Who: Bret Williams, a product and lighting designer, and Julian Lo, finance director at a lighting company Where: Thornbury Year built: 1873
In 2018, Bret Williams and her husband, Julian Lo, bought a loft in Mimico. But Bret never felt entirely at home there—it was too sleek, too white. She favoured moody homes with eclectic yet traditional vibes. Her dream was to live in a converted church or schoolhouse, maybe in her hometown of Thornbury.
When Bret couldn’t find suitable flush-mount lights for the condo, she designed her own, and her business, Huey Lightshop, was born. She hand-makes lighting in fanciful shapes like scallops, pleats and hourglasses. By 2021, with business picking up, the condo felt smaller than ever. So the couple sold it and rented a cottage in Thornbury while planning their next move. Related: This converted Wellington County schoolhouse is a wood-filled oasis
In 2022, Bret viewed a converted schoolhouse with 20-foot ceilings and hefty ceiling beams. The wood building sat on a bucolic half-acre overlooking a pond. She loved its charm and put in an offer hours after her viewing. The structure was solid, but the conventional interior felt too pedestrian for the designer. The couple gutted the space, removing mouldy carpets, redoing the layout to carve out three bedrooms in the loft, and replacing the lath-and-plaster walls with drywall.
Bret and Julian love their new lifestyle. “There are hip little restaurants, whiskey bars, coffee shops and an amazing school system,” says Bret.
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