Reviving a former beauty

Chuck and I bought a house! In the spring of 2018, we finally bit the bullet and started looking for a house together. We wanted an older home not far from the city centre as we both had houses in the West End and loved the convenience of the area. After a lot of looking, we fell in love with a house in North River Heights. The place had good bones and a location you couldn’t beat.

It needed work though.

So for one full year (Aug 2018 to 2019), we went full-tilt on renovations. We started high (bedroom/ensuite), ended low (basement), pushed structures up (sunroom and front porch) and put new pavement down (garage and front walkway). If something required fixing, it got fixed.

We were on a mission. If we were going to do this, we were going to do it in one shot. And with no procrastination or excuses, which is definitely thanks to Chuck. If I was organizing this reno, the completion date would be sometime in 2032.

Here’s how we brought life back into an old 1929 abode and turned it into a home we adore…

Master bedroom & ensuite

This was our first change to the house and it’s definitely my favourite. We enlisted the help of the amazing Natasha and Debbie at The Design Shop to configure our dream bedroom/closet/ensuite. We took two bedrooms at the front of the house and turned it into one large space.

My favourite thing about the way the design evolved for this space is that there is only one door, the one you use to enter. The rest is pretty open. It makes the space seem much larger than it is.

For the closet, we used Ikea’s Pax wardrobe system and — like all things Ikea — it was a bitch to put together. But boy, do they hold a lot! We added sliding doors so you can easily close off the messy.

In the bathroom, we were able to add both a soaking tub and a double vanity. Our patient designers mentioned we probably couldn’t do both with the space we had. I might have pulled a ‘Karen’ (sorry about that, N & D!) and then they came up with a creative solution to push some of the vanity into the closet area, hence the ultimate removal of any doors. That change ended up making the space better than we could have ever imagined.

The design work that Natasha and Debbie did for us was beyond beautiful. And they put together the best material selections. See a few here.

🎨 ART TALK: The gigantic floral canvas over the tub is a piece I stumbled upon at Structube. Most of the house is from Structube, tbh. It’s really affordable compared to most other places. I love large brightly coloured things and thought this artwork would give a nice punch of colour to a mostly white and black bathroom.

🎨 ART TALK: Those Kal Barteski scripts were all quotes my mom loved.

We wanted a black hex tile floor in the bathroom and our designers suggested this black marble look. It was a great choice, it literally shows nothing! We went for a smaller hex tile for the shower floor as our designer said smaller tile there is helpful because there’s more grout, which keeps the tile from becoming slippery under your feet.

And of course subway tile for the shower walls. We opted for a 4″x12″ version instead of the standard 3″x6″ and a light grey grout instead of white, to give subtle definition to the tile shape and to better hide the shower grime. The black hardware is from Delta’s Trinsic line. (I loved this line so much I used it throughout the basement too, but in gold.)

The colour on the walls for the entire room is Cloud Cover by Benjamin Moore and the vanity millwork is painted in Silver Satin.

After spending an ungodly amount of time looking for vanity lights, I finally picked these industrial ones. They are nice, but I’ve never love-loved them. However, they give off some nice warm light in a coolish bathroom.

Upstairs

The upstairs area is pretty much a gallery of artwork and family photos. The artwork on the walls are my former pieces — except that naked lady in the background, I found her at Le Marché de la création in Paris in 2010.

👉 VINTAGE ALERT! The table was a garage sale find from over 15 years ago. It just needed a touch of new paint.

The large basket was found at Wayfair and the cute plant pots are from Shelmerdine. They have a great selection!

Going down the stairs, we have a family photo wall. We got the frames off Amazon as they were an excellent price at the time, they were quite thin and they came with a grid to help hang them correctly. Are they great quality? No. Do they look cheap when all up? Also, no.

The pink-walled room is our home office. It’s still pretty messy; it’s where we put everything we don’t have a space for. We’re slowly emptying it, but never completely. We all have that one room, right?

🎨 ART TALK: The office also houses all my old acrylic-framed photos I’ve taken on my travels. I was able to squish them all in. There is just way too much artwork upstairs. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Dining room & hall

The dining room was the first room we updated. The walls were a darkish grey, which made the room look a bit gloomy. We freshened it up with Dove Wing by Benjamin Moore, which is the same colour used in the hallway and upstairs.

