A Country Farmhouse Renovation Jumpstarts A New Way Of Life

I started the first half of my life in those glass office towers in downtown Toronto. It was something that was taught to me by my late father that you wanted to get into financial services, it's sort of where the money was at, you'll be successful that way, but something didn't feel quite right. I was always wanting to spend time in nature, I was happiest in a cedar strip canoe in Algonquin Park, and for me it was sort of a little bit confronting. I felt like things are going really well but I feel like I really want chickens and I want bees and how do I reconcile these two very polar opposite worlds. I went on an interesting journey which was okay like what could I do if it's not Bay Street, if it's not financial services, I wonder if there's anything I can do that's more nature-based that doesn't exploit nature, that works in harmony and synchronicity with nature, but allows me to put some food on the table and still support myself. And because I wanted to be a beekeeper, I decided to explore the beekeeping industry. And as a little girl, I actually wanted to be a veterinarian, so I feel like in many ways I'm coming home to what I really was meant to do. Mulmer and some of the beautiful townships north of Toronto, they are situated for the most part in the Niagara Escarpment Commission, which is this stunning geological formation that runs from Niagara Falls to Tobermory. Some of the most breathtaking scenery, it's unbelievable and what's equally unbelievable is that so few people from the city really know about these sort of hidden pockets. So in 2014, at the end of the summer, we set out to find our dream country property. We had some criteria that we wanted and we found this place. And one thing we noticed was that it had been sitting on the market for about seven or eight months. We had heard from the agent that the sellers were getting a little bit anxious because country properties don't typically move in the wintertime. So we quickly made an offer and we were able to get 31 beautiful acres in the hills of Mulmer for $740,000. So this is a reproduction farmhouse. The previous owners studied the architecture of the homes that really dominated this landscape 150 years ago and built this 30 years ago. Our agent described it as a project. We didn't quite see it as a project. The bones of the home were absolutely stunning and on point. It needed work, so there were some pretty big things that needed to be addressed right away. But for the most part, we were able to move in and enjoy it and just live with the space, get comfortable with the space, see how we use the land and the buildings before we embarked on this big renovation journey, which happened over the last two years. Right before COVID, my partner was diagnosed with cancer and our world went into a pretty big tailspin. I think everybody's dead with COVID. We had some extra serious challenges, one of which was, okay, we've got the contractors booked. We've got all this sort of laid out. Now what do we do? I knew Jeff was going to need a lot of support. My role was going to change to being a caregiver. And Jeff and I had a talk just before he went into surgery and I said, what do we do about these renovations? And he said, it makes you so happy. It's going to be the greatest thing to heal you through this really difficult journey. And so he gave me the sort of green light to go ahead and renovate. And I can tell you that the renovation was so healing for me. And every day I got to bask in this delicious world of design. I am not a designer, but one thing that I love doing, I love building, I love creating, and I in particular love creating beautiful things. The original kitchen was stunning. They actually used Paris kitchen, which still exists today. The bones of the kitchen were beautiful, but unfortunately the wood after 30 plus years was all cracking, warping. We were actually initially just going to spray them out and put some new hardware. But like many renovation projects, once you dip your toe in the water, you're like in full deep end. And that was us. We renovated the whole kitchen using the existing wall space. And in fact, we really used the existing design that was done 30 years ago. It worked so beautifully. We changed the size of the island. The seating was awkward before. So we reoriented where the seating was to allow for more seating at the island. I guess the biggest change with the kitchen and the thing I'm really proud of. The home initially ended at these two openings and there was an exterior porch. The previous homeowner closed it in and sort of made it a three season porch. We decided to winterize it. We tried so hard to use this space because it's so beautiful. It's got all these windows that look into the forest. In the winter you wake up and the deer all sleep out here. You just see it's just, it's magical. We put in heated floors. So we crank it in the winter time. I love having warm feet and it is just a sacred space right off the kitchen. We call it the Zen Den. When you walk into the mudroom, this was initially a really dark sort of cave-like place. It didn't feel like reflective of me being sort of light and airy and open. So we popped in a new window in the mudroom. There was this big sink and it just ended up like just full of stuff. It was just, we didn't need a sink in the mudroom. So we decided to clear that all out and we did a long bank of cabinets down the whole hallway. It's all about storage for me and concealed