That heritage house may have great bones, but the '70s lino and the leaking roof have got to go.
When there's dramatic renovation to be done, who you gonna call?
Even though the inside of 2962 East 2nd Avenue looks like the crumbling-tenement battleground
in Children of Men, Mr. Ka Wong is okay with that: he's used to being on the frontlines. Four
years ago, he bought his first old house, subsequently transforming the Mount Pleasant
knockdown into a coveted showpiece. Although he'd never been through the process before, he
had enough fun that he decided to quit his day job as a computer-software salesman. Now he's
gone into business to help others through the hell that is restoring old houses, in the process
bringing back the character that a previous generation of Vancouverites once felt driven to strip
out or cover up.
Wong's Transcending Home Renovation specializes in detail-oriented, heritage-style
transformations. So although the East 2nd home that the outgoing 35-year-old finds himself in on
this warm spring day would probably frighten fabled Canadian handyman Mike Holmes, Wong is
unfazed. When he looks around the century-old house that he's been contracted to remodel, he
doesn't see dangling wires, piles of lath and plaster, and yellowed '70s-vintage linoleum. Instead,
he sees potential. And the more that potential has been blurred by years of neglect from previous
owners, the happier he is.
"It doesn't matter how scummy a place is," Wong says, standing in the house's stripped-to-the-
studs dining room. "Scumminess can be cleaned up, and everything can be fixed. One time I went
into a house with a 200-litre pail in the middle of it to catch the rain. It was a nightmare–every time
I walked in, I'd get fleabites on my ankles. Most people would be turned off by that. Me, I was
turned on. Why? Because I saw the vision of what the house could be."
The goal of TH Renovation is to bring old homes back to the way they might have looked when
the city's streetlights ran on gas and streetcars were Vancouver's primary mode of public
transportation.
"It's important for a city to retain areas that physically define that city," Wong says. "New
development is fine, but it's also important to keep what you can. A lot of people have started to
do that in the last few years. If you look at areas like Main Street and Grandview, you'll see all
sorts of beautiful houses that have been restored."
For a good example of what TH Renovations has done with places that looked ready for the
wrecking ball, take a drive past 1044 East 13th Avenue. When Wong bought the place, it had
been subjected to years of renovations, none of which were going to win any awards from
Heritage Vancouver. The original bay windows had been removed and the front porch lost in a
misguided living-room expansion that turned the Craftsman-style home into an ugly box. The
original wood siding had been replaced with cheap vinyl and the fir floors covered with linoleum
and carpeting. Today the home is virtually unrecognizable from what it was two years ago. New
bay windows give the house a turn-of-the-last-century feel, as does the addition of an expansive,
ready-for-the-rocking-chairs front porch. Inside, wood floors have been exposed and thick crown
moulding installed, and layers of paint have been removed from pocket doors and banisters.
Walls that previously separated the living room from the entrance hallway have been removed
and replaced with dramatic pillars.
"Things like pillars and crown mouldings aren't the things that people point out and go 'oooh' and
'aaah'," Wong notes. "But they are important, because it's the subtle stuff that really makes a
place feel grand. You also have to have features that stick with the era, which is why things like
front porches are important."
What's impressive is the way that Wong and his crew manage to modernize homes like 1044 East
13th while maintaining the buildings' original character. One of the realities of Vancouver's early-
20th-century old-timers is that they weren't built for dinner parties, let alone pimped-out home-
theatre systems or indoor tennis games on the Wii. For a very good reason, according to
Vancouver heritage expert Michael Kluckner, living rooms, kitchens, and dining rooms were, back
in the day, designed to be separate from each other.
"They didn't have central heating," says the author of such books as Vancouver Remembered.
"Because of that, you would always have things like parlour doors that would allow you to shut
rooms off to keep the heat in."
As for why many homeowners in the '60s and '70s decided to maximize their floor space by
getting rid of features such as bay windows, Kluckner has an easy explanation: they were no
longer needed.
