Buyer gets a second chance at her dream home

41 Garden Ave., Toronto

Asking Price: $3,195,000

Property Taxes: $9491.89 (2024)

Lot size: 18 by 125 feet

Listing agent: Jen Laschinger, Bosley Real Estate Ltd.

The backstory

When Alexandra Palmer missed her chance to build her dream house she was reminded of her mistake almost daily.

“I was interested in building something different and living in a modern house because I’d never done that,” she said. But finding an architect and finding a site to build new posed daunting challenges. Then, as luck would have it, a lot with narrow two-storey house on it came up for sale on the other side of shared laneway behind her Edwardian-era home in Toronto’s Roncesvalles community. But before she could get all her ducks in a row, someone else swooped in.

“It was cheap at the time and a builder bought it and gutted it,” she said. “I was really cross at myself.”

A lover of cycling and Toronto’s alleys and laneways Ms. Palmer had to ride past the house (sitting at the only entry to the laneway) on her way to and from work. Then she noticed work had stopped, and the building was sitting fallow. This time she didn’t miss her shot: “[The builder] went under; it went back on the market; so I bought it,” she said.

She had ideas of what she wanted, but many architects she met with wanted her to buy into their vision. Complaining to a friend about “snooty” architects, she was urged to try Dean Goodman, partner with LGA Architectural Partners. “He asked me really good questions,” she said. “He was almost interviewing me.”

Ms. Palmer had sold her Edwardian home in order to get the money to buy 41 Garden Ave., but even with that cash in hand, the scale of the project was giving her second thoughts. “At one point I bailed and said it’s too scary. … I told him ‘I’m not really very rich Dean,’” she said. “He said, ‘You’re exactly the kind of person who should be building.’”

From the outside, the shape of their collaboration is striking: The house’s high point is at the three-storey rear and the roof is one long slope down toward the two-storey front. The long sides of the house are clad in black metal, ending on narrow ledges that wrap around the front and back bracketing the cedar wood panelling on the ends like a picture frame.

The house today

Mr. Goodman became close friends with Ms. Palmer and her husband through the course of the project and over the years has been able to observe how their design choices worked out.

“It’s incredibly gratifying,” he said. “I love going back to places we’ve designed and see how people use it.”

In some ways the space is almost stereotypically modernist, with open spaces, mostly white walls, lots of glass and simple materials. In addition to wanting the house to look great, Ms. Palmer and her husband wanted the house to work better for their family.

“They wanted the kitchen right in the middle of the house, because they had teenage kids,” said Mr. Goodman. Ms. Palmer’s practical purpose was to situate the kitchen as a nerve centre where no one could go upstairs, downstairs or out the door without passing through the kitchen. The result is “this wonderful hangout space and there’s always lots of people in it,” Mr. Goodman said.

The front door opens into a long foyer that is separated from the preparation area of the kitchen by a long run of countertop and lower cabinets (with gas range and sink on this side). The hallway ends at a closet and powder room, and allows visitors to enter the living space toward the back of the kitchen, which is really the midpoint of this level’s open floor plan.

“People don’t want everything in one room,” said Mr. Goodman, speaking to the challenge of interpreting what clients often say they want with what they really want. “They want a delineation of space but the connectivity of it.”

Ms. Palmer’s kitchen is the gatekeeper to the all the defined spaces on this level: travel through it toward the front of the house and you arrive at the dining room with its almost floor-to-ceiling windows picture windows looking into the front garden; walk past the kitchen (and a wall of pantry storage) to the stairway leading upstairs and turn your back on it and you see a short flight of stairs down into the living room. Down the stairs off the dining room is a basement recreation room with long windows on two sides and a separate entrance off the front, for possible conversion to income suite.

Having the living room on the same grade as the back garden was one of Ms. Palmer’s key requirements. “That California modernism – which we do not have the climate for that here – was an influence,” she said. The rear wall of the living room is a floor-to-ceiling glass and provides the inside-outside seamlessness of classic mid-century modern design, even if as she mentions the winter storms can occasionally pile up against the glass. “It’s nice in the winter: when it snows the garden is perfectly white and soft, all curved and dusted. But you’re much more in it than looking down on it or looking out of the window,” she said.

The winter was another inspiration for the flooring: All of the floors on this level are concrete, only the wide oak stairs break up the near seamless sweep. “She was very adamant about wanting heated concrete floors, she always really loved that warm floor especially in winters,” said Mr. Goodman.

Because one side of the house is very close to the neighbouring structure there are no windows on it, so as you travel upstairs along the floating oak treads skylights come into play to keep the natural light flowing in.

On the second level there are two bedrooms front and back of the house with huge windows, and at the midpoint near the top of the stairs is an open-area office/den that could be partitioned off for a third bedroom. Also at the rear is the staircase up the third level, which is entirely turned over to the primary bedroom with ensuite bath, walk-in closet and another wall of windows looking into the garden.

Laneway living

On the back of the lot is a small garage that connects to the laneway, which itself is an underrated feature of the home.

“My kids grew up in that alley,” she said, but things have changed for the better since then. “Back then there were hardly any children in the neighbourhood – there was one friend in the alley – and they would complain ‘Why do we live here there’s no children?’“

The demographics of downtown have shifted over the past 15 years and now there are many more kids, dogs and young parents in the laneway: “In the summer it’s so nice, parents come home open up the garage doors, maybe have a drink, and kids play in the back.” There’s even an annual “Galley Alley” potluck dinner. Even though the plan is to move to the country (another thing she’s never done) Ms. Palmer’s having a hard time letting the old neighbourhood go with its alleys, fruit stands, coffee shops and restaurants: “When I think of moving out of the area, where else can I get all those things?”