The Ridge?s soaring, spacious design won a Georgie for best single-family detached home
Mary Frances Hill
The Province
The Ridge at Burke Mountain
Where: 1425 Strawline Hill St., Coquitlam
What: 49 single-family homes near well-developed trail systems, many municipal amenities, stores and restaurants at Coquitlam Centre, David Lam campus of Douglas College, and with access to the newly launched Evergreen SkyTrain line.
Residence Sizes and Prices: Three or four bedrooms; total square footage from 3,400 to 3,800 square feet, from $1.59 million, including GST
Developer and builder: Foxridge Homes, a Qualico company
Sales centre: 1425 Strawline Hill St., Coquitlam
Hours: Noon — 5 p.m., daily
For Shannon Haerdi, the key to the interior design and décor of grand single-family homes lies in playing to the residences’ architectural strengths. At The Ridge at Burke Mountain, Foxridge Homes’ community in Coquitlam, the source of that strength is obvious: it can be found in the show home’s 17-by-16-foot open-concept living room with three banks of stacked windows rising to an 18-foot-high ceiling.
“The selling features of this house, such as the oversized windows, glass railing and over-height ceilings in the great room, made our design work easy,” says Haerdi, the principal of First Impressions Design.
“The natural light and open concept of this home allowed us to capture elegance and functionality all in one.”
Burke Mountain is an attractive place to make a life. It’s a booming family community set among natural surroundings and near a new library, city hall and recreation facilities, so Haerdi sys she pictured a “young emerging family” settling into the homes. She stuck to neutral shades, but focused on keeping it lively with touches of rose quartz and serenity blue.
“This house is definitely not a boring beige home,” she says of the show home.
“We added [those] pops of colour to the mostly neutral furnishings and that anchored all of the textures and tones in the home. The rose quartz has a calming effect that draws you into the space, captures your senses and makes you want to linger in the room a little longer.”
And while spacious rooms do impress visitors, homeowners eventually focus on smaller details. Buyers of large homes like these prefer the convenience of laundry areas and mudrooms, and treasure the opportunity to live clutter free with plenty of storage space, she says.
“Clients do love window seats, as well as built-in storage solutions in mudrooms and laundry areas,” Haerdi says. “We try to think of a vast array of buyers when we are designing these homes as every client is unique, but they all want beautiful, yet functional living spaces.”
Haerdi says it’s a special treat to work with Foxridge on this project. Qualico Developments Inc., Foxridge Homes’ parent company, celebrated The Ridge at Burke Mountain’s Georgie Award for Best Single Family Detached Home over 2,300 square feet under $750,000. Haerdi says First Impressions Designs savours both the teamwork and the creative independence she gets with Foxridge Homes.
“We carefully select all the finishes with the builder to suit each show home and then we are left to our creative devices to create an amazing space that buyers will hopefully fall in love with as much as we do.”
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