A Rideau house renovation.

This Rideau house had good bones and dated finishes almost everywhere you looked: a dark cherry-and-white-spindle staircase, cultured-marble vanities under globe lights, and a beige-tiled tub that had seen better decades. We took it room by room. The clearest way to show what changed is side by side, so here are the real before-and-afters — the staircase, the bathrooms, the ensuite, and a powder room built from scratch.

The two-storey great room had a dark-stained cherry staircase wrapped in white colonial turned spindles, a brass-and-wood ceiling fan up in the vault, tan walls, and dark red-toned hardwood. The main bathroom ran a beige cultured-marble double vanity under a cluster of white glass globe lights. Upstairs, the primary ensuite told the same story: a navy accent wall, a white raised-panel vanity with oval tilting mirrors, and a drop-in soaker tub in a white-tile alcove under a skylight. The plan was to keep the good bones — the light, the layout, the skylights — and bring every surface forward.

The staircase is the transformation that changes the whole house. The dark cherry treads and white turned spindles were rebuilt in warm white oak, with slim floor-to-ceiling black steel rods standing in for the old railing — an open screen instead of a wall of spindles. The loft rail became light oak with a built-in bookshelf worked into its edge, and a modern cascading-rod pendant now drops through the double-height space where the wood fan used to spin.

The dark red floors were brought to a warmer, lighter tone, and the dead space under the stairs earned a job: a wall-mounted wine display and a small bar. Same volume, same footprint — a room that finally uses its height.

The main bathroom kept its shape and changed everything else. The beige cultured-marble vanity became a floating walnut-tone double vanity with a white quartz top and undermount sinks; the globe-light cluster and mismatched mirrors gave way to a single large black-framed mirror lit by a pair of woven-rattan pendants.

The tub alcove was re-tiled in white hexagon, the floor in large-format grey tile, and every fixture — faucets, hardware, shower rod — switched to matte black. It reads calm and current now, where it used to read dated the moment you walked in.

The ensuite got the biggest rethink. The old navy-walled vanity with its oval tilting mirrors was replaced by a floating charcoal double vanity with a white quartz top, a seated makeup station worked into one end, a backlit LED mirror, black-and-brass sconces, and a tall walnut linen tower — the clerestory window and the walk-in closet stayed right where they were.

The bigger move was in the bathing area: the dated drop-in soaker tub came out, and in its place went a double walk-in shower — two stations with brass rain and hand showers, grey-and-white marble-look tile, a lit niche and a built-in bench, all behind black-framed glass, still lit by the original skylight overhead. It's a genuine tub-to-shower conversion, not a like-for-like swap — the fixture changed on purpose.