A hearth in a herringbone-tiled chimney breast over honed black slate, framed by glazing onto summer aspens.

Service

Renovations

Substantial renovations to houses worth keeping.

Roughly half of Riverside's work is renovation: houses in Rosedale and University Heights that are well sited and well built but no longer laid out for how the owners live. The work is usually structural (walls out, addition on the back, everything mechanical replaced), and it is priced and scheduled the same way a new house is.

01 · Assessment
What the house will allow
An old inner-city house tells you what it will accept once you are inside the walls. Before a price is given, Paul goes through the structure, the foundation and the services with an engineer, so the number you are quoted is not one that changes in month three.
02 · Restoration
Keeping what should be kept
Original stair, leaded glass, plaster mouldings, a brick chimney worth saving: these are taken out carefully, stored, and put back by the same trades who removed them. New work is detailed to sit alongside it rather than imitate it.