The owner’s tour | A former summer residence that crosses the seasons

(Richelieu) Built a hundred years ago in Richelieu, it was Senator Élie Beauregard’s summer residence for several years. Today, it is a couple of lovers of old houses who occupy it. Both had planned to spend the rest of their lives there, but a bike ride changed everything.

Valerie Simard
The Press

You can imagine many notables from the Richelieu valley having tea on the veranda in their period clothes, even if a lot has changed since the construction of the house in the early 1920s. Third owners, Stéphane Poissant and Annie Bédard have restored luster to this residence in downtown Richelieu by enhancing its original cachet and even modifying some of its elements without altering it. The yellow brick has been painted white and long hemlock beams have been installed in the ceiling of the main living area, where the hidden ones that really support the house are.

“For the sake of aesthetics, as we were making a chic summer chalet, we didn’t want [à l’époque] show support like in farm buildings,” explains Annie Bédard.

Authenticity

Nevertheless, the one who is an interior designer says “to have applied to put back what was of time: the palette of colors, the materials, the wooden floors in the kitchens”.

Original, many architectural elements remain such as the casement windows and their shutters, the maple hardwood floor, the cast iron radiators and the water heating system, the staircase, the integrated moldings and the walls. of textured plaster, one of which is rounded. The XX^e century also winks at us, here and there, through the old built-in ironing board, the interior doorbell (not functional) and the plans of the architect’s blue type house (blueprint) that have been framed and hung on the wall.

“It is a house where there were staff, says M^me Bedard. In the current kitchen, there was the maid’s room. Since then, the space has been opened up to enlarge the kitchen and open it up to the living room.

It was her work as a designer that led her to this residence in the 8^e Avenue, when she had been hired by the previous owner to redevelop her interior. “I’ve been here a few times over the years and always had a nice feeling, like it was a little Provencal mansion,” she says.

Rescue

Then her spouse, a real estate broker, was mandated by the former owner in 2018 to sell the property, which was then located on a vast plot of 60,000 sq.ft.^⁠2. Buyers have come forward with the intention of demolishing the house. The couple, who love old homes – he grew up in Vermont in old houses that his father was renovating and she once lived in the old post office in La Prairie – then bought it in order to save it. . The land was subdivided into lots, which set the stage for a residential development that is still ongoing. New neighbors have since moved in behind the century-old house.

And what about the neighbor opposite… a cemetery? “You are sure of what will happen, says Stéphane Poissant, down to earth. We are close to a church too. It brings peace. »

If they leave after almost four years this house where they thought they would spend their old age, it’s because another centenarian (twice that one) has made eye to them. It was during a bike ride across the river, in Old Chambly, a few blocks from where Annie Bédard grew up.

“It’s a house from 1780, located on the land of the first mill of the seigneury of Fort Chambly,” she explains. You’re on the rapids, you hear the water, it’s rushing down, you want to be there! The transaction is already concluded. They will move in after carrying out some renovations.