| PROJECT | GALLEY HOUSE |
| TYPE | INTERIOR RENOVATION |
| YEAR | 2022 – PRESENT |
| LOCATION | TORONTO, ON, CANADA |
| PHASE | UNDER CONSTRUCTION |
| SIZE | 2,000 SF |
The project consists of a full interior gut of the house. The row house development was built in the early 80s and included some peculiar design choices; the most notable being the kitchen awkwardly divided the main floor in two, leaving a front room severed from the main living space. The rear of the house was long enough to contain a living and dining area meaning that the small front room became a lonely island.
Our first intervention was to remove the closed kitchen in favor of an open plan with a multitude of formal and informal seating areas. The home owners love having friends and family over to cook with and entertain. It is important to them to be able to have multiple people in and around the kitchen area at the same time without it feeling cramped, a challenge given the narrow width of the house. Our solution was to introduce a seating area and table by the front window and a peninsula counter at the other end of the kitchen. Friends and family can hang on either side of the kitchen and lend a hand when needed.
In addition, one of the homeowners is a musician who loves to pluck away at his guitar and the front nook or rear window nook are perfect places to do so. His beautiful wood piano will be in the centre of the house by the open rung stairs, filling the house with his music throughout the day.
The second floor master bedroom and bathroom also had some questionable design moves. The master bedroom had an awkward walk-in closet that was not efficiently shaped. In addition, it ate into the potential of the master bathroom and created a useless “mini hall” to get to the bathroom.
The master bedroom is wide enough to comfortably include a full wall of closet, almost tripling the linear area of closet compared with the original walk-in closet. Removing the walk-in also allowed for a slightly wider bedroom and bathroom and allowed us to create a more efficiently laid out bathroom.
Finally, a new skylight is introduced above the open rung stairs bringing light down through the centre of the house and another skylight is introduced in the master bathroom, bathing it in natural light.