Wow. What a week. I am not sure what i am most excited about: the first look at rough plans or the fact that i don’t have to take off any more asbestos shingles. I am actually a week behind in blogging because the last 2 weekends i have pushed hard as i approached the finish line with the shingles. It was a literally a ton of work based on how much i took to the dump.
I started with taking the scaffolding down because it doesn’t fit down the side of the house. I think over all i likely spent more time assembling and disassembling than using it, but it did make me feel a lot safer. I thought i had about an hour or maybe 2 to finish the back and east side but it turns out i was way too optimistic. This seems to be a pattern. In addition to having to move the ladder every couple of shingles i also had to unscrew and then reattach the electrical conduit in a half dozen places to get the shingles out and do the same with the downspouts. We had a pigeon problem in the past so all of this prime roosting area is also wrapped in chicken wire so it was a bit of a hassle. Very few of the shingles came off complete so after many hours of reaching and climbing and general struggle i ended up on my knees vacuuming all along the side of the house to pick up all of the bits.
To save time the last two weekends i had just been stacking the shingles on the garden bench and against the shed so Sunday was spent in all my safety gear bagging them up. It doesn’t sound like much work but remember these are heavy and awkward. The whole ones are fine but the broken ones are a nightmare. You are putting 1/4″ thick sharp concrete slabs into plastic bags. Thick plastic bags and of course, you are double bagging, but what you really need are kevlar bags. I line the bags with tarpaper from the house and bundle the shingles in the same after stacking them carefully. I don’t want to trash my car with little asbestos and concrete knives. It is also 350 kg worth of them so a heating pad is regular part of my weekend evenings. I did manage to listen to all of “A World of Three Zeros“, by Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank and a total hero of mine.
We also got some schematics to use as a starting point for discussions with the architect. This is the exciting part for us and all the work i am doing is just so that we can maximize our budget for this and the builder.
The schematics are 3d renderings of what the house will look like based on the broad things we discussed. They look fancy but are really just a rough sketch of what we are working on so that we can discuss specifics.
In these drawings the architect has us dropping the basement 3 feet to get the extra height we want downstairs. We have decided to split that and go down 1.5 ft and raise the main floor level 1.5 feet. This will make our front steps a little longer, and the basement stairs a little shorter. We had discussed narrowing our stairs and moving them to one of the sides so the entrance would face south and go in beside them but in order to keep the character of the house the architect rearranged it. I am ok with this because it allows us to keep the original shape to the tapered pillars. The front path he designed doesn’t work with the tree and we don’t want to lose that much garden but those are small things. I also raised my concern about the awning over the front window as i am concerned that will block too much light going into the suite. We will arm wrestle that later.
The big thing here is our vision for the addition. This one balances the the entrance at the front but won’t give us the dining area we are hoping for. The stairs going straight back will also take up garden space than we want to sacrifice. To give us shed storage with a decent height we will need to have stairs which makes getting the lawnmower and bikes in and out a bit awkward. We also had an interesting talk about privacy and the suite and shared space. We need to fit in a basement door for the suite and they will need access to garbage and recycling in the back yard so we will need to figure out all of that. Sarah and i have always been really casual but will the people giving us crazy rent for the suite really want to have to be in our garden when they take their garbage out? What about that big bedroom window facing what could be our patio?
So much to think about!
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