A big day of destruction

Today I started on the Living/dining room. One of the owners before us had build in a front foyer with a small closet. We have decided to rip it out in order to really open up the room.

Luckily for me the construction was relatively new and thus had been drywalled not the really messy lath and plaster. I will have to do a little re-wiring and moving of a heating duct. The plan will be to build a bulkhead at the front wall which will contain all the wiring and duct work. It'll be about a foot by a foot, although I have not settled on that, it could be as narrow as a 2x4.

After about 3 or 3 1/2 hours of work, I managed to get ride of everything except the wiring. Next up here will be to remove the ugly ancient vinyl tiles. Actually the whole place is covered with them. Once they are gone I can begin building the bulkhead and a half wall that will extend 3 feet from the end of the bulkhead.

Obviously there will be some touch ups as well. In one area there is drywall that sits out further than the original lath and plaster; I am not sure what I will do. Maybe remove the drywall and patch it. I can't put drywall over the plaster as it goes all the way up the stairs. I guess we will play it by ear.

After the demo of the foyer I took apart the temporary room that the previous owner had built in our dining room. That went well, I even managed to get most of the garbage boxed up and stored in our backyard entrance area(that's a whole other post).

After finishing all that I was pretty close to calling it but then I turned around and looked at the awful fake wood panelling which was right out of the part of the 70s everyone is trying to forget. Maybe I just have an aversion to it...sorry Mom and Dad.

After removing the fake wood panelling and not knowing what to expect I was frightened yet relieved to find more fake wood panelling. I was relieved to find it, as it most likely meant lath and plaster. I spent the next bit exposing both the stairwell and the kitchen wall.

The kitchen wall had wood panelling on both sides which should make tomorrows demo quick and tolerable. With the stairs I found some lath and plaster which was providing the wall for the basement stairs. One of the previous owners had closed in the stairs to the second floor with drywall thank goodness.

So hopefully tomorrow I will get the demo on the ground floor done and most of the cleanup as well. I still need to tear down the beams supporting the second floor at the stair opening, I will be temporarily supporting it with braces. These will be replaced by custom made posts that are part of our new banister. Wait till you see it, it will most definitely be a conversation piece but more on that shortly.

We own a house.....I think I broke it.

Today was our closing day...wooohoooo finally get away from the idiots living upstairs. You'd think after 6 months of us complaining and almost kicking in their door they'd learn to walk gently or at least go on a diet. So if you head to the Clocktower for some food or a beer, don't tip the bartender.

Luckily for us our new neighbour seems to be great, she doesn't even mind the huge demolition racket we are making. We have promised to quite banging and cutting by 9 in the evening.

I picked the keys up at 4 and was off to the house to start the demolition. Our plan of attack is to start with the master bedroom first. We are ripping out the wall that seperates the bedroom from the hallway to the deck. We are also tearing out an small closet that is shared by the master and the other bedroom just west of the room. Mel decided to not study tonight and take out her stress on some walls.

The walls in the room are a combination of lath and plaster (what a mess) and drywall. As you cans see lots of lath and plaster. There is also a combination of new and old wiring in the wall. I bought a spool of 14-2 wire so I can rewire the place as we go.






You would not believe the amout of dust and garbage the lath and plaster create. Its going to be quite the clean up. Luckily the downstairs demo is all drywall. I gave the downstair walls a quick kick test.

So after the first day in our place I managed to get almost all the demo done in the master bedroom. There is still a small closet by the enterance to demo. After that we will have one heck of a clean-up before starting to dry wall and patch the remaining walls.

Well that's it for now. Tomorrow I start on the living/dining room, we decided this would be best as we are moving in on Friday and want all the major demo to be done so our stuff won't get totally covered in dust. With the bedroom we have it cover off nicely and it seems to be containing the dust.

President's Choice Insurance Sucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here we are a little over a week from our closing date of February 27th, which we moved up from March 1st in order to give us a little time to remove walls and do some general demolition before we move in. In order to make sure that we were protected in case we accidentally burned our house down before March 1st (it has happened before) we decided to move up our insurance to the same day as we took possession. Mel called our insurance company PC Financial Insurance to make the arrangements. Of course nothing is easy, they lost our policy but suggested we call back on Thursday in case it arrived by mail in the mean time.

Well it’s now Thursday and guess what, nothing has arrived. Time to give them a call and make the necessary arrangements. We figured going into this we would have to regurgitate all the info we already gave them and boy did we have to do it all over again. I should have known we were dealing with idiots the first time when they couldn’t understand what a flat roof was. This evening was the same, we once again hit that dreaded question about the roof. Here is how that conversation went:

PC: what kind of roof is on the house?
US: it's a flat roof.
PC: is the roof in the shape of an A?
US: no, it's a flat roof.
PC: ok, what kind of shingles are on it?
US: it's a flat roof, it has a tar roof.
PC: are the shingles asphalt, clay or wood?
US: no, it's a flat roof. Flat roofs are usually made of tar.
PC: oh, is it a metal roof?
US: no, its a tar roof. its a flat membrane roof.
PC: ok, I don't have that option.

I'm not kidding, that is verbatim of our conversation with PC and it happend twice.

We then spent another twenty minutes answering many, many more questions. After they got all the answers they needed, the idiot at the other end of the phone then says "sorry we can't insure your house because it has a flat roof". WTF, half the roofs in our area of Ottawa are flat not to mention this is the second time we told them it was flat. What a bunch of incompetent idiots...stay away from PC Insurance.

