Robert McNutt is walking to his Vancouver home carrying the reusable bag he uses to go grocery shopping everyday. “Because I have no fridge,” Robert explains. Despite having no appliance to keep his perishables cold, Robert does carry antique silverware to use whenever he goes out to restaurants. “I know it’s a bit much,” Robert smiles before revealing a set of intricately designed utensils. “But it looks nice.” To appreciate why he lives like this, we need to visit his apartment. “Welcome to ‘The Shack’,” Robert says, opening his front door and inviting you to seemingly step back in time. “This is not normal living,” Robert says as you notice his apartment is furnished like a luxury home from more than a century ago. “Everything you see, I’ve done it all.” After removing absolutely everything that wasn’t original to the space, Robert refurbished the floors, ceilings and everything in between. “Four layers of shag carpet!” Robert says before pointing out that the walls are hand-painted by brush in heritage colours. Refurbishing his apartment back to how it looked when the building was first constructed in 1913, included finding and re-installing a central vacuum system that you turn on with a key. “That’s as rare as it gets,” Robert says as a brass-plated door near the floor opens and starts making a sucking sound. The bathroom features top-of-the-line fixtures from the same period. The living room — which includes luxury radiators — is transformed into a bedroom at night thanks to a Murphy-style bed that twists out of a hidden hardwood wall before being lowered to the floor. Instead of a refrigerator, the kitchen features a cooling closet. “The cool shaded air from outside blows through the shelves,” Robert points to an opening in the back of the closet that daylight is shining through. Everything is circa the turn of the last century, including the stove. “With proper maintenance, this antique stuff will last forever,” Robert says. Robert says he started collecting as a kid, after exploring demolition sites and teaching himself to fix what he found. “A lot of doorknobs and light fixtures came home (when I was a boy),” Robert smiles. Decades later, Robert’s collection of just “doorknobs that were custom-made for commercial architecture,” includes hardware from 480 notable buildings across Canada (including many of the CP Hotels and Legislative Buildings) and around the world. “The New York Times Building, the Empire State Building,” Robert begins pointing out items from his collection that seem more like ornate sculptures that door hardware. “A Vanderbilt house, the Emperor of Brazil’s summer palace.” The remarkable knobs, light fixtures and luxury plumbing hardware that aren’t on display are being used to open doors. Illuminate rooms and furnish his bathroom. If you ask why he keeps collecting, Robert says it feels like being a marathon runner who spends months training to achieve a goal. “It’s, ‘Yes!!!’” Robert acts out the excitement. “That’s how I feel when I find the rarest of the rare.” If you ask why he surround himself with all his finds, he’ll say that all the past stuff feels better than the present things. “I find (contemporary design) cold. I find it like an office building,” Robert says. “And then I come in here. It’s very warm.” And if you ask why he still uses all these things that are more than century old, Robert will answer with the question: Why wouldn’t you? “With antiques, a lot of people don’t use the things,” Robert says before heading out with that silverware in his hand to have breakfast with a friend. “(Items in my collection) are well used because they were meant for being used.”
