Polishing a diamond in the rough
Aging bungalow gets a serious reno to show off clean lines of mid-century modern design
A modest, Don Mills diamond-in-the-rough was just what Toronto architect-designer-builder Po Ku and his wife, Georgiana, had been looking for.
The 1950s-era bungalow was built in mid-century modern design with clean, straight lines and a lowsloping roof. Its floor space covers just 1,000 square feet, and it sits on a 63-foot lot.
The house was a big change from their 3,000square-foot, multi-level downtown home.
“We’d been looking at the neighbourhood for a long time and Don Mills is undergoing a revival,” says Ku of the area he and his wife discovered about 18 months ago.
“A lot of the old bungalows are being torn down at an alarming rate,” he adds. Ku feels a grassroots movement, with homeowners choosing to renovate rather than tear down, could help preserve these often overlooked homes.
“We’re living in a treasure that we don’t treasure,” Ku says. “Mid-century modern was a specific architectural period . . . It’s a unique period, too new to get heritage designation.” The popularity of the TV series
Mad Men has helped revive interest in this period, he says.
But with its mint-green aluminum siding and dull tan-coloured bricks, the little bungalow wasn’t attractive. It was also plagued by basement flooding issues. Ku, however, saw its hidden potential. He has transformed it into a light, airy and functional home where he anticipates he and Georgiana will be able to live for decades.
The Kus kept the home’s original footprint and finished the basement to provide an additional 1,000 square feet of space — where Ku has his office — as well as a music room and full bathroom.
The breezeway between the house and single-car garage provides a sheltered outdoor living space.
The homes of this era can have their problems: wet basements, leaky roofs, inadequate wiring and huge heating bills because they’re poorly insulated. But the building envelope issues can be remedied, Ku says, and the bungalows present a viable alternative to condo living.
He is so passionate about this style of home that he started 1950modern.com, a blog to talk about his own house and others of similar style.
The Kus did a full renovation.
But they saved some of the 1950s design elements, including the double-layered bricks that make the walls almost 8.5 inches thick. The bricks have been stained white with a water-based stain that will not need maintenance for 10 years and allows the original brick to show through.
They found original wooden louvres behind the old siding and though most were rotted, they saved what they could. They replicated the look of the original windows with window walls that have operable sections set in.
The old green siding was replaced with white vinyl, and white wooden screens were added to the breezeway, as well as to the opposite side of the house, to create balance.
Inside, the front entryway was 12 inches below the main floor, so Ku raised it and put it on the same level.
He removed a non-load bearing wall between the living room and kitchen to create an open-concept space and replaced the old kitchen with a white, glossy version from Ikea that maintains the clean lines of the home’s original modern style.
Sections of floor on the main level were wavy and crooked, so chunks were bared to the floor joists and shimmed while the remainder was shimmed from below and a level surface created.
Some of the original hardwood was preserved and stained dark (in the bedrooms) while the living room floor was painted white.
New linoleum that looks like bleached planks was put down in the kitchen.
Ku loved the original red and white checkered linoleum tiles in the basement and kept them.
One of the main floor’s three bedrooms was converted to a dressing room/small office for Georgiana (who used to have an interior design store), the original bathroom was gutted and replaced, and a new full bathroom was added in the basement.
Many of the home’s doors were replaced with sliding doors, to save on space.
The house has two furnaces — one heating system for each floor. Ku says basements typically tend to be much colder than the main floors in winter, so separate heating systems remedy this.
And the main floor needs less heat because heat from the basement rises. Only the main floor is air-conditioned, since cool air sinks to the basement in summer.
Ku hopes others will follow his example and save the “treasures.” For many families, the houses seem too small to be useful. But, he says, they can be perfect for downsizers and even the smaller bungalows, like his at 1,000 square feet, are larger than most condos.
As well, space can be created with open-concept layouts such as the dining room the Kus create using their open design and long, narrow table that can easily accommodate10 for a dinner party. “How much space do one or two adults really need?” he asks.