Home Additions in Toronto

A century home can only be rearranged so far. At some point the wall you want to move is holding the house up and the room you need is not inside the footprint. That is when an addition starts to make sense.

First Place Homes has built additions onto Toronto houses since 1997. Harvey Minuk quotes the job, runs it and checks it before it closes. An addition is the longest work we do and the job where having the owner on site every day counts for most.

The kinds of addition we build

Second storey addition. A full or partial second floor on a bungalow or a rear second storey over a single-storey kitchen. The most structural version, because everything you add has to be carried by the walls and footings already there.

Rear addition or kitchen extension. The house grows into the back yard. This is the most common house addition we build in Toronto, usually to get a kitchen that opens to the garden and a main floor that works as one space.

Front addition. A vestibule, an enclosed porch or a small bump-out. Front setbacks and the character of the street constrain these tightly and many end up at the Committee of Adjustment.

Garden suite. A separate small building at the rear of the lot. The City of Toronto permits these on many residential lots, subject to lot size, emergency access and separation from the main house. Ask early, because access usually decides it.

What your house can carry and how we find out

Before anyone draws anything, the question is what is under the walls.

We dig test pits to see the existing footing: how wide it is, how deep it sits, what it bears on. We open a section of wall and floor to measure joist size, span and direction, because that shows where load travels. An engineer works out from those numbers what the house will carry and what has to be added.

Wartime bungalows often take a second storey well, because the footprint is simple and the walls stack. Bay-and-gable semis are harder. The party wall belongs to two houses and the original footings are shallow.

Foundations and underpinning of existing footings

An addition needs footings below the frost line, bearing on undisturbed soil. Older Toronto footings frequently sit higher than that, so when the new foundation goes deeper than the old one beside it, the existing footing has to be underpinned.

That is the same work as basement underpinning. Sections of the old footing are excavated one at a time and new concrete is poured to the lower depth, so the house is never unsupported. Engineer, permit, inspections at each stage.

Zoning comes before design

Zoning sets the box. Design happens inside it. Working the other way around is how people pay for drawings twice.

Four things decide the box:

• Setbacks. How close the addition can come to the side and rear lot lines.
• Lot coverage. How much of the lot all buildings together may cover.
• Height. Overall height and the rules that shape an upper floor near a side lot line.
• Permitted floor area. How much floor space the zoning allows on a lot that size.

Fall outside those limits and the route is a minor variance through the Committee of Adjustment: an application, notice to your neighbours, a hearing. It adds months and it can come back with conditions. We check zoning at the first meeting so you know which path you are on.

Permits, engineering and inspections

Every addition needs a building permit. The application usually carries a current survey, a site plan, architectural drawings, structural drawings sealed by an engineer and heating design for the added floor area. It goes through the City of Toronto district office covering your address: Toronto and East York, Etobicoke York, North York or Scarborough. Inspections follow at footing, framing, insulation and completion. We prepare the application and meet the inspectors on site.

Tying into the roof, the heating and the electrical

Roof. The new roof has to meet the old one. Valleys, changes of slope and the flashing at the junction decide whether that seam is still dry in year three.

Heating. An addition adds heated volume. Hanging two more runs off a duct trunk already at capacity leaves the whole house short. A heat loss calculation answers whether your furnace and ducts can serve the new floor area.

Electrical. Many century homes still run a 100 amp service. An addition with a kitchen and air conditioning often means a service upgrade and a new panel. Better found at design than at rough-in.

The seam between old and new

The seam is where cheap additions show. A year or two in you can read it from the sofa: a crack along the ceiling line, a step in the floor, a cold band where the walls meet, brick that no longer matches.

We build the seam on purpose.

• Foundations designed so the new structure and the old one move together.
• Floor framing set so the finished floors meet flat.
• The air barrier and the insulation carried continuously across the joint. Harvey's Passive House training is for exactly this and it is the detail most additions get wrong.
• Brick and mortar matched as closely as supply allows and a deliberate joint where no match exists.

Whether an addition beats moving

Sometimes it does not and Harvey will say so at the first visit.

Selling and buying carries its own costs: Ontario and Toronto both charge land transfer tax and then commission, legal work and the move itself. An addition keeps the street, the school and the neighbours and lets you fix the rest of the house while the walls are open. Moving makes more sense when the lot cannot take what you need, when zoning rules the design out or when the house has problems an addition would sit on top of.

"First Place turned the house we had been living in for 20 years into our dream home!" Jennifer Z. & Russell L.

More on how we work is on the Toronto home renovation page. Most additions include a new kitchen: see kitchen renovation in Toronto.

"We found in Harvey a person with tremendous knowledge about how houses work. He anticipated what needed to be done in the right order." David M.

Home addition FAQs

How much does a home addition cost in Toronto? An addition is priced from the drawings, because the foundation, the structure and the servicing are decided there. Excavation depth, underpinning of existing footings and upgrades to the heating and electrical move the number more than the finishes do. An addition gets quoted from drawings rather than from a walkthrough alone, for that reason.

Do I need a permit for a home addition in Toronto? Yes. Every addition needs a City of Toronto building permit, with sealed structural drawings and a current survey. If the design falls outside the zoning limits for your lot, you also need a minor variance from the Committee of Adjustment first.

How long does a second storey addition take? Design runs 2 to 4 weeks and construction runs 4 weeks to 4 months depending on scope, with additions at the long end. Permit review sits outside that and a Committee of Adjustment application adds months.

Can my bungalow take a second storey? Often yes and the answer comes from measurement. We dig test pits at the footings, check joist size and span and give the numbers to an engineer. Undersized footings can usually be strengthened as part of the job.

Get a free consultation

Tell us what the house is missing and how long you plan to stay. Harvey will look at the lot, the footings and the zoning and tell you what is buildable before you spend anything on drawings.

Book a free 15-minute call with Harvey or contact us. Call Harvey at (416) 489-4083.