St. Clair West

St. Clair Avenue West has carried streetcars since August 25, 1913, when the Toronto Civic Railways opened the line west from Yonge Street. The cars ran in a dedicated right-of-way down the centre of the road, that right-of-way was pulled out between 1928 and 1935 and the track paved over for mixed traffic, and the City spent most of the 2000s putting it back. Construction started September 25, 2005 and service returned in three stages, finishing at Gunns Loop on June 30, 2010. The 7.1 km line is the spine this corridor is organised around, and most of the housing on either side of it was built within walking distance of a stop.

The houses are not all one thing. East of Bathurst you are on the Casa Loma and South Hill edge, where the ground climbs the Davenport escarpment (the old Lake Iroquois shoreline) toward Austin Terrace and the 98-room house Sir Henry Pellatt built between 1911 and 1914. West of Bathurst is Wychwood, where the Civic Railways carbarns went up between 1913 and 1921 and reopened as an arts and community building in November 2008, and Hillcrest, annexed by the old City of Toronto in 1909 and developed from 1911 out of the Turner estate. Past that is Regal Heights on the western crest of the same escarpment, Corso Italia from Westmount Avenue to Lansdowne, then Humewood and Oakwood Village, which sat in the former City of York until amalgamation in 1998.

Our shop is at 480 Wilson Ave, North York. St. Clair West is a down-town drive for us, roughly half an hour. We have spent years opening up houses of this age and construction, and the wiring, framing and supply plumbing in a 1922 semi off Lauder Avenue behave the same way as in a 1922 semi off Coxwell. What changes here is the ground, the lot widths, and which set of rules your address falls under.

Edwardian and interwar brick on narrow lots

Most of the stock between Bathurst and Oakwood went up in a tight window. Earlscourt, whose eastern half is now Corso Italia, was settled by British immigrants from 1906 and annexed by Toronto in 1910. Regal Heights filled in through the 1910s and 1920s once the roads were surveyed and the schools built, and the brick houses there came with front porches, wood panelling, and leaded and stained glass in the Arts and Crafts manner. Humewood is largely single-family houses from the 1920s. Wychwood Park is the exception: a plan registered in 1891, about sixty houses built mostly between 1905 and 1917, and a Heritage Conservation District under the Ontario Heritage Act since 1985, which means exterior changes visible from the street need a heritage permit while interior work does not.

The lots are the constraint people underestimate. Semis on 18 to 25 foot frontages, mutual drives shared with a neighbour who has opinions about them, and in many pockets no rear lane at all. Front-pad parking is not a free choice either. The City licenses front yard and boulevard parking only within the geography of the former City of Toronto, and Chapter 918 does not permit licensing parking on private property in the former York or East York, so an Oakwood Village homeowner is looking at a zoning variance rather than a licence. For us that means staging gets planned before day one. On a 20 foot frontage with no lane there is nowhere to improvise with bins, material drops or excavation spoil.

Knob and tube, plaster and lath, and galvanized supply

Knob and tube wiring was standard in Ontario houses built before the 1950s, which covers nearly everything on this corridor. It has no ground conductor, it was never designed for the load a modern kitchen puts on it, and the rubber and cloth insulation goes brittle where it has been buried under blown-in attic insulation or spliced into by a previous owner. Insurers know this, and a fair number will not bind or renew a policy until it is gone. When we open a ceiling here we assume live knob and tube until proven otherwise, and we price the electrical work assuming the run continues past the room you are renovating, because it usually does.

Behind the plaster it is lath on strapping, often nailed straight to the masonry with no cavity worth the name. That has three consequences. Removing plaster in one room releases the keys in the next, so cracks appear on the other side of a wall nobody touched. There is often no place to add insulation without furring the wall out and losing floor area. And the walls are rarely flat, so a tile layout or a flush cabinet run needs the substrate corrected first rather than shimmed at the end. We either repair plaster properly with a bonding agent and a skim, or take it back to the studs and hang new drywall with resilient channel where sound through a shared wall is an issue.

Hillside drainage in Hillcrest, Regal Heights and along the escarpment

The Davenport escarpment is a real bluff, roughly 50 to 75 feet of grade, and it was the shoreline of a glacial lake about 12,000 years ago. Casa Loma sits on top of it at about 140 metres above sea level, 66 metres above Lake Ontario, and Davenport Road runs along its base. Houses in Hillcrest, Bracondale Hill and Regal Heights sit on and just below that slope, so water moves through these properties rather than sitting on them. Neighbouring lots drain onto each other, side yards between semis act as channels, and the clay backfill against the foundation stays wetter than the undisturbed soil around it.

