inspired design
From dollhouse to dream house
When Melanie Kushner was 10 years old, she received a birthday gift that would chart of her life’s work eventually. the direction
It was a wooden dollhouse kit and the project sparked her imagination. “After I built the house, I ran electrical into it, added chandeliers and carpet and hung wallpaper. I still have all the furniture,” she laughs.
“For the life of me, I don’t understand why my parents didn’t insist that interior design was my first career!”
Instead, she went on to earn a master of fine arts in photography and, ultimately, worked in the family dentistry business. It wasn’t until she and husband Rob Melamed, 37, a composer for film and television, had started a family that Kushner realized she was itching for a creative outlet. She found it by taking evening and weekend interior design classes from 2014 to 2016 at George Brown College.
During that time, she came across the perfect fixer-upper in their Hillcrest Village neighbourhood. “We were living in a semi-detached, one street north, but we’d been looking for a house to grow into,” says Kushner, 37, of her discovery three years ago. “I came to see the house several times over four days … As I walked through it, everything started to click in my head and I started to see it the way I’d like it to be discovered.”
Her designer’s sensibility helped her see through the dated wood panelling, cramped rooms and sagging floors in the two-bedroom, two-bathroom home built in 1915. After years of neglect, the house was unlivable for her family of four, including daughters Nylah, 8, and Vivienne, 5, so they hired contractor Nick Upton and set to work on a renovation.
For the next 10 months, until July 2016, the family lived in Kushner’s parents’ basement rec room, sleeping on three mattresses on the floor “without an inch between them. Literally, all of our clothes were on utility shelves you would put in your garage,” she said.
Throughout the renovation, she continued her evening design classes, often visiting the house to see the progress. Her life-sized dollhouse even served as a model for her course work. “As we were doing the electrical plan in the house, I was completing my lighting class, so I used my house for the project.”
The renovation was not without challenges. After completely gutting the house, Upton, owner of Upton Design Build Inc., broke the news that the poorly constructed back extension needed to be entirely rebuilt. “The foundation wall on the north side was bowing in because it wasn’t strong enough to hold back the neighbour’s driveway, which ran six inches away from it,” Upton said.
“We had to brace the wall temporarily and then fix it in sections.” The process added significant cost and another six weeks.
Once the walls were structurally sound, the renovation continued. The main floor was free from its warren of small rooms, and an extension to the second floor allowed for three bedrooms and two bathrooms. Downstairs, the most important design elements for Kushner included updating the space for a modern family. “Old houses weren’t built for the way we live now. We really broke down the kitchen and thought about its purpose and how we would use it,” she said.
Tall Ikea cabinetry encircles the room, offering plenty of storage space and disguising utilitarian functions, such as the washer and dryer. Kushner says most people have no idea they’re also in the laundry room when they sit down at the Caesarstone island, which features a deep black Blanco sink. A coat closet at the back door also hides in plain sight. And a powder room is tucked behind a pocket door.
A lounge area at the back of the kitchen was a must-have for Kushner, who wanted a cosy space for the kids to relax. A three-panel window overlooks the backyard that underwent a transformation of its own.
In 2017, a year after they moved in, they had two big work sheds demolished. A landscaping team graded the land and installed sprinklers, fresh sod and pea gravel. The remaining two-car garage was an eyesore before a friend suggested graffiti to add some interest.
The agency TorontoGraffiti.com connected them with an artist who goes by the street name Smug.
Over the course of a weekend, he created a unique and colourful design. “The idea of having graffiti is so bang on for this neighbourhood. We all park in laneways and so many times they are uninvitingly tagged. I love that we just owned it,” Kushner said.
Although the family has been in their forever home for two years, as the owner of Melanie Kushner Interiors, Kushner is still very much designing.
“Our renovation helped me manifest my childhood dream. I feel like I’ve come full circle.”