Inside a technicolour rural farmhouse lovingly restored by director Eva Michon and musician Sebastien Grainger

Director Eva Michon met musician Sebastien Grainger in 2005, during the early days of Torontopia—when Queen West was still crowded with artists and Canadian indie bands like the Hidden Cameras and Broken Social Scene were considered the pinnacle of cool.

Michon was working as a photographer, and Grainger was playing drums in the seven-piece hardcore band Femme Fatale. Grainger was living and working out of the Ossington studio he owned with Jimmy Shaw of Metric and would go on to form Death From Above 1979 with bandmate Jesse Keeler. Meanwhile, Michon went to film school and co-founded Bad Day, a quarterly arts-and-culture magazine that ran for 20 issues. The two were friends first, eventually started dating, and in 2009 they married.

In 2012, the pair decided that they needed a fresh start. Michon wanted to try directing, so they packed up for LA, telling each other they would try it for three months. “We wanted to have an adventure,” says Michon.

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Eight years and one new baby later, Michon and Grainger moved back to Ontario in search of a bucolic countryside home to hole up in during the pandemic. They stumbled on a 19th-century stone house in a small town called Lucknow, near Lake Huron. “When you’re buying an old house, everyone talks about good bones. Well, you can’t get much sturdier than stone with log floor joists,” says Michon.

The house had been renovated in the 1960s, but the original mouldings, windows and exterior were still intact. Rather than restore the grand old house back to its Victorian state, Grainger and Michon envisioned a space suited to their tastes while honouring its history.

“We were trying to create a place that would last forever,” says Grainger. And since the pandemic meant there was no outside pressure to work quickly, they took their time. Projects included raising the ceilings to their original 11-foot height, insulating the windows and moving a staircase from one side of the house to the other.

In the kitchen, Michon and Grainger decided to take a sledgehammer to the lath and plaster walls to expose the stone underneath. They had hoped the rocks would look identical to the exterior, but the walls on the inside were roughly mortared with lime. Grainger used wire brush drill attachments, chisels and a great deal of patience to expose larger portions of the stone. “Once the stone was exposed, it gave the room such a powerful, unique look. We thought it would be a shame to cover it up again,” says Michon. They added clean, modern white cabinetry and ash flooring in the kitchen to create a calm yet striking juxtaposition.

The centrepiece of the home is the striking kachelöfen, a type of efficient masonry fireplace found in eastern Europe that Grainger had first become acquainted with while on tour with his band. They removed a bookshelf room divider in the living room and installed the fireplace in its place, hiring Jessica Steinhäuser, a Guelph-based mason and ceramicist who designs fuel-efficient ovens and understood the couple’s vision, which included a cozy carved-out seating area.

“It’s the best place in the world to sit,” says Michon. In the summer, the tiles stay cool, and the spot is used for reading or watching TV, while in the winter you can sit up there on a sheep skin and warm up or dry mittens and socks. The dusty pink tiles were custom-made, with the extras winding up on the kitchen backsplash.

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Much of the woodwork throughout the house was crafted by local Amish artisans. The storm windows required custom carpentry, so Grainger spoke to his neighbour, who one day showed up with a young Amish man—“no older than 19,” says Grainger—who had just taken over his father’s shop. He and Grainger worked together to restore the 18 rounded frames, which now have hinges and can open when needed.

Another local man from the Amish community built the solid ash staircase leading from the kitchen to the basement, installed the kitchen floors, and hand-crafted the benches and kitchen table. The stools are a flea market find from the St. Jacobs Antique Market in Waterloo.

Michon and Grainger insist that they don’t have a specific design approach. Instead, they fill spaces with what feels right at the time. “We’re both artists,” Grainger says. “With a long project like this, we just trust our instincts.”

Most of the furniture and artwork have been collected over the years, some shipped over from California. The Moroccan rugs throughout the house were gifted by a fashion-designer friend in France, Calla Haynes, who up-cycles the rugs into shoes. Their expansive record collection lines the bookshelves in the dining room. The Yamaha piano in the living room—the same model Michon had as a child—was purchased from a neighbour.

Lucknow is in a snowbelt, and the winters can feel long and grey. To combat seasonal ennui, Michon and Grainger painted the exterior window frames light pink. “We wanted to have a pop of colour that would brighten your day just by looking at it,” says Michon. Their goal is for the entire house to feel inspiring and joyful.

After several years in the home, Michon and Grainger eventually settled into a rhythm. They got to know their neighbours, and their daughter began playing with the kids down the road. Grainger made maple syrup by tapping trees on the property, and Michon found herself painting and writing screenplays, inspired by the view from the window of the office room Grainger had renovated for her. At one point, the couple found a note taped to their front door from one of the descendants of the original owner, who told them the house was once called the Maples.

Last year, Michon and Grainger decided to head back to LA. They now split their time between California and Ontario. “We got to a point where we felt like we were retired up there,” says Michon. And Grainger realized he was channelling all of his creative energy into the house: “I thought, Oh, wait a second. I’m a songwriter.”

The Maples now serves as a getaway and a special place for the family, and the couple hope to turn it into a retreat for artists, musicians and writers. Every aspect of the home, including Michon’s family heirloom Polish tapestry hanging on the second floor, the basement recording studio and the office door handle—a dandelion suspended in resin, made by Michon’s friend Wylie Gelber—is autobiographical. “It’s an incredibly personal space,” says Michon. “It’s us, expressed as a house.”