Renovating in Westboro, Hintonburg and the Glebe

Inside the Greenbelt the housing is old, the lots are narrow and the renovation budget behaves differently. Much of the stock in the Glebe, Old Ottawa South, Hintonburg and the older part of Westboro predates 1940, and a real share predates 1920. That means balloon framing in places, plaster and lath, knob-and-tube remnants, galvanised supply lines, stone or block foundations rather than poured concrete, and no meaningful insulation anywhere.

Practically, this changes three things. Contingency goes to fifteen or twenty per cent, because what is behind the plaster is genuinely unknown until it is opened. Kitchen and bathroom gut jobs turn into partial rewires and repipes. And the foundation is often block, stone or rubble, which cannot be treated the same way as a poured wall when an addition or an underpinning is designed.

Lot width is the other constraint. Narrow inner-city lots mean side yard setbacks bind almost every addition, so rear and upward is usually the only direction available, and a second-storey addition on a pre-war roof is a structural redesign rather than an extension. A minor variance application to the Committee of Adjustment is common here and should be in the schedule from the start.

One more local specific: many of these streets have mature City-owned trees whose critical root zone reaches well into the front yard, and the City protects them. Excavation for a new foundation, a walkway or even a window well near one of those trees can require tree protection measures, so the tree question belongs in the design phase rather than on the first day of excavation.