{"id":874,"date":"2013-03-19T15:24:46","date_gmt":"2013-03-19T19:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=874"},"modified":"2013-03-26T13:24:30","modified_gmt":"2013-03-26T17:24:30","slug":"builder-has-passion-for-uncovering-auroras-diamonds-in-the-rough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/builder-has-passion-for-uncovering-auroras-diamonds-in-the-rough\/","title":{"rendered":"Builder has passion for uncovering Aurora\u2019s diamonds \u2013 in the rough"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/p>\n

As the son of a Richmond Hill bricklayer, building is in Fred Flood\u2019s blood.<\/p>\n

Flood, a resident of Aurora, got his start in the family business and he jokes being the oldest son, followed by two younger brothers, his father soon had a ready-made crew.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat didn\u2019t cost him anything \u2013 typical dad.\u201d<\/p>\n

The family business however, focussed on new construction and prefabricated homes, but when Fred moved just a little bit north to Aurora, local architecture inspired him to take his building in a different direction.<\/p>\n

In the early 1980s, the then-employee of Vaughan Hydro arrived in town with some money burning a hole in his pocket. Saving for a home, he found just what he was looking for in a 2.5 storey brick home at 20 Catherine Avenue. Well, maybe it wasn\u2019t exactly what he was looking for. Underneath the layers of changes, he saw what was underneath and since then, he has been devoted to finding the \u201cshiny pennies\u201d under many heritage homes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was kind of bastardized,\u201d says Mr. Flood of his first home in Aurora. \u201cAt the time it seemed to me that a lot of the homes on Catherine Avenue, because they were of a certain size, were either duplexed or triplexed in the war years to bring more income in, but this was an effort to bring them back to single family homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

He got rid of what he described as a \u201chorrid\u201d stone front porch that stuck out from the building \u201clike an air conditioner hanging out of your window\u201d and restored its wood porch, added some \u201cgingerbread\u201d accents to the exterior incorporating the initials of his soon-to-be-wife Maria and himself, all on a shoestring budget. <\/p>\n

They stayed there until 1991 and by that time he was married with two daughters and had bought the house across the street, subjecting it to the same rigorous makeover as the adjacent property.<\/p>\n

Since then, what started as a hobby has snowballed and his efforts have led him to many heritage homes in the area, including most recently a house on Gurnett Street. Taking off the pressed cardboard siding, he stripped it back to the concrete stucco underneath, but then uncovered bevelled pine siding underneath that. <\/p>\n

He restored that, re-installed some of the original hardware, and added an addition in keeping with the rest of the house\u2026and the rest is a new chapter in its history.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love architectural history,\u201d says Mr. Flood. \u201cIf I go to a city, I like to take in the architecture, especially in Europe and older cities like Quebec, Kingston, and Montreal. Somebody said Toronto boomed at the wrong time and it boomed when there wasn\u2019t a lot of great detail in architecture, but I do live shining up the old pennies and recognizing that there is something there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have a hard time visualizing what I can do and ways to enhance it. I know what I like and sometimes it is an eclectic mix of one era and another. I just like the process and it is fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Flood hopes to share this fun with the wider public this Wednesday, March 20 at the Aurora Cultural Centre with his lecture \u201cHidden Gems in Plain Sight: Restoration Projects.\u201d Here, he aims to share his tips, tricks, and \u201cvaluable information to take on your own project.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the third heritage lecture of the year hosted by the Centre and next month\u2019s event will focus on the Church Street School building\u2019s evolution to the Aurora Cultural Centre of Today with Mary Ellen Lynch of Lunch + Comisso Architects. <\/p>\n

Looking ahead, Mr. Flood says he is keeping his eyeball on a few buildings in the area, but declines to give too much away other than they again focus on older homes and perhaps homes in old areas that don\u2019t really conform to their surroundings. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I think of Aurora architecture, I think of some of the original old homes that are still there like Horton Place and Hillary House,\u201d he says. \u201cI think secondly of a bit of sadness that many of the old mansions and big homes that were there and taken down without much thought.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1982 when I moved to Aurora, at the corner of Catherine Street there was a little pillbox house and it was John Fleury\u2019s original residence. On the church property there was a spectacular looking mansion and it was pushed down to make way for the new church. They probably could have one something to keep it and probably today it would not have been allowed to be pushed down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAurora has some nicer old neighbourhoods than some of the bigger towns do,\u201d he added. \u201cThey seem to have been maintained pretty well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Fred<\/a>

Fred Flood gives a heritage lecture this Wednesday evening, March 20, at the Aurora Cultural Centre.<\/p><\/div>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir As the son of a Richmond Hill bricklayer, building is in Fred Flood\u2019s blood. Flood, a resident of Aurora, got his start in the family business and he jokes being the oldest son, followed by two younger brothers, his father soon had a ready-made crew. \u201cThat didn\u2019t cost him anything \u2013 typical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":875,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/04-e1363720899199.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-e6","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 17:06:52","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}