The Globe and Mail

29 Aberdeen Ave., Toronto

What: A detached modernist house, built 1976, and the only one of its kind on a street otherwise lined with vintage Victorian-era townhouses in historic Cabaggetown. Offering three bedrooms and three bathrooms on a 28.37-by-120.59-foot lot, home is also unique in the area for having an attached garage with four-car parking.

Asking price: $1.1-million

Taxes: $5,714.33 (2010)

Agent: Bosley Real Estate Ltd. (Philip Thompson)

A personal tragedy drove Dave Hamilton to buy this house seven years ago. He had recently lost his parents, and found himself searching for a feeling of belonging.

“They had just passed away and I was longing for a sense of home,” says Mr. Hamilton, a creative partner with the Toronto-based advertising company, Grip Limited. “When I saw this house I thought it was it, but wasn’t entirely sure.”

The confusion was created by it being an architectural beauty marred by years of neglect, not to mention a dated decor sensibility that Mr. Hamilton, a lover of all things pop culture, describes as very American Psycho.

“There was lots of grey with high gloss black accents and this crazy thing I call the bus shelter – a Plexiglas solarium that allowed you to look down from the bedroom or be looked up at from the living room. Take your pick.”

Despite a plethora of mirrors and a leftover party smell from the 1980s, Mr. Hamilton saw that the house had genuine character.

Daniel Li, the Governor General award winning architect behind Harbour Terrace at 401 Queen’s Quay and 100 Bloor St. W., among other distinguished projects, had designed the house in 1976 in collaboration with Gary Zanner, a partner in Toronto’s esteemed Babcock Zanner interior design firm.

A showcase of modernist design, the house took the form of a flat top square block fitted with a single horizontal row of gun-slit windows on the outside.

On the inside, the open concept rose two storeys beneath a sky-lit central vault with a dramatic 25 foot ceiling.

Philip Thompson is Mr. Hamilton’s long-time agent and when he first saw the house he knew it would be perfect for his client.

“It’s a trophy house for a single, gay or straight, alpha male,” says Mr. Thompson. “It has a very contemporary feel.”

Still, Mr. Hamilton initially had his doubts.

“It certainly seemed to have promise, but I wasn’t sure. The colour was awful – a taupey grey that was just very sad looking, really. I needed a second opinion.”

He dragged his then girlfriend, now wife, Sandra Mauro, to the house for her assessment. “Sandra helped me see the potential of that house,” Mr. Hamilton says.

“She pointed out that under all the ’80s drab that had gone horrifically out of style, there was this really unique and special house with a ton of stuff going for it that never goes out of style, like being detached and having four-car parking in a really friendly ’hood.”

Mr. Hamilton bought it and then set to work turning it into a home of his own.

“Mostly all I did was strip away and simplify things,” he says. “I took away the mirrors and the black lacquer and washed it to get rid of the smell.”

He also added a new cherry-stained Ikea kitchen with stainless steel appliances and orange tile backsplash in addition to a new powder room on the main floor.

On the central staircase he added a stainless steel banister that he commissioned from Ontario College of Art and Design student Jamie Maxwell, now a metal artist.

For a few years he led the life of the single alpha male, lounging outside on the man den deck when not filling his new home with 1970s furnishings and memorabilia hunted down in the antique stores lining Leslieville.

“There’s a temptation with a modern house to furnish it in the latest in Italian design, but to me that was too cold,” Mr. Hamilton says.

“I wanted the furnishings to instead match the time the house was built and so concentrated in the 1970s. To me, the house looks lived in. It’s a very human space even though sharply modern in design.”

But all good men eventually grow up to become good husbands and when Mrs. Hamilton recently added a new little Hamilton to the household, the time seemed ripe to move on.

The objective now is to find a new house where a new sense of belonging will unfold with Mr. Hamilton now in the role of the parent.