Working Hours: Mon - Fri: 9:00 to 18:00 | Sat - Sun : Closed
Working Hours: Mon - Fri: 9:00 to 18:00 | Sat - Sun : Closed
Toronto's housing runs old. Victorian and Edwardian rowhouses, wartime bungalows, the post-war semis and detached streets of Etobicoke and Scarborough — and beneath most of them, a basement short on headroom, prone to damp, never properly finished. IntraBuild rebuilds that raw cellar into rooms the household actually lives in: framing, insulation, wiring, plumbing, boarding, flooring, paint. One job, quoted per square foot. One crew directing every licensed trade, so no sub ever goes missing.
IntraBuild is a basement renovation company — one crew, working across Toronto and the wider GTA, turning the raw and tired basements under the city's older housing into finished, liveable floors. East York, North York, the old downtown core: everywhere, the job runs turnkey. We frame. We lay batt and reflective insulation, set dimple-board protection against the damp that stalks century foundations, hang and tape drywall, bring in our licensed electricians and plumbers, then close with flooring, trim, doors and paint. Family room, downstairs bedroom, home office, three-piece bath, kitchenette, full second suite — a Toronto basement can become nearly any of them. Pricing runs on the finished square foot, so your written quote reflects the room in front of us. Not a figure invented over the phone.
Century Toronto foundations almost never run straight. We frame to them anyway — stud walls raised true, partitions dividing off each planned room, bulkheads dropped to bury the ductwork, waste pipes and old beams these cellars are crowded with. Here, the drawing you signed off takes physical shape.
Insulation packs every stud bay. A reflective layer goes against the concrete. A dimple membrane breaks the new floor away from the slab. Under homes founded on rubble, fieldstone or block, that moisture strategy is the whole ballgame — get it right and the space stays warm, hushed and dry all year.
Sheets go up on walls and ceiling alike. Joints are taped, sanded, feathered flat. Then primer, then colour — the exact standard of your main floor. A world away from the bare cellar most buyers picture when they hear "Toronto basement".
Our licensed electricians and plumbers set the pot lights, receptacles and any water lines. Then the floor goes down, doors are hung, casing and baseboard wrap it up. The result: a room you can furnish and move into. Not a studded-out box.
One figure. Built from your finished square footage and the tier you pick, and handed over before work begins. Never padded with a surcharge for building inside Toronto.
Electrical, plumbing, flooring — every trade answers to us. One team, one calendar. No juggling a lineup of separate Toronto contractors on your own time.
Framing, insulation and rough-ins go in to the Ontario Building Code, staged for City of Toronto inspectors. The basement holds up on paper as surely as it does underfoot.
Poly walls seal off the stairs. The site gets swept at the end of each day. Full liability coverage runs from day one. Your main floor stays livable while we build below it.
Two things set the cost: how many finished square feet you're creating, and how far up the finish ladder you climb. Hence a per-square-foot number instead of a flat figure tossed out cold. Ballpark, a fully finished Toronto basement lands near $45–110 per square foot, and most jobs carry a minimum project around $30,000. Older, damp or short-ceilinged basements can need extra prep — we say so before you sign, not after. Choose a tier below; the full project-by-project table is further along.
| A compact Etobicoke semi's basement (≈500 sq ft) | $30,000–35,000 |
|---|---|
| Rec room plus a bedroom, East York bungalow (≈800 sq ft) | $48,000–68,000 |
| The whole lower level with a 3-piece bath (≈1,200 sq ft) | $75,000–100,000 |
| Second-suite / kitchenette conversion | scales up |
One rate carries the whole basement. Framing and insulation, the moisture layer, the drywall, every trade, the flooring, casing and paint — plus a clean-up each evening and a single written total at the end. Coming into the city adds nothing. Most jobs start around the $30,000 minimum. Read these as guide ranges before HST; the firm figure lands once we've walked the space, the foundation and the layout with you.
Riverdale, Parkdale, the Junction. These Victorian and Edwardian streets sit over cellars dug for coal storage, not living — rubble or stone walls, a damp floor, pipes crossing everywhere. The jobs lean hard on the moisture layer and smart bulkheads, with rooms planned around the posts and stacks a 1910 house won't let anyone move. Many of these blocks hide shared party walls, too. So the sound insulation stays generous along the rowhouse side.
Wartime and post-war bungalows fill Etobicoke, Scarborough and East York. Block foundations, honest squarish footprints — and, frequently, a wood-panelled rec room left over from the seventies. We strip those old efforts back to concrete and rebuild the level properly: insulated, dry, bright, where it used to be dim and draughty. Alderwood, Clairlea and Wexford come up on our schedule constantly. Their block walls take insulation without any drama.
