Before & After: They Saved One of the Last Midcentury Homes in Their Lakefront Neighborhood

In 2021, in the thick of the pandemic, Todd and Kristen McMillan thought it might be nice to move to the country, just north of where they were living in Burlington, Ontario. The couple had sold their current house, which they designed and built as principals of their firm, Ben Homes, and were scanning the market for another property to build on for themselves, their two teenagers, and their dog.

Instead, they found the perfect listing where they least expected it: a 1969 house on the shore of Lake Ontario, just a five-minute drive from their old place, down a road they had never been on before. The home retained a lot of its original midcentury style, including a flat roof, exposed beams, a rear wall of windows overlooking the lake, and a modest brick and redwood facade; the decision to buy was an easy one. "All of the things that we love about architecture were already in this home," says Todd. "It was like a meant-to-be thing. All we had to do now was restore it, instead of build new."

It was important to the couple to keep much of the original home intact, since it’s one of the last remaining midcentury homes in the area. "In the nineties, people thought of them as just their parents’ homes and started taking them down, or putting a pitched roof on them, or altering them," says Todd. This home had survived because it was being sold by the original owners, who had commissioned the house from a local architect after a stint in Massachusetts.

"After studying at Harvard University and visiting numerous modern homes in the vicinity, the original owners wanted to build something similar for themselves," says Todd. "They came back here, bought this piece of land, and built this home very true to modernist style." While the original architect’s name has been lost, a few of the drawings remain, which inspired Todd and Kristen’s renovation.

Before: Roof