Easy, Breezy Style

In Homes & Lifestyle magazine Karin talks about growing up with house-flipping parents, to discovery by the Property Brothers, to an eclectic Burlington design practice doing new builds, whole-home and condo renos and redecorating projects of all sizes, Karin Bennett’s “approachable contemporary” design continues to build a wider audience.

You might say design and renovation runs in Karin Bennett’s blood – along with paint chips, fabric swatches, and maybe a tile sample or two. Karin grew up in a family of serial renovators and lived in no fewer than 12 houses during her childhood and teen years.

“My mom studied interior design when I was a kid, and graduated in the late ’80s. But it wasn’t that easy to be an entrepreneur in those days, especially for a woman. So she decided to get her real estate license and became a realtor, and that was her main job when we were growing up.”

Her mom’s particular combination of skills – along with a willingness to invest her own sweat equity – proved to be exactly right for the renovation boom that took off over the next two decades; it became a second career for her and Karin’s dad. “They’d buy a house that needed some TLC, fix it up and make it absolutely beautiful, then sell it and buy another one.”