Home restoration: A ship-shape lakeside reno - National Post
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When they bought their semi in the Upper Beaches, Rotem and Troy Lamsee had a mess to deal with caused by former occupants: A family of racoons had run rogue inside the house for years and it showed.
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"The roof was partially collapsed and there was water damage," Troy says. "It was dilapidated and unsellable. We couldn't even get traditional financing from the bank."
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The couple are accustomed to rehabilitating stinkers. They operate Ace of Space Interiors, a design-build studio in Toronto. Rotem is a designer and Troy is a builder.
This past April, the crackerjack pair beat out three contractor-designer duos on Renovation Resort, a competitive HGTV Canada show streaming on StackTV that tasks teams with building the best vacation rental cabin. As victors, the couple won $100,000 and bragging rights for a cozy cabin filled with custom arches, a mint green kitchen and densely layered decor.
That same pep runs through their Upper Beaches house. Gutted down to the studs and reframed over six months, the three-storey brick pile is 1,200 square feet above grade but reads much larger.
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"That has to do with space planning and the built-in features," Rotem says. "All the storage is tucked away on the exterior walls. We even managed to get a powder room on the main floor."
There are four bathrooms in total, and several more clever cheats.
In the galley-style kitchen, built by Vaughan-based Kitchen Pro, Rotem shaved off a few inches from the pantry so it's slimmer than the traditional depth.
"I couldn't accommodate an island you can sit at, and storage is more important, so I did a full wall of storage," Rotem says. "It's about 12 to 13 inches deep to keep it useful."
While it's utilitarian, it's style comes from wood-lined display niches for wine bottles, cookbooks and such, and ring-pull hardware that feels lifted from a boat.
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The adjacent living room has its own attitude. Composed of vintage and new elements, it too showcases storage smarts.
"We cut out a niche for the TV and put in an old piece of teak furniture underneath it," Troy says. "We removed the legs and built it in the wall, so it doesn't have to stand in the room." Because it's flush to the wall, it doesn't eat up space.
All of the HVAC components are tucked inside that wall, which is much more pleasing to the eye than bulkheads. Each bedroom, meanwhile, sports hotel-like built-ins, including a cute bedside nook in place of a side table in the principal bedroom. The intentional design proves it pays to splash out on custom millwork, especially when space is an issue. (Props also to the integrated floor registers in the engineered white-oak floors throughout the home in place of metal vents.)
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"When building from scratch, little details really matter," Rotem says. "In the principal bedroom, the only way to get his-and-hers closets and a king-size bed was to do built-ins."
As for the palette, Rotem devised a coastal scheme as a nod to nearby Lake Ontario and the house's leafy exterior. "The thing that drew us was the potential on the third floor for a rooftop deck overlooking the lake," Troy says. "The foliage is amazing. We have this massive old oak tree that hangs over the yard like a canopy in the Amazon."
Hopefully, the racoons don't climb up it to find a way back into the house. If they do, they'll hardly recognize it.
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Home restoration: A ship-shape lakeside reno - National Post
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