B & A - Behind The Scenes...Almost A Forever Home

The Scoop

Amir originally scouted a four-bedroom semi near St. Clair and Dufferin to be his family home, but decided he saw potential for a big, beautiful, fully detached home, which he could buy privately. The renovation was the biggest Amir had ever taken on. He set a budget, a timeline of five months and a vision of his ideal buyer: a young family who likes to entertain.

What Amir Did

After bringing the electrical and plumbing up to modern standards, he installed a custom entertainment centre with indoor and outdoor speakers. In the backyard, a new two-tier deck addressed the lack of privacy resulting from a shared driveway. Upstairs, four bedrooms became three, allowing Amir to enlarge the master bedroom and build an ensuite. Vaulting the ceiling in the master bedroom also added a large loft space—as well as extra costs, when 20-foot pieces of lumber were needed to reinforce the aging roof. If that wasn’t enough, he opened up the whole main floor, but with that came with a lot of extra work. Since the house was quite wide, Amir would not only have to install giant beams and a support pillar to bear the load of the second floor, since all the walls were disappearing on the main floor, he also had to jack the house up. The property had sagged over time, so that needed to be addressed before installing the support beams. The jacking included temporary walls, renting a lot of shore jacks and slowly raising the house over a few days. Now that the house was structurally sound, Amir could move onto the fun stuff, all the finishes!

The Result

Rather than creating a traditional virtual tour, Amir and Aleks pulled three consecutive all-nighters staging the house for a video depicting what it would be like to live there. With the video complete, he priced the home and put it on the market with an offer deadline. There was plenty of interest: Amir, showed the home to more than 25 young families and professionals. Yet on deadline night, he received verbal offers, but nothing on paper. Both Amir and Aleks loved the house so much, the finishes, the size and the neighbourhood, they started contemplating keeping it as their forever home and talked about the loads of potential they still saw. Amir and Aleks set a deadline in their minds and Aleks crossed her fingers that the deadline would pass without an offer and this would become their new home. But five weeks later and just in the nick of time, they found the perfect buyer and it was time to say goodbye!

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