Meet Richard and Rana Florida at their Toronto home in this House & Home video tour. See even more in the April 2009 issue of the magazine.
Creative Class
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Meet Richard and Rana Florida at their Toronto home in this House & Home video tour. See even more in the April 2009 issue of the magazine.
March 11th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Great house, good lines, great kitchen! I like the art. Are the walls all one white or different shades? I couldn’t really tell from the video. Also looks like a great family house if you stay there.
The first 10 years we lived in our house we had all white walls, then when we remodeled the kitchen we realized the 10 year old paint was going to look pretty dingy by comparison so now the house is lots of colors.
I wonder if I can get the Canadian H&H in Oregon? Have you ever noticed that all the ads in Architectural Digest are for kitchen appliances, but the featured houses never show kitchens?
Pretty gutsy to run this on the same blog with all of the “renting is better” posts. I know, I know, every case is different, etc.
March 11th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Thanks Michael. The walls are indeed all white. Color gives me anxiety
Renting would have been a smarter option as we already lost a ton on the exchange rate, we bought with US funds at the height of the the Canadian dollar!
March 12th, 2009 at 1:25 am
I like your millwork. You did a nice job with the interior in general. My mother-in-law subscribes to CH&H, so we will look forward to the piece about your house. One of the best things about buying, as opposed to renting is being able to fully customize your house.
March 14th, 2009 at 8:03 am
Great space! I do have to point out that the use of Jane’s “New ideas/old buildings” quote was interesting (and a bit ironic, given the obvious cost of the place). She was speaking more about the economics of the dynamic- new ideas (companies/their innovations) needed the access to older spaces because those spaces were more economical than the new buildings. That said, I’ve always believed this statement to be true on the same level Richard meant it.
March 14th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Michael –
Great eye! Sasha (who rennovated the house) would know, but he once told me once that they used a variery of different shades of white.
Yes, we would have much preferred to rent, or at least I would have. I looked closely at rental options but couldn’t find anything that fit the bill.
Part of the problem was, I think, that so much of the better rental stock in urban Toronto (we live in the city about a mile from the university, a mile and a half from the core) services Toronto’s many film projects. And trust me, those folks are a far better market than people like us.
We actually had a great deal of trouble finding a house here. The architect, Bridgette Shim clued me into this early on, when she told me: “You seem to want to live in a urban village, it’s hard finding the right house here.” I really had no idea what she meant. A large part of the stock has been rennovated in a kind of faux McMansion way (we saw way too many of those). It was not the Dwell-inspired world of modern-like houses or great rennovations in urban perches, far from it.
One house we liked in the Annex where Jane Jacobs lived went for about 60% over asking price in a day. It warped and crooked floors (you could barely stand straight on them) and needed a total overhaul. We made a bid on one house, offering a percent or two under asking and the sellers threw our real estate agent out and jacked the price up by 20 percent or so the NEXT day.
We consider ourselves lucky to have found this place. Somehow we just clicked with Sasha, the owner-rennovator. The day we saw this place, he was over doing some finish work, and we met. With his larger than life personality, he immediately blurted out: “I want THEM to have it. They are why we designed this. They are YOUNG people who get it; they understand what we did.” I guess he was looking at Rana but I took the compliment. Since then Sasha and Milosh have become two of our closest friends.
From a purely financial view, we would have been better off renting. But we plan to stay here for a long time and the place suits us. One thing, for all you Americans out there, is that we can’t refinance our mortgage to take advantage of historic low rates. I guess that’s a bit of a bummer for us, but it comes along which much stronger banks which are still making mortgage loans. So while prices have dipped a bit (we always buy at the very top of any and every market) at least people can sell, and buy, homes.
I could go on … sometimes I think if I didn’t study cities I’d really love to be involved in urban design and architecture.
You guys should REALLY see the MPI. That space is beyond belief … And truly conforms to Jane’s dictum that “new ideas require old buildings.”
March 14th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Richard, I might have suggested it once before, but I’d really encourage you to open up the MPI space during Doors Open 2009 at the end of May. (That’s assuming MaRS will be one of the Doors Open buildings; it has participated for the last couple of years.)
March 17th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
The different shades of white can play on one another. One of the things I’ve come to appreciate (even if I don’t have the talent to do it myself), is how different colors or shades from room to room work together when you look through an interior door or even beyond at 3 rooms at once.
A house in our neighborhood was renovated/redecorated by a man with seemingly unlimited money. I talked to his painters and they said he’d get a room painted, then have it redone in a slightly different shade. It seemed crazy and self indulgent (probably so) but the result was stunning. Combinations you’d never expect like lemon looking into raspberry (this is from memory of talking to my wife. I think in what she calls “boy-colors” — yellow, blue, red.)
July 28th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Hi, I’m very taken with your white paint in your home- do you know what colors were used? If you’d wouldn’t mind sharing them, I’d be very appreciative.
Sincerely,
Rebecca
December 4th, 2011 at 10:21 am
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