Home Sweet Homewreck Read online

  Home Sweet Homewreck

  This is the worst reno story you will ever hear

  Richard Warnica

  CONTENTS

  Home Sweet Homewreck

  Not Quite Their ‘Dream Home’

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Home Sweet Homewreck

  Jim Pantaleo’s phone winked out sometime after 6:00 a.m. on Aug. 1, 2012. The last message he sent before it died was to his wife, Allison. “Love you forever,” it said. And then, nothing.

  Jim had spent the day before writing and drinking, slowly. From his perch at the corner of an L-shaped bar at a pub in Toronto’s east end, he tapped away at his laptop. He sipped beer and he did shots of “liquid cocaine,” a mix of Jagermeister and Goldschlager schnapps.

  Jim had arrived at the pub, Rails and Ales, at about 3 p.m. “He seemed very normal,” says Len Grammenopoulos, the bar’s owner. He ate some food. He joked around. Sometime after midnight, he sent his mother an email with seven letters inside. At about 2:30 a.m., he paid his tab—maybe $60, $70. He high-fived Len and he walked out. “I remember him saying ‘I’m gone,’” Len says. “And that was it.”

  Jim was gone.

  When Jim and Allison Pantaleo first met — as coworkers at a pub called Gabby’s on the Danforth — it was something close to love at first sight. Not long after that, they were married.

  Supplied Photo

  Three years before he walked out of that bar, Jim was a different man. He was newly married. He owned a pub with Allison. The two had planned on starting a family soon. Then they bought a house, and everything fell apart.

  Within weeks of moving in, they say, their new floors buckled. Their pipes froze. Their ceiling cracked. They also say that their foundation began to shift. One day, just months after signing their mortgage, they became so concerned with the condition of the house that they grabbed their cats, packed their car and fled—afraid their walls might collapse.

  By the time Jim disappeared, the two had been out of their home for two and half years. They were separated, broke and stuck in a long and pricey lawsuit. In a letter addressed to his lawyer, Jim tried to sum up what it all had done to him. “I dont [sic] expect to survive to see the end of this,” he wrote.

  But what happened to Jim and Allison—at least the version they told in interviews and court documents—represents something beyond the worst case scenario of a renovation gone wrong. Because, according to them, it wasn’t even their renovation that caused the problems—it was the one next door.

  Going by pictures alone, Jim and Allison don’t look like much of a match. She’s blond and sunny, and always smiling. He is none of those things. In fact, in a lot of photos, he’s giving the camera the finger. Still, when the two first met—as coworkers at a pub called Gabby’s on the Danforth—it was something close to love at first sight.

  Within months of their first kiss, they were living together.

  Not long after that they married, in a small ceremony at City Hall. They had the party afterward in Gabby’s, which by that point Jim had bought and the two were managing together.

  Allison knew then she wanted kids. Jim did, too. But before starting a family, he wanted to make sure they’d have a home to grow up in. “We spent over a year looking for a house,” Jim wrote in the letter to his lawyer. Jim’s mother, a real estate agent, helped them out. Together, they looked at more than 100 homes.

  After Jim and Allison Pantaleo got married, they had their reception in Gabby’s, which by that point Jim had bought and the two were managing together.

  Supplied Photo

  One property, in an up-and-coming neighbourhood a 15-minute walk north of the Danforth, looked promising. It wasn’t perfect. It was small and old and it needed work. It was semi-detached, too, linked by a common wall to the home next door. “I’d heard horror stories about that kind of thing,” says Allison. Still, the Pantaleos liked the neighbourhood and the local schools. So they decided to go for it.

  They offered $340,000, a smidge above asking. “And we got it, and we were thrilled, I mean absolutely thrilled,” says Allison. “It really was one of the happiest moments of our marriage.”

