living Clubhouse life comes home to Angus Glen
Filed Under Kitchen Curtain | Posted on January 20, 2008
Living away from it all without being away from it all seems like a contradiction in terms, but not to designer Jean Bisnaire. He enthuses about the community surrounding the latest phase of Angus Glen project, where he decorated the model home. Essentially, it has everything. A prestigious golf course, lots of restaurants around, a small town feel with all the city amenities, a short zip to the cottage. A lot of the people who buy here are involved in golfing, or they have horses boarded nearby. Their kids are in soccer or hockey, and it’s close to a lot of kid activities.When it came to the model home, the same mindset drove its decor. Basically, the builder decided to create a model with all the upgrades, because so many people were requesting them anyway. That also set Bisnaire’s decor approach.The layout was already established, he recalls. My task was to define the rooms, and I imagined a successful family, working parents, growing children, who wanted to come home to an oasis.Bisnaire aimed for creating a club environment within the home: a family room with stone fireplace, natural leather upholstery; a slate-floored garden room without curtains to overlook the golf course; warm colours and distressed woods to feather the retreat; a kitchen to help entertain in; bold furnishings with a sense of identity in either design or colour, items collected on travels.These purchasers would not be starting from scratch and would bring furniture with them, Bisnaire notes. They also like to entertain at home, with dinner parties or martini parties. And often these are catered, so you need a full-service kitchen. The kitchen is a combination of dark and light cabinetry: creamy cabinetry in a U-shape that wraps two walls and creates a peninsula separating kitchen from family area; a dark wood island in the centre with a second sink; and a dark servery unit insinuated into the fourth wall. The herringbone pattern backsplash in brown, taupe and cream pulls it all together. Elsewhere, the palette is taken right from the golf course outside, Bisnaire says. I wanted a lot of natural greens, and neutral colour to reflect the calm of the fairway, with sandy white walls, and creamy trim, a medley of greens, and neutrals.The family room, surrounded by curtainless windows, is a good example of this. Everyone loves this room, Bisnaire says. I think it has to do with the stone tiles, the view, and the furniture is very relaxing.The dark dining set with light upholstery is large, strong and comfortable. The nearby sofa and chair grouping is equally welcoming. Contemporary dark chairs from Brazil are slightly rustic but clean lined, and the striped fabric and pillows is friendly and brings in the shades of green from outdoors. The one challenge in the garden room, Bisnaire notes, is with so many windows and no walls, there’s little chance to bring in warmth and character. Since he didn’t want to bring in curtains, he had to create atmosphere with the fireplace, lots of plants and strong furniture. In the family room, Bisnaire had different challenges. The double height hip-roof room with stone fireplace that reaches all the way to the top was brought down to human scale with brown leather sofas and chairs that are oversized, dark and weighty. A side chair with lattice arms is rustic and brings texture and warmth to the space, while the oversized plaid drapery in the large windows adds a note of casual friendliness, sort of like a country lodge, Bisnaire says. Although the model has a high-end sticker, Bisnaire says it’s not necessary to spend big bucks on furniture. It’s also how furniture is perceived, and some of it in that home is not expensive. It looks it, because it’s combined with more expensive pieces.How Bisnaire achieves this sleight-of-hand with the furnishings is to be mindful of where attention is focused, and keep the more expensive pieces there, with the lesser pieces just beyond the focal point.
Tags: ades, amp, combine, curta, curtain, doorsRelated posts
Leave a Reply