Home renovating in the Glebe
Reno realities
Living small in the Glebe
Reno realities
By Sheila Brady
Sylvie Chiasson has the eye, the imagination, the fiscal control and now a charming 1900 red brick home that is snuggled up against an expanded Mutchmor Public School on Fifth Avenue. Seven months ago Chiasson, who is the senior interior designer for the House of Commons, her partner, Antonio Estable and his 10-year-old daughter, Katerina, had to bolt for the outdoors because of the overriding stench of tobacco in the house.
The couple had been looking for a Glebe address for 14 months, initially walked away from 195 Fifth Avenue a year ago, returning last fall with new determination and a detailed plan to rehabilitate the modest house of many walls and small spaces.
“I could see the potential,” says Chiasson, who already had a major renovation of a Glebe home under her belt and a smaller reno of a New Edinburgh duplex. “You have to have a big plan, but also take one step at a time.”
There was some thought about tearing down the house and starting from scratch, but it would have ended up costing $1.2 million and the pair did not have the money. They paid $437,000 for the two-bedroom house that sits on a 25 by 105 foot lot, spending $50,000 gutting the main level and taking down walls in a back addition that had a laundry room, which was actually larger than the tiny kitchen, and a dark den.
Estable, an engineer and health consultant, was the project manager and often rolled up his sleeves to tear down old kitchen cabinets and offending walls. Today, the back addition, built in 1996, is one large open space, with a working kitchen, a generous island and sunny spaces to relax in a pair of leather chairs.
It is not an elaborate renovation because the couple are thinking ahead to possibly tearing down the single storey addition, adding two floors and extra bedroom and bathroom space on the second level.
“You have to think in steps. Why put in a lot of money to a new kitchen or a bathroom if you are going to tear it all out in two years,” says Estable, who realized the house would work for their family when new windows were installed at the front of the house, with some being recycled to the back.
Chiasson, the modernist at heart, designed simple yet deep mouldings that mimicked the size of the original mouldings still visible near the front door and stairs. “I opted for single hung windows to respect the age and style of the house,” says Chiasson, who is actively mulling over how to handle the staircase, whether to open it up to the basement and show off the thick stone foundation walls. “It would respect the history of the house.”
Chiasson is a big fan of Sarah Susanka, the British-born architect who launched a movement in the United States in the late 1990s to pare down spaces and put money into finishing touches.
The first phase of the renovation – the gutting, cleaning and painting the walls to get rid of the tobacco smell – is now complete. They also ripped out a line of scraggly trees on the east side of the lot and cleaned up the backyard where there is now room for two cars to park. The front has also been cleaned up. A white picket fence is gone, the porch has been rebuilt and black trim and a black door welcome family and guests.
“It has been a success because our aim was to make the house liveable, live for a while and then move on to the next step,” says Estable.
“It took someone with a renovation history and good sense to see the potential,” says Meeka Proudfoot, the Tracy Arnett real estate agent who worked with the couple for 14 months to find the right house. “It is a small house and it will always be a small house, but it is now a charming small house,” says Proudfoot, who says most younger buyers don’t have the money to take on major renovations, while older buyers often think they can do a renovation, but then pay someone to finish the job.
Renovations can be a dangerous exercise, says Tracy Arnett, owner of Tracy Arnett Realty, with a majority of buyers not keen on buying a Glebe home that needs a lot of work. It is important to consider how long you intend to live in the house to recoup your investment, says Arnett, who renovated six of her family’s homes, always selling them for a neat profit.
“I have never lost on a house,” says Arnett, who is now renovating a duplex on Ella Street, with plans to rent the units for five years and then likely sell.
The key, Arnett says, is to find an honest contractor you can trust, who passes along discounts they get when buying materials. Keep control on costs, make sure the structure is solid and avoid homes that need foundation work. “You end up spending $50,000, nobody cares. The easiest and best renos are kitchens, bathrooms and floors.”
Sheila Brady is an amateur decorator, dedicated painter, tree pruner and semi-retired journalist, who spent some of her most satisfying professional years as Homes Editor of the Ottawa Citizen.
Living small in the Glebe
By Seema Akhtar
But, with some smart planning, a concerted effort to reduce the plethora of useless possessions most of us have (who really needs an asparagus steamer?), and some minor renovations that pack a big punch, as well as a few tricks and a whole lot of style, Chiasson, who is an interior designer by trade, has made her tiny family home feel much larger. And the best part is that Chiasson says, “Anyone can do this!”
So how exactly did Chiasson and her family do it?
Culling
The first, possibly most arduous step, was culling possessions to eliminate clutter in their new smaller space. In the weeks and months before moving, they looked through everything they owned: clothes, kitchen stuff, sports gear, decorations, paintings, furniture. Everything. They started sorting things into categories: keep because we love it and/or we use it regularly, give away or sell because we don’t love it anymore and we hardly use it at all, but it might still have value for someone else, and recycle or throw away for items that had really seen better days. They were ruthless. 
Renovation
Next, Chiasson and her family tackled renovation. They made minor improvements that made a huge difference: replacing all the windows and window trims and baseboards in the house to create cleaner lines and a more streamlined feeling (not to mention the environmental benefits of new windows). They also eliminated non-load bearing walls in the kitchen area, giving them an open-concept space that does double duty: kitchen and informal living space where family members or friends can hang out while Chiasson cooks. In the kitchen, they also replaced regular-sized appliances with smaller ones, to allow room for more functional workspaces in the kitchen. They recycled the kitchen island from their last home in this new kitchen to excellent effect.
But perhaps the most important thing Chiasson and her family did to improve the feel of the house was to paint … and paint … and paint. They painted all of the walls in the house a light colour – Decorators White by Benjamin Moore – creating a sense of greater space and bringing in more light. And they painted the old worn-out pine floors on the staircase and the second level to give them a new lease on life and to keep costs under control. But the house is not antiseptic, far from it. There are shots of colour, personality and levity everywhere: in the stunning one-of-a-kind (some of which is even inexpensive!) artwork on the walls, in an artfully arranged vase of flowers on the dining room table, in a throw cushion on the couch.
Storage
And finally, storage. They incorporated innovative, practical solutions everywhere. The two bedrooms are tiny, but include well planned out, personalized walls of storage to eliminate clutter. The bathroom is so small that it had to be divided into two bathrooms because all of the fixtures could not fit into one space. So, they have two mini-bathrooms: one with a tub and sink and one with a toilet and sink. An oddity turns into a practicality on a busy weekday morning when three people are getting ready for work and school! And both mini-bathrooms maximize storage so that bottles of shampoo and cream, toilet paper, cleaning products, towels – all the banal but necessary things – are hidden from view, keeping the space simple and serene. Spa like, on a tiny scale.
So, Chiasson and her family show us how people who didn’t think they could afford to own in a central downtown neighbourhood because of rising real estate costs, may be able to after all. By carefully considering what they need to live well, re-thinking how they use their living spaces, keeping things simple, and throwing in a whole lot of creativity, it is possible to live “small” in a fabulous central neighbourhood like the Glebe.
Seema Akhtar also lives (somewhat) small, in the top half of a duplex in the Glebe.
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