How one woman turned her row house into an art collection – Toronto Star

Some might consider a broken mirror bad luck, but Lynda Middleton saw in it a graceful tree, and glued the bits to form a strikingly original piece of art. It was just one aspect of the redecorating work she recently did on her 1890s Toronto row house, a project she undertook as a creative way to make use of her time during the COVID lockdown. The results? Surprising and stunning.

For Middleton, an avid tennis player, it turns out that her hand skills extend to brushwork, and her mind is full of paint swatches.

“I always resisted doing a lot of work on (the house), because I suspected if I ever were to sell, new owners would gut the place,” she says. But when a real-estate agent mentioned that buyers might want to live there before taking on another project with a big bill, she decided to take the opportunity, even though she is not looking to sell.

“Something just clicked,” Middleton says. “I knew it was time to begin. I didn’t do research – I’d looked around at rooms before.”

Before she set about redecorating her 2,000-square-foot, three-storey home from top to bottom, she first had to take care of a host of formidable tasks.

“I stripped and repaired wallpaper,” Middleton says. “I painted the trim in all the rooms, staircases and landings, plus an entire bedroom, two bathrooms, single walls in three rooms – and floors.”

While standard home decorating follows a linear path of painting walls and floors before assessing the results and then hanging art, “the designs and artwork were done as I went along,” Middleton says.

What influenced her choice of patterns? “I looked at books and on YouTube,” she says, before admitting, “I’ve only had internet at home since the start of the pandemic, at the insistence of my friends. I must admit this has led to some unexpected and welcome pursuits.”

Middleton, who has lived in the house since the 1990s, has always enjoyed fine art, visiting galleries and exhibitions. She is also an accomplished photographer, having shot theatre productions and developed and printed the works, some of which are displayed in her home.

One of the images she created for her home renovation project, an angular line drawing inspired by a souvenir from the play “The War Horse” – made with a pen and ruler on paper – sits in the stairwell going up from her kitchen. Its placement was hardly random – it’s there to soften a colour choice.

“I used sunshine yellow on the walls, but it was way too bright for me,” she says. “I created the image and sat it there to tone down the effect. I have an aversion to hanging things from walls by nails after all the painting I did.”

Likewise, a floor painted grey seemed dull and lifeless to Middleton. Rather than go over it in a different shade, she painted a strong geometric pattern in white strips that resemble bars of sunlight.

“This gave the room some energy,” she says. “The idea to have designs on stair landings was mine, and one, a stylized star, was actually derived from an image used for the American election.”

Similarly, she painted a section of the second-floor hallway in strips of colour. “Those details seemed logical to me,” Middleton says. “A lot of the colour choices were done on instinct.”

While her painted designs have been incorporated into the walls, floors and staircases, she also created one-of-a-kind works using a variety of materials. In addition to the broken-mirror tree, there’s an eagle made of construction tape, some bird-like pieces that now hang from her deck and more. She bought her supplies from a local Canadian Tire as well as from a dollar store, using twist ties and coloured pieces of rubbery material to form some of the works that now grace her home.

When Middleton finally finished in January, she was happy yet missed doing the work. “It wasn’t time to start tennis playing just yet,” she says. “I almost think I should have stretched this project a bit. However, I’m definitely pleased with the outcome and proud of what I achieved. I would do it again!”

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