It all starts outside, in the neighbourhood on a hill at the north end of Tawatinâ Bridge. Nestled among the older homes sits Cliff Lane, the name this owner gave the laneway home his family built while living in the 113-year-old main property.
If you ever wander down Cameron Avenue towards Riverdale Park, look left and you’ll see a dark grey peak atop the trees. Take a detour down the alley and you’ll see its exterior’s gradation from light to dark (or dark to light, if you head up the hill) like the feathers of a Canada jay. “Alair Homes custom made those shingles by water jet-cutting Hardie board panels in the curved shape, and we absolutely love it,” he says, still beaming over his labour of love.
The suite, which sits above a single car garage, is all kinds of adorable and functional to the extreme. Matching the shape of the shingles, the half-round entranceway leads to the interior, which literally opens up to an above-living-room loft under a peaked roof, accessed by a ladder that, by necessity, is as customized as they come.
“What we tried to do here was to get you interacting with the home a little bit, so it’s not just a hard staircase that lives there forever. It’s a little bit of an adventure,” he says of the steel-rail, wood-rung ladder on wheels that lock once you slide it to your desired spot — the bedroom, the storage above the bathroom sink, or back out of the way at the entrance.
It’s the most obvious example of the home’s built-in ingenuity that the Alair team devised, but there’s plenty more (neatly) packed in. What would be a flush-to-the-floor wall needs to be cut and cantilevered to make space. Kitchen cupboard handles need to clear extended window frames. And all the plumbing, wiring and gas work is miraculously packed into the tiny pony wall separating the living room and bathroom while keeping each big enough for even the six-foot-four owner. (The bathroom’s space-saving sliding door is painted with a New York-Edmonton-hybrid mural by Caroline Stokes, commissioned by Alair Homes.)
In the short time it’s been a short-term rental, it’s already housed guests from as far away as Dubai, and the reviews have been raving. But the point of such a space is to ooh and aah at the craftsmanship — and then get out and enjoy one of coolest neighbhourhoods in the city.
“There’s obviously a big benefit of this being a revenue property, no question. But we didn’t just build the cheapest thing to get it rented. We built what we think is a piece of art. And if you look across the hill from the Folk Fest, you’ll see this little mosaic popping up out of the trees. So it’s not just a home, it’s our little touch on the Edmonton skyline.”
Ballet Edmonton’s Home Tour takes place on September 23 & 24, 2023. This annual fundraiser allows patrons to see inside a curated selection of beautiful private homes while supporting the arts in Edmonton.
This article appears in the Sept/Oct 2023 issue of Edify
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