Illustration by Lauren Tamaki
We already had a perfectly adorable and lovingly restored log cabin with a postcard view of our favourite lake. But my husband and I left it all behind to pay way too much for a falling-down 1970s nightmare nearby.
Since our adult kids had moved back to Canada, the one-room cabin was feeling a little tight and this new folly had some other advantages. Unlike the little cabin, where we were chockablock with our neighbours, its selling point was two acres of mature gardens just down the beach from our friends. Though you could barely glimpse it through a tangle of overgrown cedars, it was also sunset-facing. In order to catch it, we had to peer through a tiny office window that offered the only view onto the lake.
After moving in, however, it quickly became clear how unlivable the new house was. A quick fluff with some mid-century finds and beachy indigos gave the living space a certain boho flair. But no amount of cleaning or air purifiers or scented candles could address the house’s unique fragrance of decay that permeated our clothes and hair within hours. Our son simply refused to visit. “This place is toxic,” he said after one night’s stay. “I don’t know how you can stand it.”
A new house was clearly in order, but having grown up in old houses and living in them our entire lives, the idea of tearing it all down and building something brand new was off-putting. Renovation is my comfort zone; the more old quirks given new life, the better. Would I even like a new house, without any of the character that gives old houses their charm? And yet, the opportunity to design and build something from scratch – a bucket list item if there ever was one – was the pearl in this fit of madness.
As grateful as I was for the creative challenge, I knew we were headed into unmarked territory. In any home reno, you inherit a set of design limitations. Whatever improvements you choose to make to the original house, if not exactly determined by what’s already in place, end up being informed by it. So much so that the measure of a good renovation is often how well the designer makes the most of what is already there.
The conundrum of a new build is the complete opposite. Starting from a blank slate means there’s literally nothing to work with – or against. Other than the inescapable concerns of budget and timing, the sky is your limit. Tile the foyer in hand-pressed bricks from Belgium? Sure. Turn the shower into a living wall? Why not! What’s more, even if you hire a team of professionals, the responsibility for every single choice made along the way is on you.
It is hard to anticipate just how many decisions you make in the process of building an entire house but, trust me, the sheer volume involved is intimidating. And woe betide you if you fail to sweat the small stuff because, if you’re like me, you will regret the bad placement of a light switch or air return forevermore. Apart from building code-mandated ugliness, every single awkward finish or insufficiently thought-out solution will be your fault forever. And, after inevitably spending way more than you had hoped, you get to live with the results.
Thankfully, we survived this gauntlet and I’m relieved to report that we are thrilled with the result. The house may be new, but it is far from soulless. The eight-inch thick beams that form our walls are like a beautiful woven basket and the views of the turquoise lake from almost every angle are maximized by a 15-foot high wall of wood-framed glass. The pale grey of the tiled floors echoes the river rocks on our beach while the bright, open kitchen with its curvy 10-foot island is ideal for entertaining. Even some of the decisions we were forced to make – to scale down our dream of a stone fireplace wall to a freestanding contemporary stove, for instance – actually turned out better than I could have imagined.
Now that the saws and hammers have been packed away and we’ve moved ourselves in, the garden around the house, which was entirely flattened in the building process, looms. It’s ironic that the landscaping that first attracted us to the site is now another blank slate. When it comes to design, the work is never really done.
