Thought I would share another of my favourite details in our new house.

DS’s bedroom had a very small walk-in closet. Almost completely useless for clothing storage. It was a cubed space over the secondary door/exit from the house, over a stairwell. We decided to switch the doors on full sized hall closet so that it was accessed from my son’s room, addressing his storage needs. We then decided to put a window in over the stairwell, where the closet used to be, to bring some east light into our upper hallway.

In the end we kept the floor of the closet to create an interior balcony.

The glass window is one of two panels we had DH’s uncle do for us, one by each entrance to the home. Artist’s name is Markian Olynyk. I’m so thrilled we finally had space for two of his pieces. http://www.markianstudios.com/

Our home is close to waterfalls where a medium sized river flows into a larger one. I asked Markian to create the glass panels as an abstract interpretation of the falls, paying homage to the rivers, the forests and the industrial pulp and paper industry that was once so critical to our city. He did an incredible job.

I love the faint image of the long gone mill (hmm, kind of like a palimpsest?) The windows are the only part of this piece that are clear.

Here is the second panel by our main ground floor entrance. The front doors are (finally) being installed Monday so no picture of the foyer yet. The poem is from one of Canada’s confederation poets, describing the spot 150 or so years ago where the Rideau flowed into the embrace of the larger Ottawa river.