House Tour: With a Few Key Design Updates, a Historic Home Gets a Fitting Refresh

Photos by Provoke Studios.

“Historic” is so often a euphemism for dated or worn. But that wasn’t the case for this Vancouver home. The decades-old house was in great shape, just in need of a polish to keep its charms in tact. Enter interior designer Amanda Evans—recipient of Robert Ledingham Memorial Award this year as part of the 2021 Designers of the Year Awards—who was more than game to give the gorgeous vintage architecture a refresh.

The layout of the 4,000-square-foot, three-bedroom home was working well; it would just need some cosmetic touches to bring the design (respectfully) into the modern era. “We wanted to keep the traditional character alive while adding contemporary furniture into the space that fit well and made sense,” explains Evans. And so, she maintained the statement brick fireplace in the kitchen and the vintage black-and-white tiling, while weaving in chic and contemporary marble detailing, sophisticated neutrals and rich dark green accents.

The result feels both totally fresh and totally natural: a progression of how the house was always meant to be.

In the kitchen, Evans and her team kept the original cabinetry, but sprayed it with a fresh coat of white paint and transformed the wood island with a new palette of grey and black. Hardware and fixtures were swapped out, too; above the refreshed island hangs a brushed-gold dome light.

The dark and moody dining room is perfect for long, leisurely dinner parties. “It’s the perfect place to sit for hours while eating delicious food and making memories with friends,” says Evans.

The living room features matching sofas that face each other, with two cognac leather chairs in between. The large coffee table anchors the furniture grouping and provides a surface for games and food.

Up in the main bedroom, the vaulted ceiling posed a bit of a challenge, but Evans took the awkward architecture as a chance to get creative. “We designed the headboard so that it went wall to wall and floor to ceiling to really customize it and cozy up the bedroom,” she explains. An area rug was repurposed from the living room, bringing a rich cognac colour to the space that gets echoed by the Euro pillows on the bed.

The bathroom kept its original flooring, which offered Evans some inspiration for the rest of the room. “Our client loves marble just as much as we do,” she says. The vanity countertops were decked out in rich, green marble, but paired with a contemporary apron front to keep the space from feeling too retro.

Finding a balance in a refresh like this can be tricky, but for a designer like Evans, the contradictions are exactly where the fun is most often found. “The challenge was mixing the old with the new, but this is something that I personally love to do,” she says.

Project credits: 

Interiors: Amanda Evans Interiors

Contractor: Lotos Construction

Originally published January 2022