planning takes so long

I feel like we are moving so slowly on this reno, but so many people I've talked to seem to think the opposite. One friend who has just recently completed a year long reno said that it took her about a year to do all the planning -- before they even lifted a hammer! Anyway, we have done quite a bit of surface demo on the first floor and basement.  Without the permit, that is all we can really do but we wanted to move things along and Gigi wanted to see what was behind the walls and ceilings.  After a few discussions with architects and with two architectural technicians, we have decided to go with the latter since I have already done the space design myself and have a good idea of what I want.  The fee difference is about $30-40,000 compared to $3-4,000.  This is the main reason for our decision!  The designer we are going with is also a structural engineer and he will design the beams and supports for us as well as do all the permit drawings.  We're all pretty happy with this direction now.

still waiting... but started some demo!

While we were still trying to decide on an architect (or if we could do this without one), I thought we would order a bin and do a bit of demo.  But before we did, we had to let the kids have a bit of fun! So we let them loose, along with a few neighbourhood friends, to grafitti the walls with some markers and paint. What a ball! I'm pretty sure we'll all remember that afternoon for a long time to come.

We're starting the demo in the basement so that we can see the foundation walls. It looks like both the kitchen and sunroom were additions put on at some point in the house's lifetime. Gigi (my dad) has suggested that in order to open up the rooms above these additions (that he thinks were done separately) we might be better off to tear down and rebuild the additions. Yikes! That sounds expensive!