This, as you can imagine caused us a little stress. As with most people we made getting insurance a condition of our home purchase, which we waived a month ago because PC told us we were insured.

Luckily for us we called Bel-Air Direct and they were great, staffed by knowledgeable people...who even knew what a flat roof was. Even better was that we save $20 per month on our insurance. So my recommendation to everyone reading this is stay away from PC Financial and/or Insurance and go with Bel-Air Direct, who I believe are now owned by ING.

Well that's about it, boy did I need to vent. Boy I wish I could sue those idiots at Presidents Choice.

I promise that I will get back to posting about the renovations next time. Stay tuned we demo Monday, February 27th.

The details and more

Here are some of the details our home:

Location:Hintonburg
Type: Semi-detached (3 Bdrm, 1 Bath, Kitchen, Living/Dining Room, Basement)
Coverage: 950 Sq. Ft. (approx)

• Living/Dining - 15' x 22'6"
• Kitchen - 9'10" x 15'
• Master Bedroom - 15' x 13'
• 2nd Bedroom - 9'5" x 9'5"
• 3rd Bedroom - 9'10" x 9'10"
• Bathroom - 5'10" x 5'
  

Age: 80 Years old (approx)
Foundation: Stone
Lot size:
Facade: Red Brick (front) and siding (side and rear)
Windows: New Low-E Argon
Electrical: 100 Amp
Roof: Tar roof (flat)
Existing flooring: Vinyl tiles and linoleum



We have chosen our flooring. Our plan is to cover the living/dining room, stairs, 2nd floor hallway and the master bedroom with Bamboo flooring. We have chosen the Vertical Carbonized style .

The Plan

Welcome to our modern home renovation blog. Mel and I (brad) recently bought a house in what we hope is the next up and coming area of Ottawa, ON, Canada. We were pretty lucky that we found a place with great potential. I think that most people were scared away by the fact that the previous owners had built a freestanding bedroom into the current living room, which really gave you the impression that the place needed an awful lot of work.

Mel and I have an ultra modern taste when it comes to the style of home we want. This house has the potential with a lot of sweat and hopefully a little bit of money to become the place we'd like. It should be quite interesting as we both have experience in building as she is an architect and I was a carpenter, the biggest challenges will be finding the time as we both have day jobs and living through the mess.

First Floor

The first floor has so much potential. We plan on opening up the main floor by removing several walls and exposing the staircase to the second floor. By removing the walls we will turn our place into more of a loft and a very open concept. We are also planning on installing Bamboo flooring everywhere but the foyer and the kitchen.

See below for some photos and more details.

2nd Floor

Lots of work to do up here, we debated about removing a bedroom and creating two ensuite bathrooms but decided against it because of resale issues in the future. We plan on making the master bedroom into a fairly good sized bedroom (15' x 13') by removing a wall. The master bedroom will also feature Bamboo hardwood flooring as will the hallway.

We are also planning on borrowing room from the other two bedrooms in order to make the bathroom a little bigger.

See below for more details and some photos.

Check back often

We will hopefully be updating this blog weekly or bi-weekly during the renovations. Feel free to let us hear your opinions all good suggestions are welcome but I can't guarantee we will undertake every suggestion we get.


Our Floor Plans and some photos of the house

This drawing shows the layout of the ground floor. The door on the far left is the main entrance to the house (facing east) while the room to the far right is the kitchen (facing west). The plan so far is to remove the wall separating the kitchen from the dinning room. We will also be opening up the stairwell and removing the little foyer and closet at the entrance.


This drawing shows the second floor and is aligned the same as the ground floor drawing above. We are planning on tearing out the wall in the master bedroom (East end of drawing) and remvoing the small closet as well. A new closet will be built along the shared wall (South or top). We are also looking at expanding the bathroom by stealing 1 foot from each of the other two bedrooms.

Ground Floor photos

This photo shows the living room as seen from the stairwell. Say goodbye to the separating wall between the living room and the foyer.

Here is a photo from next to the TV set in the living room showing the stairwell as well as the temporary room the previous owners built.


As you can see this is a photo of our kitchen (taken from door way to the dining/living room. It will be gone soon and replaced likely with high gloss red cabinetry from Ikea. I have to admit it is hard to beat their prices and the kitchens are of excellent quality.




This photo is looking back at the wall separating the kitchen from the dining/living room. We are ripping it out entirely and even exposing the stairwell to the basement (far right of photo). We will leave a small column on the far left for the houses 2nd floor mechanical.

The view from the top of the stairwell looking to the front of the house and the master bedroom. The bathroom is immediately to the left as is the 2nd bedroom.







The bathroom as seen from the doorway. As you can see it is relatively small, in order to make it bigger we will steal a foot from each of the two adjacent bedrooms. In the near future we will be removing the old clawfoot tub and replacing it with a new modern one that can more easily accommodate a shower. So if you're looking for a clawfoot tub in good shape, drop us a line.



The master bedroom as seen from the doorway and aiming east towards the front of the house. To the right of the computer desk is a wall that creates a hall way where a door to our front balcony is. This wall is going, giving us a new large master bedroom of 15'x13'.



The Outside Views

Coming soon, the front of the house...I forgot to take a photo.

As you can see this is the back of the house. The small vestibule entrance on the left will be removed and replace with an deck. The deck will then lower onto another back deck.