THE LISTING: 155 Dalhousie St. Unit 701, Toronto
ASKING PRICE: $1,095,000
TAXES: $5,172.00 (2015)
UNIT SIZE: 1,734 sq. ft.
MAINTENANCE FEES: $1,101.68
LISTING AGENT: Jen Tripp, Saleswoman, HomeLife/Realty One Ltd., Brokerage
Owning a home can be exhausting, even when your house is a beautiful brick semi-detached in Cabbagetown, such as Carolyn L Burke’s.
By turn of the century, Ms. Burke was getting stick of the freehold lifestyle.
“It was a wonderful house but it was so much work,” she said. “I was tired of all the grass cutting and snow shovelling.”
So she set off on a six-month journey to find the perfect loft. Halfway through, she discovered the Merchandise Building on Dalhousie Street.
“I love the building,” she said. “But there wasn’t a unit I liked.”
For three months, she watched the listings for that building and eventually Suite 701 came up for sale. Once she saw the corner unit in person, she knew she had found her new home.
“I felt like I was in a palace in the sky,” Ms. Burke said. “We’re only on the seventh floor, but we’re 100 feet in the air.”
The Back Story
Ms. Burke is only the third owner of Unit 701 since the loft conversion was finished in 1999. Prior to that, the Merchandise Building was also known as the Simpsons-Sears warehouse.
“Horses and buggies would come all the way up the floors to load up,” Ms. Burke said. “In lobby, the pillars have this metal skirt so the horses wouldn’t kick them.”
The warehouse, located near Church and Dundas Streets, is one of the largest in the city. It was originally built in 1910 as a five-storey-tall warehouse, right beside the company’s stables, which was convenient as it was originally used as storage for the wagons and other delivery equipment.
Even after being turned into lofts, the building retained many of its historical touches, including the art-deco exterior and large mullioned windows.
In her own unit, Ms. Burke says she “tried to respect the industrial theme, but give it a clean, polished look.”
Over her ownership of the two-bedroom, two-bathroom loft, she has made a number of changes to enhance this aesthetic. Most notable are the floors.
Ms. Burke removed the laminate flooring that was on top of parquet to reveal the original concrete warehouse floors, which she then polished and glazed. But unlike modern concrete floors, which are uniform in nature, this one is a mosaic of little stones and other pieces suspended in the concrete.
“It has the memory and the voice of the building,” Ms. Burke’s agent Jen Tripp said.
The other major change Ms. Burke made to the condo was finishing the ceiling. Many lofts in the Merchandise Building come with exposed ceiling, showing off the bones of the building. While that provides an authentic loft feeling, there’s also a drawback.
“When you have two hard surfaces, the sound just goes bing!, bing!, bing!, bing! and ricochets off of everything,” Ms. Tripp explained.
So, Ms. Burke added a drywall ceiling, boxing out the ducts and pipes but maintaining height in the living room, where ceilings max out at just over 13 feet.
“You’ll notice there are no ceiling fixtures,” Ms. Tripp said.
“And that’s because of the city,” Ms. Burke said, gesturing to two walls of windows enclosing the living room. “It provides lots of light.”
The loft is in the heart of the city, steps away from Yonge and Dundas Square and the Eaton Centre and on the doorstep of Ryerson University.
“I think the profile of living beside a university has changed,” Ms. Tripp said. “It’s not so rowdy any more. The students are much more serious.”
But being 100 feet up in the air doesn’t just provide a great view of the downtown core; it also gives you some space from the hustle and bustle of the busy streets.
“When the windows are closed, it’s silent. You can barely hear the city – even the sirens don’t seep in,” Ms. Burke said.
“And when you really want to really tune out the city, you put down the blinds,” Ms. Tripp said.
“And then, when you want to change that, you open a couple of windows, you get sound, you get a breeze blowing through and everything comes alive,” Ms. Burke added.
Favourite Features
While her unit features two full bathrooms, Ms. Burke is quite clear that her favourite spot in the loft is the five-piece master bathroom.
“You can have a quick, get-clean shower and then dive into a beautiful soaker tub bath with bubbles,” she said. “I’ll spend a couple of hours in there with a shot of tequila, a big book and lose myself.”
Ms. Burke has a special connection with bathtubs, as is evidenced by the cover of Oct. 21, 1996, U.S. News and World Report magazine, which features Ms. Burke hanging out in a tub with her laptop. It was the image that accompanied the story titled 24 Hours in Cyberspace, which included Ms. Burke and her online diary, Carolyn’s Diary, the first blog on the Internet.
The spaciousness of the master bathroom and the split layout of the unit really gives the loft a house-like feeling and is part of the reason why Ms. Burke has been able to live their comfortably for the last 14 years.
“I never looked at this place like an investment, but as my home,” she said.