Tour A Semi-Detached House Redesigned to Utilize Every Inch

Hey House and Home, I'm Jess DeBanco. And I'm Tamara Robbins-Griffith and we are Curran Field Interiors here to show you one of our latest projects. We are at our client's semi-detached home in Riverdale which is a corner lot which has some unique properties to it but there's tons of natural light and we've really done a transformation of their main floor but also rethought how the basement functions for them and done their bathroom upstairs as well. Traditionally in a Toronto semi you will have maybe one window next to the dining room but it's often facing the house right next door so not a ton of light coming in. Here we have two large windows facing out on the street so lots of natural light and they also have the option of coming in in two places. Figuring out the layout was a really big starting point for us and definitely we talked to them about how they function in the space, how they live in their house. The living room and dining room were previously flipped. They had their dining room at the front of the house, their living room was in the centre, their TV was under the stairs so we flipped it back to what you would traditionally see with a living room at the front of the house. They did have an old fireplace that wasn't working so we opted to take that out completely and put in an electric unit. We like the electric units because they don't add too much depth. Our goal in creating all of this custom millwork was to really create the illusion that there's more blank space and less clutter but still pack in that storage in a discreet way. They're real audiophiles, they have all these books about music and lots of vinyl and they wanted their record player out so we created space in the new living room for all the records and music books but it just looks less busy and there's more breathing room. So we have the living room at the front of the house, the dining room we put in the centre that made a little bit more sense to us just being close to the kitchen. They opted for a round table that can be extended to fit more people when needed but it's normally just the three of them so it's a nice little spot in the middle of the home. It's right by the big bright windows and the long bench under the window. The clients really wanted the table in the centre of the room and lots of flexibility there. So the bench has tons of storage, it can act as seating, they can push the table over when they're entertaining, if they want more they can expand it. Yeah, the kitchen, Freddie's just crawling on the counter in the background, I don't know if we have that, it's her house too. The kitchen used to have a peninsula which really cut it off from the rest of the space so it was kitchen and then living room. The space wasn't well used so we really took up more of a footprint for the kitchen and utilised all the space, floor to ceiling, added pantry cabinets on the window wall, added a 10 foot island, it has storage on either side, space for stools and eating and then we took advantage of the entire wall including the space underneath the stairs so there's a little drink station, beverage fridge there and then as you move through you have your double oven, microwave, induction cooktop and we did a 48 inch fridge there and that was because they wanted a fridge in the basement but because we did a mudroom there we decided to just do a larger fridge upstairs so they have the 48 inch fridge and a beverage fridge that suit all their needs. The clients really liked mid-century modern so they wanted some colour in the space and we settled on this palette of deep secret which is a slate blue with white dove and walnut accents throughout. I love the quartz countertop as well, brings a little bit of movement into the space, we've repeated that blue in the light fixtures and then brought everything together with brushed nickel hardware. They come in the back door a lot because it's closer to a main street with the TTC, it's closer to where they park their car, their front mudroom really they use more as storage so what made more sense in the end was creating a bigger mudroom in the basement closer to where they come in the house. Previously when you walked downstairs there was a small laundry closet and then there was also a small room where they had just a fridge and a little bit of overflow storage so what we did is we removed the closet in the small room, made it a larger space, have the mudroom on one side and then a laundry counter, machines, sink on the other. The other thing we did in the mudroom again with Freddie being the main star of the show here they wanted a cabinet to hide the litter robot so we have a special cabinet for Freddie's litter robot so that she can jump in and out and it's hidden and it's out of the way so it looks nice and clean down there but it's also an extremely functional space. They have a son starting high school this year undoubtedly he'll be playing video games in the basement with his friends they can come in they have this big spacious mudroom dump backpacks lots of space for a coat closet down there and then they can hang out in the rec room. We do have beside the laundry room a pocket door now and works well for their son to hang out and also our homeowner to work from home she can close the door to separate where she works from the mudroom space. The upstairs bathroom is their family bath for the three of them previously they had an L-shaped vanity with a corner sink and it was all slate so it's quite dark and dated the space was great they only required a stand-up shower so we did a larger shower with a bench seat and we also included a double vanity with a full mirror from the counter up to the ceiling with a couple of sconces so it really reflects light it feels much lighter lots of storage still in the drawers of the vanity. I think every client in the way we live in the way we use our homes is unique having a corner lot having a back entrance that's close to the garage closer to the subway they were always going to use that so it didn't make any sense to create a new mudroom space at the front of the house it just wasn't going to be used. They love the space now and it works well for their family.