A smooth renovation | The Press

How to renovate a century-old house without stripping it of its period charm? You can rarely go wrong when you take inspiration from existing elements to create something new. This is what the architects of _nature Humaine have done, in the smooth redevelopment of an apartment in the Little Burgundy district.

Sophie Ouimet
The Press

Michèle Beaudin called on Stéphane Rasselet, co-founder of the architecture firm, to renovate the accommodation where her daughter lives with her two young children on the ground floor of a quintuplex. M^me Beaudin and his family, who acquired the building over 20 years ago, have always been keen to preserve and maintain the beautifully crafted period features. But the time had come to make the apartment more practical for a family, with more light, fewer partitions and more storage.

“Among the essential elements, we wanted to keep the cachet of the house of yesteryear, while making it more functional, of course,” summarizes Michèle Beaudin.

Retain period features

So where do you start when renovating a house that dates back to the 1920s? “The main challenge of the project was to preserve period elements: the woodwork, the plaster mouldings, the original radiators”, Stéphane Rasselet immediately launches. The multiplex also has superb stained glass windows that have been well maintained over the years.

To base their concept, they looked at existing elements to see how they could draw inspiration from them. “There is a whole mosaic work in the entrance vestibule with insertions of small pale green tiles, continues the architect. So it was one of the elements for the choice of our color. Hence the sage green that can be found everywhere in the project, from the kitchen cupboards to the hallway cupboard.

But that’s not all, the soft curved shape with which these cabinets are equipped was also induced by a period detail, namely the roundness of the moldings. “The introduction of rounded shapes comes a bit from the original mouldings,” continues Stéphane Rasselet, alluding in particular to the arch and the colonnade between the living room and the dining room. “So we wanted to work roundly from these elements. »

The curved shape is also found in another contemporary intervention, the openwork partition between the kitchen and the dining room. Where there used to be a wall, the architects wanted to channel the light that came from the kitchen to the front of the house. Since the occupants wanted to preserve a little privacy between the rooms, a claustra was added, an openwork partition made of pine sticks painted white.

“The claustra structures the space a little more, while retaining the light, which filters like a screen,” says Stéphane Rasselet. The division also plays the role of a graphic element, in a way. Moreover, this openwork partition continues on the side wall of the dining room. “It creates a vertical rhythm effect in the space, and adds a bit of texture to the walls. »

The little details that matter

The rest of the cachet is found in the small details: for example, the clawfoot tub which has been preserved and which sits in the now modern bathroom, or even the original radiators. These were stripped and repainted, but they were not reconnected to a hot water system; they have instead become electric.

The last detail — which is not insignificant — concerns the small brass ceiling lights in the four corners of the living room, which there was no question of getting rid of. “As far as the architectural lamps are concerned, we went with classic models from Lambert & fils, which echo the brass of the ceiling lights that we restored,” explains Stéphane Rasselet.

“We liked them and we had always preserved them, the four small brass living room lights,” adds Michèle Beaudin. We wondered if we would remove them, but in the end, we decided to keep them. » Creating something new as a reminder of the old, a leitmotif that was repeated throughout the project, in large and small details alike.