At his previous house in Picton, Kevin Reid-Morris loved sitting on the porch with a coffee, greeting his neighbours as they walked by.
So when he purchased a century-old home at 36 Edith St. in Georgetown in 2022, it was something he missed. But as he looked at the house and compared it to others in the neighbourhood, he began to suspect that the house, built in 1904 by local sawmill owner Henry Pratt Lawson, had a porch at one time.
“What I knew about the age of the house, what would be period appropriate, and the surrounding homes, there were signs of a more ornate decorative Victorian porch underneath,” Reid-Morris said.
Curiosity got the better of him and he cut a hole in the ceiling and discovered the tongue and groove boards that were an exact match to those on the exterior of the house, above the front door.
That discovery led to a year-long project of restoring the home’s original porch with exacting detail.
Reid-Morris’ efforts were rewarded Monday with the Town of Halton Hills’ Heritage Conservation Award.
“As someone who doesn’t do this professionally, I’m not a contractor, not a professional restorer, that was amazing to me," he said. “I was really humbled when you have a group like that tell you, this was really well done. It felt amazing.”
The project began with research and piecing together what the original porch looked like. He found a grainy picture from 1908 that was taken of the back of the house from the Knox Church tower.
From that he got a glimpse of a pillar on the front porch as well as some of the detail of the decorative elements along the roof line.
Comparing that to other homes in the neighbourhood, many built by the same builder, he was able to piece together the look of the decorative elements. Using impressions in the paint on the roof, he was able to accurately locate where each element went. He salvaged posts from a 1900s home in Toronto.
Reid-Morris cut, sanded and painted all the corbels and gingerbread to match what had originally been on the house.
“Apart from having an exact photo of the outside of the house, which I’m still desperate to find, I think it’s a pretty good approximation, that it’s 99 per cent of what would have been there originally,” he said.
As much as that detail work was time-consuming, the toughest part of the project was building on the foundation of a 120-year-old porch while still meeting building code requirements.
“Nobody would build a foundation like that today," he said. “A project like this isn’t typical, you’re not building from a clean slate and everything is level, plumb and flat; you really have to look at each of those things as a fun problem to solve.”
Reid-Morris said Town staff was helpful in solving those problems, such as hiding a modern bracket underneath the porch that helped the restored elements tie in seamlessly.
The Town also offers programs such as the Heritage Property Grant Program and the Heritage Property Tax Refund Program, to provide financial assistance to owners of designated properties.
“By recognizing the incredible efforts made by our residents, we encourage others to do the same and continue to champion the importance of protecting our cultural heritage resources,” said Halton Hills Mayor Ann Lawlor.
“The Committee was thrilled to see such a high-quality restoration project, and we commend the owner on his attention to detail and commitment to heritage conservation,” said Councillor Clark Somerville, who chairs the Heritage Halton Hills Committee.
Reid-Morris said many porches have been enclosed in order to provide more indoor living space. But he was more than happy to trade that to restore the porch and said “it came out even more amazing than I could have envisioned at the start.”
“It felt like such a great restoration project,” he said. “It really has changed the front of the house and brought back the original spirit.”
Check out a viral Instagram reel Reid-Morris made at the outset of the project that got the attention of several large Instagram influencers in the U.S., like Renovation Husbands.