Funny thing, once we put this colour on the wall, the white trim looked dull. It looked white when the walls were grey, but now that the walls were brighter, the trim looked like crap. I discovered that the trim throughout the house (baseboards, casings, crown mouldings) was all painted a dull light grey. So that meant all the trim would have to change. UGH.

We switched all the trim in the house to Simply White. A bright white that has the tiniest bit of warmth to it.

Because both Chuck and I were coming from small houses, neither of us had an adequate dining table. We found this ‘living edge’ one with matching bench seat at Structube. It weighs a ton! The blue chairs were from Costco online. Yes, Costco!

🎨 ART TALK: Those blue pictures are the house’s original blueprints! We found a stack of them in the basement along with the original spec sheets. The house was originally built for a Mr. J. A. McKenzie Esq. between 1928 and 1929. What a lucky find!

Living room

This room was a hard one. It’s much longer than it is wide. The fireplace is opposite the entrance way and the sunroom entry is adjacent to the fireplace. Wanting to put the furniture around the fireplace just wasn’t going to happen unless you wanted people to walk over furniture to get into the sunroom.

Many a night Chuck would look over at me staring blankly at the room and be “what are you thinking of doing now?!” I really had a tough time figuring this space out.

🎨 ART TALK: Does that painting on the back wall look like it’s glowing? That’s because it’s a TV!

Since the room is quite long, it seemed weird to have it organized as one space, so we split it into two. We have a traditional living room set up on one side and a smaller ‘conversational’ area for two on the other. We bought furniture with an eye on smaller-scale and easy mobility so we can quickly change the room to accommodate small to large gatherings.

My two favourite things in this space are the fireplace and the blush chairs by Roar and Rabbit. I saw the chairs on West Elm and went to order them only to find out they do not ship big items to Winnipeg. Bah! Chuck was on it though, he knows shipping peeps and he got those chairs brought in from Calgary. He’s a peach.

😽 CAT FACT! The cats love those chairs. It’s been Max’s fave spot to snooze since he was a babe. We are constantly de-linting his chair!

The fireplace was a dark red and black brick. It was dated! But it did have nice glass doors. I kept suggesting we paint it white, Chuck resisted. I may have mentioned it way too many times (I definitely did) because I came home from a work trip to find it painted. So nice! Fresh and bright! The mirror was found on Anthropologie, I originally saw it in Jillian Harris’ house.

The second area of the living room came together once we put the cowhide rug down. The Design Shop suggested a cowhide as it would pull the small area together but wouldn’t compete with the other straight edge carpets in both the living room and sunroom.

The floor lamp in the back I’ve had for over 15 years. I just keep spray painting it a different colour and updating the lampshade whenever it’s moved to a new room.

The living room walls are Swiss Coffee by Benjamin Moore. The fireplace is Simply White and the feature wall is Newburg Green, which is used in small doses throughout the main floor.

Sunroom

This is the room I spend most my time in. Especially in winter. Sunday morning teas and toast, painting, writing, reading. It’s all done here. It’s the natural light. It’s a happy room.

The room also has insane popcorn stucco, which was painted light grey when we first moved in. It made the room look dull. And a sunroom should never look dull. So we updated the colour to Simply White.

It took 2.5 gallons of paint for this room! Look at it, there’s hardly any wall space! I was covered in paint after and so sore. Ugh, painting stucco, the worst!

👉 VINTAGE ALERT! This light is original to the house, I think? It’s kinda weird, kinda cute and I’m kinda in love with it.

👉 VINTAGE ALERT! Those teal chairs were my papa’s. They were from his RCMP office in his house in Morris, MB. I believe they would be from the late 30s or 40s.

The teeny-tiny powder room

Like many old homes, there was no bathroom on the main floor. We didn’t want guests to go upstairs to use a bathroom, especially one frequented by teenagers, so we converted a small closet into a tiny powder room.

Most people get a kick out of how tiny the sink is. A Wayfair special! Everything in that bathroom was ordered on Wayfair, except the wallpaper, which is by Rifle Paper Co. for Hygge & West.

👉 FUN FACT! The room is so petite you can easily wash your hands while you do your business.

The countertop is a walnut grain from Caribou and for the backsplash we went with a matte white rhombus tile with a very light taupe grout.

