Realtor Natalie Paquin and her husband, Graham Pangrass, describe their renovated houses style as “your Grandma’s modern cottage.” Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
"Because our home is a 1950s wartime home, it definitely has some unique and quirky characteristics," Natalie describes. "It has relatively zero closet space. From having no linen closets all the way to zero primary bedroom closets, we had to find some unique ways to store our belongings and our clothing. Our only true closet is in the front entry and being very small on its own, it also has a double entrance for no reason, ha!" Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
A decor element that inspired much of the rest of the home is the living room rug. "I spent forever looking at vintage rugs online and testing out dozens in our space over the years. We could never find the right size, pattern, or colors that went with the vibe we wanted," Natalie begins. Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
"As soon as we found this rug, it all came together and we knew what kind of coffee table, sofa, chairs, and other decor would fit! Also finding the right size of rug for our space was a total game-changer in ordering other furniture and maximizing the space." Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
The living room rug also happens to be one of the oldest things in their home! "I won it off an eBay auction, and it’s dated 1907 from Turkey!" she explains. "Next up would be our dining room cabinet that dates anywhere from the late 1800s to early 1900s or some of the artwork around our house! There’s definitely a couple pieces from the early 1900s." Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
The BEST purchase the couple made for their home is the custom-made sofa by Peppers Upholstery. "It’s SO comfortable, and with being true homebodies, we relax on it all the time. I work from home a lot during the week, and always chose to work from the sofa vs. any sort of office setting we have." Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
"We tried several sofas over the years and just couldn’t find one with the right comfort, the right vibe or even something that could hold up with a big energetic dog and two cats!" Natalie continues. "We were nervous to invest in custom furniture, but it’s truly turned out to be one of our best purchases in our home." Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
While the couple DIYed many things in the home, their proudest project is the kitchen. "I’ve never designed or renovated a kitchen before, and honestly wasn’t even sure what our needs were within a kitchen space," Natalie admits. Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
"Neither of us cook much, so it took a while to run through what worked best for us and how much storage we needed. Because we relocated the kitchen across the house, we were starting completely from scratch. We reused our old kitchen cabinets and only had to buy one or two matching new cabinets to fit with the new layout." Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
"We also installed a structural beam in the ceiling to open the space up! Our total budget for our full kitchen renovation was $20,000, which we knew was going to be tricky because kitchens are SO expensive, but after reusing our cabinets, we were able to stick to our budget and ended up spending just under $20,000." Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
"I sourced some brand-new quartz counters from a local company, who gave us a great discount and I installed and painted all our cabinetry myself! We also installed the new drywall, lights, window, trimwork, tile, and built our hood fan from scratch ourselves." Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
"We’re super proud of how it turned out, and although we have slowly made small adjustments over the years, we still love the design!" Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
The couple made some significant changes to the home's layout in the renovation "The original main floor design had two bedrooms off the living room, with only a 3'x4' half bathroom," Natalie begins. Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
"We knew we wanted to open up the bedrooms and relocate the kitchen across the house (to where it is now), and in doing so, we could turn the other bedroom into a connected dining space that would eventually have patio doors leading out to a deck." Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
Natalie says they finally "found our true sense of style when it comes to furnishing and decorating our spaces." Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
"We had a goal to mainly decorate using antique pieces or custom furniture, and all of a sudden our house felt so lived-in and perfect to us." Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
One of Natalie's favorite thing about their home is all the natural light. "Finding a south-facing home was really important to us, especially with our long harsh winters in Canada," she admits. Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
"We wanted something where sunlight poured into each room, and thankfully we found the perfect house for that." Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
"We have nice large south-facing windows leading into our living room and kitchen, which made it really fun to play around with a darker kitchen cabinet color," she continues. Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
"Our house always feels bright and happy, which has been our main goal and favorite part." Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
"Something that shouldn’t make sense but does to us is probably all the glass doors on the bedrooms and bathrooms," Natalie admits. Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
"Anytime I post photos online, we’re always met with questions about ensuring privacy, especially for bathrooms." Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
"For us, it's only us two living here so it’s never bothered us, plus we prefer the natural light coming in all the rooms." Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
"The glass door on our bathroom has a curtain for privacy and so does our guest bedroom door, but we still always get asked why that vs. solid doors for privacy," Natalie admits. Credit: Natalie PaquinCredit: Natalie Paquin
Natalie Paquin, a realtor with Remax Real Estate, and her husband, Graham Pangrass, basically started renovating this house — a two-bedroom, 1,100-square-foot house in central Edmonton — as soon as they received the keys! “Our main focus initially was the exterior, where we knew we wanted to remove the sunken front deck, paint the stucco, and replace the torn-up siding with vintage looking brick,” Natalie begins. But the interior needed lots of work too.
“We knew we were in for a big renovation, both inside and out, so every year we set a new goal and a new budget for what projects we wanted to complete that year,” Natalie admits, explaining that the entire renovation budget for the house was $50K for both the exterior and the interior work.
Natalie says they DIYed quite “literally everything except for any electrical or plumbing needs,” admitting that her dad also helped a lot with the renovations, installing all the new hardwood floors and all the tiles in both the house’s bathrooms.
“We’ve saved a lot of money along the way by doing everything ourselves and sourcing salvaged material whenever we can,” Natalie continues. “Just about any supplies we need, I try to find it on Marketplace or salvage yards first. Although we’ve since surpassed our initial budget over the last four and a half years, it’s surprisingly not by much and likely only due to me changing my mind 1,000 times on our designs!”
While Natalie says plenty of the projects in their home could be categorized as renter-friendly, the biggest challenge of renovating this house was “reworking the layout of our main floor. We knew on our first walk-through of the house that we would need to alter the layout. It was really closed off and had an extremely small inconvenient kitchen with NO dining room,” she writes, explaining that they ended up relocating the kitchen across the house, turning an original bedroom into a dining space.
“It was extremely challenging taking on this reno, not only for budget reasons, but because our old kitchen needed to become the new and only guest bedroom in the house,” Natalie continues. “The old kitchen was only roughly 7 feet wide by 11 feet long, so it makes for a very tiny bedroom. But in doing so, we gained our dream kitchen, a dining space, a bigger bathroom, and a now super cozy guest bedroom. It was hard making the call going from a three-bedroom house to only a two-bedroom, but these changes better suit our lifestyle!”
Of course, as with many renovations, there were surprises. “We initially thought we would fully finish our renovations in two to three years and here we are almost five years in, still going! We’ve definitely learned to tweak our timelines as we go (and our budget too, ha!).” Follow along with Natalie’s home renovations on her Instagram account, @natalieapaquin.
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