Heritage on the outside, party on the inside

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One of the many images that has stayed with me in Anthony De Sa’s excellent 2008 novel Barnacle Love is of the houses in Toronto’s Little Portugal. The street-facing façades present themselves as model citizens: free of clutter, trimmed lawns, even scrubbed sidewalks, with only the azulejo saint embedded into the wall by the front door to hint at who might be inside.

But, in the backyards and laneways, an agrarian society: here, homeowners kept pigeons, tended to tiny rows of crops, and even slaughtered pigs in the garage. The mess of real life.

In the more than two decades I’ve been writing for The Globe’s Real Estate section, I’ve come across a similar version of this, but one that has little to do with the homeowner’s country of origin. Rather, it’s about the change in how we live in the 2020s versus a century ago. Back then, the kitchen was a utilitarian room, secreted away from the rest of the house. Even in smaller homes, guests would be received in small, front-room parlours. And likely have to hold in their pee, as the only bathroom was a private affair up the staircase.

But 21st-century Torontonians still love their Victorian and Edwardian homes, especially if there is desire to live in a walkable neighbourhood with a high street. So, what to do?

Often, what to do is exactly what Julia King and Simon Beck have done to their handsome Humewood neighbourhood house: keep the heritage face intact – front porch, bay window, reverse-gable roof – while adding a strikingly modern addition to the back. And then reconfigure room placement to meet today’s needs.

Which usually starts with a much bigger kitchen: “The original impetus for doing this was that we wanted to modernize the kitchen,” confirms Mr. Beck. As if on cue, designer Deborah Mesher of Drôle House Inc., calls up images of a dark, disco-era kitchen on her phone. Tacked onto the kitchen was a “dodgy addition” that contained the washer and dryer but kept natural light at bay.

“I knew that that DIY addition at the back … had to come down,” says Ms. King. “I knew it didn’t have a foundation, I knew it was a breach-point in the house.”

So this renovation snowball began to roll: if addition should go, why not extend the house out into the backyard a little more to drink in natural light? And, to keep the flooring consistent, why not gut the whole first floor? And although it’s not in the budget to do the entire second floor, could just the bathroom get done?

The process began in 2021 when Ms. King reached out for recommendations on Facebook. When a friend suggested Drôle House, she was intrigued that they were local – Christie and Dupont streets – and that Ms. Mesher offered a design consultation for the very reasonable $399.

“I get carried away,” Ms. Mesher says with a laugh when she admits she provided Ms. King and Mr. Beck with four to six scenarios of what could be done.

Since one scheme was a clear winner, the next step was to find a builder. While Ms. Mesher provided names of a few she’d worked with since hanging her shingle in 2016, she also added Flux Developments to the list, since she’d seen their work and had been impressed.

As it turned out, so too were Mr. Beck and Ms. King. “We just felt that you knew what you were talking about,” Mr. Beck says to Don Aquila of Flux, who is sitting across from him in the new, street-facing dining room. “[Previous clients] said you had a strong interest in the design and attention to detail … and the price was fair.”

At between $350,000 to $400,000, the price seems more than fair. Ms. Mesher’s and Natalia Bieńkowska’s design has been executed so well that this writer pegged the renovation at $500,000. From the enlarged vestibule at the front (the canary yellow stairs to the second floor are the first happy thing a guest will notice) to the gorgeous wooden kitchen cabinets with burnt-orange pulls by Mooza Wood Arts (the second thing a guest will likely see), past the curving royal blue wall which contains the new laundry room, and on to the candy-pop light fixtures by Luminaire Authentik that announce the lowered family room addition, the eye delights in a textbook example of clean material transitions, precise gaps, smooth drywall, and a masterful manipulation of light.

“Julia said at the very start of the project that she didn’t want a run of the mill kitchen,” Ms. Mesher says with a smile. “Nothing boring, that was not their personality.”

“It was very important for us to have the natural wood,” adds Mr. Beck. “We really liked that option when you brought it to us. … It’s got a slight Scandinavian feel to it which I really like; it’s kind of a mixture of minimalist but colourful too.”

However, as with all old houses, there were challenges, says Mr. Aquila: “The existing house framing, we’d never seen anything like it. … They only used the double brick where they needed, like underneath each joist.”

Yet, even still, from demolition on day one to handing over the keys was a mere six months.

With that in mind, it’s no wonder this new model citizen has become so common on the older streets of Toronto. Stately countenance in the front, a glassy, light-loving party at the back and a comfortable, casual, dinner-party-ready space in the middle.

“I like to sit on the sofa and just look at the house and think, ‘Oh this is so nice,’” Ms. King says with a smile.