Making More of East York's Compact Homes

Finding space in a small bungalow

Topham Park is a good illustration: most of its houses were built between 1944 and 1946 by a federal Crown corporation for returning veterans, and similar modest homes fill streets across the former borough. A typical East York bungalow has two or three bedrooms, one bathroom and a kitchen separated from the living room by a wall with a doorway. On a modest lot there is rarely room to build out, so the gains have to come from inside. The changes that make the most difference tend to be:

• Removing or widening the kitchen wall so the kitchen, dining and living areas share light
• Full-height cabinetry and a pantry wall that use every bit of vertical space
• Built-in closets and storage under the stairs or in awkward corners
• Pocket or sliding doors where a swinging door wastes floor area
• Lighter flooring and paint carried through the whole main floor

A wall that holds up the ceiling or roof is a different matter: its replacement beam has to be engineered, and the plan approved through a City building permit, ahead of any demolition. We plan the schedule so the kitchen, normally a three-to-six-week job, is out of service for as short a stretch as possible.

Low basement ceilings

Many East York basements were never meant to be living space, and headroom gets tight once ducts and beams are counted. We make the most of what is there: keeping ceilings as high as possible with careful bulkhead layout, using slim insulated wall assemblies, and picking flooring that adds little height. When there simply is not enough headroom for the room you want, lowering the floor is a structural job for underpinning specialists, and we say so plainly rather than build around a problem. In East York houses of this age the basement stairs are often steep and narrow too, so when a basement is being finished we check whether a safer, more comfortable stair layout will fit.

Leaside homes and the one-bathroom problem

Leaside was planned in detail long before most of it was built, and the bulk of the housing stock is from the early 1930s to the late 1940s, many of them solid brick two-storey homes, detached or semi. Families who love these homes often run into the same limit: a single bathroom upstairs for everyone. We renovate that bathroom with durable tile and better storage, then look for room for a second one, such as a powder room under the stairs or an ensuite carved from a large closet, with a plumber handling the supply and drain lines. The bathroom work itself usually wraps up in two to four weeks.

Apartment units for property managers

Thorncliffe Park, planned in the 1950s as one of Toronto's first high-rise neighbourhoods, and the towers of Crescent Town together hold a large number of rental suites, most of them built decades ago. For property managers and owners in East York, we renovate units between tenancies or as part of a planned upgrade program: kitchens, bathrooms, flooring, drywall and paint, finished to a consistent standard so suites stay easy to maintain. Work runs to each building's own rules, and common hallways are kept clean for the residents living on the same floor.

From a bungalow off Cosburn Avenue to a tower suite on Overlea Boulevard, every project begins with us seeing the space in person, and every quote we send is free and itemized.