28 WEYBOURNE CRES., TORONTO
ASKING PRICE: $2,850,000
PROPERTY TAXES: $10,722.24 (2013)
LOT SIZE: 119 by 93 feet
AGENT: Barbara, Mary and Jamie Dempster, Sales Representative, Re/Max Realtron Realty Inc., Brokerage
Weybourne Crescent is a winding residential street in the heart of Toronto’s upscale Lawrence Park neighbourhood, dotted with many multilevel, million-dollar homes. Most are tear-downs, some are bungalows that have had their share of renovations. But none are like 28 Weybourne.
Jamie Dempster calls it the “Hansel and Gretel house,” since it’s reminiscent of a cottage from England’s Cotswold region.
“When I saw this house [in 2011], I said, ‘This is a great house and I want to live here forever,'" said owner Ed Zemla.
The back story
This year the home celebrates its 79th birthday. A teacher from nearby Northern Secondary School built it in 1935. But over time, the little cottage on the pie-shaped lot started to rot away.
“The exterior of the house was very charming, but it had a terrible roof on it,” Mr. Zemla said. “And the interior was very tired and worn.”
“So, we set out to do the ultimate restoration for ourselves in the hopes that it will still be there in 100 years.”
But to do so, Mr. Zemla, who is a professional builder and runs Glenrose Homes Ltd., poured a lot of time and money into the project. It took nearly two years to do and close to $1.2-million. But now, everything is new.
“[The owners] have taken this house and brought it into modern day,” said Mr. Dempster.
“We gutted everything that could be gutted,” added Mr. Zemla. “The entire house has new plumbing, new wiring, new heating. None of the original exists in that sense.”
Most of the mechanical equipment is now stored up onto the second floor, leaving the basement space (which he dug out and finished) to be a second living area, complete with an extra bedroom and washroom, a laundry room, a wine cellar, a workroom and even a gift-wrapping station.
The first floor of the house is a home unto itself. In theory you could live entirely on this level, since the living room, dining room, kitchen and master suite are all situated on it.
Beyond the mechanical room, the upper floor also houses a guest bedroom with its own bathroom and another room entirely for storage.
The home’s interior proves the house is a true restoration project. Each detail was reproduced as a replica of its original design, including the beams in the living room and the new windows fabricated to resemble the original diamond-paned, leaded ones.
The only original features that remain in the house are the front door, with its single-panel, peephole window, and the panelling in the dining room, though it’s a different colour and during the rebuilding it had to be removed to insulate and repair the skeleton underneath.
“Aesthetically, it’s a special home. It’s a unlike no other home people have seen,” said Mr. Dempster.
Favourite features
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mr. Zemla’s two favourite features are the two that took the most work: the kitchen and the roof.
The space that is now the kitchen started off its life as a garage back when the home was first built. And over time, it was converted into a bedroom, which you had to go up one set of stairs and then down another to access.
But Mr. Zemla took the space, added an archway to so it could be connected directly to the main floor. Then he spared no expense in modernizing the appliances in it, adding a Dacor gas cooktop, as well as Sub-Zero fridge and Miele dishwasher.
“It works extremely well. Two people can work in there without running into each other, but it’s not a huge kitchen,” said Mr. Zemla.
Mr. Dempster, on the other hand, loves how beautiful it is with its vaulted ceiling, skylight and matte Arbescato granite countertops.
But both agree that the “crowning glory” of the home is its cedar-shingle roof.
“It’s a piece of art,” said Mr. Zelma. “If you look at [it] closely you realize each piece of it is hand-cut and fitted.”
Each shingle also had to be steamed so that it bent correctly.
“That [kind of craftsmanship] is not something you do any more because it becomes so prohibitively expensive,” said Mr. Zemla. “But the roof gives me a little thrill every time I see it. It blows me away.”
It is such features that Mr. Dempster points to when saying the home is an heirloom.
“It’s the equivalent of buying an old Muskoka boat, where you see the absolute beauty in it,” he said. “You see the history behind it.”
“Everything about the place is special,” Mr. Zemla added. “It’s a house of incredible comfort.”