505 Ontario St.
Asking price: $1,249,900
Taxes: $5,662.26
Lot size: 19.74 feet by 107.92 feet
Agents: Liora Tal and Daniel Bloch, Salespersons, Harvey Kalles Real Estate Ltd.
When you walk into the family room in 505 Ontario St., you can’t help but notice the wooden piece on the ceiling. Is it a trap door? Is it a tabletop now turned into art? Is it a relic from overseas?
“When we were looking at the listing on MLS, we saw the double-door ceiling from Indonesia. But we couldn’t really figure out what it was,” said owner Petra Kodeda La Pianta. “And I remember sitting there, looking at it and thinking: ‘We need to go look at this because it looks really interesting.’”
It was the intrigue of the details that not only got Petra and her husband, Lawrence La Pianta, into the Cabbagetown home in 2008, but it is also what sold them on it.
“Then when we got here and saw the house still had so many original details like crown mouldings and vents – it was just such a fascinating house,” Ms. Kodeda La Pianta said.
The back story
The house was built in 1875 and over the years, its owners have added to its character, while keeping many of its original features. For example, the interior front, wooden doors are original. So is the stained glass window above it. And the staircase has been restored, including the carvings in between the rail posts. The house even still has a little joint along the baseboard in the main floor hallway that reads “Pease Foundry Ltd.” That is the spot where a pulley cable attached to help hoist coal up to the higher levels.
“You don’t see details like this in a lot of other houses,” said salesperson Liora Tal.
And to add to the intrigue, the dwelling also features a number of teak archways, pillars and a set of double doors (those hanging in the family room) that come from Asia. The owner before Ms. Kodeda La Pianta and Mr. La Pianta was a teak importer and he adorned his home with some of his favourite finds.
“I especially loved the woodwork in the entrance way to our walk-in closet,” said Ms. Kodeda La Pianta, referring to an archway that is carved with an intricate flower pattern. “I thought: ‘You’re never going to see this anywhere else.’”
To some, the variety of style may feel like a mishmash. But for the current owners, it reads more like a history of the house itself. And for Ms. Tal it adds a layer of individualism that is sometimes lacking from Toronto homes.
“What’s so special about the house is that every owner that has been in here has done something to make it their own,” Ms. Tal said. “So you see a lot of different styles in this house, which is what makes it so wonderfully eclectic.”
Mr. La Pianta and Ms. Kodeda La Pianta added their own touches to the house. When they moved in, they focused their efforts on modernizing the mechanical elements. The home originally had oil heating. And their first winter cost them a small fortune.
“We ended up going through $1,400 in heating in five or six weeks and started to think: ‘We can’t afford to live here,’” Mr. La Pianta said.
That year, they got an energy audit and found that the house had the equivalent of a one-foot hole in terms of how much heat was escaping.
So they installed a high-efficiency furnace, hot water on demand, added insulation to the basement and ordered custom storm doors on the front of house.
“It tripled in efficiency and now it’s only a fraction of the original cost to heat it,” Mr. La Pianta said.
The other major change was to the outside of the home.
“The exterior was lacking curb appeal, but they had a really good vision and it underwent a massive front-yard landscaping renovation,” Ms. Tal said.
The changes included adding a wrought-iron fence, stone steps and a sleek metal element that doubles as the address plaque. Mr. La Pianta and Ms. Kodeda La Pianta also landscaped the backyard, enclosing it with fences and an automatic garage door and paving over the gravel. It now houses an “outdoor living room” and two-car parking.
“The stuff we did was to improve the integrity of the house,” Mr. La Pianta said.
Favourite features
The home’s layout follows your typical Cabbagetown flow: living room and dining room off the front and a family room in the middle of the house. The second floor has two bedrooms and two bathrooms, including the master suite. And there is a narrow staircase that leads you up to the third floor that is currently set up as a den and home office but could also be a master suite, since it has a full, three-piece washroom.
However, of all of the rooms, the kitchen is everyone’s favourite space. It sits at the end of the first floor and opens up to the private backyard. And its feel is totally different from the rest of the home, with its modern Scandinavian design.
“I’ve never seen another kitchen like it, with its mahogany countertops,” Ms. Kodeda La Pianta said.
“For me, it’s the heart of the home,” Mr. La Pianta said.
But for Ms. Tal, it’s all about the appliances, including a gas range, a new dishwater and Samsung refrigerator.
“The kitchen has such great functionality,” she said, adding that even though it’s inside in a Victorian row house the kitchen isn’t outdated. And in that way, it’s a microcosm of the entire home.
“It’s a character, heritage home but with all of the modern amenities,” Ms. Tal said.