For this client, family comes first. With two girls and four boys ranging in ages from 5 to 17, home life is busy and marked by constant comings and goings for school and sports and activities.
The couple loved living in West Point Grey, one of Vancouver’s oldest, most prestigious oceanside neighborhoods. Just across the street is a city park, which prefaces the sparkling blue water of English Bay and the mountains beyond.
However, the family of eight quickly began pushing the boundaries of their existing home, built in 2012. To avoid a disruptive move, and to address the newish structure’s lack of history, they decided to acquire the property next door and commissioned architect Eric Stine to dream up a more expansive forever home.
The intricacies of preserving the original home near the ocean presented challenges, with restricted excavation depth and lower floor ceiling heights. “It was truly an engineering feat,” recalls interior designer Kelly Deck, principal of Kelly Deck Design, of the transformation. “Eric kept half of the original home, but the scale of the addition is much larger than the original. It’s really like new construction,” she adds.
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While Stine deftly achieved a seamless 8,000-square-foot new-old home with seven bedrooms and eight baths in the Craftsman style, Deck and her team tackled the couple’s aesthetic goals while considering their needs, present and future. Meanwhile, landscape architect Paul Sangha refreshed the exterior with a poolscape and various outdoor-living destinations.
“This project promised to be a perfect match for my team’s strengths and the client’s vision of relaxed, stylish living,” summarizes Deck. The wife hails from Eastern Canada and likes blending antiques with modern elements, while the husband, a Vancouver native, focuses more on architectural details and top-quality finishes.
“They make a really good pair,” adds the designer. “They envisioned something different from what you typically see in Vancouver. They wanted traditional bones; they wanted to play with more contemporary furniture pieces and artwork. They wanted something lasting.”
The home’s proximity to Royal Vancouver Yacht Club prompted the interior’s narrative of coastal elegance. Similarly, Deck and her team derived inspiration from a visit to the Hamptons, where the comfortable, unpretentious style of a friend’s historic house left a positive impression. The designer and her team even referenced pictures of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis on sailing trips or at the beach. “We wanted the home to have the same chic, restrained feel,” she explains of the icon’s influence.
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With a base palette of white and blue, and by layering rugs and mixing antiques and modern finds, Deck created an airy, lighthearted, youthful atmosphere. The intentional use of finish carpentry throughout gave the home an older, more established feel. Stained glass windows—studded with six light-blue diamonds representing their six children—instill extra charm into the paneled stairwell, finished off with a double-height gallery of family photos in antique frames.
Not surprisingly, the new kitchen hums with activity on any given day. “We wanted a big island so my clients can feed the kids quickly, and the banquette is perfect for family dinners. It’s also where the kids can read or lounge or do their homework. It’s a hangout space,” says Deck. The café-style banquette table, crafted from solid white oak, rests on thick plinths for easy sliding in and out.
Matching the island cabinet finish to the Le Cornue range’s cheerful provincial blue “just seemed like the right choice,” says Deck. An artful arrangement of blue and white china plates (“We looked all over to make this collection happen,” she recalls) by the banquette adds fresh pops of blue. Bronze pendants from Urban Electric over the island evoke the feel of historic lanterns but with a modern interpretation.
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Just off the kitchen is the entryway, punctuated by a central draper’s table, sourced from the UK and augmented with a lower marble shelf for extra storage. “While I was staying at a French château in the Loire Valley, there was a long wood table covered in books and arrangements right when you walked in. I fell in love with it,” says Deck of the European flourish. “The owners can create different vignettes depending on the season,” she adds.
In the great room, Deck and her team compiled a variety of seating vignettes to fill the long, rectangular space. A custom sofa by Kelly Deck Design is centered on the fireplace, finished with a limestone surround from Jamb in London. Cushy armchairs invite lingering and gauze drapery lets light pass through.
Nods to life by the sea are subtly intertwined into the interior design: The hardware, plumbing, and lighting are a mix of unlacquered and aged brass, evoking the look of a classic wooden sailboat. The husband’s office—outfitted with navy millwork and grasscloth walls, a rope motif incorporated into the moldings, and cognac leather accents—leans nautical and feels masculine.
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“Adapting to the evolving needs and tastes of this family was both a challenge and an opportunity,” says Deck, adding that the older teens moved their bedrooms to the lower levels, closer to the “hangout room.” This recreational space is paneled in whitewashed oak, with blue-and-copper wallpaper between the ceiling beams. “It was intended to feel richer and more intimate that the upper floors,” notes the designer.
Each of the children’s rooms has its own personality. Two standouts are the underwater bedroom, complete with matching wallpaper and draperies sourced from Paris, and another with a color scheme evoking the iconic Beverly Hills Hotel. The primary bedroom, in comparison, is serene, awash in white, linen, and blue toile. A pale sky blue on the ceiling brings the outdoors in.
At the start, Deck and her team strove to achieve the look and feel of a historic home that had been standing for generations without sacrificing youthfulness or freshness or fun. The result is an interior that engages the senses with interesting details at every turn. “The home is inviting from the moment you walk in,” she says. “You immediately feel relaxed.”