Keys to a house restoration

Century-old High Park home in Toronto re-creates original period style

Step into Michele Woodey's home and you feel as if you've entered a bygone era of Toronto. Michele and her husband Daniel Schembri were so intrigued by the history of their High Park home when they purchased it 10 years ago, they decided to restore the house to how it may have originally appeared almost a century ago.
The Queen Anne style bungalow, with its distinctive mansard roof, was built in 1916 for a head physician at nearby St. Joseph's Hospital. The house was designed in the then-popular Arts and Crafts style, which grew out of a 19th century English movement against both the blunt efficiency of the Industrial Revolution and the perceived fussiness of Victorian style. An American Arts and Crafts sensibility soon developed and initially characterized work by legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whose design sense provided inspiration for Michele and Daniel in their High Park dream home.
The couple are only the fourth owners of the house in its long history. It had been a rooming house prior to their purchase and this left the layout in something of a mish-mash. Michele and Daniel's present kitchen, for example, had been a hallway, bathroom, and kitchen in the old rooming house set-up. Original elements had been neglected. The couple restored two sliding pocket doors which hadn't been used for years. One had been hidden behind drywall and another had been abandoned in the basement.
In the main floor living room, Michele and Daniel re-created the original baseboard and positioned four corner ceiling lights to replicate a popular lighting configuration from the original Arts and Crafts era. While many elements of the house have survived the years, including the original brick façade, a brick fireplace and interior treatments, the couple returned English oak panelling which had been removed from the original design. Daniel, a civil engineer and ever the perfectionist, even sourced replicas of the original brass push-button switchplates. Dimmable lighting throughout the home creates the warm glow which was present in the first Arts and Crafts house designs. Daniel also designed an oak arch leading to the home's front door. The arch suggests a Japanese influence, a quality also found in many Arts and Crafts homes of the period.
Michele and Daniel didn't restrict themselves to an American Arts and Crafts look where it may have seemed forced. A main floor breakfast nook, between the dining room and the kitchen, is styled with a 1920s European flavour. The small room is painted a combination of blue/green robin's egg with a cream trim. The kitchen is quite modern in comparison to other rooms though the couple took care to ensure the contrast was not too pronounced. "I didn't want the kitchen to be so modern that it stuck out from the rest of the house," Michele says. "It's a transition between two eras."
Although counter tops and a range hood are stainless steel, the room's pale lemon colour, including maple cupboards with rippled glass windows, suggest a quality consistent with the modest Arts and Crafts ethos.
Michele has a natural interest in vintage furnishings. Her father was an antique dealer when she was growing up in her native Southend-on-Sea, England. After art school, she also worked in the English antiques trade before settling in Toronto and practising professional interior design. Michele now focuses on work as a fine artist. Two new display cases in the High Park home, one on the main floor and one upstairs, provide space for showcasing artistic works.
The couple spent the past year completing a renovation of the basement and next up is a re-design of the second storey. An iron deck and a walled garden with a small waterfall on the west exterior of the house are also planned. In the kitchen, the granite floor has five small marble inlays inscribed with the words faith, love, passion, grace and truth. "You need all of those if you're going to restore an old house," Michele says with a smile.

Publication Date: 2002-05-26
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=1363