborite.

The couple has not gone too modern, after four years of extensive remodelling, preferring classic furniture and architectural details such as ornate crown mouldings and a crystal chandelier.

They have a particular fondness for France and the buttery yellow walls and blue accents reflect that design sensibility as does the old grandfather clock in the hallway, a French antique.

“This whole home is very personal,” said Nosalik.

Armstrong, with his mechanical engineering skills, did the drawings when they designed the interior, but he gives full credit to his husband.

“I was just taking what he wanted and putting it on paper,” he said.

DAVID BEBEE PHOTOS, RECORD STAFF The kitchen and sitting room of Peter Nosalik and husband Richard Armstrong in their Pilgrim Circle home.

Horse sculptures reside in the front garden of the home of Peter Nosalik and husband Richard Armstrong at their Pilgrim Circle home.

A glass sculpture in the sitting room area.

A fibre bust of a rhinoceros is an impressive feature in the living room of Peter Nosalik and husband Richard Armstrong in their Pilgrim Circle home.

DAVID BEBEE, RECORD STAFF The guest room of Peter Nosalik and Richard Armstrong in their Pilgrim Circle home.