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Anatomy of a renovation

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Sheriff Roland:
Hi Folks

Thought I'd share with you what I did on my summer vacation. Well, not really but this story does sorta start in early summer.

Actually, if I were to be honest I'd start with Once upon a time there was a wish.

I bought a house... one that had a cherry tree in the back yard and a grand view of a valley in the middle (North-West central actually) of Toronto. This was scary too. The payments were initially outrageously expensive, what with 14%+ interest rates, but with income from the basement rental and a little belt tightening I could manage. It was 1990 and I was almost 40 years old.

As time went on, the cherry tree disappeared (too many ants) and was replaced by an apple and a pear tree - and the interest rates fell (as did the value of the property - but that's a different story). My tenant moved out and Bryan moved in - but not as a tenant. He was/had become family. Improvements to the property were needed and discussions veered towards what might be. In the late 1990's a wish was formed - to remove a wall seperating the kitchen and the living room and create a larger living space. The idea might very well have been Bryan's, but I now claim it as my own. The cost of such a radical change might be prohibative, but I never got an estimate - knowing full well that I couldn't afford it. Even thought the interest rates kept on decreasing, what I owed on the house didn't seem to go down much.

Bryan moved on (as happens in many relationships), but we remained good friends and time went on. The interest rates kept going down and in time, so did the principal I owed on the house. My 50th birthday came & went and retirement approached. There was a countdown, I remember. I knew when I was ten years away, and then five. My house would not be paid off by retirement, but I sure would give it a try - by making extra payments. Of couse, as many of you might already know I did manage to pay off the morgage at roughly the same time as I retired in 2008.

Sheriff Roland:
After retirement and paying off the mortgage and two decades of belt tightening I found myself in a situation of more money coming in than I was spending. Hereditary money came in, loans to relatives I'd forgotten about were paid off, renting the basement as a favour to friends' relatives and a friend in trouble (she spent a year in there for free before I started charging her) made for additional income. And having low-balled my income compared to my needs, I had plenty of money left over to maximize my retirement plans (RSP's) and even making bank and market investments. But as interest on investments declined I considered buying property - like maybe the house my parents used to own in Timmins, or the cottage property my parents sold off 45 years ago on Star Lake (see 'My Great White North' thread, first 20 pages). These were just ideas, but nothing happened. I just continued accumulating money in the bank.

Then, after much nagging by Bryan, plans were formulated to renovate the house I live in. The bathroom was a cramped room and if I removed the two closets behind the tub, I'd have more leg room in there. The walls coming down between the kitchen and the living room AND the middle (or 2nd bedroom aka the junk) room would provide a larger living space - one I'd always had but had never really appreciated/enjoyed.

There had been naysayers suggesting that fewer rooms and fewer closets would negatively impact the value of the property. The money in the bank wasn't making any money so I decided to jump in.

Bryan recommended a small private contractor who confirmed that the whole thing could be done - with a 30 000$ budget. I didn't want to borrow to make these changes and in time I found another 10 000$ that didn't involve the Tax Free Savings (TFS) or RSP's so I could actually do the changes and have quality finishings.

Sheriff Roland:
Clive, a small, jovial, Jamaican-Canadian in his early 50's was the contractor. He made at least two visits in early July (thus the early false start about this being what I did during my summer vacation ;)) when we discussed the likely need for a support beam to be installed across the middle of the house - a job that the wall between the kitchen & the living room was probably doing.

Actual demolition of the walls started on Monday, July 16 and the changes were swift. I didn't think of taking before-and-after pictures until the second day's work was done.

And before that day, I had basically created an entertainment centre downstairs, having installed my computer and by brand new 46" HDTV with antenna in the large bedroom space downstairs. In addition the entire contents of the living room (except the sofa and an Ikea chair) the middle room and some things from the kitchen and back (computer) room had to be boxed and moved downstairs. A few things found their way into the garage. I had plenty of help from Bryan and even my neighbour, who helped me select my TV and installed the antenna and helped move some boxes.

I'd made some refence to this back in July on the "How's the Weather Where You're at?" thread.

http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,45845.msg634931.html#msg634931

Anyways, this is where I start posting some of the 'before' - sort of pictures.

Sheriff Roland:
By the way - if you were wondering, and as a completely accidental happening, I've almost finished reading Annie's Bird Cloud about her building her dream house in Wyoming.

I picked up the hard cover book for 6$, thinking I was going to read a recent collection of her fictional works. It's actually an easier read than her Shipping News which I picked up after I went to view Brokeback Mountain at the TIFF back in June ... when Annie made a short presentation to a very small crowd. (I've actually been reading quite a bit of Annie's writing this past while.)

I've related some of this earlier in the "Brokie Social Events' forum in the "Brokeback Mountain and Annie Proulx, Toronto, June 10, 2012" thread.

http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,49950.msg632790.html#msg632790

Sheriff Roland:
Taking pictures of a room ain't an easy thing. There's just not enough space to get a full view. By day two, the only room that still looked like it use to (sort of) was the living room. But I couldn't step far enough back to give a panoramic view.

So here goes - a series of pictures showing a mostly empty 'before' picture of the living room.

This image is of the entrance, looking into the stairway to the side door from the far end of the living room's south-west corner.


12-07-17

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