69she eventually bought in West Queen West,
the place was in rough shape. “It was as
though Wes Anderson redirected Grey
Gardens in the Haunted Mansion at
Disneyland,” she says. The heritage-listed
Victorian had been given over to the
raccoons for years, then a false start by a developer left a disjointed
jumble of stray Ikea kitchens and crumbling walls.
For Bonas, after two years of losing bidding wars, a massive
overhaul was better than staying in a too-small laneway house with
her seven-year-old son, Lennox. “I was committed to a full gut,” she
says, standing in her now exquisitely remodelled ground floor – an
open-plan, maple-and-brick-lined space where a living–dining area
can easily be reconfigured into a photography studio. The kitchen,
across from her office, is bathed in light, ideal for filming cooking
and nutritional videos for children at a graphite marble island (her
son has type 1 diabetes, so she’s working on a series showcasing
low-carb recipes).
Bonas hired StudioAC on the advice of contractor James
Aikenhead of Whitaker Construction, which specializes in
contemporary builds. “When I saw a photo of StudioAC’s Richview
kitchen, I was like, ‘Oh, those are the designers for me,’ ” she says.
The studio recently won the Design Exchange’s prestigious Emerging
Designer Award, in part for its miraculous ability to convert smallWhen photographer
Stephanie Bonas first
laid eyes on the semi
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