As country as she likes it

Debra Thier first opened the creaky front door of her 90-year-old home on a blustery winter day in 1999. It was Valentine's Day. And it was love at first sight. Among the confident and upstanding parade of Victorians crammed into a crooked little Toronto road, Thier found the old spinster. What she saw was a tall, narrow and cracked facade tucked tightly into the lonely end of the street. But filtered through the lens of this successful photographer's ripe
Don't tell photographer Debra Thier she can't create country style downtown. A mix of colour, antiques and European flair make this house as country as she likes it.

"I walked in and I was instantly transported," says Thier. "I felt like I was in an old Parisian apartment. It was completely instinctual."

Thier's sixth sense allowed her to see beyond the damaged floors and pitch-black painted walls left behind by the previous owners of the turn-of-the-century home. In the old house, originally built on the side of the railroad tracks for Canadian National rail conductors, Debra Thier saw her dream home. That dream home was one with plenty of room for her own refined style, yet with touches of country for a sense of relaxation.

With a little help from friend and decorator Sarah Richardson, Thier realized a vision of what some decorators now define as 'new country.' "Working with Sarah I was able to bring the past into the present," she says. "Sarah really understood my love affair with historic, old European apartments, refined a little for modern life."

What Thier divined was a melange of old-world charm accented with hints of modernity. She envisioned light-filled rooms that would play host to both her Fortuny chandelier and her collection of contemporary black and white photographs. She imagined easy, breezy spaces with minimal adornment. And then she made it so.

"The renovation – well, the renovation was an ordeal," says Thier. She contended with construction nightmares, such as the collapse of the living room ceiling at a critical stage of the renovation. But with typical spunk, Thier used the disaster as an opportunity to redraw the roof line, revealing an existing light-catching vaulted ceiling reminiscent of the European dwellings she so loves.