Welcome to DH Houses, a brand new sequence that includes Torontonians and their properties! No matter your design aesthetic, we need to pay attention about what makes your own home uniquely you. Click on right here for extra main points, and practice to have your digs featured.
When Ellen Geesje Schraa graduated from faculty in her place of origin of Orangeville, Ontario, in 1985, she discovered a Nineteen Fifties get dressed from the “new — and most effective — antique retailer” within the space. That get dressed set her on a trail to changing into a tireless collector of all issues vintage and antique.
“I’ve been featured on Collector Showdown for my antique clothes assortment,” she stated, including that her earlier properties had been featured in Canadian House and Lawn and The Globe and Mail.
Schraa, whose background is in accounting, recently works as a professor of well being and police control at York College. But if she’s now not instructing scholars, she’s exploring her neighbourhood together with her canines and in search of distinctive furnishings for her surprising Victorian house in Little Portugal.
DH Houses Q&A
Identify: Ellen Geesje Schraa
Neighbourhood: Beaconsfield Village
Measurement: 2,500 sq toes
How would you describe your design aesthetic?
Girly, modernized, grandma elegant.
Ellen Geesje Schraa
How lengthy have you ever lived in your house?
One and a part years.
What’s the most efficient a part of dwelling in Toronto?
The small the city neighbourhood really feel. Toronto is a town of neighbourhoods. I lived in lots of Toronto neighbourhoods since shifting right here in 1995. I simply love [the city] and my neighbours.
Ellen Geesje Schraa
What’s your favorite factor about your neighbourhood?
The folk and the small one-of-a-kind retail outlets and eating places. My on a regular basis canine stroll is a sightseeing journey.
Ellen Geesje Schraa
The place do you get your adorning concepts?
From what I visualize in my thoughts, which is influenced through the whole thing I see. I’m an excessively observant and detailed-oriented particular person.
Ellen Geesje Schraa
What’s your own home’s best possible function?
The unique Victorian options, like tall ceilings, cornices, ceiling medallions, trim, doorways…
Ellen Geesje Schraa
Ellen Geesje Schraa
What’s your favorite merchandise in your house?
That is very arduous for me to respond to, it adjustments always. Lately, my painted ceilings with the unique medallions within the access, dwelling and eating room, and kitchen.
Ellen Geesje Schraa
What’s the most important expense up to now?
The dull stuff, underpinning, and mildew abatement. My splurge purchases in my price range have been my unlacquered brass fixtures and Broche lighting fixtures.
Ellen Geesje Schraa
And your favorite DIY undertaking?
Portray. Detailed portray that makes the entire distinction within the giant image.
What’s your least favorite a part of your own home?
Sadly, the entrance of my area. I took a porch down, had some brick repaired, did some landscaping, nevertheless it simply doesn’t really feel like me but. I planted a Eastern Maple nevertheless it died, and I’m recently at the hunt for a saucer magnolia. I’m so unhappy to leave out a rising yr.
Ellen Geesje Schraa
The place do you typically supply furnishings and decorations?
In all places. The aspect of the street, Kijiji, Fb market, circle of relatives, buddies, vintage and antique presentations.
What’s your adorning recommendation?
Whilst you’re crushed with a choice, give your self a while away and let the proper resolution come to you while you’re in a relaxed frame of mind. Differently, the verdict is also incorrect.
Ellen Geesje Schraa
Ellen Geesje Schraa
How do other folks typically react to your own home?
They gasp, then ask if I’ve been featured in {a magazine}. The funniest remark was once from any person dwelling out of town who stated, “This is able to make dwelling within the town profitable!”
Ellen Geesje Schraa
