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.

And there it goes...

I missed this big event, but luckily I have a husband with a Blackberry who was on site when it happened. He snapped these six photos in succession as the house came down. They'll be digging our new foundation next week. Everything seems a whole lot more real now.

J.

Last Days

We got word that the house will be torn down this week, which is very exciting. I'm hoping it happens on a day when my work schedule is flexible so I can come by and see what's going on. And take more photos. As it is, here are the photos I took today when we stopped by the house after lunch.

from the front:


from the back:


this tree needs to come down:


bricks and flagstones from driveway and backyard (to be re-used):


sideview:



J.

Thinking About Toilets

I don't normally think about toilets. You know, beyond the "I really need to find somewhere to pee," thoughts that we all have now and again. But choosing fixtures for our house means thinking about toilets. And sinks and showers and faucets and bathtubs.

These are the fixtures that we have to choose first, because they might actually affect how the house is built. Things like cupboards ("millwork" I've now learned to call it) and wall colours, and flooring come later.

We went to four different plumbing stores (Boone, En Suite, Preston Hardware, and fancy, fancy Astro) a few weekends ago and took photos of any fixtures that caught our eye. By the end of it all I was thinking mostly about an article I'd read in the New York Times magazine about "decision fatigue".



What we learned? I like round stuff. My husband likes square stuff. We don't actually care much about what our toilets look like. I have a major crush on "pot filler" kitchen faucets. There are a lot of ugly sinks out there. If you want to sit in a showroom bathtub, you need to take off your shoes first.

Luckily, there is a designer who works with the architect we hired. Her name is Serina, and she helps sort out stuff like which bathtubs fit the style of the house and the limits of our budget. I am more than happy to leave these things to the professionals. Last week we had a meeting where she took all the fixtures we'd taken photos of, and showed me options she'd found that were identical or similar. One of the architects, Sarah, sat beside us, doing budgety math. I just had to say, "I like this bathtub better than that bathtub." Almost everything we chose came in under budget which made everyone very happy. It was much less daunting than I thought it would be.

I'm still expecting to be a bit freaked out when I have to pick paint colours, though.

J.

Boarded Up

On Thursday I drove to Sandy Hill so I could vote in the Provincial election. I parked in front of our now vacant house and got to see for myself that it had been boarded up. I'd seen the house in disrepair already, since our friend Jamie corralled my very kind husband into tearing up the floorboards with him. Jamie is going to use the floorboards in his basement. At least he's going to try. The floorboards are soft wood and were installed by idiots. They were nailed AND glued, despite being tongue-in-groove. All that to say they didn't exactly come up like a dream.

The windows were removed by the contractors. Part of the LEED certification involves responsibly disposing of the old house, so they're dismantling the house slowly so they can salvage as much as possible.

One thing people keep asking me is if I feel sad at all thinking about the destruction of the house. I'm pretty sentimental and soft hearted, so I'm surprised that the answer to that question is no. I am so excited to live in the new house. A house with heat! And a great kitchen! And non-splintery floors! A house that's organized and practical and healthy. So no, I'm not shedding tears for the old place. Everything that I loved about living there, namely my husband and pets, are still with me now and will be with me in the new house. We'll all be happy when it comes time to move in.

J.

The Foundation

The first time I ever saw this house was on my first date with the man who is now my husband. We'd taken our dogs for a walk and gotten along well enough that he suggested we drop our dogs off at our respective homes and then walk up to a nearby pub for a drink. We dropped my dog off first and then drove to his house.

At that point in the date I was pretty sure I liked him. But, given my previous dating experience, I was also sure there must be something wrong with him. As we pulled into his driveway I thought I'd found it. The house beside the driveway was so decrepit it looked like something from a horror movie. The paint was peeling, the walls were sagging, and the porch roof was being propped up by some haphazardly placed wooden posts.

My date (who on my other blog is called The Man of Science and would probably like that to continue here) leapt out of the car while I was studying the falling-down house to my left. He walked around the front of the car and went up the walk to the house- on the right. Not the horror movie house, but a perfectly reasonable, liveable home on the lot beside it.



Years went by. I moved into this house with my dog and my cat and my record collection. I married The Man of Science. I developed a pretty strong love-hate relationship with the house. I loved its lofty bedroom ceiling, it's giant lot with space for gardening, its mature trees and its view of the park across the street. I hated its lack of central heat, its crumbling carpentry, its mouldy smell, and its cracked foundation. We started to think seriously about what we were going to do with the house.

Building inspectors and architects were called in. They all said the same thing. We'd be better off tearing the house down and starting from scratch with a brand new building. This news made me want to lie down with a cold compress on my head. My fairly unflappable husband shrugged and said he'd expected as much. We selected an architect and started watching the plans develop. We had land surveyors, engineers and appraisers walk our property. My economically savvy husband met with bankers. I started saving all my spare money, cleared away all my debt and signed loan documents.



And now, it's all starting to actually happen. Tomorrow we move to my parents house (a situation worthy of its own post, stay tuned) and next week they start shutting off the utilities. By Halloween, the house I am sitting in while I type this will no longer exist.

Here we go.

J.