There was a well-worn house on Churchill. Previous owners subdivided it into apartments. Now, it has been given an “extreme makeover”.
The makeover kept and modernized most of the old elements. For example, the main floor walls were left in place rather than “opened up” to a loft style.
Typically for such old homes, the antiquated kitchens and baths are scarcely what would be found in decorator mags or HGTV shows today.
Kitchen:
So who lives there and how did I get in?
No one lives there. The house has been staged … selectively furnished with impact-full pieces of furniture and artwork. All the furnishings have some sort of WOW factor; the artwork coördinates from room to room. It becomes seductively easy to imagine yourself moving in … except my cheap furniture would look lost.
I know the renovator/decorators through one of those bizarre chain of events: my son’s girlfriends’ mother’s step-sister’s boyfriend’s … implausible but hey, so is life.
I couldn’t help but feeling the whole extreme makeover and big reveal was life imitating TV. Instead of Tony Falco or Sarah Richardson and her crew, we have the Ottawa edition. The renovation struck me as being as much about image and show as function. Mind, it does have to be marketed.
They gave the house a huge back deck, overlooking a very large back yard newly fenced:
Next: renovating the attic.
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They’ve done a nice job on the renos and I especially love the living room…great light, but the photos…some of the people look staged. Especially the ones sitting in the basement.
Really nice makeover. Only thing missing is a cigar room for Winston 😉
Chris; the photos are unstaged except to the degree that people freeze up if they see or sense me with a camera. The old photos and web page references (coming tomorrow) are much more professional.
I tried to get someone to model in the shower, but alas, I wasn’t persuasive enough.
I want to go to there.
It’s a fine looking house now (I pass by it frequently), but I’m not convinced they’ll get the price they’re asking. Churchill traffic can be very bothersome.