In our summer issue, we featured the glamorous Toronto home of designer Ali Budd. It is a space filled with custom details. There are the Thomas Hayes dining chairs made just for her, and plenty of Ali Budd originals—like a pink onyx table in the entry and a console table she customized with marble cladding. Today, we’re excited to offer a closer look at the home, including images that weren’t included in the magazine feature! Most noteworthy is Ali’s nursery for her sweet baby girl, Jemma. It’s outfitted in West Coast Kids and couldn’t be cuter. Below, an excerpt from the original article, and in the slideshow, find all the details!
In December 2012, Ali Budd was living in Vancouver, B.C. with plans to move her family and her interior design business back to Toronto. Working remotely with an agent, she received a video of a well-loved home in Ledbury Park, and though it needed work, there was a built-in social network: two of Ali’s lifelong friends each lived within one block.
The price had been cut significantly and offers were due—the owners needed to sell quickly. With no time to fly to Toronto and see the property in person, Ali made a brisk decision to buy it then and there. The rest, as they say, is history—though it wouldn’t be the only “when you know, you know” decision she’d make.
Fast forward to a 2019 girls’ trip in Las Vegas, Nevada: Ali meets Martin, on holiday from the U.K., and a storybook romance unfolds. “We fell in love so quickly that it didn’t take long for us to move in together and settle down,” she says with a smile. Martin moved across the pond, relocating his business, Roofing Inc., and joining Ali and her two young children in Toronto.
They were married within the year and collaborating on the home’s renovation. The pair updated the entire main floor, and just in the nick of time. “Thankfully, the renovations were done just one week before our baby girl Jemma decided to make her arrival, born six weeks early,” Ali shares. “This has been my home through so many phases of my life, and I feel it is now the perfect setting for raising the three children—Joey, James, and Jemma. I feel more at home than I have in my whole life.”