GAME ON

The crowd and young players at designer Jennifer Backstein ’ s house goes wild for indoor hockey at home.

TEXT MARTHA UNIACKE BREEN PHOTOGRAPHY MIKE CHAJECKI

The rink is a huge hit not only with the kids and their friends but also with grownups – including owner Jennifer Backstein, who wasn’t much of a hockey fan before.

“It was a great way to do something fun and joyful during a sad time, ” she says.

DESIGN, Jennifer Backstein Interiors. Vinyl WALLPAPER, Mr. Grafix. SYNTHETIC ICE, Glice. BASEBOARD PAINT, Confident Yellow SW6911, UPPER RAIL PAINT, Blue Chip SW6959, Sherwin-Williams.

ABOVE Low-maintenance artificial ice, durable enough for ice skates (but also slippery enough for playing in socks, as Jennifer’s husband discovered), is the basis for the new design. For the walls, Jennifer had high-resolution photos of players (all Maple Leafs for her young Toronto fans) and cheering crowds mounted on vinyl wallpaper. Even the entry door was switched for a puck-proof, Plexiglas-topped “gate.

hen Jennifer Backstein ’ s hockeyloving kids found themselves without a place to practise after the pandemic closed the local rink, the Toronto designer ’ s plan for turning their basement into a home gym got put on ice, you might say. Seeing her kids ’ despondence at the loss of ice time – and the anxiety and enforced idleness that the pandemic engendered –she was inspired to create something more fun for them. “And once I got the idea, I decided to go to town on it, ” says Jennifer, laughing. Hockey fans: welcome to the Backstein Basement League!