Syncopa is a house we reworked from the inside. We took it through permits, put in steel beams, changed the layout, took out a stone fireplace and built three new bathrooms. The doors, floors, trim and tile are all new, and the attic insulation was upgraded. James ran the build. Ceara at Juliette Interiors chose the finishes, as she does on all our jobs.
There's no video walkthrough of this job on the site yet, so everything below comes from James's list of the work and from the finished photos.
The scope
In James's words, Syncopa was:
- permits,
- steel beams,
- the entire layout reworked,
- the stone fireplace taken out,
- three new bathrooms,
- all new doors, floors, trim and tile,
- upgraded attic insulation.
The structure
When a layout changes this much, walls that carry weight often have to move or come out, and steel beams take over the load they used to carry. Work like that needs a building permit, and Syncopa had both: permits and steel beams.
The stone fireplace came out as well. None of the finished rooms in the photos has one now. What they do show is how the rooms connect: a long oak island in the middle of the kitchen, and wide cased arches between the rooms. James points out in the walkthrough video where a load-bearing wall came out to open the kitchen, and the new hall runs under an arched barrel ceiling, with a mudroom and a powder room added off to the side.
The kitchen
Every finish here was Ceara's choice. The kitchen is cream shaker cabinets with crown moulding run to the ceiling, an oak island with a white veined top, and glossy taupe square tile in a handmade look. The tile goes all the way up behind the range, under a tapered cream hood. Three white fluted glass pendants hang over the island, and two brass swing-arm sconces light the sink under the window.
Storage is built into the walls. A tall cabinet opens to an oak-lined coffee station, and its doors slide back out of the way. Next to it, an arched niche has oak shelves over the counter, with a lift-up door that hides a small cubby. The top drawers and some lower panels have reeded fronts.
The bathrooms
Three bathrooms are new. The photos show:
- a bathroom with a long oak double vanity, tall oak linen cabinets at each end, arched black mirrors, polished nickel taps and glossy white vertical tile,
- a second bathroom with an oak shaker vanity, a shield-shaped mirror between two oval brass sconces and a glass shower,
- a powder room painted a deep plum, with a black vanity, a marble-look top and polished nickel lever taps.
In the shower, white stick tile runs above a band of large grey veined tile, with a niche and polished nickel fittings.
The rest of the house
The new floor is a wide plank in a warm brown, and it runs through the kitchen and the dining room. The dining room sits through a wide arch, with a wood-panelled ceiling inset in the trim. Elsewhere, a built-in wall unit has oak-lined open shelves on each side of a recess, over a long run of cream cabinets with vertical-grooved doors.
If you're planning to rework the layout of your own house in Durham Region, Ontario, or Toronto, the whole-home renovations page explains how we take one on.
Watch it
James walks the finished main floor in the Syncopa walkthrough: the barrel-vaulted hall, the new arches, the kitchen with its appliance garage, and where the load-bearing wall used to be.
