Step Inside the Stunning Vancouver Family Home of One Former NHL Hockey Star

It’s been said that the interior design of someone’s home tends to match their personality. And if personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once argued, then who’s to say the decor of a former NHL hockey star and his beautiful young family isn’t a similar sort of expression? For David Jones and Kim Vaage Jones, that collective gesture spans all the way back to when the couple first began dating in the sixth grade. Now, a few decades later, the pair have three children, a dog, and a stunning house in their hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia.

Located in the leafy north Vancouver neighborhood of Edgemont Village, the lot on which their home is located was purchased by the Joneses at the beginning of 2017. After two years of construction, they moved into the new build. The home, which was designed by the residential architecture firm Su Casa Design, is nestled between the 4,000 foot-tall Grouse Mountain and the Burrard Inlet that leads to the Pacific Ocean. It is, as one would imagine, the ideal setting for a recently retired professional athlete. “You can ski, swim, and play golf—all on the same day,” says David Jones, whose star career spanned from 2007 to 2016, and included time with the Colorado Avalanche, Calgary Flames, and Minnesota Wild. “Sure, it’ll be a little cold to do all three in a day … but there aren’t many places in the world where people have those outdoor options. For us, it’s perfect.”

For all the possibilities afforded by the surrounding area, the Joneses were keen on making their house a space that felt so comfortable guests would want to linger. “We both had nostalgia for our childhood homes,” explains Vaage Jones. “The views of the mountain are great, but what we really wanted was a place where our kids could safely run and play, while the neighbors are out socializing with one another.” Wish granted: The Joneses’ neighborhood now includes many young families, who—pre-pandemic—often socialize. But to make a new home feel so congenial that friends want to stick around? That takes real vision.

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In this case, help honing that specific vision came from the well-trained eye of Kelly Deck, the director of an eponymous design firm. The couple hit it off with the interior designer from the get-go after they were introduced by a friend. And while they tasked Deck to help put the final touches on the abode and work on the exact art placement, it was Vaage Jones who took the lead. When she’s not busy on Mom duty, she runs an aptly named interior design firm: Kimberly Jones Lifestyle. “Kim and David both came with a clear vision, so our job was just extracting that vision and placing it in a well-defined environment,” says Deck. “They wanted a family space that had a timeless sophistication—so when you walked into the home, it was unclear whether it was brand-new or had been there for a long time.” In other words, what the Joneses were yearning for was Frank Gehry’s rule of exceptional architecture, of which he once mused: “Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.”

There’s no doubt that Vancouver is a beautiful city, but if it is lacking in one area, it’s in the absence of historical houses. “Buyers in this area are always looking for an authenticity in a home that fits the lifestyle here, which tends to be very recreational and relaxed. But at the same time, an elevated sense of that,” explains Deck. “With Kim and David, we just kept stripping the interiors down, refining it, taking out unnecessary details. The end result is, once you’re in the home, it has this warm texture to it that makes you want to stay.”

To walk through the home is to be lulled by unpretentious forms, and to be absorbed by understated hues and elegant lines. Not an easy task for any homeowners, let alone one with three young children and a dog running around. “We’re very fortunate with our children,” says Vaage Jones. “Of course they love to run and play, but they also have a sense of ownership of their space. We want them to have a rewarding childhood, and with that comes a calmness in their home and in their rooms.” This theme—the importance of memories, specifically family memories—is consistent throughout the house. “My childhood home was filled with various antiques, so I wanted to find pieces like that for our kids to grow with,” Vaage Jones adds. “My father, who was a fisherman before I was born, had a lot of nautical-themed sketches that I had reframed to give [them] a bit of a revival, with personal sentiment.”

Step Inside the Stunning Vancouver Family Home of One Former NHL Hockey Star

Nonetheless, not everything in the home carries the weight of personal history. “I saw a 19th-century Italian marble table that I thought would be perfect for our entryway,” explains Vaage Jones. “[But] when I called to buy it, the seller said it had been sold.” For weeks, Vaage Jones was upset. She began to think of different options for the space, but each time her mind came back to that one vintage Italian marble table. “Turns out the buyer was my husband, who had quietly purchased the table as a birthday present.”

For Jones, that natural synchronicity relates to Vaage Jones’s family treasures as well. “It’s amazing to have [all those] little moments from Kim’s home growing up, because I spent a lot of time there. It takes me back to that time in life too,” he explains. Casting his gaze toward the past and the future, Jones adds: “Because of my career in hockey, we’ve never lived together [somewhere] for more than four or five years, so the idea of living anywhere for 20 years seems crazy. But if I had to pick a place, it would be right here.”

Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest