Plans Plans Plans

Today our designer Chris came back out to see us.  He needed more measurements inside as well as out in our yard.  He and William ventured out to the town office to find out where our property lines are.  This being an old church we weren't exactly sure what was our property and what was town. Some good news and some bad, but I'll get into that...

While Chris was here we sat down and discussed the first draft of the plans.

 

After our chat and redesigning a few things, I am super excited for what Chris comes back with.  

Chris needed some specific measurements from the floor to the ceiling (good thing Will took down the paneling so we could get more specific measurements!  He also wanted to know the thickness of our walls to make sure that nothing we are taking down is linked to structure in any way.  Will cut a small hole to be able to measure.

No wonder people use to complain about the church being drafty.  The only insulation we have is wood chips.  It's actually just a glorified tent!  They have little to no thermal benefits.  But still kind of neat to see (when you know you are going to insulate properly and not have to worry about freezing).

Once Will was finished, Chris dug around in there and got the measurements he needed.

Our contractor did up plans for the front door a few weeks ago and we applied for the permit. We found out that the inspector does not like the plans as they are drawn and wanted more specifics.  Bad news as we were hoping the door was going to go in soon. Good news, Chris said he could do up the plans for the door. EXCELLENT! Now the really frustrating news.  Our side door, like the one we use as the main door, is actually our front door.  And our yard is actually our front yard not side yard (I will go into this in more detail with pictures in the next blog post).  So that means that where we are planning on placing the new door is actually the side of the house.  This is bad/frustrating because the stairs need to be 4 feet from the property line on the side of a house.  This is impossible since that section of yard is roughly 6 feet wide.  We are going to need special permission to build stairs to the door (this could mean we need to plead our case to the town council).  So in short, it could take much longer for us to get that door in than we planned.  Chris took the measurements of the door to make up the plans.

Some exciting news; we should have (hopefully) all the counter tops we will need for the kitchen.

It's slate, and is going to be a project all of its own.  But that will be a blog post for another day.

The Demo Has Begun

Last Thursday Chris sent us the first (of I'm sure MANY) draft of the plans for the upstairs.  First off, sorry everyone.  No sneak peaks until the final product.  Second, we have spent the past few days looking and discussing over and over different parts of the plan.  Some we LOVE!  Some were no surprise.  Some were "I LOVE what Chris did here!!" And some were "Uh... now that I see it in the plans I don't know if I like it anymore."  And finally, as I type this, I realize that I need to email Chris to organize a few things.  He mentioned he wanted to come back for a few more measurements.

The nice thing about receiving the plans was that it lit a fire under us that we really needed.  The demo is so large and with no garage, we have spare beds, luggage, tools, Christmas wrap... pretty much anything you have in your spare rooms and or garage... we live with in the upstairs.  PLUS building materials we have begun to collect for future projects.  But stuff or not, the demo must be done.

We put the scaffolding together and moved a bunch of stuff out of the way.  Will climbed up and decided to pull down some of the faux wood paneling.

Here we go!

As soon as Will broke threw the drywall the first question I asked was "How is the tin ceiling?!" These are the first looks at it.

At first look, I think we will be able to restore the tin as we did in the front hallway.  It will mean scraping off the old paint but it will be well worth it!

We decided it was enough for one day and started up again a few days later.

Will decided that he was going to take down as much as he could, so he pulled down the paneling from the walls too.

 

At this point I took a step back and realized we were officially not only in a demo again, but a renovation.

I'm so thankful we have our space in the basement that is nowhere near the dust and rubble.  Living in the middle of a renovation is hell.  We have made it so we can walk away at the end of a day and not even see the renovation.

With a lot of hard work, Will was able to get the paneling off the ceiling as well as the drywall to the end of the wall.

 

I can't express enough how excited I am that the tin ceiling is looking like it will be usable.  This is a picture from one end of the wall to the other.

As long as people were careful when they placed the paneling on the center of the ceiling we should be able to keep the entire ceiling as tin.  We will most likely need to buy one more level of scaffolding as you can see where Will is able to reach to.

I felt a little useless when Will was in the middle of demoing.  My job this time around is to keep the little one out of the dust.  An important job but not as hands on as I'm use to being.

So this is what we will be doing for the next little while.  Demo and trips to the dump. Hopefully we can coordinate so the demo will be finished and we can begin the official renovation shortly after.

The Loft is a GO!!

So Chris sent us an email this week with the news we have been wanting to hear.  The engineer looked over things and does not see any issue with us having a loft space.  YES!!!  Like Y. E. S. YES YES YES!!!  I've been trying to think of how I would want the upstairs space designed without a loft and I just couldn't think of anything that made me as happy as a loft.  There was a lot of happy dancing and wine drinking the day we received the good news.

Will received pictures of our church from the archives.  They couldn't help with other questions we had, but we are very excited about these pictures.

