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When they bought this dated home, this West Vancouver couple had pretty clear ideas of how they wanted it to transform. “We really liked modern, and we’re an organized couple,” explains the husband. “We like everything completely organized without clutter.” But things change, he laughs. “Now we have four-month-old twins. We now have modern baby clutter.”
When the couple purchased it in 2005, the home was classic 1970s design. Piddling rooms carved up the main floor. The kitchen was a small galley and the only through access to the dining room. An elaborate garden, one that the previous owners had spent 25 years nurturing, was inaccessible from the house itself.
The couple brought on Nigel Parish of Splyce Design after falling in love with work he had done on a friends’ home. At the time, the couple shared the home with their three children. (That was before the twins.) Parish was charged with making the space open and livable for the family of five, along with the many friends and family they entertain.
And so down came the walls, but not without consideration for privacy and the changing needs of this family. Along the central axis of the house, Parish installed a series of sliding, warehouse-like panels that roll out to create privacy or tuck away to open the space.
In the main entranceway, at the side of the house, a quiet, comfortable family room is surrounded by a corner window. The room itself is updated with modern seating along the windows, its dated rock mantle re-clad in modern tile. A soft shag rug, one of many throughout the home, warms the dark porcelain tile floor. Here, the sliding door is a translucent polycarbonate, backlit from hallway lights for a soft glow at night.
Just around the corner, the living room-office-kitchen area at the front of the house is what the husband refers to as their “condo”: this is where you’ll find the family most nights, watching TV, cooking and working in the corner office nook. Here the sliding doors are laminated with practical metal sheets in funky red and silver. One side is great for posting notes, kids’ artwork and kitchen-related messages; on the other, the husband displays his digital photographs. “With so many windows, we’re limited with what we can display,” he says. “These walls are perfect for that.” Slid in front of the kitchen, they block out noise for the chef or a teen focused on homework, with the added bonus of hiding the meal prep mess from the other side during larger gatherings.
Two bedrooms—one now a dedicated nursery—are tucked off the main living area, with a bathroom shared between the two. And miraculously, Parish found the space to bring back a boldly tiled, hot-red powder room, eliminated from the plans years ago.
Upstairs, the master bedroom is a private retreat for the couple. (The older children have rooms in the walk-out basement, while the twins have their cribs in the main-floor nursery.) Lofted ceilings from the original roofline bring light deep into the room. The wall separating bed and spa bath drops down at the ceiling, opening up the space.
What started as an enclosed, cave-like home is now open, light and airy, forming a loop from the front entrance, through the quiet living area to the common area, kitchen and back to the front door again. So successful was the renovation that it netted a 2008 Award of Excellence from the Interior Designers Institute of British Columbia. It’s modern, but with two infants now in the house, the circular design has revealed an unexpected late-night bonus. Says the homeowner: “Now we use it for walking laps with the babies.”
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