Couple ditches buying for building
Fed up with real estate market, duo creates their own ideal home
If Toronto’s housing market is a metaphor for love, Mike Leon and his wife Leah thought they’d play the field before settling down.
The East York couple was experiencing a five-year itch of sorts with their two-bedroom pad and embarked on a quest to find a more spacious, threebedroom house in 2014 for themselves and their daughter Ellie, then 1.
They wanted a long-term match they could grow into, a forever home in which to raise a family.
While they flirted with plenty of houses in their yearlong quest, what they found in the housing market never lived up to their fantasies.
“We were very, very picky and I think it became clear how picky we were when we started looking,” says Mike, 40, who works in digital marketing.
“Every house we saw we would have to sacrifice something we already had to get the extra bedroom,” adds Leah, 34, an environmental consultant.
The couple loved the neighbours on their Danforth Ave. and Greenwood Ave.-area street and the fact their home — purchased for $400,000 in 2009 — stood detached and on a dead-end street with a park.
They were reluctant to give up those perks for just any three-bedroom home, especially as prices continued to skyrocket and they would have to pay more for less.
The last straw came after about a year of looking when they finally saw a listing for a house that seemed to check all of their boxes. Unfortunately, by the time they called their agent, the home had already been scooped up on a bully offer.
“I was like, ‘all right, we give up!’ ” says Leah, who is expecting a baby sister for Ellie in November.
The Leons concluded there were more pros to staying than leaving and opted to embrace the bones of their home and build an addition.
They contracted Rovimat Group Inc. to build a twostorey addition to the back of the house, as well as underpin the entire basement to bring the ceilings up to eight feet.
Leah says she was quite stressed initially about the prospect of such a major undertaking, having heard horror stories about renovations.
Thankfully, their experience turned out to be positive. Leah credits Rovimat owner Rolando Pires for removing all of the stress.
“When I mentioned that to him once, he said quite simply: ‘That’s what we do — we take care of everything for you.’ ”
The couple used an architect to draw up basic plans and get some pricing in the beginning.
By opting to work with an architectural technologist/interior designer team instead, the Leons estimate they saved about $11,000.
Designer Andi Wheelband, coowner of Two Birds Design, finalized the plans for the home after consulting with architectural technologist Richard De Oliveira from Re: Placement Design Inc. for any technical requirements.
Wheelband says the addition needed to keep with the other homes in the Upper Beaches neighbourhood, so they settled on grey shake siding, a gable roof and windows with plenty of character instead of a more minimalistic look.
The family rented a cramped onebedroom bungalow nearby for the duration of the six-month project, but the short-term pain was worth it.
Before the addition, their home covered a modest 1,000 square feet, plus the 500-square-foot basement, which wasn’t really usable before the underpinning.
Now they have an extra1,100 square feet — 200 square feet per floor, as well as the now-useable 500 square feet in the basement.
Polished, heated concrete flooring was installed through to give the house a more modern look and feel.
While the revamped basement has a bathroom, bedroom and larger laundry space, the main floor boasts aspacious family room that opens up onto a new back deck.
The coveted third bedroom is on the second floor and the couple have claimed it as the master bedroom. The price tag for the undertaking totalled about $300,000 after all the fees and taxes.
Leah says luckily there were no big budgetary surprises, except for a little extra spent on reinforcing the structure and installing a sewage ejector. While their home was appraised at $685,000 in 2015 before the addition, comparable houses in their neighbourhood are now going for about $950,000 to $1 million.
“We love this house,” Mike says. “It feels cheesy to say this . . . when we bought the house, it was all about being temporary. Now, it kind of feels like we’ve arrived.”
Wheelband says the Leons’ story is a familiar one in Toronto these days, as more and more families are opting to build additions to the backs of their homes or add a third storey, saving the costs associated with moving in the process.
“It’s been keeping us pretty busy!” she says. “A lot of clients come to us with the same thing. They need more space but it just doesn’t make sense to move.”
The Leons concluded that there were more pros to renovating their current home than buying a new house