HEAD OVER HEELS
Heritage house in Ste-Geneviève was a solid impulse purchase
Many talk about love at first sight, but in the realm of home-buying, Rita and Alan Rigler took it to the next level 22 years ago when they walked into this Québécois-style country house.
Hardly two steps inside and seeing only the living room, they were ready to buy it without having visited the other rooms or inquiring about the taxes, type of heating, the cost and other essential information usually needed to make a rational and educated decision.
“I just told the real estate agent right there and then, that she could send any other prospective buyers away,” Rita says with a laugh. It was an impulse buy, but they haven’t regretted it one bit since.
Built by a stone mason in the 1830s, the house is called Maison Damase-Richer, after its earliest occupant. The house is part of a series of heritage buildings in the borough of Ste-Geneviève on the West Island. Originally, it was divided into two separate units, which explains the two front doors. The dwellings were eventually combined, and an extension was built in the back. The extension has a basement, while the older area of the house has just a crawl space. The 61-centimetre (two-foot) thick red-mortared stone walls support a steep roof with three dormer windows. The roof is covered with brown and tan asphalt shingles.
The Riglers said very few renovations were needed inside the house. In the kitchen, for example, only the countertops were replaced with nuanced granite. Beautifully crafted Shaker-style wooden cabinets provide a generous amount of storage space. The glass-door cabinets hanging from the beam that stretches across the room’s two walls serve as a divider between the kitchen and the dining room areas. The two rooms are part of the extension, which preserved the bare stone wall of the old house to add to the overall rustic country look of the kitchen/dining room areas.
The warm-toned ceramic floor tiles were imported from Mexico. The stunning china cabinet in the dining room is also from Mexico. It is hand carved with exquisite details. The dining set was a gift from Rita’s father after he bought it in Gaspésie and found it did not fit into his new apartment.
Two paintings hanging on the blue dining-room wall could very well pass for pricey modern artworks, though Rita bought them at a garage sale for only $5 each. She is a frequent visitor to garage sales, but what she loves most is picking up furniture and objects discarded on the street and giving them a new life.
“It’s amazing what people throw away,” she says.
To paraphrase the old saying, one man’s trash is this woman’s treasure. She has a knack for harmoniously incorporating unusual objects into the décor, as is evident in the large living room. The 10-foot ceiling is covered with stamped metal sheets, while the floor is barn wood planks purchased from a local farmer. The couple had them, cut to size, polished and stained a dark brown. They also added a banister to the staircase. The post and handrail are made of oak. The wood-burning fireplace with brass trim is from Vermont Castings.
There is a guest bedroom on the ground floor separated from the living room by French doors. Here, the floorboards are made of pine, reclaimed from a house that was being demolished in the area. A cherrywood queen-size sleigh bed, tall lamps and a gilded mirror give an elegant appeal to this room. The co-ordinated colours and patterns of the room include soothing green for the walls and some cushions, floral motifs for the bed spread and pillowcases and three paintings above the bed, the latter of which were, of course, also found at a garage sale.
What Rita has found among articles being sold or discarded has surprised her, such as the two large portraits of children that hang in the second guest bedroom upstairs. The metal and brass double bed is an antique, but the rest of the furniture and ornaments are bargain buys. An interesting feature of this room is the window set flush with the floor where the stone wall is exposed, showing the full depth.
The master bedroom was refreshed recently with teal blue walls and accents. The king-sized