The owner’s tour | Sculpt your house in Ahuntsic

Owners open the doors of their exceptional home to us, offered on the resale market

Christine Desjardins
special collaboration

In the wise rue Chambord, in Ahuntsic, this is a property with character. Its distance from the street, its shape and its square brick covering already suggest that it is not a “copy-paste” house. ». As soon as you push the door, its uniqueness is confirmed.

We’re on a liner! We are in an art gallery! There is size, height, light, color, and lots of practical details to discover. By the way, here we are at Joe Jbeily’s, sculptor, poet, cabinetmaker, businessman, and whatnot… It’s as if the days have 48 hours for this Lebanese of origin. Came to Quebec in the mid-1970s, as part of a cultural and educational mission, the man never left. Because the war broke out there, and because he liked it here.

Mr. Jbeily quickly made his mark in Quebec. He founded a family, a communication agency and bought this property on rue Chambord in the early 1980s. It was then a small two-storey house, built in 1922, with a basement of 4 or 5 ft. “It was the first house that had been built in the neighborhood,” he says. I renovated it a few times, before doing the big job. »

The master of the place knew quite well what he wanted when he undertook to do the “big job” towards the end of the 1990s: height, size, light… But everything had to be even a plan before taking action. He decided to design the base himself.

Cardboard, wood, steel…

Taking a material and giving it shape is the passion of sculptor Joe Jbeily. It is also in this way, this time with cardboard and hot glue, that he made the plan of his house. “The structure was 3ft by 3ft,” recalls the owner. On each floor, I asked my wife and children what they thought. »

When the time came to move from a cardboard dream to a concrete reality, he called on architect Louis-Paul Lemieux. The tastes and expertise of both have given this house a very particular style, with an apparently unstoppable solidity. The steel beams that cross the living rooms on the ground floor are there to testify to this. And the concrete is reinforced, take it for granted!

We were talking about ocean liners earlier.

You should know that the owner is a cruise lover. Besides the voyage itself, he appreciates design and the judicious use of space in ships. From there to be inspired by it for his house, there was only a small nautical mile, which was quickly crossed.

Thus, once past the vestibule, you find yourself on the deck of a boat. This oval wooden shape, adorned with portholes, straight ahead, houses a bathroom, a laundry room and storage. To port extend the dining room and the living room. To starboard is the stairway leading upstairs. With its joyful colors dripping from step to step, you can’t miss this staircase. “I said to myself: I’m going to splurge,” says the owner, laughing. Nevertheless, this cascade of colors apparently helps to make the steps less slippery.

Space

The generously sized living rooms are located on the ground floor. The fact that the living room is raised slightly above the dining room energizes the space and creates a sort of open-plan border. The kitchen, as well as the dining area, is located slightly behind, at the back of the house, while being adjacent to the dining room. Sliding glass doors, with naval effigies, separate these rooms. Close or open, depending on the mood of the moment.

Wood, the owner’s favorite material, is omnipresent in the house. It covers the floors, from the basement to the floor. It’s there too, in this large table that the owner made with 2″ thick planks salvaged from the original structure. The noble material is also exhibited in its various attributes, in the artist’s sculptures that mark out our journey. Wood, bark, coal, nothing is lost and everything is a pretext to create, for Joe Jbeily.

Under the same roof

When the renovations were carried out, Mr. Jbeily’s two children were teenagers. Living under the same roof, while having your own kingdom, is kind of the best of both worlds. Thus the master bedroom, which includes a relaxation area, and the adjoining bathroom occupy almost the entire upper floor of the house. The other two bedrooms are in the basement and also have a boudoir and a complete bathroom.

A large terrace that runs on the side and the back of the house allows you to enjoy the good weather. The vine that knits its way all around protects from the sun and adds privacy while providing a ton of grapes, seedless.

Joe Jbeily really liked this property, as well as its location on this residential street, near the good schools in the area and the shops on Fleury Street. But then, two years ago, he sold his design agency located in downtown Montreal. And it is now in his property in the Laurentians that he spends most of his time. So he got used to the idea of ​​leaving the port on Rue Chambord. But it is not without a twinge in the heart that the captain will cast off.