John and Juli Baker, the couple behind Mjolk in Toronto, have a refined, specific take on design, centered on a mix of Scandinavian and Japanese aesthetics. The two of them curate what we consider to be one of the best design shops anywhere (proof: it’s where Julianne Moore found her flatware a few years back).
When we launched Remodelista in the aughts, we communed with John and Juli online, and when I was in Toronto a few years ago, I stopped by to take a tour of their apartment above their shop (see A Scandinavian-Inspired Kitchen with Hints of Japan). So when John emailed me a while back to tell me the couple had impulsively bought a decrepit stone house in the countryside north of Lake Ontario, we were curious.
“We shouldn’t have even been looking,” John says. “At the time, we had a weekend cottage on the shores of Lake Huron (see O Canada: Mjölk’s Renovated Scandi-Style Cabin on a Lake), which we’ve since sold, but we were longing for a rural Little House on the Prairie kind of experience for our children. Juli and I both grew up with a strong connection to nature and rural life, literally washing laundry in the stream with a washboard.”
Join us for a tour:
Photography by Juli Baker.
![mjolk stone house 31](https://media.remodelista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/mjolk-stone-house-31-733x489.jpg)
![mjolk stone house 13](https://media.remodelista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/mjolk-stone-house-13-733x977.jpg)
![mjolk stone house 33](https://media.remodelista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/mjolk-stone-house-33-733x489.jpg)
“We sourced the salvaged fireplace surround tiles from Lindholm Kakelugn, a Swedish reclamation company, and we worked with our builder to install a new masonry firebox and a flue channel. There’s no industry around this type of project, you have to engineer it yourself. Once the interior was completed, we reassembled the tile according to a template that Lindholm provided us with and added a brass hearth.” (For a full account of the process, from start to finish, read Juli’s account on Mjolk).
![mjolk stone house 26](https://media.remodelista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/mjolk-stone-house-26-733x1100.jpg)
![mjolk stone house 34](https://media.remodelista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/mjolk-stone-house-34-733x489.jpg)
![mjolk stone house 38](https://media.remodelista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/mjolk-stone-house-38-733x489.jpg)
![mjolk stone house 14](https://media.remodelista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/mjolk-stone-house-14-733x489.jpg)
![mjolk stone house 16](https://media.remodelista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/mjolk-stone-house-16-733x489.jpg)
![mjolk stone house 15](https://media.remodelista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/mjolk-stone-house-15-733x489.jpg)
![mjolk stone house 6](https://media.remodelista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/mjolk-stone-house-6-733x489.jpg)
![mjolk stone house 4](https://media.remodelista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/mjolk-stone-house-4-733x1100.jpg)
![mjolk stone house 19](https://media.remodelista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/mjolk-stone-house-19-733x489.jpg)
![mjolk stone house 17](https://media.remodelista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/mjolk-stone-house-17-733x489.jpg)
![mjolk stone house 18](https://media.remodelista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/mjolk-stone-house-18-733x489.jpg)
![mjolk stone house 20](https://media.remodelista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/mjolk-stone-house-20-733x489.jpg)
![mjolk stone house 37](https://media.remodelista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/mjolk-stone-house-37-733x1100.jpg)
![mjolk stone house 36](https://media.remodelista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/mjolk-stone-house-36-733x1100.jpg)
![mjolk stone house 12](https://media.remodelista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/mjolk-stone-house-12-733x977.jpg)
For more Mjolk, go to:
A Scandinavian-Inspired Kitchen with Hints of Japan
O Canada: Mjölk’s Renovated Scandi-Style Cabin on a Lake
Mjölk Made: A Canadian Cafe Gets a Scandi Revamp from Toronto’s Cult Design Couple
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