"Those homes were built around the idea of people not having electric lights," he notes.
"Because of that, you wanted the maximum amount of natural light being let into a house, which is
where bay windows came in."
In addition to his conviction that bay windows should be a major feature of a restored heritage
house, Wong is a firm believer that open floor plans make for a more inviting living space.
Consequently, he won't hesitate to suggest removing a wall that might separate a small kitchen
from a tiny dining room.
"One of the first things we do when we go inside a house is look at the existing structure and see
if we can open up the main level," he says. "It all depends on the layout of a house, but that's
where you are going to get that feeling of space."
Four years and eight restored homes into his second career, Wong still gets a rush from that first
trip through a place that's waiting to be brought back from the dark side.
"When I did my first house, it was for me," he says. "As with most people starting out, cost was a
factor. The only thing that I could afford was a run-down house. But I had a friend who'd been
through this, so he gave me the confidence to try doing it myself. I've always been into creating,
so as I fixed my house up, I added things like pillars and lots of colour. The more it progressed,
the more things came together, and the more satisfying it became. I enjoyed the process so much
I wanted to keep on doing it."
Now that he's no longer just renovating for himself, the benefit for his customers is obvious. If
you've ever moved into an old house, you know that undoing years of neglect and
"improvements" is a Sisyphean task. Turn the job over to someone else and you'll save yourself a
lot of ugly weeks and months scraping wallpaper, heat-gunning layers of paint, wrestling drum
sanders, and trying to figure out how to turn your rabbit hutch of a kitchen into something out of
Better Homes and Gardens. For Wong, the payoff is getting to do something creative while
helping ensure Vancouver doesn't forget where it's come from.
"I've never been a good drawer, a good singer, or a good artist," he says with a smile. "But I like
to create, and these houses are my pictures. This is how I paint them, and it's very satisfying
looking at them before and after. Even today, it still amazes me at how much transformation a
house can go through."
When there's dramatic renovation to be done, who you gonna call?
Even though the inside of 2962 East 2nd Avenue looks like the crumbling-tenement battleground
in Children of Men, Mr. Ka Wong is okay with that: he's used to being on the frontlines. Four
years ago, he bought his first old house, subsequently transforming the Mount Pleasant
knockdown into a coveted showpiece. Although he'd never been through the process before, he
had enough fun that he decided to quit his day job as a computer-software salesman. Now he's
gone into business to help others through the hell that is restoring old houses, in the process
bringing back the character that a previous generation of Vancouverites once felt driven to strip
out or cover up.
Wong's Transcending Home Renovation specializes in detail-oriented, heritage-style
transformations. So although the East 2nd home that the outgoing 35-year-old finds himself in on
this warm spring day would probably frighten fabled Canadian handyman Mike Holmes, Wong is
unfazed. When he looks around the century-old house that he's been contracted to remodel, he
doesn't see dangling wires, piles of lath and plaster, and yellowed '70s-vintage linoleum. Instead,
he sees potential. And the more that potential has been blurred by years of neglect from previous
owners, the happier he is.
"It doesn't matter how scummy a place is," Wong says, standing in the house's stripped-to-the-
studs dining room. "Scumminess can be cleaned up, and everything can be fixed. One time I went
into a house with a 200-litre pail in the middle of it to catch the rain. It was a nightmare–every time
I walked in, I'd get fleabites on my ankles. Most people would be turned off by that. Me, I was
turned on. Why? Because I saw the vision of what the house could be."
The goal of TH Renovation is to bring old homes back to the way they might have looked when
the city's streetlights ran on gas and streetcars were Vancouver's primary mode of public
transportation.
"It's important for a city to retain areas that physically define that city," Wong says. "New
development is fine, but it's also important to keep what you can. A lot of people have started to
do that in the last few years. If you look at areas like Main Street and Grandview, you'll see all
sorts of beautiful houses that have been restored."
