Paula Buxton dreamed of having an open, welcoming kitchen with plenty of room for her husband and four children to plunk down to chat while she cooked.

The long-time owner and chef of Leo’s Café in Annapolis Royal put up with the cramped and cluttered kitchen she and her husband, Michael Tompkins, inherited in 1999 when they moved into their 1860s-era house in the tiny Nova Scotian town. Buxton left her imprint on the upstairs bathroom and bedrooms over the years, but delayed disruptive downstairs renovations for two decades of diapers, childrearing, careers and community support.

It wasn’t until all but one of the kids moved out and Buxton was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2019 that she put the long overdue makeover on the front burner.

“She wanted the house done how she envisioned it for her family and for me,” says Tompkins, a commercial insurance broker and Annapolis Royal’s deputy mayor. “The house was always kind of a disaster because we were just holding on by fingernails for decades, as you have your family growing and everything going on. You just landed, fed and slept and left, and repeat … Our life was cluttered, to say the least. The vision Paula wanted was very clean with everything in its place.”

Buxton hired Deborah Nicholson, a designer just over an hour’s drive away in Canning, after stumbling across her business profile on the website Houzz.

“She called me late at night. I don’t normally answer the phone late and for some reason I just answered,” says Nicholson. “Right from the start, she was just saying, ‘This is the situation. I have cancer.’ I think it was her third or fourth time going back for treatments. She said, ‘I’m going back for treatment now. I don’t know if it’s going to work. I want to leave my family with everything they need to continue them forward in their lives.’”

The project was the entire downstairs, which was dated with 1970s-era wallpaper. Fixing the kitchen was key.

“She said they were all into cooking together, and hanging out in the kitchen was a huge thing for them,” says Nicholson. “She wanted a kitchen that would have everything that they wanted so they could continue that bond.”

Buxton filled out a questionnaire with her wish list and goals.

“She was looking for calm spaces that were inspiring, inviting, and peaceful,” says Nicholson. “It was funny because she was cracking jokes a lot. She had a great sense of humour and really liked interesting things, but didn’t mention that as being one of her goals for the feel of the space. She has this whole collection of art that’s very kind of whimsical and fun, so that was a great inspiration and jumping off point for the look of the home.”

Nicholson met the couple twice in their home to talk about plans.

“We both wanted open concept for the first floor,” Tompkins recalls. “Deborah said, ‘No, you’re not going to like that because then you have to have your entire floor clean and tidy all the time or it’s just going to jump out at you.’ She said, ‘I will design a plan that has rooms but gives you the experience of depth so you have a flow and can see from one end of the house to the other.’ That was part of the design both Deborah and Paula agreed on.”

Buxton took a turn for the worse before she could see the final designs. She died in May 2021, at age 51, after 2.5 years of treatment for lung cancer.

Tompkins took over.

“I don’t think I would have done it if she hadn’t started it. I don’t know how I would have even tried to take it on,” he says. “But the process was started. Deborah was in place … It was very, very important for me to complete Paula’s vision. It was really what she was pushing at the end because she wanted her family taken care of.”

Work started in the fall of 2021. The family moved out of the house for seven months, staying in an apartment in town that Tompkins’s father-in-law, Paul Buxton, owned.

“Michael really stepped up in doing all of this,” says Nicholson. “For him to be able to break through the grief and the stress and everything else and make decisions and have opinions and be there for meetings. He was the guy on the ground, on the frontlines.”

Tompkins isn’t sure his wife, whose taste was classic with a hint of modern, would go for every one of the design choices he greenlit.

“Would we have dragon wallpaper on our ceiling? I don’t know,” he says. “But now that it’s done, I think she would have loved it.”

It took a little time to settle in when the reno was done and make the place feel like home again.

Tompkins and the kids, who range from 16 to 24, picked through their mother’s vibrant local art collection to find the pieces that fit best. “They’re very particular about what they want to be added,” he says.

His youngest, Georgia, who still lives at home, has taken over the now clutter-free kitchen, with its bright blue cabinetry, large island, double-faucet workstation sink, hidden pantry and heirloom, stained glass window feature.

“She was 12 when her mother got sick. She used to cook in the old kitchen. It was small, tight, confined, dated — not a space you’d want to be in,” says Tompkins. “Now, she has this open space where you could probably have 25 people and they wouldn’t bump into each other.”

New traditions are emerging with family and friends.

“I really think Paula would love how the kitchen and the rest of the house turned out. I wanted it done for her and she wanted it done for us ... She wanted a fresh palette that we could create new memories in.”