I just realized that we have been working with the architect for the last few weeks as part of the planning process and i haven’t shared anything recently. Most of these arrived in late June and we have been going back and forth a bit working on decisions. The current focus for our development permits are what the house will look like from the outside. Character Retention requires us to keep the house looking like an old house from the street. Our dentil trim and tapered columns are both key to that. There are also a few dozen other decisions that we need to make that we hadn’t really thought about.
The current plan is to have the house go up 16″ and down 16″ to give us the extra couple of feet height we want in the basement. This will make our front steps a bit longer and the patio for the basement suite will be about 4′ deep. The main entrance will be under our front porch and there will be doors onto the patio. Doors are currently shown as sliding but i prefer garden/french doors. This will be a point for further discussion.
The east elevation above shows an aluminum cover on the deck. We had wanted cedar so we had a bit of back and forth about that. Cost of cedar is a factor but the architect and builder also pointed out that north facing cedar is more likely to end up covered in moss/slime and will take more maintenance. The architect assures us that we can get nice aluminum and matching railings so we are waiting to see. He also put windows in the doors in the basement and shed which we have kyboshed for security reasons. The window will go into our laundry room.
The west elevation shows a path to the back door of the suite and a privacy screen between us and our neighbours for the deck. The basement window is in the kitchen of the suite.
Decisions
The architect hit us with a ton of decisions with this round. In addition to the deck cover, patio, and basement doors, we also have to decide on exterior treatment. The east wall is only about 3′ from the property line so it needs to have a fire proof treatment. Cedar is not fire proof. We can put a fire barrier under cedar or we can use a cement fibre product that looks like wood. The issue is that the decision we make for the east wall sort of determines what we do for the entire house. ugh
- I feel strongly about having woven corners on the shingles and currently i don’t think you can do woven corners with the Hardie cement fibre shingle panels.
- Cedar is fiercely expensive right now
- I had wanted to put Comfortboard under the shingles to add extra R value to our mainfloor walls and we can’t do the fireproofing on the east wall and Comfortboard. We could add Comfortboard to the rest of the main floor though.
We also looked at the west basement wall and it seems awfully blank. We considered copying the 2 stained glass windows on the basement but after about a week of discussion we changed our minds. They are not going to let in that much light to be honest and it is just 2 more windows to buy.
Finally , we decided to add a clerestory widow on the east wall of the addition to let in light in the summer mornings. With the heat we have been opening the back door every morning and i was struck by how much sun comes in that way. I think that will be amazing eating breakfast with that light coming in and our friend Dave has offered (well, we asked actually) to do a stained glass insert. I am so excited about this!
During this week we had our great friends Don & Jamie come through town on their way to the island from Kamloops. It was a quick visit but we got out for dinner and ice cream sandwiches and had some good laughs. It makes me glad that things are opening up a bit and we all have both our vaccines. On the weekend we went out to Manning Park to camp with Dorothy & Ian who we also haven’t seen in about a year. They both retired this year so booked 2 weeks at a campsite in the park and are inviting friends to come and stay! We managed to hike the Heathers Trail to the flower meadows and it was everything we hoped for. Sarah and i tried in August years ago but missed the flowers. It was spectacular.
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