We've lived in this hood for about 10 years now. Our first place was on Elmer Avenue. When we bought it, it was a run-down 100-year-old 2-story home. We adored it. It took my father and I years to complete the renovation, the extent of which is worthy of its own blog. We never pursued the thought of moving or building a new home, though the thought had crossed our mind. The truth was, we were content in our little 3-bedroom house. What happened to us in the summer of 2007 would change our lives forever…
Geoff Teehan
February 6, 2010
204beech.com
"Bittersweet" is perhaps the best word Geoff Teehan would use to describe the experience of building a new home on a tree-laded, hilltop property with views of Lake Ontario.
A partner in a Toronto digital design firm, Mr. Teehan and his wife, Melissa, both in their mid-30s, used to romanticize about building a modern home once their two young sons, Cole and Sam, were old enough to leave the nest.
"It was Friday, July 13th and it began like any other morning," Mr. Teehan writes in his blog. "We rushed to get the kids ready for school while simultaneously doing a thousand other things. During the mayhem, Melissa mentioned her neck was stiff and that she must have slept on it the wrong way. The pain became worse within minutes. Nothing was providing any relief, not massage nor the hot shower. A few more minutes passed and pain turned to numbness..." Within an hour, the numbness had become full paralysis.
Melissa was diagnosed with a severe case of transverse myelitis, a spinal-cord disorder that left her paralyzed from the neck down and put her in a wheelchair.
Mr. Teehan says their time to build "came sooner than we had hoped. The circumstances aren't great for something that should be a momentous occasion."
The couple's old house, with its small, narrow interior spaces and lone second-storey bathroom, was not built with accessibility in mind. So, this winter, after years of rehab, temporarily moving into a condo and finding a larger property in their beloved Beaches neighbourhood, they hired Altius Architecture Inc. to design one that was.
At the same time, Mr. Teehan created 204beech.com: The Design + Construction of a Modern Accessible Home to keep friends and family posted on their journey, like his business partner did on her 360winnett.com design blog last year. "It was easier than constantly writing e-mail and sending out images," he says.
Somewhere along the way, Mr. Teehan's blog - filled with family photos, floor plans, 3-D architectural renderings, poignant narrative, even links to their realtor's and architect's websites - "became something larger than a communication device," he says.
In just two months, the blog has been featured on a few design sites and has had more than 21,000 unique visitors from more than 140 countries, he says. "The traffic is pretty surprising, given I don't really talk about it much."
March 05: [Our architects]also were able to keep the elevator in close proximity to the staircase, so when someone traverses a flight of stairs or uses the elevator they meet at the same place. That way Melissa and I aren't at opposite ends of the house when we change floors. One of our requirements for the finished product is that guests can come into our home and see it as a beautiful piece of modern architecture, not as an accessible home.
Altius principal Cathy Garrido is accustomed to designing big-ticket items, such as oversized windows and wood-burning stone fireplaces, into the contemporary homes and cottages her firm designs. A $30,000 elevator, while uncommon in residential interiors, is no different, the architect says.
The challenge is that most elevators require a lot of space and "look like they're made for someone quite elderly," she says. "The design style is very reminiscent of your average retirement home."
There are exceptions, Ms. Garrido notes, referring to the minimalist glass elevator in iconic Canadian artist Charles Pachter's home, to which the Teehan blog, not surprisingly, also links.
Elevator aside, she says the Teehan project is remarkable for several reasons. For starters, it takes customization to a higher level. "Usually we don't discuss every single light switch," she adds.
She says it's also increasingly rare to find someone who buys a 50-by-120-foot property for a 2,200-square-foot dwelling as opposed to one double the size.
"We don't want to build a massive monstrosity," Mr. Teehan says. "We want something that's sized in check with other houses on the street. We're trying to be realistic with what we can afford to build. We use three rooms 99 per cent of the time so we're going to make sure those three rooms are perfect for us."
While relatively modest in size, the home will feature a second-storey catwalk to connect the master suite with the kids' rooms and overlook the kitchen and dining area. Double-height ceilings and large windows are also being factored into the plan without any privacy concerns because the house is set back and 15 feet above street level.
Alas, the architects are still completing the schematic designs, and the Teehans have only just taken possession of 204 Beech Ave., which still has a circa-1920s two-bedroom cottage on it.
There are still a million little details to finalize before their new home is built and their last blog entry posted. But for the Teehans, the road ahead is not as daunting as the one already travelled.
"We definitely have our moments of stress, but it doesn't take much for us to take a little step back and have a little perspective and say, 'What's the worst that can happen?' "
Special to The Globe and Mail