Home design: A “living photograph” of the outdoors 

A sliding door opens the house to the deck.  Photo by Riley Snelling 

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The family living in this High Park Edwardian had been there since their kids were young and did “bits and pieces” of updates as the years passed. But when the kids turned into teens, they found themselves ready for a full-bore renovation. And certainly, the house was ripe for reconfiguring.  

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A solid Edwardian brick family home typical of the neighbourhood, it had all the pluses of its vintage, including period character and lovely features like a big front porch. But it also had the typical drawbacks: the kitchen at the front was cut off from the rest of the main floor, especially after an earlier addition of a family room at the back. Other than a tired sliding glass door, there was no real relationship to the garden. And the centre of the house was dark and gloomy. 

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According to Jacob JeBailey, principal at Reign Architects, the goal was to maintain the home’s relaxed, family-friendly vibe while adding plenty of functionality and light, and just the right amount of modern edge.  

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In the kitchen, the built-in forms a deep counter and frames a view of the outdoors. Photo by Riley Snelling

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He and his team’s first order of business was to remove the original, load-bearing rear wall of the house, which cut the home in half when the addition was made. The task required time-consuming structural work; but once that was out of the way, the stage was set for transformation. 

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Next, they set out to reconfigure the layout. The kitchen, always the family hub but marooned at the front, was moved to roomier quarters at the back. Then the family room was relocated to the centre of the house.  

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A big skylight was installed at the top of the stairway, casting light down to the main floor. To maximize light transfer but still provide a sense of structure at the edge of the new family room, JeBailey created a narrow screen of floor-to-ceiling slats that delineate the space while letting light shine through.   

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A charcoal-stained built-in travels from the family room past the dining room and into the kitchen, playing a distinct role in each room. Photo by Riley Snelling 

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The dining room remains at the centre of the main floor and features a comfortable, leather-upholstered banquette in place of chairs.  

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“We felt a banquette was a cozy way to keep the central circulation pattern clear,” says JeBailey. The banquette and lozenge-shaped dining table were designed as a unit by local furniture artisan Mary Ratcliffe. (The pendant lights, notes JeBailey, were chosen by the owners; their flattened-orb shape nicely complements the rounded edges of the table.) 

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The materials used throughout the home are low-key and light in tone: white oak floors and millwork, creamy walls and kitchen cabinetry, and natural quartzite counters and backsplash. But an extended bank of built-in storage, finished in crisp charcoal-stained millwork — that begins in the family room, turns the corner at the dining room and covers a full wall of the kitchen — acts as an architectural spine, linking the rooms it travels through. 

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In the dining room, the banquette is finished in a cozy cognac leather, while minimalist lighting echoes the curved lines of the lozenge-shaped table. Photo by Riley Snelling

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In the family room, it contains a combination of bookshelves and closed storage, and provides a background to the family TV. At the outer edge, it has niches for displaying art objects, with extra dining room storage below.  

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But the kitchen is where the millwork unit comes into its own. Here, floor-to-ceiling banks of storage surround a deeply recessed secondary counter and form a deep frame for a window that JeBailey calls a “living photograph” of the outdoors, changing with the seasons and the cast of the light.