46447 Old Mail Rd, Meaford, Grey County, Ont.
Asking price: $3,222,000
Lot size: More than 50 acres
Taxes: $5,802 (2024)
Listing agent: Katherine Robichaud, salesperson, Real Broker Ontario Ltd.
The quest for fresh air
People often say when you move out of the city and into the country you breathe a little easier. Some folks go a little further in the quest for fresh air inside and out of their home.
That’s the case for Marc Aeberhardt and Andrea Lugowski Aeberhardt, who have spent years updating not just the aesthetics of a country house they bought in 2017 but also rebuilding its mechanics to banish airborne irritants like mould and chemical leftovers known as volatile organic compounds.
The couple are osteopathic practitioners, and when they returned to Canada from the United Kingdom in 2006, they found they would often meet clients whose health complaints weren’t easy to pinpoint.
“We were seeing a lot of really unwell people at that time. … We were trying to understand complex presentations and one component – a real common denominator – was their houses,” said Ms. Lugowski Aeberhardt.
When they began looking for a new home in 2017, they saw more than 80 properties, trying to find the right one, until they came across Old Mail Road about 10 minutes inland from the town of Meaford, which sits on the southern shore of Georgian Bay.
“We’d come up every weekend and come and see every single thing,” Ms. Lugowski Aeberhardt said, though her husband chimes in that if the property was too close to the main roads, they sometimes wouldn’t even bother to go inside. This house, you can’t even see from the road: “There’s a long winding driveway, and you turn around the bend and it opens up to something magical,” she said.
The lot has five acres of cleared land surrounded by a woodlot but with commanding views of the landscape. The house, however, needed more renovations than they had expected. “It was once a well-built house that was slowly rotting,” she said.
The home boasts a beautiful view.Elevated Photos Canada
Rather than tear down, they rebuilt, but with what they admit was perhaps overkill in terms of technologies to keep the home dry and mould-free. The heating and cooling is geothermal (which is still forced-air, but “It’s not as drying or as powerful as a regular type … it’s not as hot, it’s much gentler,” said Mr. Aeberhardt). Combined with a powerful dehumidifier and an energy recovery ventilator (ERV) air exchanger that is constantly refreshing the inside air with outside. The house has its own lungs according to the couple. “It really feels like there’s fresh cool air inside, it’s a really unusual,” said Ms. Lugowski Aeberhardt.
“I get allergies pretty easily if I’m in a place where air quality is not that good,” said Mr. Aeberhardt. “But when I go home and really breathe, it’s amazing.”
The house today
At the top of a gravel driveway that ends at the double-garage (which is also a workshop) the two-storey L-shaped house is tucked around some mature trees.
Accessed by either the front door or an interior door to the garage, the foyer takes a left turn into the main living space of the house. Continuing past a set of open stairs to the second level, the hallway looks straight through with a glass sliding door to the rear deck providing an outdoor view.
Skipping past the first entrance to the kitchen on the right, at the terminus of the hallway, the central living area opens up with the dining room on the right and the living room on the left. The kitchen is just behind, over a half-wall that opens that room up to the large windows and doors. In the corner is a granite mantle and wood-burning fireplace that is tied into the heating for the house.
Hardwood floors extend through the entire first floor.Elevated Photos Canada
Hardwood floors extend through all the spaces on this level, including the kitchen, but end at the sunroom that opens up off of it through double half-glass French doors. That room also doubles as an office, and has its own separate satellite deck.
Above the sunroom is a flat roof that serves as a large balcony/rooftop patio for the large bedroom suite just above the kitchen/living area.
This is the room the couple has occupied as their primary suite for much of their time here, given its proximity to their son’s bedroom and the commanding views and light they get from its position on the northwest of the house.
“I love the sunroom and our bedroom; they both have access to the view and this cross-breeze that goes through them,” said Ms. Lugowski Aeberhardt. “It’s breathtaking, in eight years we have not tired of it for a second.”
There are two bedrooms between it and a shared bathroom on the opposite side of the house (at the top of the open stairwell). The actual primary suite, newly updated, sits above the garage and has a vaulted roof and its own ensuite bathroom. This room has typically served as the guest quarters: “We have family from Europe, they come for a month at a time,” said Ms. Lugowski Aeberhardt.
Elevated Photos Canada
Country life
As good as their indoor air is, the stuff outside is easy to enjoy, too.
“I grew up in a very rural part of France. I really like the outdoors and maintaining the land. Where we are, it feels good to put your intention in your land,” said Mr. Aeberhardt.
“The fenced-in portion is really safe for dogs and kids, and you could really live here and just be held or nestled by the land. We have these nice vegetable gardens and Marc built irrigation drips for all of it so everything could water itself,” said Ms. Lugowski Aeberhardt.
The wooded areas are used practically every day by the family, in all seasons.
“We really wanted to make some trails in the winter, but you don’t need them; you can snowshoe everywhere,” she said. “We’re really lucky.”
Elevated Photos Canada