A Designer’s West Coast Bungalow Gets A Soulful Makeover

Hi House and Home, I'm Rosie Dakin of Roseanne Dakin Creative Works. Welcome to my home here in Vancouver. We're on the west side and this is a funny little pocket. It's not really Dunbar, it's not Carrisdale, it's kind of well known. We're right in the middle, which is kind of funny because we're in the city. But this is the way the city breaks up. The house is a fifties, I want to say rancher. I was on a hunt for a very specific kind of house. And I had this idea that I wanted much more sort of contemporary living, indoor, outdoor, one level. So the house had everything that I wanted from a foundational standpoint. So we went in and we renovated it just as I had sort of desired in a more contemporary way. Over the years we have slowly dialed that back to become a bit more traditional. But it is that, it is a fifties rancher, which for my husband and I, my daughter's obviously moved out. And it's kind of perfect for Paul and I. It's everything we'd want in a condo, but in a home. And then with the yard space, which is great because I like to garden. The house as you see it, the front of the house is just one big open space. But when we bought the house, it wasn't. I mean, there was very much an enclosed kitchen. And the rooms were broken up, but we took it all out. Put in a very long, expensive beam and turned it into this. The biggest changes we made in the house were obviously taking out these walls at the front. And then opening up the front of the house to the courtyard that I created. So the front door was always on the side of the house. But the windows were not opaque. That particular sight line is like, that's where the carport is. But, well, I don't want to look at that all day. So, hence the etching of the glass. But it's nice because I really like the way the vines that grow up through the summer months, through the opaque glass, the pattern they make and stuff, I think it's quite intriguing. We do all of our living pretty much in this space. The kitchen, dining room, living room, and then I've broken off a little area. Paul does his crossword and reads the newspaper here, but giving us a den in the living room. But it's nice and it works great for entertaining this big open space. For intimate gatherings, but for large ones too. And especially through the warmer months because we had the ability, having put in these big sliding doors, it extends our living space by that much. So when we're having summer parties in that week and open these up, indoor, outdoor, it works really nicely. Thanks for watching. This house tour is presented by Scotty's Supreme. Can a tissue box really be a decorating accessory? Yes it can, when it's from the House and Home Designer Series of Scotty's Supreme. The front courtyard, we've got a dining table and then we have our living room-y kind of seating area. And the water feature I did originally because we're close to a busier street and I was worried about noise pollution and I thought, okay, this will drown out anything. And it's also just a lovely noise. But I've kind of broken up the outdoor space on the front. It's not so much about the actual design, like the living room, dining kind of, but more about the garden spaces. Like creating, for me it's about a walk through the garden. We also have the built-in barbecue out there too. So yeah, it's very, very usable. And it's a nice viewpoint. I've actually now renovated this kitchen. Big renovation once, facelift twice. So when I first did the house in 2006, I had redone the kitchen at that point with a painted cabinetry and put in the open shelving and that. And then just two years ago, I did it one more time. And that island, it just felt of a time. So I had those gables removed and tried to turn it into something that looked a bit more furniture-like. And then the painted, changing up the colours, softening it. I do like pattern and I do like colour. I'm more subdued, I'm not a primary colour kind of gal. So in that sense, I think people quite often think, oh, this feels more English. Aesthetically, I think it's wonderful. And that part of that relates to the garden. And I really wanted, given the size of the house, for it to be a really cohesive space. The garden is a part of that. And the style of garden that I like, which is a much more sort of cottage garden, English-inspired, it carries on through. It all sort of makes sense to me as you walk it. So this is the glorious chicken run that was a garden bed that we enclosed. And the girls have the ability to hang out in the chicken run, but they come down this path from their coop in the side garden into the chicken run, which is very, it makes it super hands-off easy for me, which I like. I have three chickens. Coco and Olive are lovely and Regina is horrible and mean. But just to me, no one else. I don't know why. She's got it in for me, that chicken. They can go back and forth between the coop and the run. And then at least once a day, I open up the gate and I just let them run the backyard, which is pretty nice, pretty fun for them too. And then a little farther back in the backyard, this is the greenhouse that we purchased back in 2021 through BC Greenhouse. And they are, they make the best greenhouses ever. I adore BC