Elegance at Christmas

Designer Ami McKay kept things clean and simple when planning her home's festive look

Friday, December 08, 2006

On the TV show Makeover Wish, designer Ami McKay works wonders with a relatively small budget, transforming a deserving client's home with $25,000 and a good deal of imagination.

When it came time to do up her own house for Christmas, she didn't go over the top with tons of decoration. She kept things clean, simple and elegant -- and didn't spend all that much money doing it, either.

She lives in a 1969 post and beam house near the U.S. border in South Surrey, close to White Rock. It's small, but comes with a cool slanted ceiling that makes for a pretty dramatic living room.

The living-room ceiling ranges in height from nine to 12 feet, which gives ample room for that Yuletide staple, a big Christmas tree. In the past, McKay was big into vibrant colours -- she is a one-woman crusade for orange. But she changed things up this year, opting for more subtle tones.

"I've gone for some punchy colour [in the past], but I've moved more into the pastels for Christmas this year," she says.

Hence the tree isn't decorated with all sorts of brightly coloured lights. It's illuminated with strings of clear white lights and strands of pearl-like beads, with pastel paper balls that she picked up in Paris in the spring.

"I didn't mean to buy them for Christmas," she says. "I was going to make a really cool piece of artwork out of them, but I don't have any more wall space. So now they're my Christmas balls. They're nothing by themselves, but when you put them by a Christmas light, they illuminate and are quite colourful."

The new look got the thumbs up from McKay's husband, who normally doesn't comment on such matters.

"I decorated this Christmas tree and he came home from work one night really late and said [astonished voice]: 'Oh! The tree is so beautiful!' And that's the first time he ever said that to me."

Her sons Tavish and Braedy are in love with trains, so she placed a beautiful folk art vintage railroad engine at the foot of the tree. But it isn't just any toy train, it's a handmade family heirloom.

"My grandfather made that train for my dad 60 years ago," she says. "Last year for Christmas, my mom and dad sent that out here.

"I can just imagine my dad painting it in his little wood shop and sending it for the boys. So every year, it's going to be part of our Christmas tradition."

One of the features of the house is a very 1960s white brick fireplace. Mc-Kay decided to enhance its look through the use of candles and garlands.

She arranged 13 white candles along the top of the fireplace mantle, choosing candles of different heights and enhancing the effect by placing little pillars underneath them. She also placed two thick candles on three-foot high columns on either side of the fireplace.

Then she covered the top in pine and cedar branches.

"It's important to me that my house smells like the outdoors at Christmas time, so I want to bring in the pine and cedar," she says.

"It's aromatherapy. It's very healing to have the smell of pine -- it's very relaxing."

Normally, collecting pine branches is a fairly involved process involving ladders and saws. But this year, Mother Nature lent a hand.

"We had the horrible windstorm a couple of weeks ago, so all I did was go out to the yard and grab some fallen branches," she says.

"Then I wired it together as a garland, strung Christmas lights throughout the pine cones with some Christmas decorations and voila!"

The subtle approach carries over to the coffee table, which is topped with a chrome tray that reflects the sparkling lights and twinkle of the candles. A small candle provides some twinkle of its own, while white carnations and a small clear goblet filled with small Christmas balls give it a little extra Christmas flavour.

The full effect of the living room is felt at night when McKay turns off the electric lights and the room is lit by candlelight. With Christmas carols on repeat play on the DVD/CD player, it's got a real cosy, old-time feel.

The dining room is a bit different. Again, it's a less-is-more theme, clean and uncluttered. Six place settings are laid out on her teak table, in subtle tiers of colours: a powder-blue placemat, silver charger, white plate and napkin.

There's a bit of contrast with black wine glasses and more thick white candles. The centrepiece is a bowl with Christmas decorations, ribbons and white carnations. "They look like little snowballs," she says.

The dining room has a rather striking crystal chandelier. It probably wasn't intentional, but in the Christmas season, the rows of crystal suspended from a bar look a bit like icicles.

There isn't much Christmas decorating in the kitchen, aside from a Santa doll propped up against a tiled wall. But it's worth mentioning because McKay made something special out of a very small galley kitchen.

First of all, she opened up the room by cutting a big hole in the wall between the kitchen and dining room.

"I wanted to take the whole wall out but my contractor wouldn't let me -- he said 'your house will fall down,' " she laughs. "So I said 'Okay, fine, I'll deal with this small opening.' "

Then she took out the kitchen cabinets and replaced them with glass shelves, which makes the space much lighter and brighter. Storage is now contained underneath the kitchen counters.

She found a nifty retro sink at Ikea with an old-style gooseneck faucet. Then she completed the room by installing small blue tiles two-thirds of the way up the wall.

"My contractor said 'That will look crazy,' " she says. "And I looked at him and said 'Mike, Mike, Mike.' And he said 'Oh yeah, it's you. I trust you.'

"We've been working together for seven years. Now every time he thinks something will look silly I just look at him and he says 'Okay.' And at the end he thinks 'That's soooo nice.' "

McKay, 33, was born in Niagara Falls and grew up in nearby Fort Erie, Ont.

She has done a lot of travelling (living and studying in India and London), but has lived mostly in the Lower Mainland since she was 19.

She has had her own design firm for about seven years. She does a lot of residential work, but also works on commercial projects like Whistler's Le Chamois hotel and Lost Lake Lodge.

She loves her job ("basically I'm a professional shopper"), but found a whole new level of job satisfaction when she landed the gig on HGTV's Makeover Wish with host Erin Cebula and fellow designer Keith Chalmers.

The basic setup is that people who have been through some trying times due to illness or some other misfortune get a home makeover after being nominated by one of their friends or family.

McKay and Chalmers have $25,000 to spend, but make it seem like much more. Asked how to have an impact on a budget, McKay thinks a minute.

"It's colour, it's texture, it's form, it's shape. Just by putting something unpredictable in a different shape on the wall than you would normally think of . . . it makes you look at it as 'wow, it's designed.'

"You know what [the secret] is? It's about finding out who the people are, and finding those touches. For instance, this last episode they travelled around the world, so we got their photographs and printed them in orange, a rusty, earthy harvest orange.

"And it looks beautiful. And we put orange felt drapes in the living room, which really picked it up. So you're taking something and making it a bit unexpected."

McKay has been quite touched by the people she meets on the show.

"My goal is to give them sacred spaces," she says.

"If you watch the show, you'll see I'm always emotional. It's a soul-fulfilling job."