😽 CAT FACT! Josie followed me into every room as I took photos. She’s my shadow OR she wants to be a showcase model.

African basement

Ah, the African basement. The space that Chuck claimed as his homage to his homeland. Before we started the renovation, the basement was a mess. It had super low ceilings due to old asbestos wrapped radiator pipes. An old defunct laundry chute and pipes and wires that went every which way. There was even a tiny bathroom that had a toilet and a shower… no sink! Why? Ew. It did have solid concrete walls with not a crack to be seen and it didn’t have that musty, damp smell, which can tell you a lot about a Winnipeg basement.

So we removed the asbestos pipes (safely!) and gutted the place and then watched Chuck’s vision turn into a reality. The contractors started in February. They finished in July. They told us 4 months, it took 6. To say it felt like forever was an understatement.

During that time, the boiler died and covered everything in black soot, especially the cats (I think they rolled around in it, jerks). The ceiling was done twice (don’t ask), the bookcase was a constant debate and the depth of the first wine shelf was way too short (all the bottle necks stood out).

But was it worth it? Yes. We love this family rec-room space. Natasha from The Design Shop also did the design on this baby.

🎨 ART TALK: I painted that lion portrait for Chuck back in 2015, and it now fits in the space nicely, adjacent to the banana leaf bathroom.

That banana leaf wallpaper looked so beautiful when I first saw it online, it’s even prettier in person. It’s called Botany by Lemon, a South African decor company.

🎨 ART TALK: And the leopard wall was a must. Chuck spent a ton of time online looking for the perfect leopard photo for his mural wall. He found this one on Instagram and contacted the photographer to see if he would sell us a copy of his digital file. He did!

I then found a company called Pictorem to print the mural. They were fantastic. The mural came in three sections and it was peel and stick. It took Chuck about an hour to have it up and looking sharp. Possibly the smoothest install in this renovation!

The walk-up bar was my baby. I wanted it to have a modern look but with touches of things from the past. That being a Mondrian-style wine rack and a mercury glass backsplash.

👉 VINTAGE ALERT! Remember when we all pooh-poohed those old mercury glass walls of the 70s? That’s’ what I wanted. We lucked out that our contractor had a glass connection at MPD and they had a few sheets in stock.

👉 VINTAGE ALERT! The piano was a gift from a friend’s mom. A very heavy gift. When we planned out the basement space, we wanted a nook-like area that it would fit into. And books look good near pianos! It’s like we’re cultured or something.

I personally love bookcases. During this pandemic, I’ve been spending more time looking at what people have on their bookshelves in the background than looking at the person talking.

🎨 ART TALK: The artwork above the piano is straight from Lagos, Nigeria. Chuck brought it back on his last trip there. The prints are a mix of black ink/paint with colourful batik fabric. It hangs a bit higher than I would like and it’s slightly off-centre, but it’s covering a trap door into a crawl space.

🎨 ART TALK: I found the cutest jungle prints by Ambers Textiles on Society6, the same site I have my artwork listed (shameless plug). They provide small bursts of colour to the bookcase.

Front porch

This front porch pretty much sold Chuck on the place. Add an old Toys-R-Us rocking chair in there and that’s where you’ll find him on most nice days. With a scotch and a cigar. He just requires a piece of wood and a knife to start whittling me some knick-knacks as he rocks back and forth. Cue the Deliverance music.

Before & After

Here’s a before and after of the outside. A few of the front bushes were cut for foundation work, but they look to be coming back!

We switched the roof from red to black and took down all the white eaves and replaced with black. Our roofing (Capital roofing) and eaves (Up-front Exteriors) contractors were fantastic. My cousin Todd recommended them.

👉 GREAT PERSON ALERT: And speaking of my cousin Todd, he deserves a huge SHOUT OUT for all the work he did on our house. He replaced all the windows, fixed screens, brought the front porch back to its original glory, offered great design suggestions and helped us out on a whole bunch of other things. He also recommended good contractors to us, which if you’ve done renovations you know you live and die by your contractors.

He even had to help in some areas of the master bedroom reno when the workers in there didn’t seem to know what they were doing. And there’s a very good reason I’m not touting our master bedroom contractor. If you want to know who we used for that, you can message me.

Cheers to completing an intense year of renos! Now, please swing by for a porch drink! I mean, after the pandemic, of course.