I absolutely love this last photo.  We often are told how thankful people are that we are restoring the church into a home instead of taking it down to build a new home.  This photo to me shows so many people who love this building.

We have been trying to keep busy while waiting to hear from Chris.  During this time Will helped my father rip up very old carpet and lay laminate flooring.  Here are some before photos.

The living room

Hallway

Hallway by the bedrooms

In the process

Someone trying to come help daddy and grandad

And the after photos

The guys did a great job!  Dad just needs to put baseboards down and that's it.  As for us, we picked up scaffolding so we can officially begin the demo of the upstairs.  I'm really looking forward to finally checking out the tin ceiling in the main part of the church!

I Knew It!

So the last post I mentioned that we were handing in paperwork and that we had things stall in the past.  Well... it was like I had looked into the future.  Or had inside information.  The very next day I heard from Chris asking for information regarding the basement.  As in information on the support beam, as well as any information on the construction of the basement.  We thought "No problem! We can ask at the town office as everything needs to go through them to receive a building permit". Turns out that the town was much more lenient back in the day.  They have nothing on record that will help us.  From there I drove into Regina and headed to the land titles office.  Waited in line for ages, explained what I needed, the woman went and looked to come back empty handed.  UHHHH!  Last chance, William contacted the diocese to see if they had any information.  They are going to look into it, but it doesn't sound promising.  This is stressing me out!  If we can't give the information on the basement, I might not get my loft as the engineer can't sign off on the plans without knowing the basement can handle the extra weight.  Send positive vibes our way please.  I think we are going to need them!

So to get our minds off the stress, we went for a long walk yesterday and ended up at the Indian Head museum.

 

This is a picture of the original part of our church.  This is the back section where we hope to have our kitchen.  I was sad to see there was once a tower that over the years had been taken down.

This plaque once hung in the original church.  So, this is from the 1800's.  Crazy!

We have been discussing how we would at some point try to find a church bible if we could to have as a piece of art more than anything when the renovations are complete. We were a little frustrated when we saw this...

These my friends are bibles... from churches... in our area... that have gone under. SO one of these could be the original bible from OUR church.  There is no glass or barriers to stop a person from flipping through the pages to snoop.  We were SO TEMPTED!  But it felt weird to start pawing at things in a museum.  One of the volunteers that works there lives a house down from us, so I am going to see if I can get permission to check them out.  At the very least I would like pictures or copies from the original if it is indeed there.

So the weekend was not all bad although we were stressing out.  I hope to come back with good news.  In the mean time I will continue to enjoy watching people as they pass by...

Our church is a Pokemon Go Pokestop!  We have been enjoying seeing families, kids, people walking their dogs, etc coming by.  It's been a great way of speaking to people in town that we wouldn't necessarily get a chance to chat with. I love this town!

A New Entry

So we have officially made a decision that will change the look of the outside of the church.  We are going to move the main entrance from the side of the building to the front.  Currently the front of the church looks something like this...

This is an old picture from a previous blog post, but it focuses on the spot we are placing the new entrance.  It will be going between the two outer windows.  We will be removing the middle window, the door will go in that space, and stairs will go up to the door.  The issue we had was that this space is 13 feet (4 meters) across.  That is not a standard door, so we had to do some shopping and digging to find something.  By chance William found a door at Restore.  This store is a donation place for Habitat for Humanity.  You donate renovation items you no longer need and they sell them to other people.  The profits go back into Habitat for Humanity.  This is where I purchased a ton of tiles for my bathroom mosaic.  Getting the door here means we got a HUGE door for a fraction of the price if we had custom ordered it.  EXCELLENT!  The issue became "how do we get this thing home?!"

We decided on hiring a moving company.  Less stress for us, and a better chance it would arrive in one piece.  William met the movers at Restore to organize the loading of the door.

One of the reasons we liked this door is that it isn't just the door, but also the frosted windows on either side.  Here is a better look at one side...

You can't tell from this picture, but it brings in light nicely but you can't see in. PERFECT!  We've been basement dwellers long enough now that I crave sunlight.  A LOT!

The doors themselves are called "Composite Doors".  They are made up of a variety of materials and should (hopefully) be stainable.

Once the door was loaded and ready to go, William called to let me know they were on their way. They arrived and then it was the fun of trying to not only get it off the truck, but also where to place it as it would not fit in the house and it had just rained and the ground was wet and muddy.  It was decided that the best place for it was to lean it up where it will eventually be installed.

The movers told me they were worried about getting it off the truck as a forklift was used to get it in. I am happy to report that everything went smoothly and the door is now awaiting insulation!

This is where it will now live for a little while.  We will be handing in the paperwork for the permits this week.  As we have had things stall on us in the past waiting for permits, we are hopeful it won't, but ready for it to happen to us again.  Lucky we are not in a rush, although it will be nice to not worry that something will happen to it while it's leaned up against the building.

Things are not even officially a go yet and we already have choices to make.

Back to the stress of too many choices!