Renovating Toronto's Older Semis, Row Houses and Condos

Houses that share a wall with the neighbours

Many homes in Leslieville, Cabbagetown, the Annex and the Junction date from the late Victorian, Edwardian and interwar years. They were built for a different way of living: a front parlour, a separate dining room and a kitchen tucked at the back. Toronto owners ask us again and again to open up that main floor, and on a lot only a few metres wide, every centimetre of the plan matters.

A semi-detached or row house also shares a party wall. Before we cut into it, fasten to it or change anything near it, we look at how it was built and talk through noise, vibration and timing, because the family next door lives through part of the job too. Where an interior wall carries load, taking it out is a structural change, so the engineering and the City of Toronto building permit come first and our framing follows the approved drawings exactly.

Plaster, lath and what hides behind them

Original plaster-and-lath walls are heavy, dusty to remove and rarely flat. Sometimes it makes sense to keep them and repair the cracks; sometimes stripping a room to the studs is the better path, especially when insulation, new openings or rerouted services are part of the plan. Opening old walls can turn up original wiring or aging pipes that an electrician or plumber has to deal with, so we leave room in the schedule and talk to you before anything changes. Floors in older Toronto houses have often settled over a century, and they get levelled before new hardwood or tile goes down.

Working on a narrow city street

Getting materials in and debris out is its own project on a tight Toronto block. Street parking is scarce, front yards are small and some houses have no side access at all. Where a property backs onto a lane, we often use it for deliveries and bins. Otherwise we plan smaller, more frequent deliveries, keep staging inside the work area rather than on the sidewalk, and protect the front hall and stairs that every load has to pass through.

Condo suites downtown and in midtown

A condo renovation near Yonge and Eglinton or in a downtown tower depends as much on the building as on the suite. Most condominium corporations want to review the scope before work starts, and each one sets its own rules. We ask for those rules early and build our schedule around them:

• Written approval from management for the proposed work, especially flooring and anything connected to the plumbing
• Booked service-elevator time for deliveries and debris removal
• Permitted work hours, usually weekdays with quiet periods
• Underlay and sound requirements for new hardwood or tile
• Protection of corridors, elevators and shared doors

Inside a Toronto condo suite, the projects we see most often are kitchen and bathroom updates, new flooring throughout and fresh paint before a sale or a new tenant. In a condo, bathrooms normally need two to four weeks and kitchens three to six, but a building's limits on working hours can stretch the calendar.

For a semi in the Beaches or a one-bedroom suite on the waterfront, we start the same way: we come by, talk through what the space needs to do, and then send a written, itemized estimate at no charge.