Looking Glass

The windows are looking so good! 

I love the windows... and just imagine how they'll look when the whole house is sided!
We did have a little problem with them... but it has since been solved. Originally we were planning on having a bay window in the front of the house, and so I ordered my windows accordingly. I had two slightly skinnier windows on the outside and a larger one in the middle that was a picture window(no grid). But then we changed our minds on the bay in the front, so the windows looked off to me. The fix was to move the middle window and trade it with one from the other living room, which would make the three windows the same. (Below are the windows in the first arrangement)

Reused and Refurbished

With our upstairs renovation I was so excited to refinish the baseboards. Baseboards are one of the key selling points of a century old house... at least they were definitely one of the reasons I fell in love with our home! So I decided it was worth it to strip down the 5 layers of paint and save these gorgeous detailed hunks of wood.
I think i finished 3 baseboards and then me and my husband were blessed with the best surprise... I was pregnant! Needless to say, dealing with old paint was not advised for me and my lovely husband finished my task. I think this probably added an extra 3 months on to our reno... but look at the pictures... totally worth it!

We are planning on reusing as much of the solid wood from on main floor too. We have taken down all the baseboards and window trim and i have started sanding them down already. It's much easier this time because they are stained and not paints, and they do not have as many groves.

 

 These are the baseboards I have sanded...

 

 This is my huge stack that I have left to sand!

We are also saving our oak flooring. They came out pretty easily, it took us (me, jonas and his parents) two days to get all the nails out. We wont quite have enough for the whole main floor, so we will have to try to match them up and have a seam somewhere that is not too obvious. Hopefully this works out and doesn't look patchy.

Now I have to think about stain colors for the floors and trim work!

Feeling Encouraged!

 Sometimes I stress out about our renovations, but when ever I get a chance to stop by the house and take a look I feel so encouraged! It is really starting to take shape. I know we still have a long way to go, but it is great now because I can visualize everything.  (Above are some older pictures I should have posted of us pouring the footings for the basement, and then the beginnings of the framing of the addition)
What we have done this week: frame the addition roof, continue gutting main floor and we changed the plumbing from the city access to our house (which meant having our front yard completely dug up).

Us standing in our "living room nook"

Jonas in our dinning room

 Seeing what it will feel like to sit in our dinning room... feels good!

 Our main floor - standing in old kitchen

Hiccups we've had this week: We had a noise complaint. It was our neighbor. Kind of sucky because we used to have a good relationship with this lady... but she is just a renter (meaning who knows how long she'll be our neighbor), and all our other neighbors have been really encouraging. The safety people paid us a visit. They told us we needed to post a sign saying it was a boot and hard hat area, and we need a bathroom for the workers. Luckily one of our workers lives just down the street, so he posted the sign below. I love it!

Sporting the hard hat and "boots"

Down House Down!

So much has happened, house wise. The photo above is when we had set up the forms for pouring the basement walls. You can see the two huge beams that are holding up our house... the opening is where our addition will be.
We poured the walls, the house was put back down and the beams have been taking out. The floor has been added onto the addition space, and the walls have been framed in the addition. The trusses (roof frame) have been put up too. The front porch was completely taken away and re-framed. It's awesome to see it all take shape... I can see where the window and doors will be and walk in the space and dream that one day I will being sitting at my dinning room table here.
Next step is completely gutting the main floor, it is about half done right now. Also, inclosing the addition space, then pouring the concrete for the floor in the basement.
Tomorrow I have a meeting with an inspector from the Secondary Suites Program. This is a governement program that gives money to people making secondary suites for low income families. We are really hoping this will work out for us.... but for some reason I am very leery that it will work out. I guess I will just wait and see.

While He Sleeps...

Max is sleeping so I thought I'd give an update. We are still waiting for permits... and we also have to apply to have a secondary suite, so yesterday I went downtown to get the last of the 5 documents I needed to apply. They told us 6 weeks to get the permits, it's been 4 and a half, so we are getting close!
We had a little (have) a little bump with our insurance, apparently they wont cover us during renovations, so we are looking into a different company.
I am now working on disconnecting everything that is connected to the house... which is a lot of things: electric, natural gas, water, air conditioner, furnace, hot water tank and of course the brick chimney! Jonas actually did the chimney yesterday and the electric was just cut. Natural gas was going to be the same day as electric, but I am pretty sure they forgot about us... so they said they would call this week. It's thursday. No call yet. I have also learned that air conditioners are SO expensive to deal with! I have gotten 3 quotes, the average is 500$ to disconnect and then reconnect it.
Other then all the secretarial work I have been pulling off trim. We are planning to reuse the oak trim, so I take it off and remove the nails. Later we will sand them down and re-stain them.
That's all for now. I will have to take some demo picture and post them. soon I promise! (famous last words)

main floor plans

 

This is our main floor plans.  They have a changed a little since this was done... but it is pretty close. What do you think?

The front of the house is on the right, we are building a bay window in the dinning room which looks into our backyard. (It is a flipped view from the last plans I posted)

This is our plan for the basement. We are making a three bedroom secondary suite..... oh and it's going to be sweet!

Their will be a seperate enterance on the side of the house (which is the top of the picture). The tenants would then go down the stairs to their home. We will have a door on the main floor that can access these stairs too. Once you are down stairs there will be two doors, one will lead into the suite and the other into a large space. The large open space at the top of the page, in the middle, will be where the furnace and hot water tank will be. This will also be a space for my husband to screen print tshirts. (One of his hobbies)
When you enter the suite there is a closet and then you are in the livingroom, dinning room and kitchen space. The hallway has laundry and then the 4 piece bathroom. The bedrooms are all at the back of the suite.
To have a secondary suite you have to apply for a variance. A variance is something you have to get from the city if you are doing anything that is against the norm. (That's my definition anyway) We are hoping to apply for this soon. I hope this will go over smoothly.

plans

Plans, plans, plans... and planning for plans. This word "plan" has been a huge part of my vocabulary this past year while we having been planning for our upcoming renovations. I know I didn't give any heads up on my blog... so I have lots of catching up to do.
Our plan is to lift up our house, move it into the backyard, take out our old foundation, and pour a new one (adding 16 feet going into the backyard) and put the house back down. If this sounds crazy to you that's because it is! We have been thinking about this plan for a year now and it still sounds crazy to me. We are currently in the process of applying for all the permits. This week we will be getting our  plans stamped by an engineer... which is the last piece of the puzzle needed to apply for our document. Making our blue prints has been so fun. I wished I blogged about it... I'll try to find some of our older designs so you can see how they changed.
I am going to drag out releasing the blue prints throughout this week. So I will start with the basic house outline. The dotted outline is our current home, the double lined outline is our renovated home. We are moving it closer to one side of our yard so that we will have a bigger side yard.

Round Two: FIGHT!

In this corner we have the ambitious couple, equipped with experience from the first go around and excitement for this round. In the opponents corner, at 93 years and weighing in at a gazillion tons, we have the 1 and 3/4 story home. This battle will be way more intense then the first one. Let me just say our house will be lifted up and placed in the backyard at one point! Crazy.
This is going to get interesting....
Ding Ding Ding
FIGHT!