  The Pantaleos planned to move in to their new home, at 29 Dunkirk Rd., on Oct. 31, 2009. In the weeks before, they scheduled an aggressive list of renovations. They put in a new kitchen with granite counter tops and limestone floors. They laid down new cherrywood floors everywhere else, added pot lights and painted the interior. Jim especially loved the floors, says his friend Kris Edwards. “For whatever reason, that stood out.”

  As all this was happening, renovations were also underway next door. The semi attached to the Pantaleos had been sold that summer. And the new owners, Jonathan Wood and his wife, Gillian Irving, were gutting it. “I thought that would actually be good,” says Allison. “I’m like, if they upgrade their house, that’s in turn going to make the value of my house go up.”

  The Pantaleos planned to move in to their new home, at 29 Dunkirk Rd. (right) on Oct. 31, 2009.

  Supplied Photo

  It didn’t turn out that way. In August 2009, not long before the Pantaleos signed their mortgage, a city inspector showed up to examine 31 Dunkirk, the home next to theirs. According to City records, the inspector found a host of troubles on the building site. The inspector ordered the contractor on the job, Ironwood Construction Ltd., to “stop work immediately” and retain the services of a structural engineer to fix the issues.

  That order was eventually lifted, though, and work on the house carried on in the fall. In early October, Allison says their own contractor called. He told them he was worried about the work going on next door. “The site’s not secure,” Allison remembers him saying. “I don’t think this guy knows what he’s doing.” A few days later, he called again. You have to see the basement, he said. “Essentially they had removed part of the foundation wall,” Allison says. “I could see through to the neighbours. I could pass a coffee cup through for sure.” From there, things snowballed, according to Allison. As she describes it, their foundation appeared to start shifting. She remembers their new French doors suddenly jamming—the top edges rubbing against the frame. There were other problems, too, she says. “I remember Jimmy pulling me over one day and showing me cracks in the ceiling and down the walls,” says Mr. Edwards.

  On Oct. 22, 2009, the Pantaleos brought in a home inspector to assess the damage. In his report, he detailed some problems. But nothing that led Allison and Jim to believe they couldn’t live there safely. So they moved in on schedule.

  One day, just months after signing their mortgage, Jim and Allison Pantaleo became so concerned with the condition of their house (right, pictured in 2015 after they sold it) that they grabbed their cats, packed their car and fled — afraid their walls might collapse.

  Alex Urosevic for National Post

  But the problems at 31 Dunkirk continued, Allison says. In mid-November, Allison and Jim were sitting in their living room when she says they heard music suddenly piping in from next door. The workers had busted a hole “the size of a baseball” through the wall, Allison says.

  Another night, they were in bed when they heard a loud “thunk, thunk, thunk” coming from the work site. When they went outside, they found the door to 31 Dunkirk flapping in the wind. Inside, there was little more than an unguarded pit. “They had done nothing to secure it,” Allison says.

  As November turned into December, the Pantaleos say things got worse: on several occasions, propane fumes from the worksite next door seeped into their home; the cracking in the floors progressed; th
e stairs started to separate from the walls.

  On Jan. 2, 2010, in the midst of the first cold snap of the season, the Pantaleos’ pipes froze, a direct result, Allison believes, of the digging next door.

  But all of that was just a prelude. It was bad. But for Jim and Allison, it still felt more like a hassle than a life-changer. Then, on Jan. 15, 2010, things, they say, got much, much worse.

  Allison was out of town, visiting her mother, when Jim called. “He’s like, ‘You’re not going to believe this, they tore down the house,’” she recalls. “And I thought to myself, ‘No, no, no. It can’t be that bad.’” So she got in her car and she drove back to Toronto. “As I’m driving up the street, I guess my face just dropped,” she says. The top half of 31 Dunkirk had been completely torn away, she says, leaving their own home, from the second storey up, exposed to the elements.

