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Deborah Scott and daughter Cayley Lambur were heading out on a shopping spree when they stopped at a nearby open house to check it out. Ms. Scott's curiosity had been piqued by a newspaper advertisement for the three-storey midtown stucco structure, circa 1921.

They both were smitten. "I jokingly told my mom she should buy it," Ms. Lambur recalls. The two never made it to the stores that fateful day just over two years ago. Instead, they huddled around a table in a coffee shop, trying to make the math work on the back of paper napkins.

The house, originally built for a judge, "needed a ton of work," as Ms. Scott puts it. It was well designed and soundly built, but had been neglected for more than three decades.

This mother-daughter duo would know. After all, they are not your typical house browsers. Ms. Scott is a seasoned architect, while Ms. Lambur is a fourth-year architectural student at the prestigious Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. This summer, she was an intern at an architectural firm in New York City.

Within a week, Ms. Scott had put a down payment on the $1.75-million house.

It would be the third in a two-block radius at Yonge and St. Clair that she had bought and refurbished -- or finished -- within a decade; the first had been on the same street.

But this time it was something different.

It was a mother-and-daughter project.

Ms. Lambur, the architect in training, did drawings, electrical planning, and got the building permit. Ms. Scott, architect and general contractor on the job, spearheaded it all. She arranged for new plumbing, wiring and lighting; she had air-conditioning, security and speaker systems installed. Together, they completely remodelled the kitchen and much of the bathroom space.

They were able to stay pretty well within their budget. But Ms. Scott's network of trades, and her ability to tap into her architect's discounts, helped. A divorced mother of two (son Hart is a bond trader in New York), she sold her previous home for $1.5-million and has so far spent about $250,000 on the renovations. She figures she has an additional $50,000 worth of work to do, including landscaping and revamping the main-floor family room.

Why bother? "I do not need to live in a house this big or expensive," Ms. Scott allows. "It's a project -- really about saving the architect-designed house on the double lot."

Mother and daughter had the same vision for their new home: restore it to its original lustre, but give it the bells and whistles of a brand new abode. "I wanted to respect the old but not be a slave to it," Ms. Scott says.

So they kept the leaded-glass windows, the oak floors (refinished in a dark hue), tiling and tubs in bathrooms, and most of the walls. They even kept a narrow "servants' staircase" that wound its way from the main to the second floor. But with an unusual twist, they transformed the extra stairway into a decorative storage unit/plant stand at the back of a newly constructed main-floor powder room.

The daughter wanted to ditch the glass-block windows (so seventies ) that let in extra light in the kitchen but blurred the house next door, but the mother insisted on keeping them. They're glad they did.

Along with the old came the new: They picked an ultramodern, even edgy-looking Valcucine kitchen. With aluminum and dark oak finishes, it features tall glass cabinets along one wall and no cabinets at all above the counters. Instead, artwork is hung on that wall, allowing natural light to fall on to the countertop areas. They're made of eye-catching slabs of granite in tones of Jurassic green with charcoals and creams mixed in. The Italian-designed kitchen has the added bonus of being environmentally friendly: It's made from recycled and natural materials. Meanwhile, the kitchen was enlarged by knocking down yet another servants' staircase to the basement.

In the course of their work, mother and daughter came across the unexpected. When city workers came to drill a hole in the basement linoleum floor for a new water system, they turned up the original three-quarter-inch maple flooring underneath. It happened on Feb. 14, prompting the Scott-Lambur pair to call it their Valentine's Day gift: They ended up ripping out the orange linoleum to expose the handsome maple wood.

On the third floor, they transformed a closet into a convenient washer-and-dryer area. On the second floor, they rejigged the spacious master bedroom by turning the study portion into a bathroom, leaving the existing fireplace in that room. A second fireplace remained in the "boudoir" (dressing room) section of the room, while the former master bathroom was turned into a walk-in closet.

One of the still unfinished parts of the house is the large, high-ceilinged "music room" at the back off of the kitchen, which has become a family room. The sunken room was acoustically designed for the piano player who once lived there. The piano was placed in a nook at one of the floor-to-ceiling windows.

When the pair first started to renovate the house in early 2005, Ms. Scott had rented an apartment nearby. But by that July, the daughter had convinced her mother to drop the rental and move into the house, despite the construction zone.

Ms. Scott placed her bed next to the window where the piano once stood in the music room, and stacked many of her belongings in the room, too. Ms. Lambur, in Toronto for the summer and working at her mother's office, took a bedroom upstairs. When the workers arrived at daybreak, they were up with them, directing the traffic. Then they were off to their day jobs at Scott Morris Architects Inc.

Even when the pipes were being replaced and the water was disconnected, mother and daughter stayed put, taking their showers at the gym. In September, Ms. Lambur left to return to university, and Ms. Scott was alone amid the chaos.

"It ended up being tough. . . . I tell all my clients not to live through it. I blame Cayley for it. She said, 'Come on mom, it will be an adventure.' "

It was an adventure. In the end, mother and daughter remain close, and share a passion for architecture. This month, they are back together, this time in Rome to study the ancient buildings. They might even pick up a few ideas for their house in Toronto.

mstrauss@globeandmail.com