Home design: Updating an empty nest

In her renovation for a couple of Oakville empty nesters, designer Jackie Glass was tasked with giving a traditional home a complete contemporary update. The trick would be gracefully incorporating existing client furnishings — family favourites that didn’t fit into the overall design scheme.  

The first time Glass visited the house, she realized that although it had good bones, it was trapped in the ’90s — with dark, dated decor and a tendency towards heavy, traditional furniture. Some of it had been with the clients for years and carried sentimental value, so part of her assignment was making it work comfortably in a new context. 

“The clients had lived here for 35 years, and when the last of their kids had grown up and moved out, they decided to completely make it over for themselves,” explains Glass.  

He’s a recent retiree who is passionate about working in their garden, while she has a busy career and mainly works from home. So along with a smart and sophisticated whole-house update, a first-rate home office was high on the priority list. Overall, they wanted their newly designed house to be soothing, warm and approachable, elegant without pretension. 

“I always start with the kitchen,” Glass says, noting that for both designer and client, that room often sets the tone for the project. Light oak flooring, white walls and a flood of natural light — including a new window to the left of the stove, offering a glimpse into their garden — lighten the mood. On the wall behind, a swath of scalloped tile with slim, sparkling gold edges rises up to the ceiling. Gold cabinetry hardware and a pair of gold lines rimming the rangehood pull things together and impart a bright, almost blingy effect. 

The kitchen’s clean lines incorporate a wealth of carefully planned storage, especially in the roomy new island. The combination of lighter-toned lower cabinetry and dark uppers (glass inserts and interior lighting keep things from getting top-heavy) gives the room an elegant European feeling. (Given that the couple is Italian, Glass adds, the built-in espresso station at one end of the counter was almost mandatory.) 

While the owners wanted the kitchen to maintain a connection with the adjacent family room, they also wanted the option of closing off the kitchen when desired, to corral pets or grandkids, or to simply maintain a sense of separation. Ceiling-high sliding glass doors with black metal frames create the desired boundaries while sharing the kitchen’s abundant natural light. 

This part of the kitchen also shows where Glass repurposed a massive marble table, which they loved and wanted to keep. The table’s pattern and colour didn’t quite fit the vision that Glass had in mind, she says, “but often these things become the source of a lot of mental creativity.” With the owners’ blessing, she had the table recut and shaped in a more contemporary silhouette. Now it enjoys pride of place in the breakfast area, and its complex pattern of light and dark greenish tones acts as a visual bridge between the two rooms. 

In the family room, a more sultry, dramatic mood was in order. Because the room receives ample natural light through a big bay window at one end, Glass chose to paint its longest wall in a smoky charcoal (adjacent walls were done in a softer pale grey), creating the perfect backdrop for a striking, Deco-inspired porcelain mantel, in a mix of deep browns with cream and charcoal accents. “She wanted something dramatic, an alternative to the standard book-matched granite,” says Glass, “so we gave it a very architectural look.” 

As with the marble breakfast table, the dining room table wasn’t a style Glass herself would have chosen; but it had been one of the couple’s first purchases as newlyweds and carried sentimental weight. Inspiration came in the form of a jungle-inspired fabric for the dining chairs in shades of brown and cream; the crowning touch — a swoopy, translucent light fixture — turned the table’s sober lines into the perfect foil. 

In contrast to the moody feeling of the family room, large windows overlooking the garden fill the living room with light and colour. A pair of swivel chairs in a bold stripe invite a guest to sit down and gaze out at the view; elsewhere in the room, the soft palette of warm grey, brown and gold, in tactile fabrics like velvet and wool, creates a mood of supreme comfort. This room may be a bit more formal than the others, but it’s hardly stuffy. 

Glass explains that the home office at the front of the house required a considerable amount of thoughtful planning. The homeowner spends long hours working at a high-pressure job, mostly from home; so it had to be efficiently designed, well organized and comfortable. Intelligently designed file storage, a key element of the work, was also important. But beyond that, it had to look good, since it was clearly visible to guests entering the home.  

Somewhat to Glass’s surprise, the normally conservative client fell in love with a monochrome mural of trees for the room’s back wall; she thought its muted tones struck the perfect balance between workplace sobriety (since it would become a natural backdrop for Zoom meetings) and whimsy.  

It was also important to both designer and client to inject individuality into the design. “She has a lot of interesting objects collected from all over the world, things that give her pleasure,” Glass notes. “I felt they should have a place in here too.” An archtop niche, designed purely for displaying an ever-changing collection of favourite things, adds life to this hard-working space. 

Curves soften the edges of the primary bedroom furnishings. The room’s quiet, mid-’30s-modern restraint contrasts with a bright and cheerful dressing area, lit by an overhead skylight. Wallpaper-lined shelves display purses and art pieces. 

The house plays with time and mood, mixing styles and materials freely, an effect that succeeds simply because nothing overpowers or throws off the overall composition. All through the home, a pleasing harmony in line and colour makes every element, whether modern or traditional, come together just right. 

And it’s personal, says Glass. “The home is very true to their origins, a kind of homage to their lives.”