I’ve mentioned the “blank canvas” in previous posts, but this house fits the textbook definition.

That old adage, “If you want it done right, do it yourself” rings true when you take a house that needs everything, and simply start from scratch…

This past weekend, I was working an open house for this little semi-detached home in Davisville Village.

The term that came out of my mouth the most: “blank canvas.”

This isn’t a bad thing at all; it’s not like I was being negative!  I was being positive!  A blank canvas is a good thing!  After all, if this house was completely renovated, it would be listed at $100,000 higher…

This house on Soudan Avenue, listed for just over $500,000, is in need of much work.  Almost everything you can think of—it needs to be done!

In many houses throughout the area, the things you can see have all been done, ie. the kitchen and bathrooms, painting, floors, etc.  It’s usually the things you can’t see that need to be done, such as removing old wiring, updating plumbing, and improving heating/cooling systems.

But with Soudan Ave, it’s the major things that need work, starting with the walls.

That’s right, I told almost everybody who came in that this house “needs to be opened up.”  Most semi-detached houses these days have one large room on the main floor, or a “grand room” that consists of your living room/area, dining room/area, and open-concept kitchen.

Thankfully, the general public these days is so knowledgeable (and watch so many TV shows on home renovations and real estate), that almost everybody already knew the house needed an “open-concept” look.

When you walk through the front door at Soudan Avenue, the first thing you see is a narrow set of stairs, and a wall to your right.  The stairs are narrow because there is an adjacent wall instead of a banister; this wall should be removed thereby allowing you to see the living space as you walk down the stairs.  The wall next to the door when you walk in separates the threshold from the living room.  What is the point of this wall?  Get rid of it!

Once inside the living room, there is yet another wall separating the living and dining rooms, which contains a very narrow opening to walk through.  Finally, there is a wall separating the kitchen (very narrow, see pics below) from the dining room.

My thoughts: get rid of every wall on the main floor.  Throw a demo-party and give your friends a beer and a sledgehammer!

Yes, the house needs flooring, paint, kitchen cabinetry, painting, fixtures, among other things, but the layout of the house needs to change.

Once that’s done, it’s simply a renovator’s dream.

The point I’m trying to make is that if some things were done on this house and not others, you’d end up repeating work other’s have done before you, and paying for it in the process.

This house is a completely blank canvas, and needs a 100% renovation.

This is far, far better than a house where the previous owners spent money fixing up the galley kitchen and put in new hardwood flooring, when you’re going to tear down walls and change the layout in the end.  You’re paying for work the previous owners had done, and you’re not making use of the money that somebody else spent!

That’s why the blank canvas approach works best!

Think of the economies of scale.  Home Depot buys 10,000 units of a certain product and the cost is substantially lower than when John’s Home Hardware orders 500 of that same product.

When you renovate everything in your home, the savings per square foot, piece, product, room, and floor are all higher!

Consider the intangible aspects of this house.  First of all, the lot is almost 150 feet deep which means it’s among the deepest lots of the 4000-ish houses in the area.  It is also south facing with beautiful, mature trees in the backyard.  Soudan Avenue is also one of the more sought after streets in Davisville Village.

Now, the two major ways this house could be renovated:

1) Extend the footprint of the existing house.  The semi-detached house next door had an addition built on the back, and it extends some eighteen-feet longer, meaning a large master bedroom on the second floor (probably with his/hers walk-in closets and 5-piece ensuite bathroom), a family room addition on the main floor, and perhaps they even dug out the basement to create a nanny-suite and office.

2) Renovate with no addition.  The existing house can be opened up inside, and a complete overhaul can be done to create a stunning home.  It will just be a smaller stunning home than it would be if you built an addition.

Obviously, option #1 is much more costly and would involve a ton more work.

But, once the work is done with option #2, it closes the door to option #1 down the road.

As I said before, you don’t want to spend money in the same place as money has been previously spent.  Overhauling the existing house and then building an addition down the road would be a monumental waste of cash.

And if you have that much money to burn, why are you buying a semi-detached house that represents “entry-level?”

Many buyers have absolutely no vision, imagination, or creativity.  Those are the people that walked into this house on the weekend and turned up their noses.

Other buyers can see the forest through the trees, and will turn this frog of a house into a prince, with a simple kiss (an $85,000 kiss probably, but I digress…)

Offers for Soudan Ave are tonight, and I would bet they will be in abundance.

I for one would advise buying this fixer-upper, blank-canvas house before paying for somebody else’s renovations in a house down the street…

Email this article to a friend