Home design trends: A light touch

An archway marks the entry to the kitchen; its width accommodates a good-sized serving counter and a cabinet with storage for both the kitchen and dining areas.  Photo by Rémi Carreiro

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When Picnic Design Inc. principal Eric Martin first saw this midtown semi, he knew it had all the familiar challenges of typical Old Toronto homes, stacked side by side on gridded streets and built by the truckload during the 1920s. 

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The owner, a professional with a little dog, is passionate about both art and books. Her wish list, Martin recalls, was mostly practical. Her main goal was to improve storage, which was close to non-existent in the old house; her cherished books were piled in spare nooks and crannies everywhere. She also hoped to brighten things up and add style to her bedroom, which had a low ceiling and, due to a west-facing window, serious heat gain in summer.  

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When it was first constructed, the house was even smaller, but a modest kitchen addition had since been built. However, it wasn’t in very good condition. In the end, Martin says, the decision was made to rebuild it in the same footprint, which solved problems on both the main and upper floors.  

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Removing walls at the front of the house and reworking the kitchen at the back created spaciousness. Photo by Rémi Carreiro

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The rethink began at the entry. A short wall separating the living room from the front hall was removed, opening up the area. Laying a new floor of smooth black subway tiles created the sense of a vestibule without the need for walls.  

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In the living room, Martin built a new closet between the front door and window, framing in a cozy window seat complete with storage drawers. The original staircase needed little more than a fresh coat of white paint, but a glass railing over the basement stairs helps maintain the open feeling. 

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Further in, he installed a long multipurpose built-in in the dining room at the centre of the house, which forms the outer wall of the powder room. Because of its dark wood facing, made of a sustainable thermo-fused laminate, it became informally known as the Black Strip. 

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The kitchen makes good use of limited space, and its simple blocks of colour provide an artistic flourish. Photo by  Rémi Carreiro

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The Black Strip breaks under a wide archway joining the original house with the kitchen addition and culminates a few feet before the back door with another small seat, tucked into the corner. Here, it conceals built-in appliances and a cleverly designed pullout wine drawer that stores bottles at the right angle for keeping corks moist and displaying labels.  

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Marking the transition from the dining room to the kitchen with a broad arch, Martin says, was an obvious architectural choice; it’s a prominent focal point and, at a good three feet wide, makes a graceful entryway to the addition.  

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An extended counter spans the dining room and kitchen; atop it, a deep cabinet faced in reeded white oak provides storage cabinetry on the dining room side and drawers on the kitchen side. 

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Installing a front closet and extending its frame to the far wall created a window seat that offers extra storage. Photo by Rémi Carreiro

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The kitchen, Martin says, riffs on the owner’s love for art. The layout uses blocks of colour to highlight different planes: terracotta tiles on the back wall, plain pale-grey upper cabinets, dark wood-grained lower cabinets. Overhead, open black metal shelves with clean black lines offer a perch for plants, objects and cookbooks without blocking the light. Combined with the sleek black stainless-steel range hood and a horizontal window over the sink, it has a distinctly Mondrian-esque look about it.