Before and After: A Kits Point Beach House Gets a Cozy, Global-Inspired Makeover

Many people dream of living by the ocean. For Mina Wesa, who lived on the UBC campus as a child when she and her family first arrived in Canada, the seaside came to mean home. “It opens up my heart,” she says.

Years later, when Wesa and her husband, Sukh Brar, came across a listing just a block from the beach, they pounced. The house wasn’t much—a ’90s-built, reverse-layout rental property split into two units—but its location was everything.

The couple were newly married and looking for a property that would accommodate their soon-to-grow family. Brar was raised in Aldergrove, B.C., and pictured raising kids in a spacious, suburban family home. Wesa, who had been living in an Olympic Village condo, also wanted a family home, but one in the city and near the seawall, where she loves to run. They found their happy compromise in Kits Point, a quiet, leafy Vancouver neighbourhood perched right on English Bay. The house, however, needed serious work.

Wesa quickly enlisted her good friend Ben Leavitt—the creative director of PlaidFox Studio—to create a cozy beach house. She and Brar wanted the design to be inspired by the West Coast, but also by their international travels. Elements of the home would speak to her Afghani background and his Indian background. But, most of all, the house needed to feel like a serene retreat. Wesa and Brar both work in demanding jobs at a busy urban hospital, she as an OB/GYN, he as an anesthesiologist—and they needed a haven.

“Often when people build homes that are close to a beach, everything is white and ethereal, and they rely on light and the view to make the home interesting,” says Leavitt. For this home, no one wanted “a sea of white drywall,” he says. “We wanted texture, warmth and layers.” He and senior interior designer Kelly O’Quinn also embraced colour. “When we do a coastal home,” notes Leavitt, “we’re inspired by sand, by wood, by greens and foliage, by sea glass and seashells and pearlescent things, by charcoal stones, cloud cover and grey water—anything but white.”

Leavitt and O’Quinn also knew they needed to create intimate pockets throughout the home—places for privacy and retreat, but also places where the family could gather, and little kids could run wild. “I know a lot of people hold off on renovations or living in a nice space because they worry the kids will ruin things, which is absolutely true!” says Wesa with a laugh. “But I always say, life is now. Why wait? You’ve got to live well while you are healthy and young.”

The materials were chosen accordingly. Limestone, marble, encaustic concrete and brass feature throughout the house, all materials that are meant to be imperfect, to show age and wear, and to even improve with a little rough-and-tumble living. In the dining area, the enormous banquette (so big that it had to be craned into the house through the third-floor balcony) is covered in a tan-and-white striped commercial grade outdoor fabric—one that aced a spilled-spaghetti and splattered-ketchup test.

Of course, durable and practical choices can still be a lot of fun. In the kids’ bathroom, a glazed, burnt-sugar Zellige tile, travertine countertop, brass fixtures and sage-green cabinets create a jewel-box room that might easily have been an afterthought. A custom Arabic arch frames the tub, which uses encaustic concrete from Morocco and plays off the black-and-white star-patterned tile on the floor.

Where the original entranceway was practical and utilitarian, Leavitt and O’Quinn created another jewel-box moment. What was once a small wooden door is now a nine-foot glass one, and the new staircase is shifted backward to make the entrance larger, the closet tucked further down the hall to make room for a custom bench by Western Designers. Ink-coloured Mutina tiles line the floor, while a glass and powder-coated white metal wall from Iron and Ash, a metal fabricator in Vancouver, creates a stunning backdrop for a gigantic 10-foot painting of two cobalt-blue sailors by Toronto artist Erin Armstrong.

One of the most striking features of the home, which is on view from the entrance, was also a temporary pain point. Leavitt and O’Quinn worked with Jason Skladan from Skladan Architecture to clad the angled upper-floor ceiling in rustic wood. “Texture is such an important feature of the house,” says Leavitt, “and we also wanted it so that the house would feel really cozy in the evenings. We didn’t want a vast, cathedral-like drywalled ceiling.” Everyone was invested in the idea, but as it was going up—a highly intricate process—Brar and Wesa balked. They worried it might feel too dark and heavy. “There were a lot of questions, and lots of discussion, but I convinced them to trust in the process,” says Leavitt. “Sukh and Mina are both adventurous and optimistic, so thankfully they did, and now, when you come up the staircase, you’re greeted with an ocean of textured, beautiful wood.” And it has become one of the couple’s favourite features of their warm hug of a home.

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