Toronto housing costs what it costs. So the legal basement apartment is the request we hear most — and the city's permit office and inspectors take second suites seriously. Fire separation, egress, ceiling height: we design to City of Toronto requirements from the first sketch, and the suite gets registered instead of stalling halfway. Requests cluster near the Eglinton Crosstown and the future Ontario Line stops. That's where tenant demand makes the suite math easiest.
Plenty of older basements here measure six feet and change. Owners all ask the same thing: should we dig down? Underpinning is its own structural project, with separate engineering and pricing. We'll tell you honestly whether the ceiling works as it stands — most do, once slab, insulation and lighting are handled cleverly. In Leslieville and the Junction Triangle we've measured no shortage of six-foot-two cellars that still finished into rooms people love.
For most households, this is the whole point. A single open floor carved out of a cramped older basement — movie nights, the kids' play zone, a squat rack. Pot lights make a low ceiling feel taller. The flooring shrugs off daily traffic.
Insulated, sound-buffered rooms below grade — for a teenager, a guest or a full-time desk. Where a bedroom goes in, we cut the foundation for a proper egress window. That's the line between a room the city recognizes and one it won't.
A complete downstairs bath: toilet, vanity, a walk-in or tub shower, run and connected by our licensed plumbers. If your older Toronto home left a rough-in in the slab, we tie into it. If not, we core and route fresh drainage.
Anything from a tucked-in wet bar to a self-contained second suite — its own kitchen, bath and entrance. This is the income or in-law unit a lot of owners lean on to make Toronto prices work. A bigger build, yes. And we run every piece of it ourselves.
Layout first — rooms, the bath, the egress openings — locked into a City of Toronto permit-ready plan before a single stud is cut.
Framing rises tight to the old foundation. While the bays sit open, the wiring and pipework get pulled through.
Batt and reflective insulation go in. Dimple board goes under the floor — the damp defence an older city basement can't skip. The inspector signs off before anything closes up.
Drywall clads every wall and ceiling. Joints are taped and sanded until they vanish. The primed surfaces sit ready for colour.
Flooring down. Doors on. Casing and baseboard finish the edges, and the basement begins to read like the rest of the house.
Final coats roll on. The whole floor gets a deep clean. Then we walk it with you and hand back a room that's ready to live in.
Six stages, strict order — on every Toronto basement, each stage clears before the next one starts. That's why a genuine finish, run past the city's inspectors, can't be hurried. You get a realistic timeline at the outset, and the same crew stays on it from stage one to six.
Turnkey, most Toronto basements land between roughly $45 and $110 a square foot. Call it $30,000 at the low end, past $100,000 for a suite-grade build. Three things place you on that range: the tier, whether a bath or kitchenette is in the plan, and how much an older basement needs shored up first. A free written quote fixes the figure to your actual room.
Yes. Finishing a basement in Toronto requires a permit, and we frame, insulate and rough in to inspection standard. The permit-ready layout is step one of the job — never an afterthought. In a city that inspects closely, that counts for a lot.
Yes — by our own licensed electricians and plumbers. Pot lights, receptacles, a washroom rough-in, a kitchen feed: all of it is booked internally. You never hunt down separate trades across the city.
Count on a few weeks from first stud to last coat. Longer if a bathroom or kitchen is involved. Mud has to dry, inspectors have to visit — so we hand you an honest schedule, not a rushed promise.
Absolutely — that's the bread and butter of basement work. One caveat: a legal bedroom in an older Toronto home nearly always needs an enlarged egress window. Cutting that opening is folded into the build.
We do — constantly, given what Toronto housing runs. It's a heftier, tighter-regulated scope: its own entrance and egress, fire separation, a full kitchen and bath to City of Toronto code. Flag it at the start and we'll shape the layout and permits around it.
Low basements are everywhere in older Toronto. We finish them at the height they already are, squeezing every inch of headroom on offer. Dropping the floor — underpinning or bench footing — is a separate structural project we'd price on its own. Common here, but not part of a standard finish.
From the inside: a dimple membrane beneath the floor, the correct insulation, and moisture-resistant board where drywall meets concrete. Under Toronto's old rubble, stone and block walls, that matters. Full exterior waterproofing — or chasing down an active leak — is separate work we'd point out before finishing begins.
Basement renovation isn't limited to Toronto — IntraBuild works right across the GTA and Southern Ontario, all on one written per-square-foot price with no separate travel fee.
Ready to finally use the floor downstairs? Send the details — the footprint, plus whether you want a bathroom, an extra bedroom or a full second suite. IntraBuild drops by to measure, runs through the tiers, sets a per-square-foot price and blocks out dates. Free, with no obligation to go ahead.
Get a free quote