Plans for the Sharbot House

I've been sorting through my father's files and was quite surprised to find these plans for the Sharbot House, the house I grew-up in, sandwiched between some old folders filled with medical bills from the 1980s. A few years back I made a start on building an HO-scale model of this house, and spent rather a lot of time drawing up a floor plan from just old photos and my memories. I'm rather pleased to report that I seem to have gotten the overall outside dimensions more-or-less correct: the plan shows the house to be 41' wide across the front, and I estimated 41', but according to the plan the longest side wall is 36'-9", and I estimated 40'. Not bad.

Along with the plans are a set of documents that form what looks like a complete record of the business and legal activity associated with the purchase. Add this to the old photos of its construction I uncovered a few years ago, and I think it makes up an interesting look into building and buying a typical suburban house back in late 1950s Toronto. One of the more interesting documents is the summary my father wrote - shown over on the left - of all the costs associated with the house. Although the base price was $14,950.00, once you added in things like storm windows, fencing, painting, and so on, the total price came out to $16,025.00 (I don't know why he wrote $18,250.00 over on the left). And there was a mortgage of $11,500.00.

As far as a model is concerned, I notice that there are a few differences between the plans and the actual house. For example, our house was a flipped version of the plan. The bathroom arrangement was a little different: the toilet was under the window and the tub was beside the door, which changed the arrangement in the kitchen a little because the new location of the tub changed the shape of the kitchen wall where the fridge fit in. Clearly, a little further study of the plans is called for.