Calligrapher’s house back to its future Interactive House Designs

Calligrapher’s house back to its future

October 15, 2011 – 6:52 pm

Calligrapher Françoise Cloutier lives in a house on five acres of land down a country road, near Ogden in the Eastern Townships. She had been using it as a weekend home for over 20 years, but it was only after she retired from a job in communications to become a full-time artist that she decided to move from Montreal and renovate her “1850-something” farmhouse.

“The previous owner had modernized it,” recalled Cloutier, “but he’d done a terrible job. The proportions of the windows and doors were all wrong. The colours were horrible and the architectural details didn’t fit the style of the building at all.

“These things had annoyed me for years, so in 2003, when I had time on my hands, I decided to ‘re-renovate’ the farmhouse and turn it into a home I would enjoy.”

The end result, an elegant 2,200-square-foot, two-storey hideaway, exudes harmony and balance. The house has nine rooms, including Cloutier’s studio, two bedrooms and two bathrooms, with wellproportioned windows and doors that let in lots of light.

Harmony and balance are attributes that are important to the artist who has studied in China and whose calligraphy takes the form of large wall hangings, not texts, some of which adorn her walls. What attracts her, says the petite Parisian-born painter, is not what the brush strokes mean, but the craft itself.

“It is a matter of finding ‘the dance’ of the brush,” explained Cloutier. “I have an eye for colour and design and I’ve always enjoyed making things. When it came to renovating the house, I could see its potential. I had renovated an old house before so I had an idea what the work would entail.”

Because she was pretty clear on what she wanted to do to the building, Cloutier, rather than employ an architect, contacted the Sherbrooke branch of Dessins Drummond. This company, which specializes in house plans, supplied an architectural “technician” who came to her Ogden house armed with magazines to give her some ideas.

“I really didn’t need advice about colour and design, but I was worried about certain things that I didn’t think I could do myself,” said Cloutier. “The technician was very helpful. He drew up a plan with exact measurements and an estimate of what the materials would cost.

Cloutier said that having such a detailed plan worked in her favour when applying for a loan at the bank.

Cloutier has ended up with no fewer than 40 windows, which, she said with a laugh, she got at a discount because she was ordering so many. Wherever possible she sourced her materials and labour from around the Eastern Townships and bargained hard to get good prices from local suppliers.

Cloutier didn’t incorporate all of the architectural technician’s ideas, but she said, they were a good starting point.

“I kept the basic frame of the house but changed things like the shape of the windows. The previous owner had substituted the original vertical windows for cheap horizontal ones, which completely spoiled the proportions of the building.”

The exterior is grey with ivory trim (“I didn’t want white, too stark”) on the windows and eaves, which echoes the natural shades of the fieldstone chimney. The garden is designed with as much care as the house itself. Flower beds with multicoloured blooms are carefully laid out around the lawn, sharing space with a couple of vegetable patches laden with tomatoes, peppers and Swiss chard.

Cloutier’s garden is visible from almost every room, giving the interior of the house a light, airy feel.

The original kitchen was dark and gloomy, so to open it up, Cloutier demolished most of the wall dividing it from another room and installed a window. The window looks into the neighbouring room, but you can see the garden beyond it. Cloutier also put in modern kitchen cupboards and a central wooden work counter, which she designed herself, with custom-made compartments to house trays, serving dishes and cookbooks.

There is wood all over the house, which not only reflects the light from outside, but also lends warmth to the interior. The dining and living room floors are hardwood. Other floors are covered in cork – very cosy on “naked feet” as Cloutier puts it. The cork flooring runs from the conservatory into her studio, another light-filled area, which has a beamed pine ceiling and pine walls.

The dining room is one of the few places where Cloutier has kept the former owner’s furnishings. Above the Victorian-style table and chairs hangs an old-fashioned fringed lampshade. Cloutier mixes and matches throughout the house and the dark wood of the antique table and chairs looks stunning against the mustard walls.

The living room is furnished with a mix of plump velveteen-covered armchairs, long-necked reading lights and an antique sideboard. Above one of the chairs hang two rows of Cloutier’s black and white pictures, depicting limestone cliffs shrouded in mist. (An accomplished photographer as well as an artist, Cloutier took them on one of her trips to China.) To the left of the photos stands a whimsical lamp with a wooden base and a metal shade, crafted from found objects, by Nathalie Bandulet, an Eastern Townships designer.

The three closely positioned windows have venetian blinds rather than drapes to let in the maximum amount of light. In front of the windows is a 1950s, Scandinavian-style sofa with a teak frame and a matching teak coffee table with tapered legs. The simple elegance of this style (it still looks modern) appeals to Cloutier and she has several examples of Scandinavian furniture throughout the house, including in the conservatory

“Believe or not, I picked up most of the pieces very cheaply at garage sales,” Cloutier said. “Some are originals. Others are copies. The upholstery on a couple of the chairs wasn’t in very good condition but I had them recovered.”

The conservatory has ceiling-to-floor thermopane windows and it faces south, towards the U.S. border.

“When I added this conservatory, I decided to insulate it, rather than use it just in the summer. I’m really glad, because it’s sunny all year round and it has become my favourite room in the house.”

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