We are in too much of a hurry. We buy houses with practically no money down and we renovate them the instant we move in — sometimes before. We tear out original crown moulding in century-old homes or we add it to 50-year-old suburban ranch-style houses where it doesn't belong. We all have succumbed to peer pressure and shoehorned identical stainless-steel and granite kitchens into spaces where they might not necessarily belong.
It doesn't have to be that way.
Apply Carlo Petrini's "slow food" philosophy to the real estate portion of your life. Live in your new house for a while; in time, it'll reveal what's needed and, more important, what's right.
Forty-something couple Ara, a lawyer, and Anaïs, an architect/educator, are doing exactly that. They've been in their Mississauga home for more than two years, but to some, it may look like they moved in the day before yesterday. Flooring consists of old linoleum in some rooms, and raw plywood in others where carpet was taken up. The dining room has one of those tired, fake Tiffany fixtures overhead, and much of the rest of the lighting is dated. In the kitchen, an old air conditioner clings to the wall and, save for the new refrigerator, the room seems remarkably untouched by time. The wallpaper throughout is the frightening height of mid-1970s fashion.
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Anaïs says that, because it wasn't a turnkey kind of place, no less than 60 people turned on their heels and walked out of the post-and-beam, California-style home — known affectionately in mid-century modern circles as a 'Likler' for its resemblance to homes built by American West Coast developer Joseph Eichler. The property, she adds, was advertised as "an ideal lot for a new custom home," but it sat for months.
"I couldn't get it out of my mind," Anaïs says of the days after their first viewing. "I thought, 'It's a pavilion in the woods.' " It also was unrenovated, which was, ironically, another of the couple's requirements. (Funnily enough, during a drive with their agent after a deal for a nearby home had fallen through, they'd pointed to their future home as an example of what they wanted — before it had been listed.)
Another reason the couple purchased the house — the one that's so obvious they don't think to mention it right away — is that they know slow. You might say they're practitioners of the as-yet-unknown slow-home movement. For instance, while they don't love the floors in their present condition, they're saving for a "continuous floor" of terrazzo.
"I hate this fixture," chuckles Anaïs as she points to the offending Tiffany, which would look more at home in Ye Olde Ice Cream Shoppe than a modernist home. "But, you know what? It's there until we replace it with something. I'd like to get that Moooi 'dandelion' lamp," she muses.
The copper-coloured wallpaper in the small family room off the kitchen almost bit the dust, but now is enjoying a reprieve. "My vision was, being an architect, I wanted all white …," she says. "… And I loved it," Ara interjects. "There's something about copper, and now she's so happy that I talked her out of it."
The jury's still out on the wallpaper in the living room, but the red and black flocked stuff in the master bedroom has actually paid a few bills: It was featured in a Bacardi ad campaign. "When I first saw the house, I immediately recognized the potential for film," Anaïs offers matter of factly.
In fact, the entire house was commandeered for more than a week in 2006 for The Company, a CIA-themed mini-series starring Chris O'Donnell, and many of the production's twentysomethings were impressed by the home's clean, modernist lines.
"That says something for the upcoming generation," Anaïs says; "when they're 35, 40, then they're going to want it."
Let's hope so, since homes such as this one — designed for a Texas family by local architect Donald E. Skinner in 1963 and built the following year — are rare in the Greater Toronto Area and becoming rarer as original owners downsize and overzealous developers build McMansions in their place.
The couple is taking it slow with regards to furniture also. Eschewing iconic pieces from Knoll and Herman Miller, they have collected a hodgepodge of hand-me-downs from Ara's parents, estate sales, closeout sales at retail stores (and the demolished Inn on the Park), and even things left behind by previous owners.
"I didn't want [the house] to be a period piece," Anaïs says. "What we have is basically what we brought."
Again, they believe that by living with their things for a while, a sort of furniture "survival of the fittest" will take hold — call it "decorating with Darwin."
One thing they have hurried, however, is picking a name for their place: "We thought of names like 'Holiday house' because people who come here feel very relaxed," Ara says, "but I think I might go with 'Pavilion in the woods.' "
Better yet, how about the "Slow house"?
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