Home Redesign: Young family transforms tiny home to feel “so big.”

In Terrence and Emma Wong’s small, narrow home, three-year-old Atticus has room in the living room to run around and play with his trucks, which are later neatly parked in a long, custom-made bench along with his stuffed animals. It wasn’t always like that. The Wongs had to reinvent their home to find the space.

Their designer refers to a pivotal piece at the heart of their renovation as an “integrated L-shaped object.”

Practically speaking, it’s a 16-foot storage bench that keeps everything from toys to tech and food packaging neat and out of sight for the busy young family.

Made of sand colored ash wood laminate, lined with solid maple, the custom millwork in the living room is an important part of the ground floor redesign.

A second L-shaped recess connects the interior of the kitchen with the dining room. There is a full height pantry, coffee bar and integrated washer-dryer.

“The most important thing was the two ‘L’s,'” Terrence explains.

The goal of their semi’s six-month remodel was to open up the living space, bring in more light, and utilize every square inch of the main floor’s 500 square feet.

“It feels so functional for our family,” Emma says of their home after its renovation, which was completed in January 2021.

“Even though it’s so small, it feels so big.”

When the couple bought the century-old house just north of the Junction, it was dark and closed off. In the cramped kitchen, a stacked washer and dryer took up space next to the stove. The 400-square-foot second floor only needed new flooring and cosmetic updates.

Terrence, who describes his role as “very hands-on,” wanted the ground floor makeover to look unique. For Emma, ​​who likes to host dinner parties, the priorities were ample storage space and a clear line of sight to Atticus performing in the living room.

The members of the design team, Sally Kassar, Ava Nourbaran and Fadi Salib, of Architecture rel Inc., was asked to redecorate the home.

“They did a great job creating three distinct living spaces” of kitchen, dining room, and living room, says Terrence.

Kassar says the house’s 14-foot width was “challenging, but fun to tackle,” and calls the redesign a “very collaborative” project.

“They knew what they wanted,” she says of the Wongs, who called for a Scandinavian style, black-and-white kitchen, white oak floors, and wood accents.

Removing walls allowed light to flow through the space, while the materials selected were warm and inviting, yet sustainable.

In the dining area, a decorative wall constructed from vertical panels of solid ash wood makes the room “feel like its own space,” says Kassar, who jokes that it became the “perfect Zoom backdrop.”

Terrence notes that the room is given more depth by the feature, which was created by the Toronto store Studio hand, from which the storage bench also originated. The kitchen milling work has been done by Fengfabased in Richmond Hill.

The sofa, which provides extra seating for guests, can hold “everything,” including tech appliances, winter wools, and kitchen supplies, Emma adds.

Updating the home posed an occasional challenge, the owners recall; the kitchen demo revealed five floors of floors left over from previous renovations. Ranging from porcelain tile to peel-and-stick vinyl, they added an inch to the thickness of the floor.

In the end, the renovation paid off.

“It was a nice reno house to make our HGTV dreams come true,” Terrence laughs. “We love it). I feel like we could be here longer now.”

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