Welcome to the lakehouse

The moment the french doors I'd saved from my great-grandfather's house (and carried around for 30 years) were installed in a guest room in my new house, I knew this was home.

In 2001, my partner, Tim Young, and I had just completed a tedious renovation of a cottage near Bobcaygeon, Ontario, when a friend called from the site of a recently listed 1901 Arts and Crafts summer house. Knowing my penchant for all things vintage, she told us: "Come look at their stuff, it's like a 1940s movie set." Twenty minutes later, Tim and I were viewing it, and two months after that, we owned it, minus the 'stuff.'

When we bought it, the rambling two-storey structure was a tear-down. It came with a bat-infested attic, leaking roof, sloping floors and a desperate need for modernization. But the location was idyllic - three acres of bush at the end of a road, stretching along 500 feet of shoreline on Pigeon Lake. In addition, the bones of the house were a perfect match for our brand of vintage style, with lots of space to display the collections we've gathered over the years. And the spectacular round dining room - glass with an uninterrupted view over the lake - that helped me envision how I could resurrect this grand dame is one of the cottage's crowning glories.

I drew endless remodelling plans and began working with framer John Vanderheide and carpenter Bob Jones on the transformation. All 22 rooms were taken apart, restructured, wired and insulated, carefully preserving the natural wood and character. Aside from the tedious bits of any renovation, we indulged in lots of whimsy, designing rooms around favourite pieces of furniture. The Linden room, for example, took shape around three 1930s iron hospital beds brought from a previous cottage.