A retro vibe with modern accents in Villeray
Lise-Marie Cayer, 27, and her 34-year-old partner, Stephane de Sampaio, are in the fashion business. She is a designer and Stephane is the marketing and sales director for Voyou, their clothing company, which in 2010 merged with Blank, a Montreal manufacturer of casual clothes. At the time, the couple lived in St-Henri, but the Blank headquarters were a one-hour commute from their apartment, so Cayer and de Sampaio decided to move closer to their new workplace.
Through a colleague, they found a 950-sq-ft, third-floor, three-bedroom apartment on Boyer St., with a front and rear balcony, not far from the Jean Talon Market. The street is lined with low-rise concrete blocks from the 1960s and the interior still has furnishings and fittings from that era. What kind of shape was the apartment in?
Lise-Marie: It was certainly old-fashioned. The same tenant had lived here since it was built and I don’t think she ever did anything to it. The main attraction for us was the great location. We wanted somewhere quiet, family-oriented — away from the buzz of downtown. Being close to the Jean Talon Market was also a plus and we’re only a 12-minute ride by bike from the Voyou studio. The decor looks pretty fresh.
Stephane: We gave the whole place a facelift. The carpets were in terrible shape. … When we pulled them up, we found hardwood floors underneath. The carpets had protected them and they looked brand new.
The walls used to be canary yellow, bubblegum pink and baby blue. We like the retro look but those colours were a bit much.
The wood grain kitchen cabinets and melamine counter tops look original.
I painted the surrounding areas grey. The combination of grey and the wood grain, gives the cabinets a more modern look. One thing that surprised us and which we really like is the open kitch- en and dining area. In older apartments, the kitchen is often closed off from the other rooms with a door.
Where on earth did you get the chandelier above the dining table?
Lise-Marie (laughs): We found it in Home Depot and painted the metal bits white.
(Lise-Marie indicates a sideboard with a butcher block top that Stephane repurposed from a couple of IKEA units. Two brass candlesticks stand on top.) My parents gave me the candlesticks and lots of other things. What other things did you do to the apartment?
Stephane: I completely renovated the bathroom, but I kept the retro look — up to a point. The walls used to be covered with those miniature green and yellow fluorescent tiles that were so popular in the 1970s, so I installed white porcelain subway tiles and re-covered the floor.
(We go into his home office. His “desk” is three, 8-ft long planks perched on top of two filing cabinets, which function as the “legs.” The desk exactly fits the width of the room. To the right stands a chest of drawers.)
We found this on the sidewalk. Somebody had left it out as garbage. I sanded it down and it’s perfectly fine. I might varnish it eventually. Wow! Your living room is huge. It looks like a loft.
Lise-Marie: It measures 15 x 23 ft and the ceilings are pretty high. It’s probably one of the biggest apartment living rooms in the city!
Some of the furniture in here is old, like the steamer trunk (we painted it blue), and some is modern, like the leather sofa. Again, I got a number of things from my parents. One of them was the leather-covered teak armchair and footstool. I think it comes from Indonesia.
We got the sofa for a good price — around $700. It had been over $1,000. It was a discounted floor model and I sewed the black and white cushions with the zebra stripes myself.