The White Space Co.
6550 Wellington Ave., West Vancouver, B.C.
Asking price: $2,298,000
Taxes: $5,188.69 (2024)
Lot size: 7,500 square feet
Agent: Michael Miller, Engel & Volkers Vancouver
The backstory
The 1950s-era house in West Vancouver was painted a soft sage green the first time Alison Keller stepped onto the sloping site above Horseshoe Bay.
The building, designed by Bob Lewis and built as one of a cluster of homes in 1958, was a little tattered when she first visited in 2007, recalls Ms. Keller.
As soon as she stepped inside, however, Ms. Keller was drawn to the simple post-and-beam construction, natural light and views towards the North Shore Mountains.
Mr. Lewis was a builder who designed modern and cost-effective family homes, according to the West Coast Modern League, which promotes awareness of the distinctive regional adaptation of modernism that emerged in the Greater Vancouver Area in the 1940s, according to the non-profit society’s website.
The Vancouver native worked as a welder and shipyard worker during the Second World War, then took up the occupation of carpenter before founding Lewis Construction in 1954.
He was one of a cadre of designers and architects who favoured the simple functionality of post-and-beam construction during the building boom of the post-Second World War years.
Many Bob Lewis homes were demolished over the years and replaced with larger, grander residences, but a resurgence in appreciation for Mid-Century Modern design has led many homeowners to preserve and restore the original dwellings.
Ms. Keller figured she could draw on her experience as an artist to transform the three-bedroom house into a comfortable home for her family.
“It was a significant piece of architecture that was within reach,” she says.
By the time she got home to tell her husband, Perry Keller, about the property, Ms. Keller had already made up her mind that the couple should buy it.
“You could see that it was a place that would foster dreaming and creativity.”
The house today
Despite the good bones of the home, the interior was a bit of a hodgepodge when the Kellers moved in with their two young daughters, Poppy and Victoria.
The interior paint job was unfinished, Ms. Keller recalls, and the kitchen wasn’t functional.
“If you opened up the refrigerator door, you couldn’t get into the kitchen,” she says.
She figures the orange floor tiles, nasty polyester carpeting and the Spanish-style candelabra in the dining room were unfortunate design choices left over from the 1970s.
Previous owners had also added a great room and replaced a lower-level garage with a room that now serves as Ms. Keller’s home office. Today the house has 2,271 square feet of living space.
The couple soon lightened up the exterior with fresh colour and painted the interior white. They installed new engineered wood flooring.
The main living area is on the upper level of the two-storey house. That way the living, dining and kitchen areas receive plenty of natural light during the day.
“The simplicity of the Bob Lewis design really invites socializing,” Ms. Keller says.
The couple brought in a designer to reconfigure the kitchen in order to make it much more functional and modern, she adds.
Closing off a door to the balcony, for example, allowed for an efficient L-shaped arrangement of the cabinets and work spaces.
“Everything is right there at your fingertips,” Ms. Keller says.
A large island serves as a base for homework, cooking and entertaining.
The dining table is set in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows.
“The favourite seats at the dining room table are the ones looking out,” Ms. Keller says.
Ms. Keller was also able to obtain a woven stainless-steel surround for the fireplace in the family room after another renovating homeowner found it didn’t fit.
“It just happened to perfectly fit our fireplace.”
The post-and-beam construction allows for very large windows, Ms. Keller says, and the West Coast modern ethos of connecting the indoors with the outdoors does foster creativity, just as she imagined.
“Lots of light comes flooding in. You really get this poetic dance of light happening on the walls and on the beams.”
The bedrooms, on the lower level, offer more privacy in their sheltered position, she adds.
“It’s cozy and quite peaceful,” she says, “and you get to be closer to the garden too.”
Previous owners had also added a great room and replaced a lower-level garage with a room that now serves as Ms. Keller’s home office.The White Space Co.
Ms. Keller refurbished one of the two bathrooms with a fresh green vanity and a pebbled floor as a nod to Mr. Lewis’s appreciation of nature. One year a family of Steller’s jays built a nest in the tree just outside the bathroom window, Ms. Keller recalls.
The windows in Ms. Keller’s ground-floor office face a rock wall with a mass of French lavender tumbling over the top.
Outside, the home has an upper deck at the rear with a lounging area that lights up with the morning sun. The lower deck provides a shady spot to sit and a place to soak in the hot tub or enjoy the outdoors on a rainy day.
Ms. Keller says it’s a short walk down to the village of Horseshoe Bay, and there are plenty of trails through the surrounding wilderness. A herd of sea lions likes to lounge on the dock at the water’s edge or sunbathe on the beach at Whytecliff Park, and seals frequently bob offshore.
“The experience of flora and fauna out here is authentic,” Ms. Keller says.
B.C. Ferries offers sailings to Nanaimo, the Sunshine Coast and Bowen Island from the Horseshoe Bay Terminal.
“One thing I love is when you hear the ferry horn – particularly on a foggy day,” says Ms. Keller. “It’s just part of the music of the bay.”
The best feature
Mr. Keller has restored the garden and turned the exterior into a tranquil spot for relaxation.The White Space Co.
The gardens surrounding the house had run wild when the couple moved in, but over the past 18 years, Mr. Keller has restored the garden and turned the exterior into a tranquil spot for relaxation.
There are patches of sage and mint, a rose garden and swathes of French irises, peonies and vibrant red poppies. Currant and blueberry bushes, rhododendron and California juniper round out the landscape at the front.
“It’s really a well-planted, mature garden of perennials,” Ms. Keller says.
The rear garden has a pear tree, strawberry plants and grasses. There’s also a square pond for reflection. A family of Steller’s jays nested in a tree outside the house and chickadees are frequent visitors to the garden.
Ms. Keller says being surrounded by nature has meant a lot to the family during their time there.
“It really does foster well-being.”