Landscaping Plan

Part of the plan when it comes to building the house is to get as much of it done as possible before we move in. That means that when we finally arrive, we're not going to have to do work (or hire other people to do work) on the house, but rather we can just enjoy it. And with a baby on the way, our time and resources will be limited anyway.


One of the things we're glad to be able to take care of is the landscaping. Our landscape designer is Sharanne Paquette and wow, is she ever great. For example, that photo above? She hand drew it. No computers necessary. She also did a great job of balancing my very intense and inexpert desire for a full-on urban farm, with what is actually possible given our climate and our land. There will be vegetables, there will be fruit trees, there will be bee hives. But there will also be some regular old landscaping to make the property look nice.


This is her detail of my second floor balcony, which will be entirely devoted to my vegetable garden and bee hives. It will get the perfect amount of sun, and I'll be able to produce a bunch of food up there each season. Heaven.

The other detail that is worth mentioning is the dog area that she designed in the back. It is a smaller run than they had before, but will still give them plenty of space to putter around. It will have hardy ground cover and be securely fenced AND it will have a tunnel built in for them to explore and crawl through. A tunnel! They're going to love it.

J.

Walk Through

In February, we went for our first official walk though of the house with the contractor, architect, and two electricians. It was mostly to discuss placement of things like plugs and light switches and smoke detectors. But it was also just amazing to stand in the house and imagine how it will be when it is all finished. I took a lot of photos.



Living room with its GIANT window.



Another big window by the front door.



Looking out from the kitchen/dining area. These windows and doors will lead out to our patio where we'll have seating for outdoor meals, and our barbecue.



This is my sewing room on the second floor. It has a plug right in the middle of the floor so my sewing table can be in the middle of the room, without complicated cord wrangling. Very exciting.



The skylight that will bring light all the way down three flights of stairs.



And this is our view from the third floor deck, which flanks the master bedroom. The "railing" makes it look dodgy now, but it is actually going to be a beautiful place to sit and look out over the neighbourhood.

J.

Ottawa Magazine

The Interiors Edition of Ottawa Magazine shows off projects from pretty much everyone involved in our house project. RND Construction built one of the houses profiled, John Donkin designed one of the other houses (which is gorgeous, please check it out) and Serina Fraser did the re-design of an advertising office that is featured. It was a great read. Oh, and the kind of freaky house full of dead, stuffed animals is right around the corner from where we're living now. Yikes.

J.

Wallpaper Wars

The interior design continues! I am really blown away by how hard the architects and designers are working to get this done, confirmed, priced, and eventually executed.

Up there you see my photo of the computer view of our powder room from our laundry room. This is one of the two rooms in the house where there will be wallpaper. My husband hates wallpaper. I love wallpaper. The compromise is having some wallpaper in rooms where he is not likely to spend a lot of time. It will work out well, I think.



We had a three hour meeting at the architect's office this week, where Sarah (architect/designer) walked me through the house's interior while Serina (designer) displayed the samples of the materials that will be used. It is a great way to get a sense of how the space will actually look.



My sewing room is the other room in the house that will have wallpaper. This room is, obviously, very exciting for me. I had a sewing space in our old house, but it was also the guest room and had only a sub floor, no actual floor. Plus the floor was sloped, so my large shelf of supplies often lurched back and forth precariously. This new sewing room will have shelves that are not lurchy, a closet for more storage, my existing (sentimental value) wooden work table, and the cool adjustable light you see in the photo above. It will also have wallpaper patterned with birch trees, which I am super in love with. Oh! And towel bars on one wall that I can hang quilts over for display or for storage while I'll working on them. That was my idea. I'm proud of it.



Having the sewing room be well designed and efficient plays into my idea of this house as an urban homestead. I know it sounds a little nuts, but I love the idea of taking traditional activities (growing food, making clothes, keeping bees) and making a modern, comfortable, beautiful space to practice them in.

J.

Colours and Textures

We had a meeting with the architects/designers this week to go over the interior design for the house. It went freakishly well. I say freakish because for weeks Serena, who is handling the interior design stuff, had been alluding to the plan she had for the tall wall space by our staircase. I had been secretly hoping, for no reason other than I kind of liked the look of it in pictures, that she'd want to put reclaimed wood all up the surface of the wall. And guess what? She wants to put reclaimed wood up the surface of the wall. And, it turns out, everyone agreed that carrying this kind of wall covering into the living room is a great idea. Sold.



Serena also demonstrated her in-tune-ness by printing out selections of the photos I'd posted on Pinterest (choosing a bunch of my favourite shots without knowing it) and grouping them into design elements that kept showing up again and again. She used those textures, colours, and arrangements to pull together ideas for the tiles and flooring and millwork for our house.



It's crazy-exciting to see more detailed rooms pop up on the computer screen.



J.

And we have windows!

On December 31st we went to see a movie and then dropped by the house afterwards to check out the recent progress. There were windows!



I was most excited to see the south side of the house, where the kitchen is. It was great to see the doors that will lead to the outdoor deck area from the dining room and the windows that will bring lots of light into my new kitchen.



The windows will allow people to work inside the house without worrying about wind and weather. Already the electrician has been in to do some wiring. Oh, and all of the windows have big stickers on them that say "Marvin". Lots of windows named Marvin.



