A neighbourhood split in half by era
Sandy Hill is really two neighbourhoods with a line through it at Laurier. North Sandy Hill is much older, with many of its buildings dating from the nineteenth century, which puts those floors in genuine plank-subfloor territory on sawn joists, in tall houses where bedrooms sit over reception rooms. South Sandy Hill was largely built after the Second World War, so it is a different assembly again, closer to early nailed plywood. The area’s name is not decorative either: it is named for its sandy soil, which one standard architectural guide notes makes it difficult to erect large buildings. Ground conditions matter for floors because differential settlement changes how level the joists are, and an out-of-plane joist is precisely where a nailed subfloor connection opens a gap.