Black-clad house on a hardscrabble street

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The year is 1985, and two young men are working in “production housing” at separate sites in what is now called the 905 region. A much older site supervisor decided it might be nice if the two met.

“I looked like I was 12,” Brad Netkin, who, today, heads up Stamp Architecture, says with a laugh “and it was pretty rough.”

“I said something like, ‘I’m brand new here, I don’t know what the heck I’m doing,’” says Chris Meiorin, who founded Euro Vinyl Windows in 1986, “and he said, ‘Well I don’t know what I’m doing either.’”

“Anyway, we became friends that summer,” Mr. Netkin says.

When Mr. Netkin purchased his first house in Hamilton in 1986 (for $44,000), Mr. Meiorin would make the drive over every weekend to help renovate. In the early 1990s, when Mr. Netkin was studying architecture at the University of British Columbia, the pals would vacation in Tofino, or visit Powell River, where Mr. Meiorin’s father was born.

Despite marriage and children and running businesses, the two men kept in touch. After cutting his architectural teeth with Joseph Bogdan (now BNKC Architects), Montgomery Sisam Architects and Ventin Group Ltd., Mr. Netkin would hang out his own shingle. Among other things, he’d design a cottage on Drag Lake in Haliburton, Ont., christened “Blackbirch,” for Mr. Meiorin in 2013. Clad in all black, the 2,400-square-foot building was described as “a lesson in contemporary cottage living” by Will Jones in an article in the Globe in 2014.

Today, the two pals are standing in front of another black-clad home, this one a study in how to engage with a half-industrial, half-residential street wedged between Toronto’s Stockyards and Junction neighbourhoods. A street with no discernable architectural style – tiny 1930s worker’s cottages next to 1950s bungalows beside 1980s “Toronto Specials” – that is sonically bombarded by both children’s shouts from a park and the thunderous shunting of assembling trains in a rail yard to the south.

The lessons are as follows: the neighbours don’t really care about architectural style provided you seem to be a good guy (as Mr. Meiorin is) who is investing in the neighbourhood; and there are ways to both engage with that lovely view of the park while still maintaining privacy.

“It’s a privacy screen, it’s also a sunscreen‚” says Mr. Netkin as he points to elegant, two-storey tall arches that form a screen to partially shield the front door and all but two of the south-facing façade’s windows. “It contains the space and creates some sort of intermediate space that you can sit [in] and enjoy the show.” In keeping with the hardscrabble nature of the area, everything else that’s visible to the passerby is either corrugated metal, standing seam metal, or concrete (so well poured and finished it almost looks like marble).

Inside, while a certain hardness remains via concrete floors and the wire mesh guard around the open-tread stair, creamy-white walls and the use of natural wood create an unexpected coziness. Natural light abounds due to the extra windows that were achieved by setting the front door back so that the front room’s west wall is further away from the neighbouring house (if it were closer it couldn’t be fully glazed), and by installing an almost fully glazed side door with a tall transom. Light also rains down from a skylight over the staircase (the only window not supplied by Euro Vinyl).

Unlike most contemporary homes, the living area is situated at the front, the dining area in the middle – diners get to gaze upon an amazing piece of salvaged neon signage as they eat – and the kitchen is at the back. Kind of old school, but “the floor plan really came out of knowing Chris and [wife] Susan’s lifestyle.

“And also, it was a collaboration,” continues Mr. Netkin. “All the stuff in terms of the details and the materiality have to do with Chris and his talent and experience.”

“It was also your distinct guidance,” Mr. Meiorin interjects. “Our conversations could morph from professional to personal.” Sometimes over beer, they add with a laugh. It helped, too, that Mr. Meiorin grew up with a father in the precast concrete business and a grandfather “who was responsible for, probably, the vast majority of the terrazzo that went into Toronto.”

In the dining area, brick veneer has been applied to one wall. It’s so authentic that it looks as if it were a century-old exterior wall uncovered during a renovation. When it was first applied, however, it was “too nice,” says Mr. Meiorin, so he asked the installers to come back and be more ham-fisted with the mortar.

The large kitchen, which is mostly hidden from view from the front door, is large, logical and square-shaped, and contains the first set of European cabinets a colleague was considering importing (Mike Carty of Drors Studio in Barrie, Ont.) that he got for cost.

The staircase, although meant to carry the homeowners up to the second and third floors, can also be viewed as a piece of industrial art; the steel is raw, the welds visible and the bolts massive. “It has to be a 100 hours,” Mr. Meiorin says of the time he spent on it. “The finishing, the prep, and then we lacquered this whole thing in a night. … We’d build treads as we went, it was kind of crazy.”

On the second floor are two equal-sized bedrooms, each with its own tiny ensuite (his daughters were teenagers when the house was completed in 2017), and the principal bedroom, which faces the park. And despite the triple-glazed windows, Mr. Meiorin says he can still hear the train shunting.

The top floor is a family room/loft with a balcony overlooking the park. This feature, and all others, were “as-of-right” with regards to zoning, so no delays in getting the building permit, says the architect.

Overall, it’s a house of quiet elegance on a quirky street that speaks loudly of the friendship, trust, and understanding between two old friends.

“Chris and Susan are the ideal clients,” Mr. Netkin says with a smile.