  It didn’t stop there. On Monday, Jan. 18, Jim and Allison were in bed when they heard a loud series of crashes coming from next door. The looked outside and say they saw the workers demolishing what was left of 31 Dunkirk. By that evening, it was finished. All that was left was a deep pit. Allison says there were no fences guarding it, and nothing in place to insulate or support the Pantaleos’ half of the structure.

  During the demolition, the workers had torn a hole in the Pantaleos’ roof, Allison says, and without the support from 31 Dunkirk, their house started to shift east. Four days later, worried about the stability of their home, Allison and Jim called a structural engineer to do an inspection. He examined the house and left about 2 p.m. Fifteen minutes later, he called Allison from the road. His message, according to Allison, was this: “You guys have to get out. It’s not safe.” If the conditions were right and the wind picked up, Allison says he told her, their house could collapse.

  (The engineer, Rob Stiemer, declined to comment for this article. But in a written report he confirmed that he advised the couple to “seek alternative living arrangements.”) Allison and Jim were both supposed to work that night. Instead, they scrambled to cover their shifts. They snatched what they could from the house and they ran. “I have a Welsh bible that’s been in my family for 100 years, so I grab that. I grab some jewelry. We grab a couple of changes of clothes and a toothbrush and we get in the car,” Allison says.

  With their three cats, they sat in their Honda Civic on the street. Jim lit a cigarette. “He looks at me and goes, ‘Well, that’s kind of f—ed,’” Allison says. Then he grabbed her hand and said, “We’ve got each other, that’s all we need.” And they left.

  They didn’t know it at the time, but they would never live in their home together again.

  Mr. Stiemer came back at least four times over the next two years to chart the progression of the damage he says occurred. In his preliminary report, issued Jan. 25, 2010, he laid out a catalogue of problems, backed up by photographic evidence. The floors and walls were cracking. Light was seeping in through the basement. And the house appeared, visually, to be leaning toward the open pit next door, according to his report.

  The home, he wrote, was “unstable” due to the demolition work at 31 Dunkirk. In a later report, Mr. Stiemer wrote that the owners of 31 Dunkirk did not have a permit to demolish their house when they did. What’s more, he wrote, they never performed a “precondition assessment or walkthrough” to find out what would happen to 29 Dunkirk when 31 Dunkirk came down.

  Jim and Allison Pantaleo say the work site at 31 Dunkirk was not secured.

  Supplied Photo

  But a city inspector, according to both Allison’s account and Mr. Stiemer’s report, told the Pantaleos’ the problem was effectively theirs. If their home wasn’t stable, it was up to them to fix the damage, he said, and if they didn’t do it promptly, he’d issue an order to make them comply. “He was just so awful and so cold and so callous,” Allison said. “And I’m like, ‘My house is falling over!’”

  The City of Toronto wouldn’t comment on this story due to ongoing litigation. But in a statement of defence filed in Nov. 2010, the City said their inspector came out to 31 Dunkirk at least nine times between April 2009 and February 2010. The City claims he twice observed work being performed without a permit—including the demolition—and twice ordered the contractor to stop work.

  Regardless, in early February, Allison and Jim felt they had to do something to secure their home. Their insurance company was threatening to pull their coverage if they couldn’t prove it was safe. And if that happened, Allison worried they’d lose their mortgage, too. So on Feb. 18, working off a design created by Mr. Stiemer, they had contractors install a series of massive wooden beams, mounted diagonally from floor to ceiling inside the house. Their insurance was set to lapse at 9 p.m. that night, according to Allison. “I’m on the phone with my adjustor,” she says. “I’m taking pictures saying, ‘Please, please, whatever you do, don’t kill my insurance.’” It worked. The company didn’t cancel their policy; the bank kept their mortgage alive. But the Pantaleos were left with a home they felt they couldn’t live in.

  What happened to Jim and Allison Pantaleo — at least the version they told in interviews and court documents — represents something beyond the worst case scenario of a renovation gone wrong. Because, according to them, it wasn’t even their renovation that caused the problems — it was the one next door.

