My Parkdale reno from hell

It was a crumbling Parkdale rooming house, populated by drug users and squatters and available on the cheap. We were cash-strapped, desperate to move and hemmed in by a hot market. Five years, three contractors and $1.1 million later, our home reno nightm

I was at work when my husband, julIan, called, sounding breathless. “I just saw a house,” he blurted, “and I think we should put in an offer. Today.” It was a three-storey detached Victorian on a corner lot, a few streets from where we lived at the time in Parkdale. He said neighbours apparently called it “the grande dame” for its size and stateliness, and he had often admired it as he cycled past on his way to High Park. I punched the address into Google Street View. The place was huge, with red-brick exterior, gorgeous clay tiles covering the second storey, a wide front porch, sizeable backyard and two parking spots. It was on a west-facing lot with tall sunflowers and a beautiful lilac bush out front. Julian said that the place was being used as a rooming house and that he’d managed to take a tour—no small feat since it was full of tenants. It needed a bit of love, but our agent, a part-time contractor, had deemed the structure sound. The basement and the attic were both usable, bringing the total living space to almost 4,000 square feet. And, he added, lowering his voice conspiratorially, it looked like we could have it at a discount.

This was November 2010, and Julian and I were living in a handsome but cramped two-bedroom detached with our twoyear-old son, Oliver, on Elm Grove Avenue. That house had been a flip job, hastily renovated by the previous owner, and we had bought impulsively, anxious to upsize from our 900-square-foot condo. We soon discovered that it had a slew of issues, the main one being the rats that congregated in our crawl space, scratching and scurrying at all hours and providing fresh fodder for our nightmares. We wanted out.

In September, we had learned that I was pregnant with our second child and we accelerated our plans. We needed a place with at least three bedrooms. Unfortunately, that dream was becoming increasingly unrealistic for a young family without a lot of money. Julian had just finished his PhD in education and was teaching part-time at Humber; I was an editor for the Food Network’s website and preparing to go on maternity leave. Still, we scoured the listings every day, searching for a fixer-upper that we could renovate ourselves to save money. We weren’t particularly handy, but we’d seen all the home reno shows, and it seemed like everyone in the city was doing it. How hard could it be?

Our budget was $560,000, but nothing came on the market at that price, so our enterprising young agent, eager to kick-start her business, began knocking on doors in the neighbourhood. Eventually, she met an elderly couple who explained that they owned several properties, including the grande dame, which they’d consider selling. They suggested $480,000, based on their most recent Municipal Property Assessment Corporation report, seemingly unaware of Toronto’s scorching market and the fact that MPAC generally assesses below market value. We needed to move fast, Julian said, before they put it on the market.

That night, six hours after Julian had called me at work, we submitted a bid of $480,000 without conditions. To our surprise, the owners refused it outright, evidently realizing they’d underquoted us. We pushed our offer to our limit of $560,000, and they accepted. I was thrilled. Then the adrenalin wore off, and the gravity of what we’d done sank in. We had just spent more than a half a million dollars on a house I had never seen.

It was four weeks before we could fInally go InsIde. The sellers had been unresponsive to our repeated requests for access. Before we visited, Julian sat me down and asked that I try to focus on potential. I smiled, patted my growing belly and told him not to worry. Everything was going to be fine.

We brought along Oliver, who was excited to see his new room, and some friends—a contractor, an architect, a designer and her three-year-old daughter. As we approached the house, it became obvious that it had been badly neglected. The roof needed to be replaced—the majority of the shingles were in tatters and there were a few bare patches. The fence at the side of the house would’ve fallen over with a little push. The front porch was populated with rusty appliances, broken furniture and piles of miscellaneous junk. Julian took my hand and squeezed it gently. We walked through the front door, which was ajar. The main hallway was narrow and lined with more flotsam. Every surface appeared to be coated in grime. We stepped gingerly through to the kitchen, careful not to touch anything. The sink was full of dirty dishes and the brown linoleum floor looked like it hadn’t been swept in years. I cautiously waddled down the stairs to the basement into a sea of filth: dirty clothes, crushed beer cans, takeout containers with rotting remnants, cigarette butts. There was an overflowing litter box and cat feces smeared all over the floor. The sour stink of cat piss made me gag. Julian, seeing the panic in my eyes, began to expound on the virtues of the handsome stove in the corner— “And look at the high ceilings!” he said. That’s when I noticed him: at the far end of the room, a man, lying on his back on a stained mattress, his face covered by a grungy sleeping bag. He had a tourniquet around his arm and a syringe was lying by his side. I shushed Julian and stabbed a finger in the man’s direction. Silence. What do you do with a dead body? After a few seconds, our contractor friend bravely walked over and gently nudged him. The man groaned and rolled over. We quietly tiptoed upstairs.

On the second floor, we encountered more cat feces, more garbage, more mounds of random stuff. The upstairs kitchen was covered in anti-capitalist graffiti. The bathtub was filled with a mysterious black liquid, the sight of which caused our son, Oliver, to start bawling. Julian and I reassured him that we would clean everything up and that he wouldn’t have to bathe in it. Eventually he calmed down. Then, as we made our way to the attic, we noticed a sweet burnt-plastic odour in the air. At the top of the stairs, we