Part 2: The Urban Farmhouse
Owners: Stephanie Domet, author/broadcaster, and Kevan
Corbett, musician
Compromise equals style success with this energetic couple, whose
kitchen is well known to many musicians and writers who have filled
their home with song and words.
Kevan likes minimalism and mid-century design from the 1950s.
Stephanie loves mid-century too, but the 1850s, and is a self-professed
collector who haunts Agricola antique shops. But both ascribe to the
same design philosophy: “What do we have, what can we find, what can we
use that isn’t some shitty thing from Home Depot,'” laughs
Stephanie.
Stephanie moved into her house in August 2001. This kitchen was a
bedroom and a bathroom. They ripped down walls and put down a pine
plank floor (1). Time spent at Maritime Demolition was rewarded
with the discovery of a cast-iron sink (2). Holes punched out on
either side of the living room-facing fireplace provide space for
passing “drinks, food, conversation, music and the like,” says Kevan.
Cupboards were gleefully ripped out and replaced with salvaged wood
shelves. Ikea kitchen carts (3), used as an island, blend
seamlessly. A Lee Valley workbench fits snugly atop a low-riding pastry
table, providing more workspace beside the stove, while a hoosier flour
cabinet (4)—a sweet deal purchased on St. Margarets Bay
Road—provides more storage space for dry goods.
Drawn to shapes and colours, Stephanie’s collection of eggcups is
organized in an open wooden shelf, originally constructed by her father
for cassette tapes. Glass cake trays (5) and a stack of precious
reproduction milky-green Jadite plates (6) sit prettily on a corner
cabinet (7), which Kevan purchased from the set of the Alicia
Silverstone movie, Candles on Bay Street, for Stephanie’s
birthday.
Although conventional real estate thinking is that you add
bathrooms, not take them away, Domet looks around the warm kitchen and
says: “I wasn’t thinking about resale, I was thinking about living in
it.”
This article appears in Apr 16-22, 2009.