Alicia in Corktown
A Multi-Family Residential Building in Toronto
About the Project
“Alicia” was originally built in 1913 as 6 two bedroom apartments. Our client had a vision for student housing and asked us to renew the interior and exterior as 12 private rooms with each pair of rooms sharing a kitchen and bathroom. A modern private dorm room with a welcoming and comfortable feel.
The full interior renovation started with demolition – we removed everything down to the studs. All electrical and plumbing was replaced, a new heating and cooling solution was installed, the whole building was re-insulated and new windows were installed. The electrical was upgraded from 200 to 400 amps. Finished with 6 new kitchens and 6 new bathrooms, new floors and trim.
A new intercom/buzzer system was added and wifi access points were installed throughout the building.
See Our Work
Our Challenges
We discovered an old brick wall behind some plaster and were able to use to give the building a lot of character by cleaning and refinishing most sections of the wall. There were some sections that could not be saved, but we were able to artistically repair them so they blended in with the rest of the wall. We added some accent lighting to make the wall really stand out as a feature of the building.
Alicia is located in downtown Toronto, so space is at a premium. Our client want each space to have it’s own individually controlled heating, cooling and hot water. We were able to provide a forced air HVAC system and on demand hot water that fit in a small space above the washing machine in each unit saving a lot of square footage that was able to be used for other things.
Kanishka B., Resident
“Pretty cool spot and the brick wall that runs through the interior of the house is like a work of art, with the spotlights it looks more like a museum piece.”
Our Approach and Solution
Dealing with an older building always comes with some challenges to overcome. Alicia’s structural bay windows were rotting and needed to be replaced with new modern windows. The re-modeled building would also have to conform with current fire regulations and sound transfer coefficient.
And we did all this during covid. Finding materials was not an easy task, but we managed to get everything we needed. Keeping our crews and clients safe was also a demanding task as we had to follow social distancing guidelines and could only have so many people in a given room at any given time.