Planning, Piles & Palettes

Planning - We are continuing to make plans on the fly. We have had to adjust our plans for floor layout based on ventilation, plumbing and electrical conduit needs. We have had to think about where our light fixtures and electrical outlets need to be placed, as well as how many we will need as well as their purpose. While planning for these things, we're also having to preliminarily plan for the type of furniture that we'll have and where it will be located. Planning on the fly also likely means that I'll be doing a lot of cabinet-making. This is something that I've never done before, but I'm researching and finding standard sizes for things. I'm also drawing the specs in Autocad first so that I know what I'm building and how to build it.

Piles - We have piles of old wood in the back yard that is really starting to cramp the visual landscape. It looks terrible! We need to get a dump box pronto. We also have piles of magazines. There is one pile for kitchen planning, one for window and door pricing, one for colour and paint samples, and one for receipts (I really hate this pile in particular).

Palettes - As mentioned previously under piles, the colour scheming is beginning to become a bigger and bigger focus for us. One of my goals is to make the house as energetically passive and aesthetically congruent as possible from the exterior to the interior. We are maximizing southern exposure but with that, we also need to ensure that our colours and building materials will provide the refraction and absorption that we need all the while making sure it all looks good. Style will inevitably win the day although certain stylistic elements would be completely redundant in this old house.

Build, build build!

I know, two posts in one day! As I mentioned, the planning part was a tad frustrating and so I wasn't able to really blog about it until the end.
So, our plans are set and the building has begun! It's been so exciting to see the true transformation take place. Steve's dad came out for a few days and has really helped get the place looking more like a house. They worked all Friday and Saturday and made excellent progress. Today I pitched in and I'd have to say that the place is really shaping up.
Pictures can really describe it so much better than my words, so here it is!

Front door view on Friday

Front door view today!

My dad checking out the electrical. He's amazing.

Our bathroom!

Our little attic space.

I have to end by saying how much I have been learning about building houses. I am also starting to get better at making decisions. I get to decide where I want the kitchen window and the size of windows in the living room. I am starting to love the phrase: 'you can do whatever you want'. Before it was just daunting. Steve and I have already planned our kitchen and know where basically everything will go in the house. There are still so many decisions, but we'll just have to take it one step at a time. (ahh.. I sound like my mom!)
Excited to see what happens tomorrow.

Plan, plan, plan!

The phase in between demo and building was the planning part. I am late blogging about this for two reasons. For one it was frustrating and two, it was time consuming. We had a plan and then found another idea and re-planned. When we finally thought we had it figured out, we found out that we wouldn't be able to remodel a part of the house because of it's poor foundation. So, we re-planned. I have to say that we did have a lot of help. Two weekends ago I went home for my mom's birthday. During that time I spent a few hours at the kitchen table with my 'dream team' (my sister, mom and dad). I coined them the 'dream team' because all of us love to dream and the wealth of ideas and knowledge in the group really makes them the most ideal people to plan with. Our goal was to find a layout that worked and one that Steve would approve of. In the end we succeeded with our goal.
 I also had some help from the little people in my life. My niece and nephew were so excited about my house that they worked all weekend to build a Lego version of what they thought it should look like. Here are some pictures of it:

The finished product and so proud to show it!