In the humorous 1970s song One Piece at a Time — performed by Johnny Cash and penned by Wayne Kemp — a frustrated line worker at General Motors decides the only way he'll ever get a Cadillac is by smuggling out individual pieces, one at a time, so he can build it himself. Problem is, it takes him more than 20 years and the result is a stylistic Frankenstein's monster on wheels.
To some home renovators, tackling their homes one room at a time, as they can afford it, may seem equally frustrating; if they succumb to the design trends of the day, that first room may not match the last by the time they're finished.
Jennifer Flores and Sean Stanwick must be headed down this road, since they clearly love today's look. As co-authors of Design City Toronto (John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2007), a coffee table book they've personally crammed with slick image after slick image of the most dazzling new architecture and interiors in town, and as new owners of a north Leaside home that they're renovating, slowly, there must be a car wreck of an interior waiting to happen in their own home in about 10 or 15 years. Right?
Well, no, since this dynamic duo of 40-year-old architect (him) and 37-year-old IT project manager (her) realize that taking one's time can also do the reverse; by living with the house for a little while, observing its bones, and really listening to it, what works — and what doesn't — will ultimately reveal itself. And what their sturdy, Big Band-era brick semi seems to crave is elegance, a touch of old-world formality and only the slightest hint of slickification.
To whit, just a little over a year after picking up the keys, only one room downstairs — the dining room — and one room upstairs — the "Ikea-hack" office — are complete. One other, the kitchen, is almost done.
Even so, the way these three complement and cling to the home's bones speaks quite loudly about the benefits of quietly listening. (Except for those first few weeks, when the sounds of a sea of Dynasty-era pink carpet being ripped up and acres of flowery wallpaper borders coming off echoed through the place.)
While the dining room was the first thing they tackled, they didn't go off all half-cocked and take down the wall between it and the galley kitchen, as some neighbours with similar floor plans predicted they would. No, they considered storage and decided they'd lose too much.
They also decided they liked the idea of a contained space dedicated to dining: "I've never owned rooms before," jokes Mr. Stanwick, who grew up in an open-concept, modernist one-storey Markham bungalow and then, as an adult, bought himself a condo without many walls either. "I like the formality of the room, too," Ms. Flores adds, who also came from a wide-open condo.
That formality has now been assisted by waist-high, glossy off-white wainscoting in an updated Shaker style that the couple made themselves using medium-density fibreboard and power tools they received a year ago as wedding presents. "One of my co-workers said, 'You know, I can't give you a router,' and I'm like, 'No, I want the router, I want the nail gun,'" Mr. Stanwick says, laughing. "So she said, 'Alright, listen, I'll give you the nail gun and a dish or a bowl or something; I can't have you driving nails and thinking of me all the time!'"
The choice for the room's striking wallpaper was made after a dozen samples were pinned to the wall. While modern in its boldness, perhaps, it's a floral that "sits somewhere between Asian contemporary and British colonial," wrote Ms. Flores when it first went up in her continuing houseblog, Ramblings of a Renovating Couple ( ramblingrenovators.blogspot.com ). It certainly works well with the plantation shutters they had installed on the window overlooking the backyard garden.
This window will also frame a breezy, whitewashed, plantation-meets-Annex porch, too, when they get around to redesigning what's there.
But that's just it. As with the kitchen — where Aya cabinets and creamy-rich marble countertops contrast with holes yawning for their appliances (until a radiator is removed temporarily from the foyer, they'll never make it past the front door) — they remain low-stress and unrushed, preferring to let inspiration strike on its own terms.
It helps, too, that when the time comes for the next project, they already know they work well together — then again, it'd be surprising if, after renovating and selling two condos, writing a book and planning the city's first "Pecha Kucha" event, they didn't have a well-honed reno rapport.
"He thinks about the finer details of how to put things together and what goes first, and I'm all about the pattern and how things look," explains Ms. Flores. "She's the designer, I'm just the architect," Mr. Stanwick retorts with a chuckle.
Next up, they say, is the living room. It's been liberated of its non-original, space-hogging, river-rock fireplace in the corner. (Along with a "pimple" — n odd bump on the wall above the fireplace covering a wayward vent.) A slimmer, sexier unit should be in place before the toques and mittens come out.
"A room at a time, we'll get there," Ms. Flores says with a laugh.
All in good time, and the results will be anything but a Johnny Cash Cadillac.
