SATURDAY,OCTOBER19,2019 | THEGLOBEANDMAILO PURSUITS| P7My heart beats faster when I hear the words “cookie cut-
ter” – except when they’re referring to a home and not
to the promise of buttery baked goods. But here’s the
delicious upside: With a new build, you don’t have to
tear down walls, replace the roof or reconfigure plumb-
ing. A blank canvas awaits and you can get to work cre-
ating your masterpiece instead of dealing with demo
dust.
You can’t turn a new build into Downton Abbey, but
it’s relatively easy to layer in some personality and pati-
na. A big part of having a home with character is the
inclusion of things that not only look good, but also feel
good to the touch.
Your first order of business is to remove any light-
weight hollow core doors. They’re unattractive and do
nothing to dampen sound. Replace them with solid
wood doors and, while you’re at it, invest in quality
doorknobs and hinges. Simple shapes in a warm metal
or an oil-rubbed bronze finish (which look black) are
timeless.
Staying with the theme of feel-good fixtures, consid-
er upgrading plastic switch plates and outlet covers with
metal. With these small changes, you’ve already raised
your home’s visual and tactile appeal before even filling
out your change of address.
Let’s move on to matters a little more decorative.
Millwork and moulding are your friends, deliveringinstant impact.
You could add applied trim panels to those doors you
just changed, or go big on the walls. Try rectangular pan-
els above a chair rail for a more formal look in a living or
dining room, or a square grid pattern with MDF strips –
often called applied box moulding – for a modern Shaker
vibe in a bedroom or bathroom.
Paint all applied trim to match the wall colour for the
most cohesive look. Installing crown moulding and
chunkier baseboards make a big difference, too.
Under no circumstances should you keep the builder’s
basic light fixtures. Instead, hunt for one-of-a-kind vin-
tage pendants, flush mount lights or chandeliers to in-
fuse each room with a wow factor. Better still, install a
ceiling medallion to highlight the light fixture – faux
plaster versions look like a million bucks when painted
to match the ceiling.
One last tip: We often focus on curb appeal, but why
should the exterior side of your front door get all the at-
tention? Paint the inside a bold, look-at-me colour.
There’s nothing cookie cutter about that.
–BETHHITCHCOCKSpecialtoTheGlobeandMailNeedsomeadviceabouthomedecoranddesign?Sendyour
[email protected].PERSONALDESIGNERHowcanIadd
charactertomy
boxynew-build
home?
S
ue McPhedran and her husband
bought their property on Skeleton
Lake near Huntsville, Ont., in 2004 be-
cause of the pristine water, rugged land-
scape and windswept pines. The cottage
that came with it all was a bit of an after-
thought.
“When you drove up the driveway and
slammed the car door, the windows
shook,” McPhedran says with a laugh. She
describes the 900-square-foot building,
which housed a remarkable four bed-
rooms, as “basically put together with duct
tape.”
Still, for all its tackiness – indeed, maybe
because of it – they loved it, and when they
finally tore it down in 2010 to get a little
more “elbow room,” they vowed the new
cottage would be as laid back and unpre-
tentious as the original.
“My decorating credo was simple: You
had to be able to sit anywhere in a wet
bathing suit,” says McPhedran, an artist
who has a workshop in the basement of
the new cottage and makes whimsical
woodcarvings, such as a bathing suit and
canoe. “Our cottage is full of sentimental
things, hand-me-downs or furniture I have
made or refinished,” she says. “Nothing
precious is allowed.”
Top of her wish list when they were
building was a Muskoka room – or
screened-in porch – something most cot-
tagers know is a necessity as soon as the
warm weather begins and the black flies
descend. “It immediately became our fam-
ily gathering place. It’s like it has a gravita-
tional pull,” she says, adding that sitting in
the cozy space surrounded by the woods
feels like being in a tree house.
“It’s where we do so many things. Weread. We visit. We play games. We have in-
formal meals, and when there’s too many
of us, we just grab more chairs and jam
ourselves in,” McPhedran explains. She
and her husband have two grown kids, one
in Toronto, the other in Calgary. “It’s also
where my girlfriends and I drink wine and
solve the world’s problems.”
With all the dark cedar, McPhedran says
red seemed a good colour to embolden the
room, and she uses it freely on chairs, side
tables, cushions, knickknacks (such as the
jam jars with candles) and the dome-
shaped ceiling fixture.
The furniture is a delightful mixture of
odds and sods. The wicker settee and cof-
fee table came from her favourite local an-
tique shop, Flying Star Antiques in Brace-
bridge, Ont. The coffee table was recycled
from their home in the city. McPhedran cut
off the legs and refinished it. Her dad made
the birch lamp out of a stump he found on
the family farm.
“The red-and-white quilt my grand-
mother made me,” McPhedran says, “and
the bowl on the coffee table came from
her, too. It was what her family used to
make butter in.”
Everything in this room, she adds,
means something, but by far the most pre-
cious keepsake is the cottage journal,
which she keeps in the butter bowl.
“If there was a fire, and I had to grab one
thing, that would be it. Everybody writes in
it when they come, and it contains all sorts
of magical memories from over the years,”
McPhedran says. “Every cottage has a per-
sonality. Ours reminds us that family,
friends, health and nature are the real gifts
of life. The real luxuries.”
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