The biggest change to our house (with the exception of the dormers on the third floor) is that we are moving the kitchen to the front of the house. Initially when Paul suggested it, we thought it was a strange choice. But now we think it makes a tonne of sense. The front of the house gets the morning light, the stairs go to the front of the house, and with the placement of the stairs, the back of the house is more open, and we can then use that space for a bigger living room.

Yoko’s design has a peninsula coming from one of the walls, a bank for the range top and wall ovens, and a series of pantries. We’re a big fan of the pantries, and of the design that doesn’t have any corner units. Also, this design allows us to put a thin desk under the front window that can help with the “house-management” aspects. The one concern with this design is that it may not have enough counter space.

Here are Yoko’s designs. We’ve already decided to not use a big range hood and instead have upper cabinets above the range top on the north wall.

Thoughts? Comments? We’re interested to know what we are missing.

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 the dormer come down at a 45-degree angle to create a more complicated roof line, but perhaps preserve the aesthetic of the neighbourhood.

There are pros and cons to both, and we have our opinions as well, but we’d like to see what everyone else thinks. These Photoshopped images come courtesy of Paul the Architect’s team. Shouts out to Steve for the photos.

The regular dormer is on the left, the hip roof on the right

Our appearance took about two minutes. Thanks to the excellent presentation by Paul the Architect, and the fact that we had the support in writing of our neighbours, the committee members voted to approve us, subject to Urban Forestry. It’s always subject to Urban Forestry.

Many thanks to Paul our architect and his team, our very supportive neighbours, and the committee.

The next step is getting a more finalized set of drawings so that we can talk to contractors about pricing out our job. Then permits and renovations!

So far, it’s been a great opportunity to introduce ourselves to the neighbours, and so far, no one has had any issues with the work that we are planning to do. The plans are to add two dormers to the sloped roofline of the third floor, and to possibly enclose the 10×10 front porch into a mudroom.

We’ve been going around and knocking on doors of the 12 most-affected neighbours. Five across the street that would look onto our house, two to the north side and two to the south, and three off of the alley that would also look onto the back of the house. So far, I’ve managed to talk to eight of the 12, and they’ve all been very warm and supportive. One is a contractor who pointed out a possible change that we could make that might make our dormers appear more in the Victorian style, which we appreciate.

The main benefit, of course, has been to actually meet our neighbours after 16 months on the street. They’re all great folks and very welcoming. This is in contrast to some other stories that I’ve been reading on the internet. I hope that when we start actual construction, the neighbours will be equally understanding.

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 are only supposed to be at under 60%. To get approval, the Committee of Adjustments has to approve a zoning easement.

The architect thinks we have a good chance. One advantage that we have is that we are not going to change the footprint of the house on the lot. In fact the only change to the envelope of the house is to add two dormers to the third floor. This should have negligible effect on our neighbours, so we hope that they will have no objections to our plans.

We’re tentatively scheduled for the first week in June. Wish us luck.

Paul had drawn up three ideas for the main floor, plus the layouts that we had discussed for the second floor and the attic. The great part of this is that we don’t have to do an addition to get all the parts of the house that we want; we can get the additional space from better use of the attic.

For the main floor, the most interesting idea was to move the kitchen from the back of the house to the front, right off the front door. This layout would allow us to use the full width of the house at the back for a living room, and also works better to hide some of the structural elements of the house, like the plumbing stack and the chimney through which the furnace vents. The downside is that we have to move some of the services, but that’s not a huge deal, as there is also a plumbing stack in the front hall closest that we can tap into. So far, this is the plan that I think we’re leaning towards.

The next step is to see how the new usage of the house works with respect to the zoning in our neighbourhood. By using the attic, we are adding to the square footage of the house, and that may push us over the zoning limit. So some exploration of the bylaws is required before we know what to do next.

All said, very exciting to see it take shape, even on paper!

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 on the fact that that it was in a great location and school district, was a fully detached house, and had a big footprint, so any renovations would not require any additions.

However, the house needs a lot of work. The couple who owned it previously were older and without kids. They didn’t eat in, so the kitchen was not designed to cook in, and the last renovation seems to have been done in the 80s. We were lucky that we could see past the decor, but it still means that we have to do the renovations to get the house to where we want it to be. We’ve also made three large decisions. The first is that we’d live in the house for a year to get a sense of what really needs to change about the design of the house. The second is that we’d have a master plan for the renovation, even if we can’t afford to do the entire renovation in one go. In our previous house, we’d do a room at a time, with not as much thought as to how the pieces fit together. And third, we decided to consider how “green” our decisions will be as we renovate the house. We’re big fans of the reno blog 360 Winnett and their Flickr photo stream, and we hope we can bring that level of thinking to our renovation.

So far, we’ve managed item #1. We’ve been in the house a year, and we’re pretty sure what needs to be done. For items #2 and #3, we’ve been lucky to find a great architect to help us start out. In our previous house, we had our kitchen designed by our friend Yoko, but we were unsure if she’d be up to designing our entire house this time around. Before we even asked her about it, she told us she had gotten her dream job working for architect Paul Dowsett.

Paul is a LEED-certified eco-conscientious architect who also happens to be a great guy. You can see some of his work in this straw-bale house, and the Globe and Mail review of the “eco/echo of deco” reimagining of a famed Art Deco mansion in Forest Hill. Paul’s ratings on Homestars.ca are off the charts. Plus he already employees Yoko, and his engineer of choice Ken Davies already has done an initial review of our house, so it seems that it’s “all in the family” to start.

Paul came over for an initial consult and spent a few hours with us. It was time well spent; he already has made two major recommendations for the kitchen and our master suite, and seems to know how the house will be laid out. His team has been by to make detailed measurements of the house as a starting point for the design.

We’ve also had a survey done of the property by Land Survey Group. I would recommend them heartily. They did the entire survey without me having to be on the property, which is excellent for me not having to take time off.

The next steps are an initial energy efficiency review of the house (our efficiency can only go up from here!) and then a review of the ideas that Paul comes up with. We’re really excited about going forward with this project!