When people walk through the entryway of Deana Mitchell’s Newfoundland home, she wants them to feel welcome in a space that balances the old with the new. It also comes with a few nautical nods, artfully placed against a blue palette.

“I want people to feel comfortable,” says Mitchell. “I want them to feel calm, and I think that’s what the blue offers... It’s like you’re wrapped in a blanket of blue.”

The colour is a prominent feature throughout her home, which is about an hour’s drive from St. John’s in the community of Brigus.

In the summer, she says it’s nature that offers another colour backdrop. The trees erupt in what she describes as “green galore… And the dogberries are coming in and the whole side of the hill is going to be red in a month or so.”

Throughout the recently renovated home, Mitchell points to items that remind her of her grandparents, with whom she was especially close.

“I feel like we’ve created a space here that’s enough of a combination of nostalgia and new,” says Mitchell. 

To update this Brigus home, Deana and Dave Mitchell brought on Newfound Builders.

Setting anchor in Brigus

Mitchell and her husband Dave bought the home about a decade ago, after he found the property in the historic town. She says she resisted going to look at it initially. That reluctance changed when they pulled up to the house. She instantly knew she wanted this to be their home.

“I felt like I was going to turn around and my grandmother was going to come down from the hill with a bowl of berries. I still get shivers when I say it; it was that real,” recalls Mitchell. She got out of the truck and told her husband they had to buy this spot, adding she knew how she was going to feel when she was there.

“I look out over the water with my grandfather’s binoculars. So, I just feel closer, I feel like they’re here. And on the door coming in here, we’ve got the place called Esther’s Perch and my grandmother was called Esther. And she was nosy... And they say as you get older, you want to go back to whatever that is, whatever ‘back’ is.”

For years, the Mitchells kept the home the way they’d bought it, paint scheme and all, including a living room that was painted in what she called a “Margaritaville green.”

“It was beautiful. It was really nice, but it wasn’t me. It wasn’t my cool colours versus warm colours,” she says.

In September 2019, work began on making it their ideal retirement home.

They hired local company Newfound Builders, led by third-generation builder Randy Spracklin. He’s now the star of the HGTV show Rock Solid Builds, which follows him, his father, and their team as they renovate and restore homes. The show documented the Mitchells’ home transformation.

Mitchell says they chose the Spracklin firm because she believes in supporting local businesses and it has a good reputation. “It would also be tangly to organize a company to come in from St. John’s,” she adds. 

The work included building a new kitchen, and a nook where Mitchell likes to do her knitting.

Major shakeup

The crew gave the house a major shakeup. Mitchell notes the former entrance was closed off and is now a laundry room and the doorway is now a window. The biggest change might be the completely new kitchen that was built onto the home with a massive skylight overhead.

The once-green living room is now a coral pink. Mitchell chose the finish on the fireplace because it reminded her of beach pebbles, adding she loves to collect rocks. The top is reminiscent of shiplap, which was her husband’s idea, and she loves it. To add to the breezy feel, a nearby couch has some sea urchin print pillows she bought from a local store in town called Brindy Linens & Company.

“So that to me, kind of just blends in,” she says.

Nautical touches are throughout the home. Paintings featuring water in some way adorn the walls, from shipwrecks to dramatic cliffside vistas.
The ground floor bathroom offers turn-of-the-century luxury travel vibes, as it’s a darker room with gold fixtures, and still has a splash of colour from wallpaper that features ocean-dwelling creatures from the deep.

“Because a bathroom is a bathroom. Boring! You know what I mean? Jellyfish will do it… And the colour is not crazy.”

It was a delicate balance to strike when it came to decorating their home by the harbour, explains Mitchell.

“For this house, I wanted it to be nautical but not screaming nautical. Coastal but not screaming it. I don’t want you to drown in it when you
come in.”