If age warrants respect, the restoration of a historic lakeside homestead southwest of Ottawa has received its share and then some.
Built circa 1830, the two-storey stone farmhouse on Big Rideau Lake has been handsomely revived and modernized as the home of a retired couple, Doug and Donna, formerly residents of Kanata (they asked that their surnames not be used). The house features bright open spaces in what was once a chopped-up interior, a stunning new addition, and calming views of the natural landscape from all rooms. The five-acre property also boasts a barn, although that word hardly does justice to the striking outbuilding with its exposed wood beams and expansive, black-framed windows.
Almost three years after moving in, says Doug, “We still talk every day about how much we enjoy this house.” Adds Donna, “Last winter we decided not to go away, and it’s the first time I’ve enjoyed winter.”
Purchasing the home, which sits a scant 40 feet from the lake where a couple of neighbouring kayakers call out “Good morning!” as we chat, was an exercise in patience and persistence. It took Doug — a former high-tech entrepreneur — eight years of repeated contacts with the then-owners and the real estate agent before the papers were finally signed.
“He always wanted a stone house,” says Donna, who also worked in high tech before becoming a spinning instructor and then retiring.
The makeover by Crossford Construction took close to two years, starting in 2020. It was a mammoth undertaking that included gutting the original house back to its stone walls, resolving serious mould issues in the basement, replacing the existing addition — which suffered from a poor layout — and leveling the barn to its weakened stone foundation.
Masonry experts from southern Ontario painstakingly rebuilt the barn foundation, reserving some of the stones for use in the new addition to the house. They also dismantled and rebuilt, stone by stone, a massive fireplace and chimney in the home’s now-bright, cosy basement to meet the current building code.
High-quality windows, foam insulation and, in the barn, an air-source heat pump all helped to enhance energy efficiency, never an easy task in old buildings.
“A lot of our work was responding to what the homeowners wanted,” says Crossford president Lindsay Nicol. “They had a pretty good idea of what they wanted. Really, it was a dream project.”
While the owners wanted their new home to be bright and comfortable with modern features, they had bought it for the beauty of its stone structure and architecture and wanted those retained. Crossford met that expectation, including the lake-facing front façade, which looks “essentially as it did,” says Nicol. (Known variously as McVeety House and Lakeview House, the home most likely faces the lake because there was no road in the 1830s and the waterway served as the transportation route).
When they moved from Kanata in the fall of 2022, Doug and Donna initially lived in the two-storey barn, which Crossford had already rebuilt to include a kitchen and a gathering area where the owners and neighbours now get together for televised hockey games. There’s also a top-floor deck overlooking the lake and a ground-floor workshop. The couple wanted the house ready for that first Christmas, and it was, with just a couple of days to spare.
The house they moved into had been transformed from the one they bought. As was common with old farmhouses, the original main floor had been divided into four small spaces: a parlour, a living room, a dining area and a kitchen. The latter, says Donna, once doubled as a birthing room because the original lady of the house was a midwife for the other women on the lake.
Crossford opened up the space, installed the new, airy staircase that serves as the focus of what is now the main living area, and shifted the basement stairs to a less conspicuous spot beside the new dining area. Here and elsewhere, original window openings were respected in keeping with the new owners’ determination to honour the home’s heritage. Upstairs, the bedroom ceilings were raised to create a greater sense of spaciousness (farmhouse bedrooms tended to be on the cramped side) while sticking with the original roofline in another nod to the old homestead.
The new addition houses the generous kitchen, an adjacent sunroom — “This is one of my favourite spots in the house,” says Donna. “It’s so nice to sit and watch the birds and the deer” — and, upstairs, the expansive master bedroom with its own deck and a spa-like ensuite anchored by a copper soaker tub.
The kitchen “is where we party. It truly is the heart of the house,” says Donna. Anchoring the space is a large island topped with a six- by eight-foot slab of lustrous black walnut. “It took five guys to carry it in,” notes Doug. Restored stonework is showcased along one wall, while the cabinetry here and in the ensuite came from Mainstream, an Ottawa design and custom mill work fabrication business.
In keeping with the couple’s wishes, the home features a French country esthetic. “I didn’t want Canadiana — that’s so done,” says Donna. “I wanted it to be fun, whimsical, more feminine with lots of little surprises.”
Those surprises include the occasional tables made by Doug from the original barnboard. They lend a lovely homey air to the spaces. Preserving that barnboard was “important,” says Donna. “It’s part of the history of the house.”
