VINTAGE WITH A MODERN TWIST
Classic comfort in Westmount
Jennifer Kaczor is a business intelligence analyst with a private health company and her spouse, Joël Kaczor, works in the financial world. Now in their early 30s, when they met a few years ago, each lived in a different part of the city. Joël was in PlateauMont-Royal. Jennifer had a place in Ville-Émard.
In 2015, when the couple decided to set up home together, they first looked around Mile End and the Plateau — neighbourhoods they were familiar with. Unfortunately, according to Jennifer, the “price versus quality” of the rental apartments they visited did not live up to their expectations. They then switched their attention to Westmount and found their current home — a converted triplex in a building dating to 1897.
The Kaczors occupy the top floor, where they have three bedrooms, two bathrooms (plus a powder room) and two balconies. What particularly appealed to them was not only the apartment’s location (it’s handy for downtown and has good access to public transit), but also the architectural details that hearken back to the 19th century — archways, lofty ceilings and original wood trim around the windows and doors. The bathrooms and the kitchen are modern, however, having been renovated by the landlady in the not-too-distant past.
Q: The apartment is certainly handsome. How long did you have to look before you found it? Joël: Probably a couple of months. These days, everybody our age seems to live in a modern apartment, but that isn’t for us. This was actually one of the last places we checked out. Jennifer: It was more than we could have imagined. The minute we walked in, we fell in love.
Q: I can see why. I notice most of your furniture is vintage. Was that so it would be in keeping with the style of the interior? Jennifer: We like vintage things and we have the same taste. Both of our apartments had similar furniture. You could say we’re young people with old souls.
Q: So did you bring all these furnishings from your previous homes? Joël: Yeah. That’s pretty well what we did, though we bought some stuff as well.
(The couple walk me to the back of the apartment where one of bedrooms serves as Jennifer’s studio. She is an accomplished artist and her work hangs throughout the couple’s home. On one wall is a narrow, multi-tiered shelf, filled with delicate, colourful china cups and saucers.)
Q: That’s quite a collection. Are the porcelain cups and saucers any particular brand? Jennifer: Actually that’s only part of my collection. There are another two shelves in the dining room. (She points them out.) I collect Coalport, Aynsley, Royal Albert. …
Q: You must really like tea? Jennifer: Actually, I don’t. I would make a very bad English person.
(The dining room has other examples of the couple’s oldfashioned taste. There is an antique table surrounded by pressed back chairs, a sideboard filled with vinyl albums and on top of that, two record players — a turntable from around the 1980s and a wind-up replica of a ‘His Master’s Voice Portable Gramophone’ with a large horn.)
Q: Do these actually work? Jennifer: They do. They’re probably the most modern pieces of technology in the house. (Clearly a joke, as both of them have cellphones.)
(We wander into the double living room. At one end is an antique desk, which Joël uses as a work area and at the other end, two black-leather covered sofas. A row of floor plants is arranged in front of the window. Along one wall is a tiled fireplace — a beautiful example of the craftsmanship of yesteryear, but no longer in working order. Standing against the other walls are five tall glassfronted bookcases, filled with leather-bound volumes.)
Q: Tell me the about all these bookcases. Joël: They’re mahogany. I had them custom made. Jennifer’s hobby is collecting tea cups. Mine is collecting leather-bound books.
Q: Are the books old? Joël: Some are. Some are not.
(Joël shows me another vintage piece of furniture — an ornately carved Chinese chest that he found in Chinatown. It is in the master bedroom and is one of a couple of Oriental pieces in the apartment.)
Q : You must have had fun shopping around for all your vintage pieces. Apart from Chinatown, where else did you source your things? Jennifer: Well in the case of my china collection, a combination of places — yard sales, thrift stores, estate sales. Sometimes we just find something on the sidewalk. The chandelier above the dining table came from a garage sale. I thought it might have to be rewired, but no. It had all the crystals. Everything. There was no damage whatsoever. All I had to do was to buy light bulbs.