For a good example of what TH Renovations has done with places that looked ready for the
wrecking ball, take a drive past 1044 East 13th Avenue. When Wong bought the place, it had
been subjected to years of renovations, none of which were going to win any awards from
Heritage Vancouver. The original bay windows had been removed and the front porch lost in a
misguided living-room expansion that turned the Craftsman-style home into an ugly box. The
original wood siding had been replaced with cheap vinyl and the fir floors covered with linoleum
and carpeting. Today the home is virtually unrecognizable from what it was two years ago. New
bay windows give the house a turn-of-the-last-century feel, as does the addition of an expansive,
ready-for-the-rocking-chairs front porch. Inside, wood floors have been exposed and thick crown
moulding installed, and layers of paint have been removed from pocket doors and banisters.
Walls that previously separated the living room from the entrance hallway have been removed
and replaced with dramatic pillars.
"Things like pillars and crown mouldings aren't the things that people point out and go 'oooh' and
'aaah'," Wong notes. "But they are important, because it's the subtle stuff that really makes a
place feel grand. You also have to have features that stick with the era, which is why things like
front porches are important."
What's impressive is the way that Wong and his crew manage to modernize homes like 1044 East
13th while maintaining the buildings' original character. One of the realities of Vancouver's early-
20th-century old-timers is that they weren't built for dinner parties, let alone pimped-out home-
theatre systems or indoor tennis games on the Wii. For a very good reason, according to
Vancouver heritage expert Michael Kluckner, living rooms, kitchens, and dining rooms were, back
in the day, designed to be separate from each other.
"They didn't have central heating," says the author of such books as Vancouver Remembered.
"Because of that, you would always have things like parlour doors that would allow you to shut
rooms off to keep the heat in."
As for why many homeowners in the '60s and '70s decided to maximize their floor space by
getting rid of features such as bay windows, Kluckner has an easy explanation: they were no
longer needed.
"Those homes were built around the idea of people not having electric lights," he notes.
"Because of that, you wanted the maximum amount of natural light being let into a house, which is
where bay windows came in."
In addition to his conviction that bay windows should be a major feature of a restored heritage
house, Wong is a firm believer that open floor plans make for a more inviting living space.
Consequently, he won't hesitate to suggest removing a wall that might separate a small kitchen
from a tiny dining room.
"One of the first things we do when we go inside a house is look at the existing structure and see
if we can open up the main level," he says. "It all depends on the layout of a house, but that's
where you are going to get that feeling of space."
Four years and eight restored homes into his second career, Wong still gets a rush from that first
trip through a place that's waiting to be brought back from the dark side.
"When I did my first house, it was for me," he says. "As with most people starting out, cost was a
factor. The only thing that I could afford was a run-down house. But I had a friend who'd been
through this, so he gave me the confidence to try doing it myself. I've always been into creating,
so as I fixed my house up, I added things like pillars and lots of colour. The more it progressed,
the more things came together, and the more satisfying it became. I enjoyed the process so much
I wanted to keep on doing it."
Now that he's no longer just renovating for himself, the benefit for his customers is obvious. If
you've ever moved into an old house, you know that undoing years of neglect and
"improvements" is a Sisyphean task. Turn the job over to someone else and you'll save yourself a
lot of ugly weeks and months scraping wallpaper, heat-gunning layers of paint, wrestling drum
sanders, and trying to figure out how to turn your rabbit hutch of a kitchen into something out of
Better Homes and Gardens. For Wong, the payoff is getting to do something creative while
helping ensure Vancouver doesn't forget where it's come from.
"I've never been a good drawer, a good singer, or a good artist," he says with a smile. "But I like
to create, and these houses are my pictures. This is how I paint them, and it's very satisfying
looking at them before and after. Even today, it still amazes me at how much transformation a
house can go through."
Our featured article on Spring 2007
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