In my most recent ‘Tales Of Upper Hillsborough‘ installments, I shared with you some of the details that made our third floor atelier so charmingly bijou, and how we reworked the space plan to create a light and airy luxury rental suite. Click HERE and HERE for those posts.

With the third floor suite finished and ready for our Summer visits (our short term furnished rental tenants move out May 30th), we decided the time was right to tackle the first floor renovation and addition. Now that we’re so heavily invested and the house is 60 percent complete, we’ve decided to sink a chunk of coin into finishing the triplex. Once that’s done, we’ll refinance to extract some funds, let the new luxury rental income cover the renovation debt, and re-invest our funds into another project.

Without question, this is a massive and complicated undertaking, for we’re both gutting the existing house and adding some extra square feet at the back. The entire floor plan is being reconfigured. The original living, dining and kitchen of our 1880s house will soon become three bedrooms and one and a half baths, while the ugly bathroom extension and tacky bedroom addition are being expanded into what will become a sun-drenched not-so-large L-shaped ‘Great Room’.

Here’s the floor plans side by side:

This is what the living room, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom of the main floor two-bedroom apartment used to look like, when it generated a rent of $700 per month plus hydro:

Back in the 1980s, the owners converted the house into a triplex and tacked on a hideous three-storey extension with a handful of windows and almost zero relationship to the back yard. The washroom was in that tiny peek-a-boo shed addition in the bottom right (and off the kitchen – Ewwww!), and the back door you see below was the uninviting entry to the third floor flat. Here’s what the back of the house looked like when we bought it:

Oh so grim!

After the wrecking crew arrived, things progressed quickly.

Here’s what the main floor looks like so far:

It’s underway! We’re craving vintage plank flooring, wood beamed ceilings, cream shaker-style cabinets, an abundance of light and a big harvest table for dining.

Will we succeed?

Stay tuned for more Tales Of Upper Hillsborough. This is going to be quite the ride!

~ Steven

Tales Of Upper Hillsborough