Home of the Week: Toronto home rebuilt on modern lines
When he bought the house in the summer of 2011, Mr. Mardukhi knew that he was going to tear it down and build something new. The house wasn’t in terrible shape, but it wasn’t worth saving either. Mr. Mardukhi described it as having an extensive history of 'patching over and not fixing' problems.
'The open-concept space really shows off the floating stairs and the big glass panels that go all the way up from the basement to top floor,’ says agent Ira Jelinek. 'That to me makes the house really unique.'
The finished house now has an eight-foot ceiling in the basement, an open-concept main floor and three bedrooms on the second floor.
And everything is new, from the joists to the plumbing. The floors are white oak, giving the house an ashen aesthetic. Large windows protrude from a two-toned sandstone stucco exterior.
An example of Mr. Mardukhi’s tribute to functionality is found in his favourite room of the house, the master bedroom. There is a whole wall of built-in storage space. 'In these smaller homes, there is a design challenge: How do we give people adequate closet space without a walk-in?” he says. 'So that’s why we went with the white lacquered cabinetry, which doesn’t ‘shrink’ the room.'