WHO: Tanya Pillay, actor and hypnotist; Jason Field, filmmaker.
WHAT: A fully detached, two-unit house near College and Dufferin.
THE STORY: Pillay and Field’s two-storey home appears unassuming at first glance, but once inside, lots of personalized touches reveal the couple’s creativity.
“It’s a funny-looking house and it had been on the market for a while, but we liked it from the start” says Field. Working through Buyingblock.com — a multi-service company that specializes in first-time buyers — the couple managed to place an offer that, while under the asking price, was eventually accepted. They also used the site for hiring contractors. “We’ve had to do some plumbing work, nothing major though — we were able to do it ourselves with help from the Buyingblock.com guy over the phone.”
They immediately made some big changes. “We finished and closed off the upstairs living area and we rent that out — we turned the place into a duplex,” says Field. “Now we take our time finishing our part of the house.” Not that the space is by any means a construction zone; many major changes are already complete. The kitchen has custom-made, stained-red cabinetry and Field explains that other seemingly cosmetic changes have practical purposes. “The deck for example — the neighbours can’t figure out why we halved it,” he says. While they have lost deck space, the smaller scale minimizes obstruction. “There’s lots of light coming in now.”
Another quirky detail is their use of wood in parts of the house. “We bought inexpensive plywood, then used it to panel certain areas. By keeping the side with the grain exposed and staining it, we made it look fancier than it usually does.”
The couple see the house as a long-term project, with plans to even out the stucco façade, build a proper porch and stain the new deck. “We’d like to put a radiant floor in the bedroom, to make it more eco-friendly,” says Field. “And we’d like to redo the basement, but that’s a big, $30,000 job, so that’s a few years away.” All in good time.