Kitchen reno brings home to life
Year-long upgrade gives family new love for their vintage house
If the kitchen is the heart of the home, the Hunter family’s house just got a whole lot more heart.
Arwen Hunter and her husband, Scott, have called a 120-year-old, Victorian semi-detached house in a west-end Mimico neighbourhood their home for more than a decade. Over the years, they’d grown frustrated with their dark and dysfunctional kitchen — especially while raising three children; Sophia, 11, Alec, 9, and Eloise, 7.
Whenever they were busy in the kitchen, they felt cut off from their kids in other areas of the house. And, despite loving to entertain, the couple had all but stopped because the process was too frustrating.
“We didn’t want people to come over. It didn’t work for the space,” says Hunter. “It wasn’t fun!”
Not only was there very little counter space, but the mismatched kitchen cabinets from the 1970s weren’t even wide enough to fit their dinner plates. There was also a lack of natural light because the only window looked out under a roof over a stairwell.
“It was ridiculous,” says Hunter, 41, head of insights at Spin Master, the Canadian toy and children’s entertainment company. As busy working parents, Hunter and Scott, 44, a partner at an accounting firm, were desperate for a multi-use space where they could feel connected to their kids while still performing their daily domestic duties. They dreamed of a kitchen where they could cook as their youngsters did homework. They envisioned a big island where they could all eat together on busy weeknights.
“We knew we wanted to do this renovation eventually, but we put it off because it was an enormous undertaking,” says Hunter.
Finally, they reached a breaking point and looked at each other, and said: “It’s time!” They enlisted the help of Peter Maes Construction, having worked successfully with Maes on five other renovation projects in their home over the years. They also hired Hunter’s best friend, designer Cindy Bleeks from Feasby & Bleeks Design, to lead the creative charge. “We found people that we trusted,” says Hunter. While Scott was originally determined to stick to a $70,000 budget, his wife and Bleeks sat him down and said: “Have a drink!”
In the end, their budget ballooned to $200,000, when they realized an older addition off the back of the kitchen had no foundation.
“As we discovered more problems, we had to go about fixing all of it. We had to redo the addition completely,” says Hunter, adding the entire renovation took 13 months to complete.
Drawings, vendor proposals and permits started in Aug. 2015; demolition started that December and things were pretty much complete by last September.
“We were all cramped in the front of the house, eating and cooking and living,” says Scott.
The family used a little two-burner electric stove and a crock pot they set up in the dining room. They washed dishes in the second-floor laundry room. There were plenty of sandwiches served and Uber Eats food deliveries.
Thankfully, blowing the budget and being inconvenienced for so long was more than worth it in the end.
“This has changed the whole family dynamic!” beams Hunter, the hostess having returned as she offers a cheese and charcuterie platter and a glass of wine inside her bright, white, modern kitchen.
“There’s no stress. We can all be together easily; cleaning while we are still interacting,” she says. “It’s lowered the tension and made it easier to live together; all of these big bodies and big kids!” she laughs. Hunter is five-foot-10; Scott is six-foot-eight; and their children are tall, so the kitchen’s 10-foot ceilings offer them all a sense of space.
As well, it means cupboards can reach to the ceiling.
The dramatically transformed space now boasts a nine-foot, eat-in quartz island, hardwood flooring throughout and a six-burner gas stove from Jenn-Air, which Hunter picked up at a Boxing Day sale. The Ikea cabinets have a designer look and feel, thanks to some splurges on fixtures, such as the pair of pendant lights over the island that they pur- chased from Cocoon Furnishings. Pot lights, a marble backsplash and a pot filler over the stove are some other features, as is the couple’s fully stocked wine fridge — which has been popular now that the couple come out of their entertaining hibernation.
The rebuilt back addition flows easily from the kitchen under one consistent ceiling line, and has become the family’s new living space with a comfy couch, fireplace, big-screen TV and built-in bookshelf. Bleeks suggested bringing all of the family’s prized art pieces into this space and grouping them closely together on one wall — now Hunter’s favourite part of the room.
Floor-to-ceiling windows at the back of the addition draw in natural light and provide a sightline to keep an eye on the kids in the backyard while the pair work in the kitchen.
“It’s just made everything better,” says Hunter.