Open the nondescript door of 1305 Dundas St. W., and one is greeted, warmly, by a little sign: “Welcome home, Wanderers,” it reads. “Stay a while.” A little arrow prompts the wanderer to trot up to the second floor, find his or her doorway – one of 24 over two floors – and flop down on the very comfortable bed, or, perhaps, whip up some scrambled eggs in the tiny kitchen.

But will wanderers respond to something that dwells in the twilight zone between AirBnB and hotel? A very luxuriously furnished something, yes, but will they pay a premium – room rates start at $2,000 a month – to be shoehorned into less than 400 square feet? Or, in some cases, less than 200 sq. ft.? Will the one-month minimum stay make them run screaming?

Pouneh Rouhani of Luloo Boutique Homes is betting they’ll run right to her front door, smiling.

“There’s a new trend that people don’t want to be tied down to one place,” she says. “They don’t have homes, they just travel from one city to another, and they live in one place for two or three months.”

Ms. Rouhani is perched on a long, turfed grey sofa in the generous common space of “Numbers Residence,” which might very well be Toronto’s first micro-suite, short-term, furnished rental concept to hit the market. At her side is business partner (and older sister) Laleh Rouhani, and, sprouting from the wall to her right, a friendly-faced, sculptural giraffe holds a chandelier in its mouth. Both sisters throw the term “nomad” around while describing the project, so it’s no surprise that, across the corridor, an extremely large photograph of a grizzled, wool-capped and baggy-panted nomadic gentleman takes up an entire wall over the coffee station.

While the clothing may not be the same, the 21st century seems to have produced a whole new type of roamer: able to carry their job(s) around in their laptops and armed with both wanderlust and a disgust for the out-of-control housing market, these new Romani are citizens of world … as long as there’s WiFi available. And as Toronto grows ever larger, they’ll arrive on our shores too, needing a place to set up their “tents.:

Or, they’ll come from right here: although Numbers has only accepted tenants since mid-December, most hail from within the Greater Toronto Area. “There was some research saying that people are happier in less clutter,” says Ms. Rouhani, who came to Canada from Iran in 2004 with her older sister and parents.

“Minimalism, you know?” her sister interjects.

The younger woman continues: “It backed up the idea of micro-units, so it was always on our mind looking for the next project, and then this building came up.” It was certainly front and centre in Laleh’s mind, since she had done her masters thesis at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson on that very subject.

Read the full article on The Globe and Mail here.

Copper, angles and surprises on Toronto’s Strachan Avenue

As the story goes, when presented with 10 samples labelled 1 through 5 and 20 to 24, Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel chose perfumer Ernest Beaux’s fifth, and the rest was history. Chanel’s new fragrance was fresh- and clean-smelling, and like nothing else on the market: perfect for the new woman of the 1920s.

After a good look at Luloo No. 4, I’m excited to see No. 5.

Fresh, clean and ready for the modern family of the 2020s, 144 Strachan Ave. has just sold, but not before Luloo Boutique Homes’ Laleh and Pouneh Rouhani, two thirtysomething sisters from Iran, gave it the proper send-off during a swanky cocktail party a few weeks ago.

Beginning where the south neighbour’s roof zooms up and back, the house’s roof zigs upward, face-on, and terminates with a sharp point just shy of the top of the north neighbour’s roof.

Even from the street, a passerby can discern that Sculptural Copper House is different. First is the copper cladding: Looking a little like a sable coat in shades of reddish-brown and purple-grey, the top two-thirds of the home are outfitted in handsome, tailored metal panels. Artificially aged, the supplier, Toronto-based Copper in Design, promises they’ll never turn green and the Rouhani sisters say the panels can even win awards – at least for them. Luloo No. 3, at 166 Dovercourt Rd., garnered a North American Copper in Architecture Award in 2017.

Read the full article on The Globe and Mail here.

Beyond Queen West's chic shops, unique house sings in urbane key

As if we didn’t know this already, Vogue magazine recently hailed the strip of Toronto’s Queen Street between Bathurst Street and Gladstone Avenue as one of “the 15 coolest neighbourhoods in the world.” (The list also featured Brooklyn’s Bushwick, the Canal Saint-Martin district in Paris and Los Angeles’ Silver Lake.) The Queen Street axis of Hogtown cool, Vogue’s style critic Nick Remsen wrote, “is a verifiable artery of indie patisseries, homegrown labels, and hidden-from-view galleries – hallmarks of hipness, if ever they existed.”

But get behind Queen’s arty hotels and shops (as Mr. Remsen apparently never did) and you find the more durable pleasures the area has to offer. These include long, spottily preserved residential streetscapes developed late in the 19th century and populated by sturdy gothic single-family and row-houses put up for working-class Victorians.

Read the full article on The Globe and Mail here.

The third home makeover by Luloo Boutique Homes will be rented, not sold.

Read the full article on Toronto Star here.

When the renovations began about 18 months ago, the locals probably suspected a flip.

By the time the exterior copper cladding and three levels of floor-to-ceiling windows had transformed the narrow red brick, all anyone cared about was when the construction would end, say the owners of Luloo Boutique Homes.

The three-unit house won't be sold. Instead, it will be let in whole or in parts, on Airbnb, part of Luloo's 21-unit portfolio of short-term rentals that finance the family firm's remodeling business.

Neighbours were among those invited this week to the celebration of Luloo's third major home makeover — the second on Dovercourt Rd.

HOME OF THE WEEK: A HUMBLE TORONTO HOME WITH A HISTORY GETS A STYLISH OVERHAUL

68 DOVERCOURT RD., TORONTO

The back story

This narrow townhouse in the Beaconsfield Village neighbourhood comes with an oversized pedigree. It is the birthplace of Beatrice Lillie, the late great Tony Award-winning actress who made her name on both sides of the Atlantic playing on stage and in films during the early part of the 20th century. Among her friends were Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence. Her husband was Sir Robert Peel, great-grandson of the former British politician of the same name. The marriage enabled Beatrice Lillie to be known in her private life as Lady Peel, a considerable step up from her humble origins in this house at the corner of Dovercourt Road and Queen Street West.

For almost a century, her birth home has hardly boasted of its connection to either fame or grandeur. It has exited as it might been in Lillie's day – as a dark and dank Victorian with a warren of tiny rooms.

Read the full story on The Globe and Mail here.