Home Renovations in Markham's Heritage Districts and Newer Suburbs

Many Cornell houses were built with a coach house over the rear-lane garage, a small unit with its own kitchen and bathroom that may hold a tenant, a grandparent or a home office. That bathroom has problems the main house does not. Its floor is the garage ceiling, so when we strip it to the joists we check that the insulation below is continuous and that no supply pipe runs on the cold side, where a garage door left open on a January night could freeze it. Space is tight, so a tub often gives way to a shower with a linear drain, which a licensed plumber sets, and an electrician runs the circuit for any heated floor.

Before a Markham basement is framed and covered, decide whether it needs a backwater valve or a sump pump, because both are far easier to add while the floor is bare. The City's Private Plumbing Protection Rebate can pay up to $1,750 toward an indoor backwater valve and up to $5,000 for disconnecting the weeping tile and adding a sump pump, for properties in known flood-prone areas or that can show a flood risk, with the downspouts already disconnected. The City has to approve the work before installation, a licensed plumber's camera inspection of the lateral comes first, and the program sets a deadline for the building permit, so check the current date with the City. We then frame the finished room so the valve's access cover stays reachable.

The city's two smaller heritage districts are the hamlet of Buttonville on Woodbine Avenue, named after John Button, who bought land there in 1808, and the Markham side of Thornhill. Beside the Markham Museum lies Markham Heritage Estates, which the City calls Canada's first heritage subdivision. Its 42 City-owned lots are sold below market value to owners of heritage houses that could not stay where they stood, some in the path of Highway 407 or a road widening, on condition that each house is accurately restored and given a period landscaping plan. Inside such a house we work room by room, keep original trim and doors where they survive, and route exterior changes through heritage staff.

Cornell, planned by Duany Plater-Zyberk in 1994 and under construction from 1997, puts most of its garages on rear lanes, and so do the East Village of Angus Glen, laid out in the late 1990s, and the townhouses and some semis of Berczy Village. In those houses the family often comes in at the back, sometimes straight into the kitchen or the hall beside it, so the kitchen doubles as the everyday entrance. When we redo one, we plan that back-door zone with it: a bench and closed storage for coats and bags, porcelain underfoot where winter salt comes in, and cabinet runs that keep the path from the door clear.

Downtown Markham, the Remington Group's 243-acre district along Enterprise Boulevard near Unionville GO Station, has been under construction since 2005, and the builder's floors in its earliest condo suites and townhouses are starting to show their age. In the towers, the condominium corporation writes the specification: hard flooring generally has to sit on an underlay with the sound rating it names, and deliveries are booked around elevator reservations and permitted working hours. Suite slabs often need grinding and patching before long planks will lie flat. In the townhouses the new floor usually has to meet the stairs, where we fit treads and nosings that match the boards.

On Markham's older houses, paint is what protects original wood sash windows, panelled doors and verandas. Before any colour goes on, we scrape back failing coats, cut out soft wood on sills and porch boards and patch it to the same profile, then prime the bare wood. Owners of designated heritage properties can apply to the City for a matching grant, up to $7,500 for a historic house, toward repairing original windows, doors, verandas or masonry. Ask the City's heritage staff about application deadlines before the work is booked; they can also say whether a new exterior colour needs approval.

Markham has long branded itself Canada's High-Tech Capital. Industry followed new housing into the western part of the city in the 1980s, later joined by technology and financial firms such as Allstate, and IBM's Canadian head office now shares its software lab building on Warden Avenue. Older suites along Woodbine Avenue and Highway 7 are often refitted between tenants, so a fit-out usually begins by stripping the previous partitions, ceiling grid and carpet tile. We then frame offices and meeting rooms, hang and finish drywall, install suspended ceilings, lay commercial flooring and paint. The landlord approves the scope, a designer or engineer draws the permit layout for the City, and licensed trades handle wiring, data cabling, sprinklers and HVAC.