When interior designer Joan MacAlpine, founder of Joan + Company Interiors, bought a house in the summer of 2020, she had some grand ideas on how she wanted to transform the fixer-upper. In fact, the house was exactly what she was looking for – a fully detached home that needed work. “I really didn’t want to pay for someone else’s taste,” she says, “so we primarily toured homes in need of major renos.”
It took her three days to sketch-up plans. “We shared it with an architect. It took under a month. We thought we wanted to go, go, go.”
The move from a semi to a detached home gave them the space they craved, but the house itself was dated and riddled with problems. While the appliances worked and there was space for MacAlpine, her husband and two daughters, “It felt like every week we were fixing something or cleaning up the never-ending water.” Something had to be done, and fast. But the world had other plans. The realities of COVID – supply chain issues, soaring material costs, a slow permitting process – brought everything to a halt. And so, as they lived in the house, MacAlpine came to understand it better. How it met – or didn’t meet – the needs of her family, their daily interactions and routines. Three years later, so much had been revealed that she discarded her original designs.
“It’s hard to tell from a drawing how the light hits certain areas, or how we use the house,” she explains. “The home I would have designed in 2020 is very different from the one we live in today. The pause allowed us to step back from immediacy and focus instead on what would feel meaningful and lasting over time.”
MacAlpine submitted new plans in 2023, and demolition began in 2024. Nearly five years after buying the home, she says, “The new end result is so perfect for our family, I can’t imagine a world where we didn’t build this version of the house.”
Time as a teacher
The process of pausing the project and living in the house slowly exposed the extent of the problems and a more realistic idea of what repairing everything would cost. As they lived with patchwork fixes, they were able to better budget until they were ready to fully go ahead.
“Had I moved forward five years ago, we’d have thought the cost being ‘X’, but there would have been an additional, $50,000 to $75,000 we didn’t see coming,” says MacAlpine. “We had an opportunity to edit the space to our needs. It set us free a bit. The crack in the foundation, the leak in the basement, we lived with that, and it allowed us to save.”
During this time, she was also able to reassess the details of the renovation and the reconfiguration of the space right down to the fixtures and finishes. What would work, and what wouldn’t. Initially, the idea was to rip, expand and replace the kitchen and renovate the upstairs shared bathroom and basement powder room, build out over the garage for a primary bedroom and bathroom and waterproof and renovate the basement. While the garage and an exterior wall did come down, an addition built and the basement waterproofed and renovated, the location of the kitchen moved and other unplanned changes occurred.
“Shortly after purchasing the home, I completed a full package of finish selections. By the time we redesigned the project, almost none of those choices remained. That has forever changed my understanding of what will truly last,” says MacAlpine.
The transformation
Before the renovation, the 1,800-sq.-ft. home, originally built in the ‘60s, had 2.5 bedrooms and 1.5 bathrooms. Now its footprint has grown to 2,500 sq. ft. and is comprised of four bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms, an expanded main floor that includes a larger living room, dining room and kitchen with better flow and functionality; additional storage in the basement; a small mudroom that exits to the side of the house and a main-floor powder room that wasn’t in the original plans.
“We entertain way more now than we used to,” says MacAlpine. “With the mudroom and additional space for millwork on the main floor, everything feels like it has a place.”
During this second-chance design, time allowed MacAlpine to be more intentional and thoughtful with the material choices. The dining room pendants are handmade in Collingwood. A blue and white floral ceramic sconce in a powder room is from the UK and was the first thing she bought for the home. An understated quartzite was used for the countertops throughout, a durable and stunning choice. And finally, the unlacquered brass detailing in the house is taking on a more antiqued patina, with the new tone complementing the rest of the finishes.
“The final selections feel more grounded, more timeless and more connected to the way our family lives,” she says. “Looking back, I’m grateful the design was given the time and space to evolve. Good design should never feel commoditized. It’s a thoughtful and explorative process. The strongest homes are not created through urgency. They emerge through reflection, creativity and a deep understanding of how people truly want to live.”