Greenhouse. And this is where I spend a lot of my time. I would say one of my happiest spots in the whole house is in the greenhouse. This is where I start all my seeds for my flowers and my vegetables. And through those dreary winter months, this is where you can find me hanging out. Scale is everything, right? And I mean, you never know until someone's standing beside it. It instantly gives you scale. And yes, these three giant trees, of course, were on the property when we bought it. And I, my husband and I joke that this represents Paul in India and I. These three trees are like us. But I love them and I love how imposing they are in the yard. People are always quite taken with them when they see it come up so, so close. But yeah, big giant cedars. And I've made a great effort to have them limbed up as high as I can. So because it can be a little bit oppressive, you know. But what that did was just expose their lovely trunks. You know, the back of our house is a much shadier space. The front of our house, very sunny. So it's, you know, the canopy that these provide is lovely through the summer months. I just love it. We had our chicken run structure and then the greenhouse. And then we went even a bit farther and had a shed built. And so now we have these three sort of points in the backyard of real purpose. And to my eye, that's in a way so much more like appealing. I love that just without words we can see there's function. I feel that way about any design, but I like to see function over just the aesthetics. That side of the house, we took the third bedroom and we turned that into two back-to-back bathrooms. So it became a two-bedroom house instead of a three-bedroom house with both having en-suites. So that was the big change back there. And then those rooms overlook the back of the house. And it's a lovely viewpoint down over top of all of it. And then, of course, our daughter isn't here anymore. She's too grown up. So her bedroom has become our den, our TV room. The bedroom, when I first did it, it had a very much more contemporary feel to it. And so the dressing area, which is just an area carved out with millwork. But that I redid from, you know, glossy white cabinetry with chrome handles on it to a painted millwork. But I incorporated antique mirror, which is really pretty and lovely reflecting off the window on the other side. It's all about viewpoints, right? We have an en-suite and what I really like in the bedroom is the stacking of the wallpapers. So there's a Robert Kime wallpaper that I did the bedroom in. And then Michael Smith one in the en-suite. But the stack of those two through the doorway is one of my favorite views in the house. I just love it. That took me years to find those tiles. Literally years because I first saw them in a restaurant in New York. I always wanted to use this tile, but I could not source it in any way. And then randomly one day on the internet looking for something else. I was like, oh my God, there it is. They're a little tile maker in Connecticut. For me being able to find that tile was the jumping off point for sort of the whole scheme of that bathroom. And then the vanity I had made locally and that was inspired by a hotel I stayed at in Stockholm. That I really loved. And it was just a really fun project. In the other bathroom off the den now, again I used the same guy's different color way on the tile. But I don't think I will ever use another tile. I love their work so much because every tile is hand glazed. So no tile is the same as the next tile. So the variation, the subtlety of variation is so pretty. My last cookbook that I wrote, The Side Gardener, was based on my side garden. And in 2020 the bakery was closed. So I was thinking about things that we could have, like projects that would just be good to be focused on. And that piece of land, I'd always wanted to turn it into a vegetable garden. Because it's south facing, it's so hot back there, it's crazy. And it was an opportunity to kind of do it properly. Like, no pun intended, but really dig deep in the side garden. To put up a new fence and have all the planters made and level it, pea gravel it. And it was very successful, very quickly. Everything we planted loved it back there. So the whole concept of it and the development, that just became the subject of my next book. And then of course that's where my chickens live, at the back of the side garden. And it's a very active, fun spot. There's a lot of activity in the side garden. Two in there, and they're such pretty colors. Are y'all done on it? It's my forever house for now. I think the conversation that Paul and I have had, when we talk about downsizing from a living space, what are we downsizing to? Like this house, we do all of our living on the main floor, for the most part. Which shows us that whatever it is, 1,900 square feet or something like that, it's ample space for us. So ultimately, in years to come, yes, I can see that we would move to something smaller. Not necessarily for living, but for maintaining the outdoor. Because I don't have a gardener. It's like me painting the Brooklyn Bridge every day. You start there and working around, it is a lot of work. So I'm sure there'll come a time when I think, I think I'll just like a patio. Patio would be great.