MOVING UP WITHOUT MOVING OUT
Renovating can be the solution,
While Toronto’s feverish housing market has made it wellnigh impossible for all but the most fortunate of firsttime buyers to jump in these days, it’s produced another unintended consequence that’s almost as formidable.
There’s a sizable contingent of people who already own a property — particularly in the coveted starterhome bracket — who have outgrown their homes and are ready to move up, but are daunted by the prospect of bidding wars and uncertainty that characterizes the current market. Add in the high costs of land transfer taxes, real estate commissions and moving fees, and for many of these families, it makes more sense to stay put and take another look at what you have.
That was the case with this house, a rather bland postwar foursquare in the northwest part of the city. While it was in good shape, and pretty in a modest way, the layout was cramped and utilitarian. And like many mid-20th century homes, there was almost no sense of design esthetics, beyond a few perfunctory touches like a porthole window at the front elevation.
Furthermore, it featured certain intrinsic problems. The principal rooms were too small and the kitchen was cut off from the action. While this setup may have made sense a generation ago, it no longer fits the needs of a modern family. Given the alternatives of renovating, razing and building a new house, or the uncertainties of trading up, the owners called in Brenda Izen of Izen Architecture to see what she could do.
Izen immediately noticed that the home had two important assets: it was structurally in good shape, with a serviceable (if slightly pinched) layout, and a lush and good-sized backyard. The solution was to build a 20-by20 addition on to the back, open up and rework the main floor, and focus on simple, beautiful finishing materials rather than fancy extras. The result, as they say, turned out to be much more than its parts.
The reinvention started at the exterior, where the postwar standard-issue pink brick was restained in a varying palette of shades, to add a more distinctive look and indicate, as Izen says, “that something interesting is going on in the interior.” Once the addition was built, Izen had it clad in grey- painted stucco — a cost-effective and attractive material that tones well with the existing house. There’s no attempt made, or needed, to make it match the main part of the house; it actually steps out a couple of feet to the side, leaving an overhang that shelters a side door. “I never like to butt different materials flat together on exteriors,” Izen notes. “It looks much better to give them a bit of a profile.”
Previously, both the living room at the front and the dining room behind it were too small for entertaining or just living comfortably, and the small kitchen was marooned at the side of the house. Furthermore, the front vestibule was so small that manoeuvring a stroller inside was an ordeal. But simply knocking out all the walls was an expensive, and only partial, solution. In- stead, much of the needed space comes from a small act of sleight of hand: the addition actually extends several feet on the main level before stepping down into the bright new rear family room. The kitchen and dining room were opened up to one another, but the front living room was left more or less intact, where it now serves as an “art studio” and playroom for the kids.
A mirrored post on a corner of the new kitchen island marks where the old house ended, and forms the pivot point, in effect, for the renovated rear area. With the dining table now comfortably within conversation distance of the kitchen, there was no need for a stand-alone break- fast area; instead, a cantilevered surface off the island, supported by a single matching mirrored column, works as a serving area or perch for a quick snack. The configuration left enough room for a much more generous island with a built- in sink, and a bit of fun: a bright turquoise faucet, a bit of jewelry among the cool, minimalist finishing materials of walnut, stainless steel and white back-painted glass.
But the family room that takes up the back of the house is where the greatest esthetic transformation occurs.
“The owner has a green thumb, and the property is located over one of the buried creeks that runs through the city,” Izen explains. “So the backyard was green and beautiful, and we wanted to take advantage of that.”
A clerestory along the side wall brings in sunshine from the side, brightening the whole room, and the entire back wall is taken up with windows that wrap around one corner. The effect of this corner window brings in nature in a way that simply glassing in the back wall alone would not.
Even with opening the walls and extending the home’s footprint into the garden, it’s still not a large house, so maintaining a sense of cohesiveness throughout the main floor was important. Engineered hardwood flooring is consistent from front to back; and the same material palette — poured concrete, walnut panelling, white walls and other surfaces, black window trim — pulls the interior together. The effect is to draw your eye back to the main event: the leafy view.
Upstairs, Izen explains, the bedrooms were actually a reasonable size (not always a given in homes of this vintage), but the addition afforded the chance to create a separate master suite with its own expansive garden view. The added space gives the owners room for a sybaritic and nicely appointed en suite, and a roomy walk- in closet off the main bedroom — another l uxury rarely found in middle- aged or older homes.
The result is a bracing example of how often it is that imagination, thought, and an eye for a home’s somet i mes l ess- t han- obvious assets are the key to a successful renovation, rather than simply an unlimited budget. And the plus, of course, is that the owners now have t he f unc t i on, elbow room, and the style they needed, without ever needing to venture into the Hunger Games arena of the Toronto housing market.