Got the building permits!!

We finally got the building permits this week and it has been a whirlwind of non stop activity since then.  We have all been a little short tempered with each other (especially my dad and myself!) during this long and frustrating time of dealing with the city.  I won't even bother going through the long, tedious story of what went on, but in a nutshell, over the last 6 months we have dealt with Architects, Designers, Structural and Geotechnical Engineers, Arborists (twice! because the first one did a lousy job), City Examiners in Building, HVAC and Plumbing, HVAC Designers, Site Plan Control, and Urban Forestry.  The biggest hurdle we've had to jump, however, has been our own ignorance of the processes involved.  It has been a learn on the job kind of experience, and I expect that is how the rest of the renovation will go as well.  But, we've got our permit, and that's all that matters right now!  Hooray!

Now the structural demo can begin.  First to go is the original brick back of the house (that was running awkwardly through the middle of the house).  We start on the second floor and move our way down from there.  It took our guys one day to temporarily support the roof and get rid of this 2nd floor wall.

This is the view out the third floor with the roof supports.  We're planning on extending the 3rd floor out onto that flat roof.

We're going to have tonnes of these old red bricks.  I'm trying to think of a way to reuse them somewhere.  Backyard pavers was suggested to me yesterday.  I'm not sure there will be enough whole ones for that, but I may use them in gabion baskets for the backyard retaining walls.