Decorating 19th century style

Image at left: The pine circular staircase is an original feature of the house. It's done in Williamsburg style, with painted risers and spindles, stripped treads and newel posts.

It took Stief a while to heed that calling. While a teacher in Toronto, she started her antiques business as a hobby, which she fit in around the daily commute to her job.

In the early 1980s (just as the recession hit, to her chagrin), she took High House Antiques full-time. "Back then, everything was 'skinned' or 'buzzed,' stripped down to the raw wood. Now, more people want the original paint, or the old over-paint.

In the 1980s, the most sought-after piece was a six-foot harvest table, but now, with bigger country houses and cottages being built, everyone wants longer ones.

Then there's the coffee table. Of course, there's no such thing as an antique one. What we do is take a table with the right proportions, one that has lost its legs by being left in a damp basement or out in a barn, and adapt it."

The original builders, the Keoghs, were Irish Catholics who raised two generations of 13 children in the house. Eventually, they sold their home to a local farmer, and moved to another house in the area. To this day, a family of Keoghs, descendents of the original owners, continues to live across the road.


Image at left: Muggy the cat enjoys an 1840s wing chair.
THE CHANGES CONTINUE

On buying the 1865 house, Stief removed many of their "improvements," including recent room partitions and acoustic ceiling tile. "The family saved for years to put down hardwood floors, and one of the first things we did was take them up to reveal the original pine planks!" she exclaims. The verandah had been demolished, but Stief oversaw a reconstruction based on vintage photographs of the property.

Stief takes a keen interest in provenance, evident when she speaks of the cannonball bed in her spare bedroom - "From Welland Port in Niagara Peninsula, 1840" - or the cherry wood tramp couch in the upstairs hallway. "Tramp couches, or daybeds, were kept in the kitchen. Farmers could come in from the barn and stretch out for a nap, without getting changed."

"All the Keogh kids had their baths in front of the winter kitchen fireplace," says Stief. The original mantel is still in place. The real showpiece is a corner cabinet from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, with tombstone doors, reeded pilasters and original blue paint. It took six people to move the eight-foot-six piece into place (the ceilings are nine feet high).