A note from an active site in Lawrence Park, where a new custom home is taking shape on a lot taken down to grade. The structure and the envelope are complete, and the work has moved inside.
Lawrence Park does not give up its lots easily. The streets are mature, the trees are old, and most of the houses have stood for generations. When a home on one of them has reached the end of its useful life, the honest answer is not always to renovate around it. On this project, Leman and the homeowners chose to take the original structure down to the ground and build new. A full teardown is a serious decision. It is also, on the right lot, the only way to give a family the house they actually want without carrying forward the compromises of the one that stood before.
The structural work is behind us. The concrete is in and cured, the below grade structure is closed, and the steel that carries the longer spans is set, which is what lets the ground floor open up the way the drawings promised. This is a home of roughly three thousand square feet above grade over a full basement, and with the frame complete, the geometry of every room is already legible. You can stand on the main floor and read the ceiling heights, the sight lines, and the way the light will move through the plan across a day.
The envelope is complete as well, and it is the part of a build that no one photographs and every good builder cares about most. New windows and exterior doors are set and flashed throughout. Thermal and moisture protection has been worked through the assemblies, and the insulation and air sealing were detailed with the patience they deserve, because this is the work that decides whether a house is quiet, dry, and inexpensive to heat for decades. The work is out of sight now that the home is closed in, but the family will feel it every day they live there.
The work underway now is interior, and it is the work the team enjoys most. Mechanical systems, including heating and cooling, are being roughed in and coordinated so that the equipment serves the architecture instead of fighting it. Drywall follows the rough-ins, and then the build moves to the trades that give a custom home its name. Carpentry and millwork account for more of this build than any other trade. Interior doors are being made to the home's own specifications rather than pulled from a catalogue, and the finish selections are being resolved room by room, in close conversation with the project's architect, so that nothing important is decided in a hurry on site.
A build like this one runs the way every Leman project runs. It is one of a small number of homes the team is on site for at any given time, and a principal is present through it, from the first site visit to the final walk-through. The site supervisor is there every working day, decisions are documented as they are made, and the homeowners receive photographs and progress notes every week.
Further site notes will follow as the Lawrence Park home moves through its interior work. If you are weighing a teardown and rebuild, or a custom home on a lot you already own, we would be glad to talk it through. Book a thirty-minute consultation at the showroom or by video, and we will walk through the scope, the neighbourhood, and the fit, with no obligation on either side.