Project — Ottawa
Two floors above a main-street storefront taken back to stone, brick and joists, then rebuilt as one bright open loft — glass-walled studio, black-and-quartz kitchenette, white oak throughout and a new three-piece bath.
Location
Ottawa, Ontario
Category
Full gut and conversion
Scope
Structure, layout, kitchenette, bath, stair, flooring, mechanical
Year
2025
Duration
Approximately 16 weeks
The brief
The upper floors were a patchwork of decades: dropped ceilings, chopped-up bedrooms, a tired galley kitchen and original stone and brick hidden behind three generations of finishes. Nothing lined up, and the good light along the street frontage never reached past the first partition.
Take it back to the shell and start again. One open floor that can flex — work, train, host — with a glass-enclosed room for privacy without losing light, a compact kitchenette and bar, a proper bathroom, and hard-wearing finishes throughout.
The idea
The build
A whole-home renovation lives or dies on sequencing. Structure, mechanical and millwork were drawn together before demolition started, and the same project manager carried the job from the first beam to the last piece of trim.
Every non-original finish came out: ceilings, partitions, floors and the old kitchen. With the shell exposed we could see what the building actually had — stone, brick and framing — and where new beams and posts were needed to remove the walls that were cutting the floor in half. Everything from that point was set out from a clean, level, square base.
A single open plan replaced the warren of rooms, with plumbing, ductless heating and cooling, and a full electrical rebuild roughed in before board went up. Wide-plank white oak runs the entire floor without a threshold, and flat ceilings with recessed lighting keep the height reading as generously as possible.
One room needed to be separate without going dark, so it was built in full-height glass with slim black framing and a frameless glass door. It closes for focus and sound, but daylight from the street windows still crosses the entire floor — and the reflections make the space read twice as wide.
A matte black kitchenette with quartz counters runs along the window wall — sink, tall storage and a long counter-height bar that doubles as a work surface. Beside it, a rebuilt white oak stair with a clean painted stringer connects the two levels and lands directly into the open floor.
Compact and deliberately calm: a floating vanity with an integrated quartz basin, a round black-framed mirror with a linear light above, and a walk-in shower lined in large white hexagon tile behind sliding chrome glass. Ventilation and waterproofing were detailed properly, which is what keeps a bathroom in an old building looking new.
Details
Outcome
What was a chopped-up upper floor is now a single flexible space with real daylight from end to end — a studio behind glass, a bar to work and host at, a proper bath, and a shell that's finally been brought up to current standards.
See more of our work“Gutting a building is the only honest way to fix one. Once you can see the structure, every decision after that gets easier.”
Start your renovation
Send us the space and how you want to use it — we'll come back with a layout, a scope and a firm quote.
We typically respond within one business day.
