A 38-acre Elora home of play and pleasure

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7679 6th Line, Elora, Ont.

Asking price: $4.5-million

Taxes: $11,241.59 (2023)

Lot size: 38 acres

Listing agent: Andra Arnold, broker, Royal LePage Royal City Realty

The backstory

There are many notable design features in the custom-built home outside Guelph, Ont., which its owners call Ash and Thorn Farm. But no matter how old you are, the key talking point is often the bright yellow slide in the middle of the house that spirals from the ground level down to the basement.

“The only person who doesn’t use the slide is my husband,” said Cynthia Waldow, who wanted the slide for her three young children when the project began building almost 10 years ago. “They have definitely not outgrown it; my son, he’s 15, and he’s still up and down the slide every day.”

This home was Ms. Waldow and husband Mike Bonneveld’s first from-scratch project, though they’ve renovated a few times before and are in the middle of a new renovation project for their next house.

“In all of our other projects, I wasn’t as involved as I was with this one,” she said. The family moved into a two-bedroom granny flat above a garage on the property, spending about 18 months living there during construction. With construction of the house completed, work to improve the rest of the 38-acre property began.

“It was very overgrown when we bought it … and there was a ton of ash trees, and a ton of hawthorns,” (hence the name of the property). “It has been cut back so you can actually see the property again.”

In the years since they’ve added a 40- by 20-foot pool and a cabana complete with bathroom/change room and outdoor kitchen (the whole thing looks like a mix between a mid-century modern gas station and a rooftop lounge). To the existing dressage barn and stable they’ve added a heated “man toy garage” that fits four cars, and on the opposite end a “party barn” with a 26-foot bar and pool table. There is also a cleared trail through the woods and three fenced-in fields covering six acres for the horses.

“We don’t keep any horses. We have a neighbour down the road who runs an equine therapy program out of the stable,” she said. The program has run for about five years. In addition to keeping the horse barn heated and maintained, Ms. Waldow liked the idea of sharing her lands. “We wanted people to be able to use the farm, we wanted to feel like it wasn’t just a place we retreated to and no one ever got to see.”

The house today

Up the laneway the first thing you encounter are the red-roofed barns and stables on the left, with a turnaround just before the road forks at the granny flat/garage building. To the right, past some landscaping, is the main house.

On approach, it doesn’t look like a huge house, intentionally so. A driveway sweeps to the right of the front entrance to the two-car garage clad in black metal, but the main entry point (past an old tire swing) feels very “modern farmhouse” with a jutting rectangular shade above the front door that’s lined with barnboard to compliment the tan stone cladding around the doorway that blends back into cabinlike wood siding that extends around the single-storey house. A ground-level porch/patio extends around the corner to the left, and if followed it will wrap all the way around to the rear.

The foyer is generous with seating, storage and hooks for kiddos and guests to dump outdoor gear. A central hallway extends at a 90-degree angle from the foyer: To the left is a step-down into a living area, with polished concrete floors, vaulted ceilings and an acid-etched steel fireplace mantle that extends halfway up the peaked wall.

To the right is the entrance into the kitchen, which extends across the back of this wing of the house, which is defined by a long window looking onto the new pool deck. This space has pale wide-plank wood floors, and the kitchen is separated from the open space by a long black-granite island countertop big enough to be its own continent. Bright school-bus yellow backsplash and metal bar stools complement the slide, which is just off the side of the dining area opposite a circular window cut into the back of the patio entrance.

Behind the slide/stairs is a large triangular tiled mud room that connects the side door and garage with a laundry room, an office space, a bathroom with shower and a butler’s pantry in the hall that heads back to the living spaces.

This space marks the end of the more public wings of the home, and around another hard corner the bedrooms spread out.

There are four bedrooms on this wing, each with an ensuite bath, as well as a library or study space. The primary suite is roughly the same scale as the main living room, with windows on two walls looking into the rear of the grounds.

Down the slide to the extra-tall basement is a playground for adults and children: from the Harry Potter-inspired hallway outside a huge in-home movie theatre; to a climbing wall and rec room complete with full wet bar; to the personal gym and fitness studio. There’s even a cozy quiet corner next to the copper-clad gas fireplace that looks perfect for high tea or meditation.

The hinge

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Sometimes when you build a new house you realize after living in it there’s things you’d like to have done differently. Not so here.

“It was exactly as I had hoped it would be, I left it pretty much as it was,” said Ms. Waldow.

If there’s a theme to the home, it starts with the mud room which serves as a hinge-point in the house’s floor plan, beyond which a second family space opens up. That sense of discovery when the house keeps going is a feeling she tried to incorporate in smaller ways elsewhere.

“Maybe because the house we had before this was one large open space it never felt like you could escape the other people in your life. I like to be able to go someplace where I’m not going to hear them calling for me,” she said. And what’s good for the goose is good for the goslings: “It’s been helpful for the kids in hiding from me, my son spends his extra time in the [soundproofed] movie room, where you absolutely can’t hear anyone calling you.”