For many Vaughan households the first renovation happens below the main floor. A large share of the city's houses went up in subdivisions of the 1990s and 2000s, and plenty were handed over with a builder kitchen upstairs and bare concrete downstairs; condo suites near the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre and older houses inside the heritage districts round out the picture, each with rules of its own.
A city that was built in a hurry
The old township and the Village of Woodbridge merged in 1971 to create the Town of Vaughan, which became a city in 1991. Between 1996 and 2006 it grew faster than any other municipality in Ontario. Much of that growth arrived as subdivisions of two-storey detached homes and townhouses, in areas such as Vellore Village and Patterson, laid out around historic centres like Woodbridge, Maple and Kleinburg.
Houses from that boom are now roughly twenty to thirty years old, and a great many of them were handed over with an unfinished basement: a poured concrete floor, a furnace and water heater, bare foundation walls and, in some cases, a rough-in for a future bathroom. For a growing household that lower floor is usually the most practical place to find more room without building an addition.
The lower level as a second living room
A large unfinished basement is often the biggest piece of unused space in the house. Families here tend to ask for a media room, a games area or a bar counter, a home gym and a guest bedroom with its own bathroom. We handle the framing, insulation, drywall, flooring and finishing, and we lay out the space so the parts that need other trades, such as a new bathroom or wet bar, sit where the existing services make sense. A lower level like this generally needs four to eight weeks of site work. If the plan includes a separate rental or in-law unit, the city treats it as an additional dwelling unit, so a Vaughan building permit comes before any framing, and the timeline is drawn up with that approval in mind.
Kitchens that outgrew the builder package
Many owners like their kitchen's size but not its finishes or flow: honey oak or thermofoil doors, laminate counters, a pantry that is too shallow to be useful. Sometimes new cabinets, counters and tile are enough. Other owners want the kitchen and family room joined into one space; where the dividing wall supports the floor above, opening it up depends on an engineer's beam design and a city permit, so we build both into the schedule from the first meeting.
Condo suites around the VMC
The subway reached the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre in December 2017, and residential towers have been rising around Highway 7 and Jane Street ever since. Suite work there is about logistics as much as craft: management approval, elevator bookings, permitted working hours and, in many buildings, sound-control requirements for any new hard flooring. We read the corporation's renovation rules before we price the job, not after.
Which heritage plan covers your street
Kleinburg-Nashville, Maple, Thornhill and Woodbridge are the city's heritage conservation districts, each governed by a plan written for it alone, so what the City will accept for a porch, a window or a rear addition depends on which district your street is in. Kitchens, bathrooms and basements inside the house are generally treated like any other renovation. Our pages for the individual communities go into each district's details, and the City's heritage staff can confirm whether a particular address falls inside a boundary before a design is drawn.
