Splendour in the grass

The dream of idyllic afternoons spent lazing away on a country home's porch can leave homeowners with a rude awakening when faced with the realities of restoring an older residence. Decorator Catherine Hoffmann and her partner, Norbert Stock, can certainly attest to it. But a daunting list of the “hidden defects” found in the 1860 farmhouse they bought near Knowlton, Quebec, in 2002, only served to inspire a partial demolition and full renovation that allowed their reality to become, well, a lot more dreamy. The renewal of the home has transformed it into a casual blend of whimsical style and the farmhouse practicality that is its natural heritage, complete with wraparound porch.

The task of renewing the house in­­cluded tearing down two old barns, ripping off a rotting porch and a mud-floored shed attached to the main house. The work continued with pulling down ceilings and walls, both to coax light into the dark, “chopped-up little rooms” and to create insulated walls for warmth in the winter. “Taking stuff down is easy,” Hoff­mann notes, “but restoring the house to the way it once looked is a challenge.” Salvaged wood from the old barns helped to ease the transitions from old to new, from restoration to, where necessary, brand new fabrication. The wood was used to frame an addition housing a sunroom, laundry room and a bedroom, and to build the wraparound porch. As well, the barnboard provided the wide pine-plank flooring upstairs, plus patches for the aged downstairs floors, creating a timeless, well-worn look. The classic farmhouse-style porch, with its 11-foot overhang, white-painted beadboard ceiling and simple, painted pine pillars “with visible cracks in them,” unifies the home's stages. And the house itself yielded up a few treasures, like the lovely wood beams the couple uncovered on the ceiling. They've since been cleaned and oiled to reclaim their good looks and add their true vintage cottage character to the mix. In the kitchen, the beams were whitewashed to help lighten the space.

With the ground-floor rooms—living, dining, and kitchen areas—now open to each other, Hoffmann chose a soft sand colour to run through the space and up the stairs. "It feels disjointed to me when a house is cut into different colours," she says. "I like to have a palette that carries through." Hoffmann, who grew up in a 17th-century hunting lodge in Portugal, has an abiding love for charming old houses and believes in accommodating a home's original architecture—but that doesn't extend to the busy, Victorian-era style of decorating that may have been this home's original look. Preferring cottage style's cleaner lines for the farmhouse, she filled it with white cotton slipcovers, wicker and refurbished junk-shop furniture, all set against the backdrop of neutral tones and occasional accents of her favourite hues: blue and yellow. Her look has "a beachy quality, more of a Nan­tucket feel," she says. Ultimately, its simplicity is what appeals to her: "It's not what you put inside, it's respecting the original house that matters."