It’s a life journey renovating a house. Anke and Kirk Simpson saw their Edwardian house in Riverdale only twice before everything was finalized with the sale. They knew for sure it needed work. A house that had two apartments inside, with a boy and girl under three they wanted a house the whole family could enjoy.
The work began in November of 2007 and they started blogging about their renovation on 247reno.ca. The site gets about 6,000 to 7,000 visits a month. They also get about 15,000 to 20,000 page views a month.
“We get about two or three comments a day,” says Kirk Simpson, vice-president of sales of Green Living Enterprises. “There are a lot people asking questions about certain questions or contractors. We plan to keep up with it.”
Anke Simpson contributes the interior design knowledge to the blog.
“We started the blog and we wanted to share our experience with other people, it’s a great way to document the journey ourselves. See how we progressed and what we learned along the way.”
Keeping a successful blog while renovating a home is enough of a challenge. The Simpson family moved from a semi-detached to a home that now has about 2,500 square feet with an open space concept. Anke Simpson who is director of buying at Indigo designed their new space and helped to make it livable in time for Easter.
“Our last house was more cosmetic fixs,” says Anke Simpson. “This one was more structural. We had a very very short amount of time and we knew we didn’t want to live in it the way that it was. We gutted the main floor as soon as we moved in. We had only seen the house two times on very, very quick visits to figure out what to do.”
The Simpsons knew they wanted a family room, a powder room and an island in the kitchen. It was also really important for them to have a lot of light. Coming into the space, it is an older home and it had a lot of interior walls.
“It’s all open concept with the exception of the front foyer that has a powder room and a large closet,” Anke says. “We’re really happy with it. Again, we had to sort of jig things on the fly. We had intended to put things in different places. You start to understand that things can’t happen for a certain reason, the powder room has to be a 4 by 4 space. You have to change your plans very quickly. A lot of compromises.”
Anke Simpson is not an interior designer by profession, although in her former job she worked with Caban, part of Club Monaco. She mainly learned how to decorate her new home by reading and learning.
“From the moment we got the house and even with our old house, I tend to go through a lot of magazines. A lot of features that I really love about a home. Just for future reference, if we ever do move, just to keep great ideas on file. I would often refer back to things and the kind of materials that I really love. When you’re going through a new build or a rebuild, at least if you know the direction that you love and the materials and the style, even down to window casings and baseboards and floor finishes and the style of window. You have to make all those decisions so if you have something in your mind to put together it makes it easier.”
The Simpson family learned how to sleep through hammering. They had to reinforce the main floor, the structure, that took three and half weeks to get it down. They ripped up old carpet and put down hardwood floors and painted.
“It’s nice to create a space that is functional for you and your family,” says Anke. “It is critical to know that we can go into the kitchen and have the kids right in front of us. That is something we didn’t have in our old house. We saw potential.”
Anke Simpson says there is still a lot more work to be done.
Anke’s husband Kirk contributed to the renovation before the contractors came in.
“Over three days we had a garbage bin brought in that was changed and there were upwards of eight of us demolishing the main floor and literally bringing down the ceiling and there were studs [two-by-fours] everywhere,” says Kirk Simpson. “Lathe and plaster with the house. Thin strips of wood that run horizontal across the two-by-fours. Then it was constructed before the drywall. We wanted to go down to the studs so we could then replaster. This way you get a more modern and less cumbersome way of maintaining your walls.”
Kirk says contractors came in and they basically took it from that to a finished product as it relates to the wall and the trim and the new windows.
“There were basically two things we focused on with the do-it-yourself, we did the demolition and Anike designed the whole layout as well as the whole kitchen. We were down to an open space and needed to reposition the powder room and the functionality of the kitchen room and she handled all of that.”
Kirk says he is lucky he knows how to deal with ceilings, walls and floors because a couple of his friends are knowledgeable about that and told him. Coupled with a little bit of online research and a little bit of trial and error and he was able to get the job done.
“In our old house we had done a lot of the work ourselves,” says Kirk. “For this house we needed to rely on professionals for the most important parts of the renovation. Painting outside and landscaping outside we relied on the professionals.
“It’s really the fact that Anike had the vision to see what she wanted in the space. We have a really large space here that is pretty open concept.”
