107 NEVILLE PARK BLVD., TORONTO
Listing price: $1,225,000
Taxes: $5,917.83 (2014)
Lot: 31.17 by 135.85 feet
Listing agents: Robin Tully, broker, and James Metcalfe, realtor broker, Johnston and Daniel Division, Royal LePage Real Estate Services Ltd., Brokerage
Coach houses are like truffles in Toronto: hard to find but worth the search. And when Ronald Boaks and Lenore Richards found one on Neville Park Boulevard in the Beaches, they were quick to snap it up.
“This was the first house we looked at. And we won it in a bidding war,” Mr. Boaks said. This was back in the summer of 1988.
He remembers his first thoughts were: “This is perfect. Well, this is a mess, but it’s perfect.”
It was the perfect property because Mr. Boaks is an artist and the coach house provided a much-needed studio.
But before he could create works of art, he and Ms. Richards had a lot of work to do.
The back story
“It needed so much work,” Ms. Richards said. “The bones were really good but all of the trim was painted salmon, the roof was red.
“We counted 30 different colours of paint when we moved in,” Mr. Boaks said.
“But since Ron and I are designers we thought ‘We can fix this,’” Ms. Richards said.
So within the first month of living there, they went about fixing the most pressing problem: the water. Not only was the basement wet, but the entire property needed better drainage (it sits in the groove of a ravine).
They spent $35,000 to solve this, adding weeping tile around both the house and the coach house. Then, that winter, they moved on to fixing the kitchen.
Originally the kitchen had brick Gothic archways over the window and the sink; the countertop wasn’t secured properly; the shelves were never sanded so they had jagged edges; the fridge blocked the entranceway and the linoleum on the floor looked as if someone had vomited scrambled eggs (Mr. Boaks’s description, not mine.)
“It was the worst kitchen I’ve ever seen in my life,” Mr. Boaks said.
“With our renovation, we wanted to make the kitchen functional and not ugly,” Ms. Richards said.
So they rejigged where the appliances were and added storage. They also neutralized the colour pallet, so no more pukey yellow linoleum.
After that came a long period of doing renovations in stages. Bit by bit, they refined the three-storey Arts-and-Crafts-style house, including its front yard and the coach house.
When they originally purchased the home, the coach house lacked a floor and doors. Now it has four barn doors and a cement floor on the first level, which is where Mr. Boaks painted. The upper floor is used as an apartment that they rent out for $1,260 a month.
And being behind (and unconnected to) the main house, the coach house is caressed by the ravine’s greenery on three of its four sides.
“You’ve got a great view of the ravine in here, so you can watch out for the coyote,” Mr. Boaks joked.
Favourite features
The second floor is home to both Mr. Boaks’s and Ms. Richards’s favourite rooms.
This floor has all three bedrooms and one bathroom. And over the years, the couple has transformed each room by adding storage (none had closets to begin with), changing the floors and making small decorative changes, such as replacing all of the doors.
“When Lenore’s aunt died, we saw this stack of doors in the funeral parking lot,” Mr. Boaks said. “And I said, ‘Hey, I’ll buy those off you.’” So, he got the entire stack for $100.
Off the back of one of the bedrooms is Ms. Richards’s favourite room: the sun room. It feels like a little nest that looks out on the coach house and the ravine.
“As a designer, you always love to frame views with windows. And that room has three sides with windows so it creates a really nice space to be in,” Ms. Richards said.
For Mr. Boaks, his favourite rooms are the bathrooms, which Ms. Richards redesigned.
“The first floor bathroom is classically beautiful and the upstairs one is funky and unusual,” he said.
“Both provide serenity through the choice of materials,” he added, while pointing out how Ms. Richards chose to mingle cement with stone and marble.
The upstairs bathroom was one of the last things they renovated and when asked to estimate how many months they’ve spent working on the house over the entirety of their ownership, they pause. Their best guess is about a year if you were to add it all up and probably close to $200,000. (They admit costs were a little lower for them since they did so much of the designing and building themselves.)
And some of Mr. Boaks’s art will stay with the home. For example, he created the eye-catching branch fence in the front yard, as well as the arty birdhouses and ironwork along the windows. He also did the wood trim in the dining room to build symmetrical wainscoting to what’s found in the adjoining living room.
In these ways, the building has become more than a symbol of the couple’s creative partnership; it is a reflection of their personalities. And because of this, the home is hard to let go.
“It’s going to be really sad to leave this place,” Ms. Richards said.