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| Reno Pics - day Four |
Friday, May 16, 2008
We're legit!
Yesterday we learned that we are "Appropriate"! The city granted us our heritage certificate - just in time as the porch received more abuse today. It's completely gone now, so we'll load up pictures soon. For now, here's the demo in progress:
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Day 2 + 3 - Porch begone!
I'm really encouraged that our contractors have been arriving before 8am each day, and seem to work straight through the day. At this rate, we should certainly have this project finished in time for our August celebration!
Day 2 and 3 have consisted of:
- digging around the yard side of the house
- securing the house with a jack and boards
- removing the first sill
- initial demolition steps on the Porch
- and the installation of our first new sill
The porch looks much nicer with windows on the driveway side. Removing the porch roofing tiles must not have been fun work in the pure sunlight we've had today. We've also noticed a considerable amount of bumble bees around the house since the digging started, and are keen to find out where they're coming from. Perhaps the retro pop can we found under the house was the attraction!
One last interesting note - in a few places the house seems to be held up by a stone wall, that's up to two rows thick in places, going about 2-3 feet deep. We may try to salvage some of the gorgeous old stone for a walkway/patio, if we can find any corner of the property that will remain undisturbed throughout this work!
More pics here:
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| Reno Project - Day Two/Three |
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
And we're off! (kind of)
Imagine our excitement when our general contractor knocked on our door before 8:00am this morning, ready to start our renovation project! At last! He had brought a worker with him to remove the siding from all sides of the house, so that they could check out the state of our sills and joists. We are thrilled to finally get underway.
We've learned that the city will require us to bring our joists and joins up to code. Our joists appear to be 2x6, but code calls for 2x10s. There were sections of serious rot in our sills, particularly on the west side. They also found issues with some of the actual house frame, where the vertical 2x4s meet the sills. That will certainly add to our expenses, but not excessively.
Today was also the day of the Preservation Board meeting, to decide on our application for a Certificate of Appropriateness. Unfortunately, not enough members of the board showed up to the meeting, so they didn't have quorum to decide on our case. The manager advised me that the members have been urged to attend the rescheduled meeting, this Thursday. He also assured me that those in attendance today were supportive of our application, so we're optimistic that the result in two days will be positive, because...
...our porch is coming off on Thursday afternoon! Our contractor would prefer to remove it tomorrow, to give them further visibility and access to the sill on the front end of the house. If the Preservation board doesn't come through this week, our timing will be compromised.
One of my favourite moments of day one was the arrival of the (mini) excavator! Having a piece of heavy equipment in the backyard makes this project feel real. We've begun, and there's no going back now. Pictures of the first step can be found in the slideshow below.
We've learned that the city will require us to bring our joists and joins up to code. Our joists appear to be 2x6, but code calls for 2x10s. There were sections of serious rot in our sills, particularly on the west side. They also found issues with some of the actual house frame, where the vertical 2x4s meet the sills. That will certainly add to our expenses, but not excessively.
Today was also the day of the Preservation Board meeting, to decide on our application for a Certificate of Appropriateness. Unfortunately, not enough members of the board showed up to the meeting, so they didn't have quorum to decide on our case. The manager advised me that the members have been urged to attend the rescheduled meeting, this Thursday. He also assured me that those in attendance today were supportive of our application, so we're optimistic that the result in two days will be positive, because...
...our porch is coming off on Thursday afternoon! Our contractor would prefer to remove it tomorrow, to give them further visibility and access to the sill on the front end of the house. If the Preservation board doesn't come through this week, our timing will be compromised.
One of my favourite moments of day one was the arrival of the (mini) excavator! Having a piece of heavy equipment in the backyard makes this project feel real. We've begun, and there's no going back now. Pictures of the first step can be found in the slideshow below.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Foxhall vs. the Flood
The great flood of 2008 (as they're calling it here in NB) has given Jon and I pause as we prepare for our renovations to kick off. We're quite thankful that we don't have a basement currently, as our neighbors have been pumping water out all around us for the past day or so. They say floods like these only come every 100 years, don't they?
Hopefully the soggy ground won't impact all the digging our crew will need to do. And as I've been watching the water creep toward the house, I'm mentally factoring in more and more sill damage... I've included a link to pics taken at 8:30 and 11:30 this morning of the growing flood pool in our yard. It's currently about 6 feet from the house, and seems to be easing up. For once I'm feeling lucky that this project hasn't started on our original target date of May 1!
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