How a High Park condo turned into a grown-up tree house
For almost two decades, Bob Lymer and Maggie Fuller lived in a century-old, 3,000-square-foot house in Bloor West Village that was becoming difficult to maintain. They had admired the nearby Ellis Park condos at the northwest corner of High Park since they were constructed in 2006, but units rarely went on the market. In the summer of 2014, while Lymer and Fuller were debating whether to give their house a facelift, a two-bedroom corner suite in the Ellis Park building became available, and it was a nice size—1,900 square feet over two floors. They jumped. While they adored the floor-to-ceiling windows facing the park, the interior was walled off, hiding the spectacular view. Plus, it still had builder-grade finishes. Lymer—who is the president of the electrical engineering firm Mulvey and Banani—enlisted an architect friend, Jennifer Turner, to transform the place into something open and airy. Over the next eight months, Turner and her team gutted the condo, knocking down walls wherever possible. Lymer’s firm, meanwhile, tricked out the place with mood lighting and an integrated sound system. He and Fuller, who is a partner in a real estate company, also installed a statement-making wine cellar—it takes up almost half of the first floor’s east-facing wall—to show off their collection. Thanks to Turner’s renovation, when guests enter the apartment, High Park is the first thing they see.
Lymer wrote Fuller a two-page instruction manual on how to operate the electric blinds that cover the floor-to-ceiling windows. The same manual explains the lighting and sound systems (Fuller is still training on the latter). The swivel chair on the left was stored away in Fuller’s mother’s attic. She had it reupholstered and says it’s now the most comfortable perch in the house:
AM Studio makes these three-and-a-half-inch clear glass pendants, called Starlights:
Fuller and Lymer are avid travellers. The figures are souvenirs from Ghana, Belize, Vietnam and the Galapagos Islands:
The wine display case can hold up to 600 bottles (Fuller, a self-professed neat freak, is in charge of cataloguing):
A tiny cylindrical speaker attached to the glass partition in the bathroom allows for in-shower grooving:
The lush treetops of High Park poke over the patio ledge:
Lymer and Fuller opted for grey ceilings to add warmth to the mainly white space:
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