What we find in basements here is rarely one dramatic leak. It is chronic damp at the base of the uphill wall, salts on the block or rubble, and rot at the sill where a deck ledger or porch has trapped moisture against the house. The fix is usually exterior and usually boring: correct the grade so the first two metres fall away from the wall, get downspouts discharging clear rather than into a cracked clay leader, seal and drain the window wells, then look at membrane or interior drainage. Anyone quoting a full waterproofing dig before walking the yard in the rain has not diagnosed anything.

Lowering a basement under an Edwardian semi

These basements were built as cellars for coal and preserves, not as rooms. Ceilings sit low, and the foundations are frequently rubble stone or unreinforced brick rather than poured concrete. Getting usable height means either benching (pouring a new interior footing ledge and dropping the floor inside it, which costs you perimeter floor area) or underpinning (excavating and pouring below the existing footing in sequenced pins, which keeps the full footprint but costs more and takes longer). On a semi you are working under a shared party wall, so the neighbour’s structure is part of the engineering and you will need their cooperation, usually in writing, before anything is excavated.

Either route needs a building permit and stamped engineering drawings, and on a narrow lot with no rear lane the spoil comes out through the house or through a side yard barely wide enough for a wheelbarrow. That is why basement work here takes longer than the same job on a wide postwar suburban lot. It is also why we establish the foundation type and the water situation before anyone talks about finishes. Framing and drywall are the easy part, and they come last.

Our East York team handles the full range of HandyForce services for St. Clair West homeowners.

Renovations

• Bathroom Renovation – full gut, tiling, plumbing, fixtures
• Kitchen Renovation – custom 3D cabinet design, stone counters, full finishing
• Basement Renovation – waterproofing, underpinning, finishing, income suite conversions

Trades and Specialties

• Electrical – knob-and-tube replacement, panel upgrades, ESA permits, EV chargers, pot lights
• Plumbing – licensed master plumber, fixtures, rough-in, backwater valves
• Tiling – ceramic, porcelain, natural stone, heated floors, large format
• Flooring – laminate, LVP, hardwood, squeak repair, stair treads
• Drywalling – new installs, patching, lath and plaster repair
• Painting – interior, exterior, cabinets, deck staining
• Handyman Services – hourly, booked by the job, no project too small

Exterior

• Decks – pressure treated and composite, permit procurement included
• Fences – cedar, pressure treated, composite
• Roofing – shingles, flat roofing, repairs
• Exterior Painting – brick, siding, trim, porches
• Windows & Doors – replacement windows, entry doors, patio doors
• Eavestroughs – installation, repair, cleaning, gutter guards

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Why St. Clair West Homeowners Choose The HandyForce

• Fixed-price quotes – the number in your contract is the number you pay
• Dedicated project manager on-site every day for every renovation
• All staff are employees – not subcontractors, not referrals
• One-year workmanship guarantee on all labour – with a 6-month follow-up
• 63% of the project value held by the client until they’re satisfied
• Local East York office on Woodbine Ave – 15 minutes from St. Clair West, not dispatching from the suburbs

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The Neighbourhoods We Also Know

We serve homeowners across the east end of Toronto. The St. Clair West sits at the centre of it – surrounded by neighbourhoods we’ve been working in for years.

• East York – our home base, wartime bungalows and semis, 15 years of local work
• The Beaches – detached homes of every era, lakeside exposure, decks and porches
• Leslieville – postwar semis, ventilation issues, and the legacy of fast flips done poorly
• Leaside – solid brick homes, dirt floor basements, water table issues
• Cabbagetown – Victorian and Edwardian heritage homes, Heritage Conservation District constraints
• Rosedale – grand Victorian and Edwardian homes, high-end renovations and specialty basement conversions
• Willowdale – 1950s bungalows, load bearing wall removal and basement finishing
• Forest Hill – custom kitchens and full renovations under high ceilings
• North York – postwar bungalows, mid century two storeys and condo unit work
• Danforth / Greektown – Edwardian and interwar semis, knob and tube rewiring, and kitchens that have waited a long time
• York / Weston – wartime houses, knob and tube, and basements in the Humber flood plain
• Midtown Toronto – pre-war brick houses around Yonge and Eglinton, plus condo and apartment unit work
• Scarborough – postwar bungalows and split levels, aluminum wiring, and basements that need underpinning

Our East York office is at 1352C Woodbine Ave, East York, Ontario M4C 4G2 – roughly half an hour from St. Clair West. We’re open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. Call us at 647-427-7366 or toll-free at 1-888-910-7366 or click Request a Quote.