Our vague move-in date of May 2012 seemed really far away when this all started, but now it's actually seeming kind of close.

J.

A Walk Through

I finally got to do a quick walk-through of the house. It was pretty overwhelming to actually be inside something that I've seen drawn on paper and mocked up on computer screens for so many months. The size of the house feels really good. Not too big or too small. It only gets more exciting from here on.



All three stories are now built and the roof is on!



This is the view from what will be the kitchen/dining area, into the living room.



A temporary staircase.



Second story balcony. Where the container garden will be.



View from the third floor.



Third floor beams are close together to support the solar panels that will be on the roof.

J.

There's an Appliance For That

In our old, falling down, moldy, no-heat house, we tried to put off purchasing anything new or fixing anything unnecessary because we knew we were going to be starting this project and a whole new home would be in our future. One of the things we avoided fixing was the stove. It was a brown and avocado-green model that came with the house. It had one working burner and an oven that heated about 25 degrees off what the readout said. Still, I cooked dinner every night for years on that stove. I wrote a cooking blog based on my recipes. I used that stove to illustrate my belief that anyone, fancy kitchen or not, could make nice meals every night of the week.



But I'm not crazy. I never LIKED the stove. I felt no pangs of emotion when I bid it, and our other sub-standard appliances, goodbye. Before we even moved out I was starting to research what kind of stove I would have in the new house. And all roads led to Wolf. Everything I read said that Wolf stoves were the best. People loved cooking on them. Whenever I read an article featuring a house tour where there was a Wolf stove, it was always listed as "best splurge." Consumer reporty-type sites and home design blogs and people's personal accounts all lined up. These stoves are awesome. They never break. They are a pleasure to cook on. And they are nice to look at, as well. The same kind of accolades applied to their fridge line, Subzero, which also looked great. And buying both got us a rebate. Sold.



Well, "sold" didn't actually come that easy. My husband ended up on a self-directed crash course in Wolf/Subzero Appliance Acquisition. Who had the best prices? Everyone's prices were basically the same. Who could offer financing? Almost no one, except The Bay. Why were the appliances significantly cheaper in the United States? A combination of the bad economy and NAFTA. Would it be cheaper to just drive to the USA and buy the appliances there? Not when you factor in truck rental, movers (because these things are HEAVY!) storage etc.

So, off we went to The Bay last weekend. After a few hours of phone calls to their credit department and dealings with a somewhat keyed up salesman, we'd purchased our fridge and stove and hood fan. Sold! Finally. I can't wait to get cooking.

J.

First Floor

We've got wallllllllls, they're multiplyin'....



We stopped by the house yesterday so I could get a look at the walls that have gone up on the first floor. It sure is amazing to see so many versions of plans for a building and then see that building start to appear in real life.

J.

A Lighting Plan

Every week we have a meeting in the architect's office which is located in his newly renovated attic and has big gorgeous windows looking out over the Glebe. Lately, these meetings have centred on the "lighting plan" for our house. Did you know there were plans for lighting? Most of my previous residences had lighting plans such as, "Don't Turn That Overhead Light On In The Bedroom Because The Wiring Is Bad And It Will Probably Kill Us" or "I Think I'll Put That Old Light My Grannie Gave Me In Thw Corner By The Couch Because That's Where The Only Plug In The Room Is."

But now we have pages of lighting plans. They look like this:



The main push and pull between us and the architect so far has been around his love of open, multi-use space and our love of more closed, single use space. As in, this is the living room where we will read books and listen to records and this is the bedroom where we will mostly just sleep. We had a major break through when the architecture team realized that the lighting was going to mostly be task-specific, rather than adaptable to many different uses of one space. It's been cool to work with people who will challenge our perceptions of what we want and at the same time listen to us and figure out what will work for our lives, even if it isn't what they normally do.

Here's John demonstrating the lights in his office and giving us all a collective heart attack by standing on a chair at the top of a staircase.



J.

Foundation

A few weekends ago I got an actual look at the foundation of the house. It was more exciting than I thought it would be. It hadn't occurred to me that this would be the first time I'd actually see the real footprint of the house. So much different from looking at drawings.



Tomorrow I meet with the woman who is helping with the landscaping. I hope she's excited about this being a little urban vegetable farm. Because that's mostly what I'm excited about.

J.

Reality Vs. Imagination

Right now the site of our new house looks like this:



There's a hole in the ground and a porta-potty and some machines and a fence. Not the kind of thing that excites me. But then the architects send us pictures like this:



Yes, it looks like a mock-up of what it would look like if we became jello farmers, but really it was to help us choose a colour for the window frames.

It is amazing to see these pictures with added detail, even if the detail looks like giant cubes of a wiggley, low cal dessert.








J.

Plans!

Here are some tiny screen shots of the draft floor plans for the new house. Some bits have since changed, but these are mostly accurate.



Gound Floor: entrance, living room, The Greatest Kitchen Ever, dining room, side patio (gardens and barbecue and table and chairs), powder room, laundry room/dog corral.



Second Floor: open office area, sewing room, spare room, bathroom, deck (for container gardening).



Third Floor: master bedroom, closet, bathroom, deck (for sitting and reading the paper and drinking tea and coffee. And probably some more gardening, like grape vines.)

J.