Inside an Antiques Collector’s Century-Old New Brunswick Home
Some of Wren Silverii’s best childhood memories involve tagging along with her dad to Ottawa’s Stittsville Flea Market in the ’90s, watching him thumb through stacks of old baseball cards. Their bond grew stronger on family road trips. “My dad and I always popped into old barns to look at dusty things when no one else wanted to,” says Silverii. Now an antiques collector herself, Silverii buys a lot of copper—stock pots and sauce pans and skillets. “If it can be hung and it’s copper, it’s coming home with me,” she says.
Such vintage finds, however, looked like interlopers in the new-build Ottawa home she and her husband, Nate, bought in 2019. Silverii could never warm up to the open-concept layout and the cookie-cutter vibe. Nate, who worked as a tattoo artist, and Wren, who was a public transit worker, planned to suck it up, stockpile their savings and eventually shuffle off to a farmhouse, perhaps in Prince Edward County, to live out their golden years.
The pandemic quashed that plan. As house prices soared and urbanites scrambled to escape the city, they could no longer afford a rural home in Ontario. So Silverii shifted her focus to New Brunswick, her dad’s home province, where she’d spent summers and Christmases. A quick search of local listings led her to a white, cottage-like Victorian home, built in 1898 and perched on a tree-covered hill in the small town of Rothesay, 15 minutes out of Saint John, where wealthy merchants and builders would once spend summers during Saint John’s shipbuilding heyday. The property overlooked the Kennebecasis River and had a wraparound porch, handsome archways and original hardware.
The Silveriis loved it. By the fall of 2021, they had sold their Ottawa home for a tidy profit and moved into a rental condo in the city, while family and friends inspected the Rothesay home in person. When the price dropped by $100,000 a month later, the couple pounced.
Modern updates had stripped away some of the home’s character, so Wren and Nate infused rooms with vintage va-voom. In the kitchen, her collection of vintage and antique copper pots and pans hang on display, though the induction cooktop makes them more decorative than functional. An upstairs hallway is plastered with vintage and modern prints, lithographs and paintings, many of which Silverii collected from thrift stores over the years. A standout piece is a portrait of one of the founders of a local Knights of Pythias lodge. She picked it up for $50 at My City Life, a nearby vintage and antiques shop, and hung it in her dining nook. “Part of his nose was missing, but I liked its history,” says Silverii. (She later found the nose buried in the frame and glued it back on.) Another favourite piece is the coffee table in her living room, repurposed from a childhood toy chest. “My sister’s name, Danielle, and the year 1993 are scratched onto it,” she says.
She chronicles her home’s makeover for 63,000 followers on her Instagram page, Hungry Heart Home, where she also sells new and antique housewares and decor. “There’s a Habitat for Humanity ReStore 10 minutes from my house that I visit frequently,” she says. She also scouts southern New Brunswick towns like Saint Andrews and Shediac and even hops over the border to Ellsworth, Maine, an antique hot spot. During the holidays, Silverii is known online for her dried-orange garlands and festive cedar swags.
Silverii’s move to Atlantic Canada struck a chord with her Canadian followers. Her first reel about leaving Ottawa went viral on Instagram and TikTok. “I feel like the whole town found me,” she says. “It was really embarrassing because I’m an introverted extrovert—I share everything online but I’m so shy.” Now, everyone at the grocery store and around town recognizes her because of the house. Through it all, she always thinks about her father. “I lost my dad to cancer 11 years ago,” she says. “I often feel his presence with me when I’m antiquing.” More than once, his favourite Bruce Springsteen song would play on the radio while she was out shopping. “I’ll spot a piece I knew he would have loved and bring it home,” she says.