An oil painting by Montreal artist Rosalie Gamache hangs in the kitchen of a circa-1885 house in the city’s Pointe-Saint-Charles neighbourhood, serving as the perfect anchor for the recently renovated space that surrounds it. In the artwork, a figure looks to have just emerged from a pool of paint or plaster, with thick, viscous liquid still clinging to their body in sinewy swirls that evoke exposed muscle tissue. Meanwhile, the home around the canvas has received its own fresh coat of paint — yet nevertheless maintains a similar sense of raw beauty, too. The project, by local interior design firm MRDK, thoughtfully preserves historic details in some corners while introducing bold modern interventions in others.

In the kitchen, a honed Calacatta Viola marble countertop and backsplash (which extends all the way to the ceiling) build on the expressive beauty of Gamache’s painting with their own wild, fibrous veining. Only a thin ledge (in the same stone) and a tubular hood wrapped in cool stainless steel are installed along this supersized backsplash wall, keeping the zone as restrained as it is dramatic.

But turn around, and you’ll notice ornate plaster ceiling mouldings and door trim. This is, after all, a nearly 150-year-old house, and MRDK was eager to honour its original character. With that in mind, many of the firm’s updates were planned as object-like inserts. Just as that monolithic back kitchen wall almost seems to have been dropped in fully formed, other key introductions feel more like giant pieces of furniture than total architectural rewrites. Rather than trying to imitate or harmonize with an earlier era of design, the project embraces deliberate contrast.

Sure enough, the rest of the kitchen revamp continues the emphasis on geometric forms, with more Calacatta Viola cladding the linear island, which includes a central recess for an integrated planter that matches the cylindrical shape and stainless-steel finish of the sculptural hood nearby. As for the fridge, freezer, wine cellar and pantry storage, these are all tucked into a tidy white-oak shelving system that runs as a continuous plane from floor to ceiling. An original beam continues right up to the edge of the top portion of these new inserts, clad in slatted wood to accommodate the home’s ventilation grilles. Adding to the warmth of this millwork, the kitchen also preserves the house’s original pine floors.

From there, the refreshed powder room continues the same palette, again employing Calacatta Viola (for a blocky custom sink with sculptural flair), white oak (for cabinetry that includes a skinny mirror-side bookshelf), and stainless steel (in the form of curled Flos Foglio fixtures).

“The existing house is neither treated as a museum piece nor stripped of its history,” says MRDK in the firm’s project description. It helped that MRDK was particularly well-acquainted with the property, having completed an earlier renovation of the upper floor in 2019. That project focused on reconfiguring bedrooms and adding an open-concept office (again introduced as a self-contained volume), while also revamping the second-floor bathroom. Both in its initial renovation and this recent follow-up, MRDK took care to layer in new updates strategically. Rather than approaching the already characterful house as a blank slate, they have honoured — and added — to its history.