Maple Home Renovations for Houses Ready for Their First Big Refresh

Pull the carpet out of the bedrooms and upper hall of a 1990s Maple two-storey and the house gets louder. Footsteps the pad used to soak up now carry through the subfloor into the kitchen and family room below, where the ceiling is usually drywall fixed to the joists with no insulation between them. We deal with it from above: an underlayment with a published impact-sound rating goes under engineered or vinyl plank, and solid hardwood is nailed over a sound-reducing mat where the manufacturer approves one. Pinning a floating floor at the edges or butting it tight to the walls lets noise and movement through, so we keep the expansion gap and cover it with the new baseboard. Felt pads and a hall runner do the rest.

The ensuite gets the attention, but the two-storey houses on the former airport lands, and on the streets that spread west from 1995, usually have two more rooms due for work. The shared upstairs bathroom often has a tub inside a one-piece acrylic surround; a tiled tub enclosure over a waterproofing membrane keeps a bathtub for young children and gives the room a proper finish. The main-floor powder room tends to sit by the laundry and the garage entry, and a family setting up a ground-floor bedroom for an older relative may want it turned into a three-piece bath with a low-threshold shower. That depends on the floor space and on a licensed plumber finding a drain route, so we measure both rooms together.

In Maple's 1990s and 2000s two-storeys the kitchen usually opens onto the family room already, often with a breakfast table by the patio door. When owners renovate, that table is what most often gives way to an island with seating, and the island then decides the rest of the plan: the width of the walkways, where the stools tuck in and whether the sink moves into it. An island sink or dishwasher needs a drain carried through the floor, simple over an unfinished basement but a ceiling cut in a finished one, so we look downstairs before the island's position is settled. The licensed plumber runs that drain and an electrician adds the island's outlets; the cabinets, counters and backsplash are ours.

The 1990s streets are only part of Maple. Around the crossroads sits the core of what became a police village in 1882; the southwest has small subdivisions from the 1960s, a decade that also saw homes replaced after an August 1962 explosion and fire at a propane depot; and the first large subdivisions arrived in the northwest during the 1980s. Each group starts a renovation from a different place. In a village house, old plaster and flooring are tested before anything is torn out, and a licensed electrician traces whatever early wiring remains; a 1960s house often wants its outside walls properly insulated for the first time; and a 1980s two-storey usually begins with its closed kitchen and formal rooms. Permits for all three come from the City of Vaughan.

Maple has its own GO station on the Barrie line, with Rutherford one stop south, and that matters to anyone planning a basement unit. Vaughan's zoning allows up to two extra dwelling units on many lots, both inside a detached, semi-detached or townhouse home or one inside and one in an accessory building, and each added unit generally needs its own parking space unless the lot lies within a protected major transit station area. Owners near either station should check whether their lot falls inside one. Where neither the station nor the driveway helps, the basement can still be finished as rooms for the household itself, which takes a permit but no extra parking space.

Maple's 1980s subdivisions and the first streets on the old airport lands both went up in years when stained oak was a common choice for door casings, baseboards, railings and kitchen cabinets. Oak can be painted, but not with a quick coat over the varnish. The surface is degreased and scuff-sanded, a bonding primer goes on, and the open grain of red oak will still show through the colour unless it is filled first, a texture some owners like and others do not. Cabinet doors and drawer fronts come off and are finished separately from the boxes, which are painted in place. Before a whole kitchen is committed, we prepare a sample door so you can judge the grain, sheen and colour in your own light.

Many family rooms in Maple's 1990s two-storeys were built around a gas fireplace framed in marble or ceramic, and once the carpet is gone that surround is often the most dated thing left. Re-facing it with large porcelain panels starts with a licensed gas technician shutting off and checking the insert; we then keep to the heat clearances its manufacturer sets and build out the wall so the new face either sits flush with the mantel or stands proud as one clean slab. Panels that size need flat cement board behind them. The hearth takes the same porcelain, cut so its veining runs on from the wall, and a television above the mantel goes up only where the insert's heat limits allow.