  Supplied Photo

  When they first fled, Jim and Allison went to stay with Allison’s cousin, who lived nearby. They thought they’d be there for a few days, maybe a week or two at most. But the weeks soon became months. The cross-braces remained. And Jim and Allison were no closer to moving home.

  And so, on Aug. 19, 2010, they filed a lawsuit in Ontario Superior Court against the owners of 31 Dunkirk, as well as Simon Maas, operating as Ironwood Construction, Stephen Hamann, the engineer Ironwood hired, and the City of Toronto. They asked for $2.8 million in damages.

  That lawsuit is still dragging on today. None of the Pantaleos allegations have been proven and the other parties to the suit would not agree to speak for this piece. But they have all filed statements of defence. Effectively, they all deny any responsibility for damages the Pantaleos suffered, while at the same time expressly denying the Pantaleos suffered any damages in the first place.

  One argument common to the defendants is that the Pantaleos didn’t have to move out when they did, and in any case, could have moved back in much sooner after the demolition. Allison denies that. They moved out, she says, because a professional engineer told them to, and stayed out because the damage to their home was so severe.

  On Monday, Jan. 18, 2010 Jim and Allison were in bed when they heard a loud series of crashes coming from next door. The looked outside and say they saw the workers demolishing what was left of 31 Dunkirk.

  Supplied Photo

  The homeowners, Mr. Wood and Ms. Irving, also claimed the Pantaleos failed to properly assess the state of their home before buying it, and failed to properly maintain it once they did. Allison, however, says they had a home inspection performed before buying the house and that the inspector found no significant structural issues with the property.

  Meanwhile, the defendants have also filed cross-claims against each other. The engineer, Mr. Hamann, for example, claims Ironwood failed to follow his advice with respect to “bracing and shoring” the home. He also writes that Ironwood tore down the roof and second floor of the home without his “knowledge” and “advice.” The homeowners also claim that Ironwood had complete control of all work performed on the site and that Ironwood alone was responsible for hiring and supervising subcontractors.

  On Jan. 15, 2010, Jim called Allison and said, “You’re not going to believe this, they tore down the house.”

  Supplied Photo

  Mr. Maas, operating as Ironwood Construction and Ironwood Contracting and Construction, claims that at all times Ironwood’s work was inspected and reviewed by Mr. Hamann, Mr. Wood a
nd Ms. Irving and the City of Toronto. He and the company also deny that the structural integrity of the Pantaleo’s home was damaged in any way by the work performed at 31 Dunkirk.

  But the Pantaleos’ is not the only case involving Mr. Maas and Ironwood. According to court records, corporate papers and city documents, the company, or Mr. Maas operating as the company, has been or is currently involved in at least three other lawsuits related to its work, and has been the subject of multiple municipal investigations for, among other things, poor workmanship. According to internal City emails, meanwhile, in 2012, municipal inspectors were preparing charges against Ironwood, when they discovered the Province had already dissolved the company.

  According to one lawsuit, in 2013, Mr. Maas was ordered to repay two former clients more than $160,000 after he failed to complete a major rebuild on their home. In another complaint, this one filed with the City, a Toronto couple described unfinished or badly done work that stretched months beyond the contracted completion date.

  After Mr. Maas declined an interview at the advice of his lawyer, the National Post sent him a detailed email outlining these and other allegations. In response, his attorney, Julian Porter, said in a letter that, with regards to questions on Allison and Jim Pantaleo, the parties “are not entitled to make statements” because the “litigation has not concluded.” Neither Mr. Maas nor his attorney responded to questions about the municipal investigations or other lawsuits. In his statements of defence for the various lawsuits, Mr. Maas has always maintained that he should never have been personally named. The work was always carried on by Ironwood, not him personally, he says. But in 2012, the provincial government cancelled Ironwood’s certificate of incorporation after the company failed to file what’s called a “notice of change” despite repeated warnings.