Renovation: East Vancouver home gets an elevated main floor update

When your main living space no longer suits your family’s needs and doesn’t reflect the hipness of your East Van ‘hood, you call in the pros.

After a decade in their five-bedroom Fraserhood home, a young professional couple, and parents to two girls, were ready to invest in a main floor update.

Article content

But they weren’t 100 per cent aligned on what that looked like. One partner envisioned the space with a modern look, while the other favoured a mid-century esthetic.

Article content

“The couple had different design styles. It’s often why we get called in, to make the final decision,” designer Greer Nelson says.

Not your average white kitchen. Moss green cabinets, oil rubbed bronze pendant lights and organic elements bring warmth into the custom kitchen. Photo by Janis Nicolay /PNG

Nelson and Jamie Hamilton, who co-own Oliver Simon Design, presented a concept that spoke to the functional issues and merged each of the client’s design ideals. “We came to them with what we love, which is sort of eclectic with clean lines and warm textures. It’s always a little bit modern, but it’s never cool,” Hamilton says.

Despite their design differences, the clients agreed on the aspects of the home that needed to change. First, the 850-square-foot main floor—which encompassed the kitchen and dining area, living room and powder room—was quite dark.

Also, the space wasn’t suiting the needs of their family anymore. “The home was transforming,” Hamilton says. “Their kids weren’t little babies, so they could send them to the recroom downstairs and have adult time on the main floor. There was a shift in the way they lived,” she continues.

To address that, Hamilton and Nelson removed one of the family room areas—since the kids now play downstairs—to open up the dining room. They also changed the kitchen’s configuration, creating an open plan with three defined living areas and allowing for better flow between them.

Despite being only 11 years old and quite modern in appearance, the original kitchen wasn’t very functional and had a lot of wasted space. “The corner areas, you couldn’t get into. (The kitchen) was sort of chopping up the living area, making it feel cut off from the rest of the house. You had to walk around the peninsula to get to the dining room. They had a ton of cupboards but couldn’t use them very well,” says Nelson.

The design team replaced the peninsula with a kitchen island featuring a modern waterfall countertop and added custom millwork with pull-out pantries. They also added open shelving—a signature element in Hamilton and Nelson’s designs—for displaying special bowls, art and vases, making the space “so much less utilitarian,” explains Nelson.

With natural wood elements and rich tones, the new kitchen is elevated and cosmopolitan but still inviting. The look is very different from the minimalist white and marble esthetic of the pre-existing space.

Article content

A hieroglyphic wall installation, which the clients sourced from Galiano Island, was kept from the original space. Photo by Janis Nicolay /PNG
A wall-mounted facet and concrete basin give the powder room a custom feel. Photo by Janis Nicolay /PNG
A farmhouse sink in the custom kitchen. Photo by Janis Nicolay /PNG
Custom shelves add storage space and personalize the space. Photo by Janis Nicolay /PNG
“The goal was to create a living space where you don’t feel like you can’t touch or move anything, or that you can’t flop down on the couch and watch a movie and put your feet up,” says Jamie Hamilton of Oliver Simon Design. Photo by Janis Nicolay /PNG
A pretty floral arrangement in the dining room. Photo by Janis Nicolay /PNG

Moss green cabinets—which the client was nervous about because she thought they would make the space look too dark—are “neutral, elevated, soft and easy to live with,” says Nelson. Coats of white paint over the once-dark taupe walls brighten up the space.

A modern version of a farmhouse sink blends tradition and modernity, while a textured backsplash and quartz countertops “with a matte finish that looks like poured concrete” add interest.

Sustainability is always a consideration in Hamilton and Nelson’s projects. Here, the clients kept the original wood flooring— “they had some planks left over from the original house,” Hamilton says—and a lot of the furniture from the original space was brought to the family’s vacation property. The designers also opted to keep the original window coverings, which filter lots of light into the home.

When it came time to select new furnishings, the clients prioritized a local vendor. “They really wanted us to find things they wouldn’t necessarily see on the Crate & Barrel showroom floor. They wanted us to push them and find things that were interesting and different—things they wouldn’t think of themselves,” Hamilton says.

Share this article in your social network