A Lake Bonavista house renovation.

Lake Bonavista is one of Calgary's established lake communities, which means a lot of its houses have good bones and dated finishes — solid family homes waiting a couple of decades for their update. This one was exactly that. We started in a kitchen that hadn't been touched in years and worked outward into the main-floor living spaces and the front entry. Here's the before we started from, and the finished rooms it became part of.

The kitchen is the room we photographed before a single tool came out, and it's the clearest picture of where this house was. Overhead, a big dark-wood-framed ceiling grid held rows of frosted fluorescent diffuser panels — the kind of built-in light box that dated the room the moment you walked in. Dark wood trim and a heavy valance ran around the ceiling and down one wall. Below that sat pale maple shaker cabinets — one upper wearing frosted-glass mullioned doors — cream laminate countertops with a rounded edge, and a white tile backsplash with a patterned diamond border. The floor was tan ceramic tile. A bay window over the double stainless sink looked straight out at the neighbour's deck.

It worked, and it wasn't falling apart. But the dark ceiling grid fought the pale cabinets, the laminate and patterned tile read a decade or two behind, and the whole room felt closed-in and dim. That's the honest starting point — a good house asking to be brought forward.

The finished main-floor living area is where the house's new character reads loudest. A full red-brick fireplace anchors one wall — a gas insert with live flame behind a black surround, a light-wood mantel across the top, and a brick hearth stepping out onto the floor. It's flanked by a matched pair of built-ins: whitewashed shaker cabinets with light stone tops, and lit floating shelves above them styled with plants, books, and framed photos. A small window sits high on either side of the brick.

Across the room, white French garden doors open onto a wood deck and fenced yard, pulling daylight deep into the space. The detail that tells you who did the work is at the threshold: a decorative river-rock-and-tile inlay set into the wood plank floor where the doors meet the room — a small piece of craftsmanship most renovations would have skipped. Warm wood plank flooring and recessed pot lights run through the space.