Heritage property charms couple
Renovations turn Thornhill cottage into a dream home
When Grujica (Greg) Ilic and his wife. Bozana. decided to sell their mid-Toronto home and move, he hadn’t thought about buying a new home outside the city — until he and Bozana fell in love with a heritage property in Thornhill.
“I was just on the Internet. I’d been looking and somehow this one came up and I thought, ‘My God, how is it possible to have this property for this price ($650,000)?’ ” Ilic says, and laughs at his first reaction to the 122-year-old property that includes two homes. “I called my agent and said, ‘I want to see it now!’ ”
Owning and restoring a heritage property, however, is not a matter for the faint of heart or light of wallet. It’s neither a weekend project nor as simple as hiring a couple of local contractors and sketching out plans.
A historical designation, under the 1975 Ontario Heritage Act, means red tape and regulations about what can be changed and what can’t be touched and, as with any century home, there are issues of structural soundness.
Still, the Ilics’ five-year journey started as love at first sight and Greg regrets nothing about the process of finding and renovating his dream home, which won a 2014 Heritage Preservation Award.
During the drive to go have a first look at the home, along with its charming 1,100sq.-ft. cottage, at 25 Elizabeth St., a buyer snapped up the property. Undeterred, Ilic insisted on seeing it and left word that if the deal fell through, he and Bozana would be back.
The 2,800-sq.-ft. main house, in early Edwardian architecture with a brick façade, had originally been built as a farmhouse sometime around 1904, on a lot along Yonge St.
It got moved to its present location on a leafy side street near the heart of Thornhill Village at Yonge and Centre Sts. in Vaughan in 1926, to make way for a gas station.
“This area was mostly cottages back then, it’s where people from Toronto came to get away from the city in the summer,” Ilic says. “Today, you couldn’t build two structures on the one lot so (the property) was unique.”
Heritage homes need a special buyer, one who is prepared to undertake the expensive and sometimes regulatory-driven process.
Ilic had been well-prepared and positioned: He had just sold his civil engineering business, specializing in laying out subdivisions, and understood the issues around structure and buildings. The main house wasn’t a spectacular example of the era, nor did it come with the provenance of a famous past owner or even the pedigree of a storied architect.
“It was just a nice house with good bones and it was in need of love and care,” Ilic says. “The inside was a disaster. There was an addition in the 1970s, but the floors didn’t match up. It needed a lot of work.”
While attending a committee of adjustment meeting, Ilic bumped into Toronto architect Phillip H. Carter, who specializes in heritage buildings. He had a hand in defining and codifying the Thornhill Heritage Conservation District Plan, as well as those in Markham and Vaughan.
Carter had a look at the Ilics’ property.
“It is what you might call a kind of a four-square Edwardian, very simple, symmetrical,” Carter says. “He wanted to make it a nice home, and that little cottage was a treasure.”
The key in heritage preservation, Carter says, is to ensure the integrity. That doesn’t mean owners are stuck putting in leaky windows, however, just because they’re original to the year the house was built. Windows, for instance, must conform to the design styles of the time.
There are other restrictions on additions, fences, driveways, roof shapes and landscaping. “When we work with owners we want them to retain as much as possible of the original charm,” Carter says. “Usually, the restrictions affect what you can do on the exterior but sometimes there’s something special inside, like a staircase, which will be included in the designation, but usually it is just the outside.”
Carter agreed to take on the project, and the Ilics moved into the coach house during the renovations.
“My kids thought we were crazy, living in this rundown cottage, but Bozana and I spent a few weeks painting and cleaning and putting on new doors and windows and new furniture,” Ilic says. “Then they all wanted to move in when the main house renovation was finished because it was so nice.”
Ilic’s choice of contractor wasn’t surprising: his brother Radomir Ilic, someone he trusted implicitly, and his company, Petrus Construction.
Starting in 2011, workers tore down the main house’s addition and built a new one to better align with the existing floor.
They replaced windows with design-appropriate — and more energy efficient — versions, added insulation to the home, and installed new electrical and plumbing systems. “We sank the basement down and underpinned it, which cost $60,000 alone,” Ilic says. “There are 10-foot ceilings on the first floor and nine feet on the second floor, so it’s a very nice space.”
Foundations on the cottage-cumguest house have also been repaired. Workers also modernized its interior while retaining its century charm outside. “My daughter is going to move back in there for awhile,” Ilic says.
He and his wife have no plans to sell the property. “We built this as our dream home. We want to live here. It’s a wonderful thing to have.”