storage. So we love having lots of places to hide things. Coming out of the mudroom, if you hang right, you'll get to our living room, which is a bit on the smaller side. But we actually love that this home isn't open concept and there's a really important reason why. We heat all winter long with wood and there's something really magical when you look at the sun's energy that has gone into raising that tree from a little acorn into a majestic sprawling tree and then we get to burn the wood from that tree and all that sun's energy is released to heat us. So it's a lot of work but not having a big open concept home in the country means we can close off rooms that we don't necessarily use. You're such a heavy. I was born in the 60s. Summer of 69. Woodstock happened. Anyway, sorry. So in keeping with the original sort of farmhouse style, there was a separate dining room that was sort of, you had to kind of go through some hallways and we're not that formal and quite frankly, I didn't want to carry platters of food and a big turkey into that room. I mean, forget about it. Too much work. So I converted this stunning room which has views to the east and the south into my office. It's a little bit of a departure from farmhouse country. It's all black and white but it's a beautiful palette for me to create and work and run our beekeeping company. All right, so then we head upstairs and in keeping with the sort of century Ontario farmhouse, the staircase is in the center. Takes you up to the second floor. We have four bedrooms upstairs. They're all like bright with windows and there really wasn't much we changed. We did redo the two bathrooms upstairs. I got some advice when I was younger from my late father who told me when I was starting out in business, you can wear a cheap black suit but make sure you have a good quality watch and make sure you have really nice footwear and make sure your shoes are always polished. Okay, why is this important and why am I sharing this with you? I use that principle in how I design these spaces. I splurged in areas and really cut corners or upcycled. So for example, my dining room chairs, I got from the restore. They were five dollars each. They're comfortable, they're gorgeous, they're commercial grade and when I flip them over after I had chipped the gum off the bottom, the date, they were two years new. So I love being able to mix and match things that you find that are secondhand. I love max sold. I love max sold. I call it crack sold but it's addictive but I love buying stuff upcycling and then interspersing it with little luxuries. I'm just going to get some scratch. This is what they're after. This is called scratch. It's like red wine for wine lovers. It's like European chocolate for chocolate lovers. This is the epic thing that all chickens want. It's chicken crack. So to give some context, this coop is over the top. It doesn't need to be this big. This building was already here. In fact, when the main residence was being built, the homeowners lived in here for nine months. They actually managed to get a kitchen in here and a futon. We didn't know what to do with the building. It was a bit of an ugly duckling. It had a garage door that didn't work. So we built those barn doors. We actually used windows from the original century barn that was here and this became the coop mahal. So come on. Well, we call it the eggplant but it's like it's our gorgeous chicken coop. Our chickens are totally living the bougie life. We even have a cupola on top of the chicken coop which we took off our home in the city. We brought it up here. So these birds are living a good life. Hello girls and Rex. All right. Why do I have chickens? First of all, it's just sh** and giggles. I mean these things have personalities. There's the nasty girls. There's the besties. I don't know. I've never seen anything like it. We call it chicken TV. If I'm having a bad day, I park myself and I watch these girls. It's comical. But more importantly, it's food. So these are all egg layers. They're all females except for that handsome boy there, Rex, who is a male. He normally isn't this piggy. He's usually quite a gentleman and allows his women to eat first. This is Betty White but I often think she should be called Carrara for Carrara marble. Those are cochins. Yeah, they're my favorite. But these are all heritage breeds. Usually egg layers are not the same birds we eat although there are some chickens called dual breeds. So most of these are egg layers and they bring me so much joy and happiness. I feel like my role in this is to provide a really lovely life for them and in exchange they provide us food. I mean it's just a beautiful symbiotic relationship. So when we bought this country property, there was this absolutely massive garage. In fact, for me, it just felt like it kind of dominated the land. It actually has a bigger footprint than our residence. And so above the garage was this interesting space. There wasn't even stairs up to the second story, just studs and a metal roof. So there was no insulation. I would take a ladder with Jeff and we would come up here and try to figure out how would we use this space. And until we could answer that question, for us it just didn't make sense to spend the amount of money that we knew it would cost to do a full renovation. And all of a sudden I had this like light bulb moment. I wondered if we could pop a dormer or two and re-engineer the roof. And that was the game changer. I think one thing that I've observed that I find quite interesting