MIX AND MATCH
People’s Choice winner combines old and new
The people have spoken. Their pronouncement: Give us a home that’s a bit traditional but also a tad modern.
It’s a fine line that Greenmark Builders of Greely has navigated successfully with its Cedarlakes custom home, the handsome, 2,800-square-foot winner of this year’s People’s Choice Award at the annual Housing Design Awards sponsored by the Greater Ottawa Home Builders’ Association.
Almost 1,000 folks voted for the People’s Choice Award this year, casting a ballot for their favourite finalist in the prestigious design competition. For the first time, voting for the award was available online as well as at the recent Ottawa Fall Home Show.
Greenmark’s winning entry — a four-bedroom, family-oriented home that marries traditional features, such as exterior stone columns and gables, to interior touches, like a modern elongated fireplace in the great room — also took top honours in the custom home, 2,401 to 3,500 square feet category. As well, Greenmark shared top honours with Kitchen Craft Cabinetry in the renovation under $60,000 category.
“Woo!” shouted an elated Mark Kranenburg, president of Greenmark, giving a quick fist pump as he approached the stage to accept the People’s Choice prize, the final award of the evening.
The award, he said in a subsequent interview, “shows that the people still want to see traditional elements in a home along with the modern elements.”
Kranenburg, along with Caswell Custom Home Design of Smiths Falls, designed the home for a young family — specifically, his own.
He and his wife wanted sleek, modern touches but not a home that was all glass and steel. So the bright, white kitchen, for example, boasts both Shaker cabinets and stainless-steel appliances. A granite-topped island anchors the kitchen, while, above, eight-piece crown moulding maintains the rustic-traditional theme.
Elsewhere, that fireplace in the great room features a contemporary, flat-finish, natural-stone surround that soars to the classic coffered ceiling dotted with pot lights. Extensive glazing along one wall is in keeping with modern design trends.
An eye-grabbing ledgestone wall defines the stairwell.
“It’s a large wall, and it was hard to find art, so I wanted something that gave it a pop,” Kranenburg said.
In the master bedroom, a dark, trimmed-out accent wall behind the headboard and a tray ceiling lend the room a pleasing blend of style and cosy self-containment. In the ensuite, the pièce de résistance is a gleaming soaker tub — itself a blend of the new and the old — with a chrome nest chandelier above.
Last year, Greenmark won the award in the detached under 2,000 square feet category for its popular Ironwood bungalow. It was the first time Greenmark had entered the awards, and Kranenburg told the Citizen at the time he intended to “go big” in 2015.
That he did, with a total of five entries that made it to the finalist stage, two of them in custom home categories.
“People now know who we are. Before we weren’t even on the map,” he said of his multiple wins this year.
Younger builders like Kranenburg (he’s 33), are the future of the housing industry, GOHBA executive director John Herbert said.
“We’re seeing fewer and fewer young builders now than we did 30 years ago because of increasing government taxation and regulations,” Herbert said.
Building out of town as Greenmark does is a way around at least one of the factors inhibiting young builders: soaring land costs.
Herbert added that the past decade has seen a trend toward modern design “versus the traditional warmer stone and wood solution.”
“At some point, I think we’ll see some combination thereof,” he said.
Looks as though the people have already seen the future.