THE LISTING 36 Ashgrove Place
ASKING PRICE $2,588,888
TAXES $8,861.10 (2016)
LOT SIZE 33.33 ft. by 123 ft.
LISTING AGENT Beth O’Donoghue, Salesperson, Brad J. Lamb Realty Inc., Brokerage
When people build a home, there is a great deal of trust involved. You have to achieve a balance between your own desires and the advice of experts.
So it helps when you have an innate faith in the person who is designing your home. This was the case for Leopoldo Piedimonte, who decided to work with his father, a trained architect, on 36 Ashgrove Place.
“I really trust him,” he said. “He is very accurate with his drawings – even though he does them free-hand. And he has an incredible ability to transfer a thought onto the paper and then make that a reality.”
The Back Story
If there was one challenge with working with his father, it was the fact that Francesco Piedimonte was living in Italy when his son bought the old 1 1/2-storey bungalow at the end of a sleepy, leafy cul-de-sac in Don Mills.
That, however, didn’t prove to be much of an obstacle. Mr. Piedimonte purchased the home in October, 2013, but decided to live in his Lakeshore condo until the new home was complete. That gave his father time to visit at Christmas to see the property and take some measurements.
Then, through a series of Skype calls, Mr. Piedimonte, his wife, his dad and his mother (who is an interior designer) reviewed and refined drawings.
Small things were changed during this process. For example, the original plan started off as a rectangular building, but that wasn’t working on the pie-shaped lot.
“We really wanted to take advantage of the full shape,” Mr. Piedimonte said.
So they stuck with the geometric theme but opted for a series of prisms of different shapes. Unlike some modern homes that are basically one large empty box, this approach gave the structure some definition without enclosing the spaces.
The choice to go modern was an easy one for Mr. Piedimonte.
“My father has designed multiple homes with a modern style, so I just kind of inherited [that aesthetic],” he explained.
They began construction about a year after Mr. Piedimonte had purchased the lot and the couple moved in when things were 90-per-cent done in the summer of 2015.
The finished home features five bedrooms (one in the basement, four on the upper level), five bathrooms, an open dining-living room space that is also attached to the kitchen so sightlines remain unbroken. This was done purposely so the parents could keep an eye on their young daughter while she played with toys in the main space. But to do this, they had to fuss with the placement of the appliances.
“We flipped the placement of the cooktop and the sink,” Mr. Piedimonte said. “In many North American homes, you have the sink as part of the kitchen island, but in Italy, it’s usually the cooktop ’cause you’re going to spend more time at it.”
The house wasn’t solely the efforts of Mr. Piedimonte and his father. His mother helped with the interior.
“My mother is very artistic and passionate about things,” he said. “She helped us with our colour schemes, like the colours in the bedrooms, as well as the design of the staircase.”
Mr. Piedimonte’s wife also contributed to the design. Examples of her touches included the soft lime green as an accent colour for the exterior doors as well as the vibrant butterfly wallpaper in the bathroom beside her daughter’s bedroom.
The Italian flavour of the home goes well beyond the fact that it was designed by an Italian family.
“Almost everything in the house is from Italy,” said Mr. Piedimonte before listing off material his parents sourced from him. These include ceramic tiles, which are throughout the house, the windows, the gas cooktops, the bidets, even the faucets.
The quality of the finishes, the complexity of the design and the cost of build are part of the reason why the home is priced at $2,588,888 – which Beth O’Donoghue, Mr. Piedimonte’s agent, realizes is higher than most of its neighbours in the historically middle-class Don Mills community.
“I feel as if this home is priced correctly,” Ms. O’Donoghue said, explaining that they determined the lot value then added the building costs to come to the asking price.
Ms. O’Donoghue also believes the area – which is undergoing an upscale reimagination due in part to the Shops at Don Mills shopping complex and the new condominiums around it – will see more houses at this price range because it is comparable to a neighbourhood such as Davisville in its appeal but with more space and bigger lots.
Favourite features
One of the standout features of the home are the sliding “doors” on the main floor. At 20 feet long, they are more properly described as a sliding glass wall.
“I really wanted to make it so that the deck was an extension of the house,” Mr. Piedimonte said. “I didn’t want any breaks in the design.”
But when it comes to his favourite room, Mr. Piedimonte really loves the basement recreation room.
“I really wanted a huge TV down there,” he said. “Instead, we painted the 13-foot wall with projection paint.”
For Ms. O’Donoghue the show-stopper in the house is the master bathroom with its Japanese-style soaker tub.
“I mean, that tub is practically a small swimming pool,” she said, adding it takes about 40 minutes to fill it to the top.
The tub was built extra large to help accommodate for Mr. Piedimonte’s frame, who stands at six feet and five inches. It’s one example of how the house was customized for him and his family. Now life is pulling them back to Italy, so they have to leave. But it hasn’t been an easy choice.
“We’re heartbroken to be leaving this house,” he said on the phone from Italy. “But at least we get to know that we’re leaving a piece of ourselves in Toronto.”