September already, and here I am finally posting an article.  I had my mind made up that my next article would be an update to the renovations that we are involved in, and wouldn’t you know it… 2 months go by without a single change to the hole that was dug in our backyard.  But today, we had progress:

Sorry for the flash pic, but I didn’t get home to see this until the sun started to go down, and I didn’t want to miss the status update.  As you can see from above, we have forms now and the rebar is ready to be placed.  I expect the crew will be back tomorrow to finish up forming and if we go to plan the pour will happen next week.  We’re still looking for things to be done in October and I’ll continue to update you guys.

Renovating is hell.

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Finally!  For those that don’t know the drawn-out saga, it has been about 2 years since this idea first began in our brains.  Truth be told, we always wanted some kind of usable garage at our house (there is currently a very narrow single car “closet” attached to the side).  At first we had thought we could build a detached unit, but there was not enough room.  At the end of the planning, a two-car garage became a two-storey addition to the back east end of our home.  Huge job, considering it’s basically a box with a roof.  But we’ll get a nice double garage as well as usable space above it, so hopefully all worth it in the end.  But what a saga so far.

First pass was to get the City of Poco Board to grant us a variance.  As it turns out, our home is zoned perpendicular to its address.  With the lot being essentially wide, not deep, the zoning was actually for the street around the corner from our home, even though our address was at the front of our house.  This turned out to be in our favour, as building the extension would no doubt have been turned down as too close to the rear-lot line.  But thanks to the wacky zoning, our rear-lot line is actually our side-lot line, allowing us to extend much further “backward”.  Long story short, the variance was actually for the side of our home closest to the lane, and for maybe 3 feet.  The Board passed us rather easily so we figured we were well on our way.  That was about 14 months ago.

Then came the permit applications.  HUGE hassle, frankly, and according to our Contractor and Engineer much more difficult than anything they’d ever encountered before.  After MANY back and forths, redrawn and re-submitted plans and even a face-to-face meeting we finally got our Permit late last year.  I won’t get into the details, but our engineer was literally coloring in walls on the plan to appease the City of Poco.  Advice: NEVER build in Poco unless you do it in the dark under a big tarp.

So after winter delays and countless other delays (weather, overbooking by our Contractor, etc.) he finally showed up this morning with a crew and a small digger.  The plan now is to dig the hole, prepare it with gravel and forms, then pour the foundation.  After that I’m guessing we wait a bit then start to actually build.  We hope to be done before the end of August – I’ll keep you posted on the progress, in words and pictures.

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