about Western society, we don't live in multi-generational units. It's fascinating when you travel to other parts of the world and you see this beautiful dynamic. I'm sure it's not always pretty and perfect, but there's so much value and benefit to all generations of living together. So when we were imagining this space with the number of kids we have, and just as us getting older, we thought we can create a beautiful space that either we live in or maybe our kids live in. I wanted it to be something that felt right, felt comfortable, had all the right finishings. Some people thought we were crazy putting, you know, a lovely kitchen in a second story above essentially a garage. But for us, we kept going back again to that multi-generational thing. My goal is that I live in here when I'm older. Perhaps the kids live in the main home and I'll be traveling in Thailand or mountain biking in Patagonia or whatever. So to connect that to why do we have it as an Airbnb right now, well we still have kids in school and they're not really launched yet. So for the time being, we thought let's rent it out and it's been the most amazing experience meeting wonderful people and people who really appreciate this space, which does feel like home. Without the dormers, we would have only had about 600 square feet, but the dormers let us go right almost to that full thousand square feet. For sure it needed to be two bedrooms, so either, you know, an office or children, whatever. So two bedrooms. It had to have a bathroom. Our bylaws required that there was laundry facilities in here and I wanted a super cozy living room, dining room, and then as big a kitchen as I could squeeze into this space, which I think I kind of hit out of the park. Because I had the experience of the extreme sort of black and white look, I actually went with a slightly different color here. I did do the island dark in the main kitchen and as soon as I saw it all come together, I'm like, oh yeah baby, we're going dark and badass up in the loft. And a lot of people said I was nuts doing dark. It's already a small space with angular roof lines, but I went for it. I went with the light upper, so it bounced the light around, but the connecting sort of glue or silver lining that sort of ties it all in together is this sort of lighter wood. So I really brought in a lot of those wood accents, which I think is a nice bridge between the black and the white. I love shiplap, so I did as much shiplap as I could in the spaces. Because of the orientation to our main residence, I wanted to make sure that when people were in this space, that the focus was away. They weren't constantly staring at the other building. So a lot of thought went into how can I make sure that more of the sight lines are the opposite direction. What was critical for me in this design was that the bedrooms were far away, both from our main home, but also from the main living space. So you could be whipping up a big feast in the kitchen here and somebody, you could tuck the kids in or you could go have a nap and have that physical separation. I'm all about energy in spaces and that was something that was really important to me. So part of the vision was if we could create a business in the beekeeping world, we could work seasonally really, really hard and then take winters off and travel in our adorable little hippie bus. So that was sort of the start of us both pivoting our careers and that's also what brought us to Malmö. Honey, I'm home! Miles of smiles! So welcome to our 1976 Westy that we affectionately call Marigold. We bought her in California. We are the second owners again of this iconic piece of automotive history. We treat her with kid gloves, although we do camp in her, so she's not just a Sunday driver. We actually have done some pretty epic road trips throughout North America and Mexico. So this is the original interior, the awesome 70s plaid. This is the second generation of camper vans within what's called the bay window. So these first came out I believe in 68 or 69 and it has everything you need for basic living. Some people stick with their bus and we collect patches. So these are some of the places that this bus has traveled throughout North America. Some of my favorites were going down Baja from San Diego. We did Coachella twice. Yes, Coachella is worth every penny. And yeah, we've seen lots of amazing parts of North America. We sleep up there. Like this, we can go anywhere. This is like a billy goat. Like she'll climb mountains. If I could talk to my younger self, I would have said, pick your corporate pathway, earn a little bit of money, try to tuck some away, but really learn to do more with less. I think that for me being raised where having more was synonymous with success, it doesn't necessarily lead to happiness. I wish I had pulled the plug from the city a lot earlier. I think if I could do it again, I would have moved to the country a lot sooner and had that deep connection to the land, keep my home with wood, collect farm fresh eggs. And by the way, it's a lot of work. I mean, there's a romantic notion about living in the country that, oh, I get to commune with my bees and sort of collect my eggs with my beautiful black mesh wire basket. But it's a lot of work. I do believe humans are meant to move our bodies, not just sit at computers. I know the world is changing immensely, but it's my wish that more people could go back to the land, whether it's walking in the forest, having a chance to connect with chickens or just doing more with less.