Armina Ligaya | January 20, 2014 | Last Updated: Jan 20 6:36 PM ET
More from Armina Ligaya | @arminaligaya
More from Armina Ligaya | @arminaligaya
After more than three decades in her Toronto bungalow amid growing mildew
problems in the 1940s-era home, Ruth Wiens decided it was to start fresh.
She still loved her East York neighbourhood, so the IT professional decided
to demolish her existing house and build a two-storey, three-bedroom,
2,000-square-foot home from scratch.
But instead of hiring a builder to construct her new home, piece by piece,
Ms. Wiens ordered one from a factory, based on a design she saw in a magazine.
She didn’t want the harsh Canadian weather to pummel the shell of her home
during construction, as her neighbours’ new homes had been over the years.
Ms. Wiens wanted a house that was constructed indoors, under controlled
conditions.
“There would never be in an unexpected rainstorm that just soaked
everything,” Ms. Wiens said. “And having watched my neighbourhood over the
years, I just thought, there are alternatives. You don’t have to be the lucky
one that has the two weeks of good weather.”
Most new homes are built stick by stick, brick by brick, by a construction
crew on-site, but a growing number of Canadians are buying homes right off the
factory floor to be assembled on the lot within days.
However, the stigma of the earlier, shoddy iterations of
these prefabricated or modular homes still lingers and the Canadian
construction industry is reluctant to change, industry insiders say.
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