The Reno Coach

In 1999, Bryan Leblanc paid $225,000 for a three-floor, semi-detached house in Little Portugal. The street is lined with simple brick pre-WWI homes so similar that from above, they might resemble a long line of train cars. In this tree-covered pocket of Queen West, junkies, yuppies and semi-famous pop stars brush past the black-clad Portuguese widows heading slowly to mass.

Leblanc loved the house and the neighbourhood. He rented out the main floor and made an apartment to live in on the second and third, knocking down walls and installing a kitchen himself. Though he works in advertising, and has a gregarious, slightly smartass charm to show for it, the place taught him a little about how houses are put together. He used to enjoy construction stuff.

In 2001, Leblanc met an attractive university administrator named Janet Hunter—dry to his goofy, with a bright, gap-toothed smile—and it was great, and she moved in. By the time their mid-30s were in sight, they had started talking about having a kid. The house was close to a school with French immersion, property values were skyrocketing, and a new boutique and a small coffee shop moved in around the corner. Maybe it was time to get rid of the tenants, spread out, take over, commit. The idea turned into an imperative in the summer of 2005 when Janet became pregnant.

They decided on a style of reno that’s typical in this neighbourhood: open up the main floor to turn it into a loft space with a large kitchen, and convert the attic-like third floor into a giant bedroom with a luxury bathroom. Extend the back to gain a second bathroom and turn the little yard into one big deck. In effect, they wanted a three-floor gut job.

Leblanc called a few contractors and ended up with two estimates: the first was from a guy who had left a brochure on their porch. He quoted $135,000 and 16 weeks for the job. But Leblanc was smitten with a company he had found on-line. Nice Web site and a nicer proprietor, a soft-spoken, gentle young guy named Joe Darragh. “I realize now you should never pick your contractor because you want to be friends with him,” says Leblanc.

Over coffee, he asked Darragh if he could match the first quote, and Leblanc is certain he said yes. Darragh, however, doesn’t recall such an agreement. So perhaps the first crack came early, the way divorced couples can look back and isolate an exchange that foreshadowed the future, that said, We see things differently. Before long, their relationship would fracture into anger and debt and lawyers and vitriol between two men who don’t seem prone to vitriol. But maybe as painful was the shift in attitude, the slow poisoning of one couple’s feelings toward that formerly sacred place, the home.

Torontonians spent $7.1 billion on renovations in 2007, up from $3.6 billion a decade earlier. The boom will likely continue despite the threat of an economic recession. Improving what one already has feels like a more prudent expenditure than starting again. When the economy weakened in 2001, reno spending increased. It has grown this year, too, despite the slowing housing market.

Everyone who owns a house in Toronto seems to have a bad renovation story to go with it. These tales are passed back and forth at parties in middle-aged years the way cigarettes were in your 20s. Parroting agent-speak, we say we renovate to “add value.” But necessity is part of it, too: ours is an aging city. Fixing common problems in these old houses—sewage pipes dislodged by tree roots, traces of knob and tube wiring, crumbling lath and plaster—often leads to bigger, more expensive renos. There is a hint of compulsion to it, a constant striving for improvement that defines, at least superficially, our work-obsessed city: If we’re digging up the yard anyway, let’s just convert the basement into a home theatre! It’s the Toronto mantra: More, more, more!

But who will execute the more? We are ignorant about our houses, our cars, the things that mark us as prosperous, precisely because of that prosperity; we don’t have to know how things work, so we don’t. We call in the experts, or the cheapest version of the experts. When we renovate, we invite strangers into our most intimate spaces. The process epitomizes an unspoken strangeness of city living, the distance between blue and white collar, between racial groups and income brackets. All the Torontos that exist but rarely meet can suddenly converge in your house during a renovation.

The potential for disappointment, like the cost, is huge. When coupled with an industry that’s confusing to navigate, the result for the homeowner is mounting anxiety. Sometimes that anxiety is called for: last year, one family’s newly purchased Moore Park home collapsed in on itself during a $400,000 renovation. The contractor—a friend—was uninsured. They lost everything.