Orra is a two-storey brick home in Ajax with a curved stair under a round foyer. It is also the house our client grew up in. We took out two load-bearing walls, swapped the kitchen and the living room, put in a gas fireplace with built-ins, and redid the floors, doors and trim through the house. Every duct and pipe that was in those walls is now hidden, with no bulkheads anywhere on the open floor.
The brief
"This is our client's childhood home, so there's a sentimental aspect to this project," James said on demolition day. The client wanted a modern contemporary house, and that meant opening up the back half of the main floor. The old main floor was closed in by walls, with the kitchen and living room each where the other is now.
The plan from day one:
- remove two load-bearing walls and put steel beams in their place,
- move the kitchen to where the living room was, and the living room to where the kitchen was,
- take out the old fireplace and put the range, a hood and a large island in its place,
- take out a window and brick it in so the new cabinets could run to the end of the wall,
- install a gas fireplace with built-ins on each side,
- replace the floors, doors and trim, repaint and remove the popcorn ceilings.
The structural day
The steel beams sit where the load-bearing walls stood, picking up the floor joists of the storey above from both sides. To take the walls out safely, we built temporary walls on either side to carry the load of the second floor, lifted the beams into place, and only then took the temporary supports out. By the end of that day the back half of the house was one open room.
The hidden problem
When the drywall came off the load-bearing wall, it was full: ductwork, plumbing and electrical, all of which needed a new route. The easy fix is a bulkhead, a boxed-in lump across the ceiling. We didn't want one. Instead we built a false wall in front of the existing wall, ran the ductwork up through the ceiling and down behind the new kitchen, and hid the plumbing behind the kitchen too. "We have no bulkheads anywhere in this entire space," James says.
The stair
Problems come up on any job this size, and one came up on the stairs. The owner had approved the stain, and we finished the stairs. Once the new floor went down beside them, the colours didn't match, and neither James nor the owner was happy with it. So we refinished the stairs to match the floor. In James's words: "I'm going to stand by my work and I'm going to rectify this situation." The stair video shows the mismatch and the fix.
The finish
The foyer has a chevron white oak floor that runs into the main floor, and the curved stair now matches it. In the kitchen, a fluted oak hood sits over the range where the fireplace used to be, with a white oak island in the middle. The new gas fireplace is faced in white veined stone with built-ins on both sides. With the walls gone, light from the windows reaches right across the floor.
James's advice from this job applies to most renovations: do it all at once. "When you do everything at once, it's faster, it's cleaner," he says, and it costs less than doing the same work in pieces.
