House Tours
Charming and quirky family home
Spacious kitchen design pairs barnboard accents with sleek Calacatta marble
House Tours
Charming and quirky family home
Designer Lidia van Zyl may stick to a simple black and white palette, but thanks to a quirky collection of oddities, her home is far from boring.
If you were ever to drive past designer Lidia van Zyl’s house, you might be tempted to pull out a map or consult the car’s GPS. With a cedar-shake exterior and dormers peeking out from the roof, the dwelling looks like it belongs on the dunes of Cape Cod instead of a residential street near Barrie, Ont. The feeling is underscored by the four-bedroom home’s idyllic surroundings: Lake Simcoe is just across the road, and farmlands stirring with foxes and deer stretch out from the back.
Sure, it all sounds a bit too good to be true. But that’s the benefit of building your dream house – and it didn’t happen overnight. Lidia and her husband, Leendert, a family doctor, owned the property for three years before the year-long build began in 2013, so Lidia had time to consider her family’s needs, which was daunting, she admits. “This is the first time I’d ever designed a home top to bottom for myself, and it’s so different from making decisions for clients,” she says. At the top of her must-have list: a sprawling space where she, Leendert and their three children, who range in age from eight to 13, could gather as a family.
Though designing for herself and her family wasn’t easy, she has no regrets about her space-planning choices. “The whole family usually plants themselves in that great room,” says Lidia. “And I couldn’t be more pleased about it.”
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