Building on home’s memories
RATHER THAN MOVE, family updates cramped townhouse with a calm, spacious look
In 2005, when Anjali Kapoor Kohli looked around her home, she saw some things that were screaming to be changed: The kitchen cabinets were too short and covered in white melamine — not to mention the greasy dust that collected on their top surfaces; the walled-off living room and enclosed staircase made the small townhouse seem that much smaller; cooking smells never quite escaped; the windows showed their age and let in too much cold; and the vestibule and one bathroom in the house felt cramped.
That year was almost twoand-a-half decades after she and her husband, Vijay, along with their young son, Milen (daughter Molly would soon be on the way), had moved into their Little Burgundy home.
A renovation would not only make things better for Kapoor Kohli’s family, she thought, but, just as important, would offer a more welcoming place to invitees. She imagined having enough room for her guests to stand around her new kitchen, sipping wine while she cooked dinner, or chat with her from the living room that would now be visible from the kitchen.
Kapoor Kohli, who has her late mother Krishna Ka- poor’s flair for entertaining, puts a lot of emphasis on visitors’ needs.
“Anybody who puts a foot in my house should feel at peace, comfortable and good.
“And I wanted to create that kind of atmosphere,” she said, adding guests need to feel they, too, are part of the house — “that they are not visitors.”
Her mother, who died early in 2012, would tell her a living space gets its energy from the people who visit.
“She had always said if nobody comes to your home, your home is not home, it’s just four walls. When people come to your home it becomes blessed.”
Before deciding to renovate, the family first weighed the idea of moving. But the house held too many memories the family wasn’t prepared to pack up. After all, it had been the first home they owned — they bought it after winning a draw held by the city in 1982. They were among the lucky ones selected to buy a unit in a new development being planned for the traditional working-class district that was trying to fill in swaths of land formerly inhabited by long-gone factories.
“We never wanted to sell it. There were too many stories,” she said, telling one of how her home welcomed a pregnant stray cat. It would end up giving birth to a litter of kittens in the Kohlis’ basement guest room closet. Along with their mother, they all became house cats in the animal-friendly home.
And it would be difficult to leave a neighbourhood that became an important touchstone for the family, a neighbourhood they all loved for its down-to-earth charm and its proximity to downtown. They also appreciate how it has changed over the years, how it now counts several fashionable restaurants and substantially increased home values.
The Kohlis were in a position to afford the costs of a renovation, and, with their children all grown up, had more time to oversee it, as well as having Molly and Milen to consult. This renovation, however, would be different than most. It would end up being spread out over five years.
Kapoor Kohli says she wanted to see how a change would settle in and allow them to look at how the next proposed change would integrateintothewholehouse.So, once she had her new energyefficient windows in from the 2005 renovation, she was able to see how new flooring of the 2007-08 kitchen renovation would go with them.
Most of the work was done between 2005 and 2009, with some work done in 2010. The entire cost of the five-year renovation amounted to just under $100,000. The true cost would have been higher had her husband not done a good part of the work himself.
They entered into their renovation, appropriately enough, by changing the entrance of their home. They made space for French double doors by widening the vestibule after demolishing the vestibule closet. They then found a place for their coats by taking a chunk out of their garage on the other side of the wall and turning it into a new entranceway closet. Since the garage had been taking up a substantial portion of the 500 square feet on the first of three split levels, they decided to shrink the garage even more and build a powder room in the lower level of their ground floor. (They’ve been fine with parking their car outside.)
The split-level character was used to its fullest potential on the second-floor renovations. By taking out the wall between the upper-level dining room and the lowerlevel living room, they ended up creating a sunken living room. And removing the wall between the kitchen and the dining room meant Kapoor Kohli’s dreams of her guests being in on kitchen conversations could be realized.
The kitchen’s renovation meant a rethink of where everything went, as the sink that had stood at the now-removed dividing wall had to find a place along a remaining wall. The new puzzle meant the kitchen got a much-appreciated island counter. The kitchen renovation also came with updated appliances, a matchstick backsplash, new ceiling-high cupboards, pantry drawers, adjustable hanging lights, a heated slate floor and proper ventilation.
That idea of taking from one room to give to another worked very well on her third floor. She nearly doubled the size of the upstairs bathroom, which allowed room for a couple of steps that lead to her bath. She achieved this newfound space by closing off her bedroom closet. For her and her husband’s clothes, she set up a wardrobe in an adjacent room, a peaceful, meditative room that houses a religious altar Vijay built. It holds pictures of relatives who passed on, as well as representations of the Hindu deity Krishna, and prayer books and incense. At the time of this visit, it also had a picture of one of their cats that had been lost and a Montreal Canadiens bar coaster, the religious signifi- cance imposed upon it having possibly helped to end the NHL lockout.
Kapoor Kohli’s sense of light has been an important part of the renovation. Inside the walls of the living room, as well as those along the opened-up staircase and inside their upstairs bathroom, alcoves can be found. Just large enough to house one of her many sculptures, the alcoves, built by Vijay, are lit by a lowwattage light that showcases the art she has collected from around the world, several of them Indian deities.
“I don’t have a mansion … but I wanted to display what I like, in a way that does not have them looking too imposing. They also bring a design element into the house.”
Those frames inside the walls, with their low lighting, will sometimes be the only light left on, adding that ambience of calm she was aiming for and that a lucky visitor feels when they walk in.