It’s the end of the workday and Nelly, Misty and Mickey are racing around on the mottled cork floors of the mudroom in a chaotic frenzy of cream, grey and black fur. The three dogs seem happy in the space they share with architect Catherine Chernoff and her two teenage children. However, as Chernoff is quick to point out, this is not her dream home.
That dream home will take shape on a nearby lot in the same mature southwest neighbourhood of Lake Bonavista. Just as soon as Chernoff and her business associate of 10 years, Patrick Moskwa, get a chance to design it. In the meantime, Chernoff needed a house to suit her family and the way they live on a day-to-day basis. The resulting renovation is stylish and comfortable, but with flexibility built in.
“When I first drove by to see it, the house had that kind of presence where it looked like a shingle-style house,” says Chernoff, referring to the cozy, cottage-like look popularized in the northeastern United States at the turn of the 20th century. Today, what was once a rectangular-shaped 1970s bungalow, features multiple rooflines, and the entire exterior has been clad in cedar shingles that unite the home’s complex shape and mix well with the mature surrounding landscape of fully grown trees.
Chernoff says the actual changes, which included raising the roof at the back of the house and creating a small second-storey addition, were structurally quite simple. What was complicated was the fact the house was never intended to be a forever-and-ever home for her family. And even as Chernoff and Moskwa began their work to update the space, they always had resale in the back of their minds.
“A realtor will tell you to focus your efforts on bathrooms and kitchens,” says Moskwa. “We believe that, too, but we also believe the rest of the space should be beautiful.”
In this case, Chernoff favoured a city, modern style with clean, simple lines. “I wanted it light and airy,” says Chernoff of the space she has dressed in a creamy palette of off-white, muted-browns and painted wood panelling.
Organizing the main living spaces around the mature trees and the privacy afforded by the yard was also a major aspect of the renovation. “All the trees were already there, and so the idea was to have a whole wall of glass looking out toward the yard,” says Chernoff. It also keeps the main living space obscured from the street.
Opposite the living room is the kitchen, and here, the pedestrian view is blocked with the use of two postage-stamp windows. A backsplash of small glass tiles rises up around them toward the clerestory windows above.
For the kitchen island, Chernoff and Moskwa chose a long, thin slab of granite, which wraps down on the side toward the rich, dark, hardwood floors. And the back counter is covered in a honed slate that Chernoff says is practically indestructible. Few upper cabinets are used in the design, which enhances the uncluttered feeling.
“I elected to open it all up to feel like there is more room,” says Chernoff of the now-2,700-square-foot home. She adds they didn’t expand the home’s footprint very much, only adding 600 square feet to encompass a large mudroom, laundry and second-storey guest suite. However, the 13-foot ceilings in the living room, as well as the wall of windows onto the backyard, give the house a much larger feel.
The living room’s original wood-burning fireplace is still in place, but its brick façade has been replaced with a graphic surround of wood, marble and basic drywall. Its asymmetric configuration allows for a sleek media closet to be tucked in quietly on the side.
Chernoff and Moskwa also placed a guest bedroom and bath atop a limestone-treaded staircase that winds up behind the fireplace. “We really did want it to be a loft,” says Moskwa. However, he adds, practical considerations drove them to close it off. “It created more options for the use of that room.”
In the opposite direction stands the open-concept dining and sitting room, where the three dogs have now taken up residence; Chernoff jokes the room’s Planter table and chairs actually belong to the dogs. Here the simple styling has been warmed up and given texture through the use of rows of painted horizontal wooden banding that Chernoff and Moskwa chose for the walls.
The pair also tweaked a number of minor things in the original layout to make the home more efficient. This included shifting the main bath by a few feet to absorb space formerly taken up by a hallway, and turning one small bedroom into a luxurious ensuite for the master bedroom. That fourth bedroom was then added back in the second-storey addition.
“We tried to give at least one bathroom per bedroom,” says Moskwa (only one of the home’s four bedrooms does not have an ensuite, but it does have access to the main bath). He adds they also tried to be conscious about where the money would be spent, as he shows off the master bathroom and its dual-sink vanity, created from an existing piece of furniture, and the master suite’s stock closet system.
“We tried to do it as smartly inexpensive as we could,” says Chernoff.
Where the pair did spend a bit more was on ensuring the view from the master bedroom was perfect. Here, again, the yard was a gravitational force, and the bed now looks out onto the garden through new oversize windows.
“When you are building, you can do anything,” says Moskwa. “When you are renovating, you are playing with different ideas while working with what is already there.”
Fortunately, the pair’s ideas have created a comfortable, in-between home where Chernoff has the flexibility to make changes, and stay as long as necessary.
“We really like it,” she says. “It’s really simple.”
Nelly, Misty and Mickey appear to agree.
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