Getting Ready

I took this photo today...

thinking it would be the last photo I would take before the door would be put in.  I don't want to get into what's happening just yet as I am hopeful that things will blow over.  But for now, what I can report is that Will's best friend called him tonight to tell him he was coming out tomorrow at 7am ready to demo and get the door in all in one day.... and we had to tell him to wait one more day...  Fingers and toes crossed everyone.  Fingers and toes crossed...

But on to what's been happening this week.

With not having a garage, or proper rooms to store things in, we usually just place things where they will be out of the way.  It can be super frustrating since it's stuff that we can't get rid of, but takes up a ton of space (beds, dressers, winter tires etc).  Knowing the door will be going in soon we needed to clean up this section of the hallway, as well as take down the drop ceiling.

If anyone doesn't know what drop ceiling is (cause I had no idea what it was called until we got this place), it's the type of ceiling that are in most offices.  Those white squares you can push up and inspect electrical and such.  Once everything was taken out, and the ceiling was ripped out we got to see what we are working with.

This is what the tin ceiling is looking like.  We knew of some of the missing tin as we used it for the ceiling where the church bells sit.  We needed the trim.

It was one of our contractors that ripped out the trim and used it for the other part of the ceiling.  What he didn't mention (or really we didn't even think to discuss) was that the wires of the church bells don't just go strait up into the attic.  For some frustrating, unknown reason, they were angled into this part of the ceiling within the soon to be porch and then up into the attic.  Here is a closer look.

This is super frustrating as we had decided to keep the bells where they are and built around them.

So we could move them in to the space where the door will be placed and they could be one of the first things you see as you walk in.

But one of the issues is that everything would then be backwards.  Bell 8 would become bell 1 and all the hymns we have could no longer be played.  We would have to take out the wall just to build around it again.  A frustration and some decisions we didn't think we would have to make.  We have thought about just taking out the tin ceiling here and designing the ceiling so we could just cover the wires.  The tin might have to come out no matter what as we are working with limited resources.  Since the church decided to cover the tin ceiling with terrible faux wood paneling.  Many areas of the tin have been destroyed in the main space of the church.

Because of this, we are discussing not having the tin ceiling in the loft area so we have more to work with and replace for the living room space.  It's a large area we are worried that is going to be damaged.

What will most probably happen is once the door is in we will finish the demo of the main area of the church.  That will include taking down the remainder of the faux wood paneling.  We can then assess the damage of the tin and decide from there what we are going to do.

But for now, let's just concentrate on getting this door in!

And the winner is......

Well here it is everyone.  Wednesday we FINALLY received the email stating if we won or not.  For anyone interested here is the 8 page document:


But if you don't feel like reading all of that....

WE WON!!!!!  🎜Celebrate good times, COME ON! It's a celebration!🎜 We have been on cloud 9 ever since.  Over a year of fighting and almost everyone we know saying "Why are you STILL fighting about this?!" Or "You know you aren't going to win right?" we have our ruling and we can FINALLY put in the door we have, where we want, where it makes the most sense for a home, NOT a church.  This decision was a long time coming.  We knew from the start that this was the only reasonable place to put the door, and we always felt the bylaws allowed for it.  It's nice to be vindicated by this highest level of appeal (other that the courts).  Moving forward we hope to continue working with the town to save this historic building, and hopeful we won't see these types of roadblocks again.

I'm not going to lie.  This whole thing has been so hard.  Many times it's felt like we were the only ones who worried what happens to this big, beautiful building.  Multiple times we discussed other options we had, with nothing feeling right. We discussed different places to put the door, insetting the door in the space we want it, we even discussed tearing down the whole building and building new since it felt like we were hitting roadblocks everywhere.  We are insisting a building that was never designed to be a house, become a home. Without our intervention this place likely would have been left to rot or worse, torn down and condos erected in it's place.  But let's not dwell.  We won!  Let's look to the future!

So what does this mean?  Well, William called he best friend who also happens to have his own construction business (he knew this call was coming if we won) and they set up when he and his crew could come out.  Sounds like Thursday next week might be the day if everything goes to plan. Good thing we have been super busy with demolition otherwise we would be in panic mode. For anyone who has forgotten, this is the next space (or phase II) we will be working on.

It looks so different now from when I took this picture, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.  This post is celebrating we won and the door is going in.

The Church Reno Adventure is back in full swing!!

Round Two

People I haven't seen in ages always ask a version of the same questions,  "So what's happened to your blog and all the renovations?!"

Do you see it?

Perhaps we should take a closer look.

If you have been keeping up with our renovation adventure I'm sure you are thinking "I'm pretty sure I have seen these pictures before."  Well you are not completely wrong.  The first picture was me being all excited to have a new door and couldn't wait for it to be installed.  This second picture is one I took over the past weekend.  And to be honest I'm feeling just like that poor tarp looks.  Putting up a good fight but feeling a little worse for wear.  The short answer for the questions I'm asked is always "Nothing.  There is NOTHING going on for the renovation so the blog has stalled."  But let's catch up so I can be more specific.

I last left you with discussions of plans for the main floor, and the new door entry.  We decided to concentrate on the door for a few reasons.  We thought that if we started there, it would give us more time to work on the plans for the main floor, and if the front door was moved to where we wanted, it would be much easier to bring materials into the building.

So the guys we organized to put in the door also drew up plans for the door.  We submitted those plans.  The inspector declined the plans, asking for specific blueprints.  So, we asked Chris (our home designer) to draw up the plans so we could submit and receive a permit before it got too cold.  We were denied again.  They told us that the minimum set back on a side yard is 4 feet.  Even though our address suggests that where we want to put the door is the front of the house.  Technically it's the side. So, no door.  But that is not how we roll in this house.  We put up a fight when things are not fare or are wrong.  We set up a hearing with the Development Appeal Board.  The meeting was held at the town office.

Unfortunately, they didn't understand what our plans were, and they felt there was an increase in the area of non conformity and they did not feel that we could move the location of the non conformity to another part of the building.  We appealed to the Saskatchewan Municipal Board because we feel that the zoning bylaw does allow us to move this door. (How lucky are we that Will reads bylaws as part of his job so he actually understand what the town can and cannot do).

So that hearing was on July 18th and they have 60 days from the day of the hearing to give us a ruling.  The catch is that every time they ask for more information, that 60 days resets.  They have currently asked the town twice for more information.  Will is optimistic and thinks we will hear back from them by the end of September.  Personally this whole experience has been such a disheartening one that I keep telling people that it won't be till around Christmas.  It's been over a year that we put in our first set of plans to apply for a permit.  There have been many times I've been ready to throw in the towel.  Like I've come close to just saying "let's just move back to the city".  But thanks to the friends I've made here, and having an amazing summer, I'm back on track and ready to keep fighting!!

It's not that we have done absolutely nothing.  We went from having no eaves troughs,

to having them installed.  The building went for so long without them that we have a dampness in the basement during the summer months (and with that the WORST spider problem).

And the yard has had a bit of an over hall.  We went from having seven pine trees way too close to each other and not having any way of properly using the yard, to having a huge veggie garden space.

Trees

Rototilling

Rototilled

Potatoes!

So there you have it.  You are caught up to what is going on around here.  I really hope to have good news when I next speak of the door.  Please keep your fingers and toes crossed for us that everything will work out.

In the mean time, we will keep demoing, and Chris sent us the next round of plans for us to go over.