Now to be fair to my husband, we did not start in 2005, as we were going through an audit by revenue Canada and did not have the money. We started in June of 2008 and here it is almost four years later and here I sit in my unfinished home. I have decided to blog about it because I am hoping that it will motivate me to get things done. Even if they are small things. Progress is progress no matter how small.
I cannot find a picture of my house when we first bought it, I will add one later, but this is a picture, taken from the driveway, before my world got turned upside down. This picture was taken after we added a deck and replaced a picture window with the double patio doors you can see here.
To begin with the plan was very simple. The upstairs had three dormer bedrooms and a bathroom. Because they were dormer rooms there was six feet of attic crawl space on two sides of each room. The back bedroom was very small and we did not really have a master bedroom. The lower level of the house had a small bedroom and office off of the living room that had nothing over it. We decided to take out the back side of the roof and the roof over the office and bedroom to crate a bigger back bedroom and a walk in closet and bathroom turning the front bedroom into a master with an en suite. Simple, right?
This is the north side of the house, here after referred to as the back side of the house. The window on the upper level is the bedroom we wanted to make a little bigger and the man is standing on there roof over the small bedroom and office of the lower level.
This is a view of the back of the house before we started.
All going according to plan. Roof ripped off and getting ready for new addition.
Roof off over small downstairs bedroom (my bedroom at the time) and office. Back side of roof removed to continue wall of back bedroom and make room bigger. First snag. We got caught in a hail storm and flooded the two down stairs bedrooms. Window under upstairs room was also a bedroom. The framer had shown up as I was leaving. He started taking the tarp, my husband had put over the roof off. "Is that wise," I asked, " there is a forecast for rain." "Don't worry," he assured me, I will see it coming from a long way off. Famous last words. My mattress was water logged. However frustrating this was, don't even get me started, you would think he would at least have moved beds out from under the water pouring in, I soon got used to it as it was only the first of many floods to come.
New wall for new en suite and walk-in closet up. Things were going pretty good. Then my husband realized the bedroom that was going to be the new master bedroom was sort of built in a box. there was a 2x8 box around the bottom of it that was held together with metal cables. Any rooms adjoining it would have to be built 12 inches higher up or have a dividing board between them. Not ideal on any level. Especially since that new wall going up was going to add six feet to the bedroom, that used to be attic crawl space, and that six fee would have to be 12 inches higher then the rest of the room. My Husband thought about this for a bit and decided the only thing to do would be to knock the whole top of the house off and start over.
That is how simple turned into chaos.
I had a small panic attack, begged him not to do this, especially since the framer he had hired to help him told me that the rip off alone would take until Christmas. My husband assured me the guy was crazy. The whole thing was going to take no more then six months. I finally relented (like I had a choice) and we went ahead.
My husband chalk marked the outside of the house where the main floor ended and second floor started used a saw to cut along it and started removing the rest of the roof and pushing out walls. Keep in mind we never moved out of this house.
If you think this looks scary, think of how I felt, living right underneath it all. That's right, we have no roof, and it is June in Southern Alberta!
Well this is how it started. Stick with me and I will show you how it progressed.
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