This job in Parkdale was a big one. It put our experience to the test. The client gave us some design freedom and we were happy about that. We did extensive interior and exterior work. We completely renovated 3 entire stories plus the basement. We built a 10′ addition to the back of the house. We paved the back driveways and we restored and refreshed the front porch. Complete plumbing, electrical and interior structural work was done.
We had our friend Enzzo from Riccio’s Excavating (riccioexcavating.com) help us with the heavy equipment in the back of the property. We also had the heating system installed by our friend Kevin from Enerline Inc. The electrical work was done by Oleksandr from Fairman Electric. And Geza Baroque Furniture Ltd (baroquefurniture.ca) built the custom carpentry finish.
We removed the exterior back wall (3 storeys) of the house to be able to extend the property 10′ toward the back. In order to create an open concept and avoid having inside walls on the main floor we had to install long structural i-beams from side to side of the house. The longest i-beam was 32′ long.
This old property was built in 1910. It had stone foundation and double brick walls. We had to remove the interior walls and we cut the back brick wall entirely. We then installed i-beams from one side of the house to the other. The structural work took us 1 month to complete.
We squared the building. We installed hardie boards from Home Hardware for the exterior siding. We built a retaining wall, a parking area and a separate side entrance for the rental unit in the basement. We also built a deck on the back porch with a nice glass handrail. The parking lot can now fit 3 vehicles.
We restored the entire front of the house, from the foundation footing to the top of the roof. We removed the old front deck, the windows, the metal siding and the facia. We washed the front brick wall and repointed the joints. New stucco siding was done around the dormer on the roof and new shingles. New cedar facia installed and new pot lights all around the front of the house.
We built a function balcony on top of the porch with custom made handrails. We rebuilt the decking of the front porch using cedar boards and stone from Stone Tile and new windows that matched the existing ones. Our carpenters did an excellent job with the custom finish.
All this gave the front of the house a ‘fresh look’ but still keeping the original architectural design. We were very proud of the final product.
The clients looked at planters in a magazine and asked me to build them for their home, as so we did. On the photos below you can see how the front of the house looks like at night with the pot lights on.
Now onto the interior renovation. We replaced all the plumbing for the kitchen and 5 bathrooms, replaced the main stairs with another glass handrail with makes the house look bigger and cleaner. We inserted a functional fireplace. The fireplace is custom made of a single marble slab.