A Family Affair- A Designer Reimagines Her Parents’ Condo

Hi, house and home. I'm Olivia Bottry of Dart Studio, and welcome to my parents' condo. They relocated from their lovely house, and I don't even know if I can use the term downsized, because it's a pretty big condo. They really wanted two bedrooms. They wanted, obviously, a bedroom for themselves, and a place for grandchildren to stay. Love that. Definitely encourage that for my own purposes. There have already been at least two sleepovers here. They really wanted a big kitchen. It's important to them. They cook a lot. They also wanted a dining room that could seat enough people. And what's wild about this condo is, I think the living room and dining room and kitchen are larger than in their previous home. This condo was built in the early 80s, and it was very dated. All the finishes were from that time. Actually, I think it was renovated again in the early 2000s, but not up to our standards for sure. And so we made some really big changes. Every surface in this entire condo was affected. My sister and I work together, as you probably know, and she does more of the business side, but in this project, because they were her parents, she also was involved in the project. And when we did the presentation in our office, which we always do for clients, we made a beautiful sign that said, welcome James and Maureen, with a picture of them that we put up on the screen in the conference room, which we thought was pretty entertaining. And then Jenna and I did the presentation together, which they just thought was funny. Between the kitchen and the dining room, there was a full wall. So it was a bit different, and the kitchen was a totally self-contained separate room. It was kind of its own space, so you could really hang out in this tiny little kitchen, which had no natural light, because it had no, or it had one little window. So we wanted to really open it up to the rest of the space. We were gonna have the stove on the peninsula, essentially because we thought for venting, that's where it needed to go. In this case, the previous renovation in the early 2000s, they had already moved the stove, and then we basically moved it back to where it was before. So we were very, very happy to end up with a completely clear peninsula, which we designed to essentially look like a piece of furniture, connecting the dining room with the kitchen. From the beginning, we knew we wanted the appliances to be panel ready. We knew that we wanted them to be really seamless and integrated with the kitchen, because the kitchen now has sight lines all the way through the dining room and also the living room. So we wanted to make sure that the kitchen really read as part of the rest of the finished space. We went with the Bosch 800 Series Induction Slide-In Range, and it was the perfect fit for this kitchen. Everyone is going induction. It's so much faster to boil water, it's super efficient, and also for a condo with venting that probably isn't going directly outside, it's gonna be your better bet. This is the Bosch Benchmark Integrated Fridge, and it was the perfect fit here. Super tall, which is great because the ceilings aren't very high, so it gives you a nice vertical line, and also great integrated storage for everything you need. The great thing about this fridge, it has dual compressors, which means there's one in the fridge and one in the freezer, which makes it a lot more accurate and prevents odor transfer. For the dishwasher, we went with the Bosch Benchmark Series. Again, the panel ready, which we love, integrates really nicely. Also, this is super quiet, which is fantastic for open concept spaces, so you don't hear the dishwasher running while you're sitting at the dining table. It's also got this beautiful light in the top, so you can see when you're putting stuff in, it just gives you better visibility inside the appliance. We love a microwave drawer. We use it in almost every kitchen. We went with the Bosch Microwave Drawer. We really wanted to integrate it into the peninsula and make it kind of hidden, so from the dining room and the living room area, you can't see it at all, but it's got this awesome control panel that folds down when you need it, but then looks really nice and sleek and clean when you don't need it. I find the microwave drawer really great for the way that we live now. We want the convenience of a microwave, but we don't want it to be in our faces. The original layout, there was actually a little space for the table at the end near the window. We didn't wanna have a little table there because we were taking down the wall and we knew that we were gonna have access to the dining room, so since we weren't using that for seating, we wanted to make it like an extension of the kitchen, so kind of this coffee bar area. We introduced this really special caramel tile, which we all fell in love with, and we wanted that to be a separate storage area, great for serving or even doing a bar if you're hosting, but really to make that as an extension of the kitchen, but still felt a little bit different. We fell in love with this amazing slab, but there was only one left, so we couldn't use it on all the counters and the back slab, so we chose to just use it in key areas, so it's on the countertop in the coffee station and then the whole back slab, so you really get it and it's a big focal point and it's what you see when you're sitting in the living room looking through into the kitchen and same from the dining room, but then we went with the Caesar stone on the countertops to complement it, but that would also add a bit of contrast with the darker color. We were trying to merge my parents' aesthetics, my dad's a little bit more clean and simple aesthetic and my mom who likes detail and interest and really a great starting point for us was this faucet. We knew from the beginning we wanted to use a bridge faucet and the polished nickel finish is one of my favorite finishes. We tried to find a happy medium with these inset cabinets, so we've got the detail of the inset, but then we have the clean look of the slab door and we went with this like mushroomy neutral tone, which complements the slab really nicely and then gave us