Tom’s guys, led by foreman Jon, have been hard at work beefing up the structure of the house. We knew that we would have to add some heft to the house, because our plan calls for opening up the main living space in the back, and the span of the second floor would be too [...]
Tom and his crew have started removing material from the inside of our house, and it’s quite a revealing process (see what I did there?) They say it’s going to take about three weeks, but they’ve already managed a lot of work in one. Amazing what four dedicated guys with crowbars can do. When we [...]
It’s been a bit of a long haul. We’ve been working for a while to get to the point where our renovation was under way, and work has finally started. The major sticking points were finding the right contractor, getting the building permits, and finding a place to live during the reno. We met with [...]
We met with Yoko our kitchen designer last week. She and Cindy had met earlier to get the basics covered, and Yoko came back with her first set of plans for our new kitchen. The biggest change to our house (with the exception of the dormers on the third floor) is that we are moving [...]
Tagged house, renovationOkay, we need some help from the interwebs. We need to add dormers to our third floor, and we are investigating two possibilities. The first is a straight dormer, where the walls of the dormer come straight down vertically, and create another “wall” surface. The second choice is a hip roof, where the wall of [...]
Tagged house, renovationI just got back from City Hall where we were in the Committee of Adjustments meeting. We were 14th on the list, so I got to hear all about the new critical care wing of St. Mike’s and a new restaurant on Dovercourt. Our appearance took about two minutes. Thanks to the excellent presentation by [...]
Tagged house, renovationBecause we are going in front of the Committee of Adjustments, Paul the Architect recommended that we show our preliminary plans to our neighbours so that they won’t be surprised when they get a letter from the city informing them of the hearing about our changes. So far, it’s been a great opportunity to introduce [...]
Tagged house, renovationWe’re going to the Committee of Adjustments. The City has confirmed what Paul our architect suspected. The "pre-application law" review showed that our plan to use our third floor will put our usable floor space of our house above 60% of the area of our lot. Since our neighbourhood is zoned as "R2 Z0.6", we [...]
Tagged house, renovationLast night Cindy and I met with our architecture/design “team” of Paul and Yoko. Paul had sent Yoko and one of his other employees, Mike, to do detailed measurements of the house as it currently sits. From those measurements and the survey, they came up with some suggestions for directions to go with the design, [...]
Tagged house, renovationWe’re finally getting around to renovating our house. We were extremely lucky to find our house when we did. We had given up on house hunting as we had lost out on three bids on previous houses (one under dubious circumstances). We happened upon this house somewhat by accident, and decided to buy it based [...]
Tagged house, renovation