To stop that from happening, “a massive chunk of concrete” had been poured under the building, about six feet deep, 12 feet wide, and 40 feet long. When Method Homes came along, one of the first things they had to do was underpin the building, which meant “slowly chunking out bits of concrete to underpin the front wall.” There were other issues, too. “The party walls were a mess on both sides,” Chris says, “the neighbors had done all sorts of not-cool stuff. Every time we opened up something there was more structural work to do to try to stabilize the place.” The two party walls needed a lot of work, but Method Homes did eventually get them stabilized. Then, with the help of their shoring engineer, they built a series of “massive shoring towers” to hold up the roof, and then bit-by-bit took out the wood structure inside and replaced it with a steel structure. By doing that, they were able to honour the heritage requirements and keep the front façade and the roof the same. “It was a pretty technically complex bit of work,” Chris says. “Now it’s done and it’s more or less a brand new house, but you wouldn’t know it looking at it from the front. It still looks like the 1872 building it is.” Moving forward, Method Homes’ vision is to continue working on challenging and interesting projects like that one. They don’t necessarily have to be that difficult, Chris concedes – “There were times when we looked at that project and thought ‘Oh my God, this is insane,’” he admits – but he says the company generally enjoys being challenged and THE CONSTRUCTION SOURCE CANADA
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