opportunity to bring in other colors, but I love this like warm cozy neutral that feels really classic and timeless and really fit with the look they were going for. The original floors, there was hardwood in here that had been put in, I actually think pretty recently, like almost before they sold, but it was installed badly. There were gaps everywhere and we could see right away that it needed to go. We really wanted to create this like luxurious layered feel, so we went with herringbone throughout. We got this from Unique Parquet who has the most beautiful stains and it's a Canadian product, which is amazing and I also feel like the pattern of the herringbone feels really Parisian apartment, which my parents were into and we also kept going with that pattern floor and did pattern floor in the foyer and the hallway and also the other bathroom. So we have no plain floors in this whole condo, every floor has a bit of a pattern to it. We kept a lot of their furniture. This is their dining table and chairs from their old house. There's actually another leaf that goes in, it could be even longer and it fits. This room is enormous. This is a really big dining room. We knew that we wanted to introduce something in the dining room that was gonna feel special and different and really define this space and we found this mural from Philip Jeffries and it was their new collection, they came to show it to us and right away we were like, oh, this is it. It had all the colors of the slab that we were gonna use in the kitchen and really tied nicely into their caramel leather dining chairs that were already existing. So we showed it to them and immediately they loved it and they were like, let's do it. The chandelier came from their old house as well and there were very high ceilings and it worked really well in that space. We weren't sure that it was gonna work here mainly because we couldn't move the placement in the ceiling because this is a concrete ceiling so the box had to stay where it was but then when everything got installed, it ended up in the perfect location and we were standing at the kitchen island, you can see all the way clear through to the living room windows and it doesn't block you at all. The living room is so large. In this condo, it has three separate seating areas. It has a banquette seating area with a small table and then it has the living room with sofa and chairs and then it has another sunroom area where there's two comfy chairs and a side table. So they loved from the beginning that this living room felt really grand and frankly, it's larger than the one in their house which they really love. The view from the sunroom is amazing. You can see right down Jarvis right to the water which is really nice and they've been loving hanging out in all the different areas and having more space. The living room is a long, narrow space so we wanted to build out one wall and create a fireplace and create some storage on that side and then on the other wall, we were left with this really, really long wall that was gonna get divided into two seating groupings so we decided to add paneling, just applied molding on top of the drywall just to create a bit of interest and also to divide up the space a little bit. So there's art centered onto the panels over the banquette area and then art in the panels over the living room area. We wanted to introduce a fireplace. I love a fireplace myself. I think it adds so much warmth and I also think in our climate, it's really nice to have that cozy feeling at night so we knew in the living room, we wanted to create this focal point and we picked this beautiful electric insert that has this lovely cast iron detail surround and then we had a custom limestone facade made around that really just to give it a sense of timelessness and that it's always been here even though this was built in the 80s and it's all new. In their previous home, they had this huge bedroom with a vaulted ceiling and it was painted the same dark color which they really liked so we wanted to keep that nice cozy feeling but it's a really large room. We have two huge nightstands that are actually small dressers, a big king size bed and there's lots and lots of room in there so they love that it's a nice cozy space and really relaxing to go to bed in there but also feels very large. It's not a tight little condo bedroom that you see where the foot of the bed's touching the wall across from it. There's lots of space. This is the en suite. This is off of the principal bedroom and really we wanted to create a nice relaxing space that also had some interest and patterns. We carried the tile through from the front hall and used different shapes and added in the black to add a little contrast and this is also where we moved the laundry. Previously the laundry was in the kitchen in that little walk-in closet but we wanted it off of the en suite which makes things a lot more easy when you're doing your laundry. We went with the Bosch compact washer and dryer. The dryer, it's actually a heat pump system which is great for energy efficiency. It's also ventless so you don't have to worry about the venting issue in the condo. The washer also has auto-dose laundry detergent which is a great feature. You fill it up once and then each time you use it it automatically uses the center to determine how much detergent you need. So way less waste on detergent and honestly one less step when you're doing your laundry. Our parents don't like to have family photos out and we joke that it's personally offensive. They'd rather have nice art on the walls than photos of their children but in this house we do have a family photo wall in the hallway where no one can see it. I will say though the grandkids love looking at the pictures of themselves when they come over so it's nice for them. I wish I could say that this was the first time my parents have been my clients but it's not. They are mostly great clients. They trust us a lot so they really let us do what we think is best. I think there's benefits to working with family in that they trust you and they probably don't question your decisions as much but the downside is sometimes the people can be a little too comfortable and that can work both ways.