Living on a grand scale
A REQUEST FOR A HOTEL LOOK in a private residence surprised designers, but they delivered with panache
HALI NOBLE “Everywhere I go, I’m always checking out hotels, looking at lobbies and bars, noticing fixtures.”
Hali Noble has spent many years travelling, thanks to a busy career in mortgage finance. But unlike others with itinerant lifestyles, she actually enjoys staying in hotels, soaking up the atmosphere and spacious ethos.
“Everywhere I go, I’m always checking out hotels, looking at lobbies, bars, noticing fixtures,” she said.
So when she and her husband, Darren, created their home north of Victoria, B.C., recently, it was hardly surprising that hotel-style design was key.
Their 9,200-square-foot home, with its vaulted ceiling and airy entertainment spaces, took two years to build and definitely feels like a hotel lobby.
Hali beams when she hears that from visitors and explains there was originally some talk of columns and beams to support the high ceilings.
“But I thought, forget it. If they can build hotels, they can do this.”
She even has a mezzanine floor overlooking the great room, with a curved section echoing the angle of the bar below — a perfect spot for children to play, or a band.
The Noble house, which won awards for best kitchen over 450 sq. ft. and best interior design over 6,000, has a large kitchen-bar area that integrates with the outdoors via an Eclipse folding door that opens to 16 feet: “I love the inside-out effect of lobbies, too. It’s wonderful for parties and dancing.”
The couple love hosting friends, special events and fundraisers, and they don’t ever have to roll up the carpets for dancing because Hali doesn’t like such floor covering.
They often invite guest chefs and friends to create culinary magic.
“I like the spaciousness of the kitchen, and the fact it’s so great looking without being overstated or gross. Not too Las Vegas,” Hali said, while opening a small door to a secret room.
Immediately behind the trendy “show” kitchen is another small one, camouflaged by a large stone wall that supports the staircase and mezzanine.
It doubles as a butler’s pantry when the couple is entertaining, but is ideal for just the two of them, said the businesswoman, who is past chair of the 12,000-member Canadian Association of Accredited Mortgage Professionals and was recently named one of the Top 10 most influential women in the mortgage business in Canada.
Darren is a custom home builder and high-end renovator who not only built the mansion but many things in it, including the dining table’s twisted legs, solidsteel staircase clad in purple heartwood, the railings and entire earthquake-proof steel structure.
He even made an outdoor gas fire pit from the cone of a crusher machine.
“Darren is extremely creative and can do anything,” his wife said.
Designer Jenny Martin agreed, saying it’s handy to have a “husband-slash-contractor to work with,” especially a creative one. She noted the home has a boutique-hotel feel, a very tailored and contemporary style.
This was the first time she designed back-to-back kitchens — “although more and more Asian and Indian clients are requesting that now” — and although the second is small, they maximized space and functionality, as there are no windows.
Hali and Darren definitely wanted some his-and-hers aspects to the house, too, Martin said.
He wanted a man cave and refreshment bar for the guys in his nearly 4,000-sq.ft. workshop, and asked for a games room downstairs for poker nights, playing pool, table tennis and air hockey. The lower-level theatre has one big curved sofa, so everyone can crash together: “no stadium seating.”
His wife wanted a parlour off the master bedroom — as in a hotel suite — where she could relax and entertain friends around a double-sided fireplace that also adds ambience to the master bedroom.
She also wanted a large walk-in closet, and her architect delivered.
It’s gigantic and features two levels of dressing and closet space, with a makeup area, lounge, ironing station, sink, special sections for everything from shoes and purses to gowns and jewelry, full-wall mirrors, luggage garage, large flat dresser for folding — and a gold leaf ceiling.
She uses the upstairs for everyday, and downstairs for special events and travel clothes.
All Darren’s closets and shelves are extra wide and sturdy for his work clothes. Hali pointed out that her husband is 6-foot-4 and has “a more massive lifestyle, so he needs his own zones, like the big shower with shaving station inside, and steam room. ... You gotta keep men contained, all their hair and stuff,” she joked.
Architect Silvia Bonet said the request for a hotel look was unusual and made the project interesting.
“The owners wanted something large, impressive and grand, but the challenge was to still keep a sense of intimacy and connection between the living areas, to not have it look out of scale. The whole ground floor is one large room, except for the master suite, and it could feel unhomey and unwelcoming without the correct separation and integration.”
Bonet solved the problem by placing the two kitchens in the centre of the great room, where they divide the area and support the mezzanine.
“You don’t want a kitchen to have a super-high ceiling, so that worked well with the mezzanine, balancing different scales, giving a sense of openness, height and spiritual elevation — yet still on a human scale.”
“The room has a very high ceiling, over 20 feet, and required significant use of steel. Darren was instrumental in accomplishing that, and also in creating the stairs, which hang from the wall with no visible support. He is quite artistic.”
Bonet had never designed a two-storey dressing room before, but decided to create this one, as the basement is enormous. “It is a fabulous idea. A dressing-sitting room where the girls can go and have fun.”
The owner’s son Nicholas, 10, loves the beach, so they had an artist create a shore scene in his bedroom, whereas Cole, 19, wanted a smaller bedroom with a lounge area adjacent to it, for relaxing with friends.
The owners bought the property in 2007 but didn’t start building right away.
“We wanted to study the land for a while, see where the water went, because it was quite swampy,” said Darren, who then spent seven months sculpting the land, diverting the water, creating pools, waterfalls and rock walls.
“We did a lot of blasting and recycled a lot of rock in the house and crushed the rest to build the roads. It was a lot of work to take out all the hawthorne, willow and cottonwood trees.”
He built his workshop in the first year, then the garage, where they lived upstairs while the house was being finished.
“We used just about all local materials and trades … a lot of the tradesmen and I used to off-road around this property when we were kids, many of us got stuck in the mud here,” he said with a grin.
Having grown up nearby, he couldn’t be happier living there now.
“It took me six months of waking up every morning just to realize I was actually living here.”