home design — Blog 1

Welcome. Come on in and checkout my hole!

Get your mind out of the gutter; it is clearly located in the ceiling. And honestly it is not my hole, it is our hole. For me to explain why there is a hole located in the ceiling, I have to talk a little bit about how the process of renovating this house started for us. If you read the intro about the blog then you are already up to date on how we are a blended family and if you are a parent you know that time, money, and let’s not forget sleep, are always in limited supply. Ryan and I were dealing with this and then some when we were dating. So, dates on his couch ordering in became the norm and if you also check the 35-45 year old box then you, too, might find yourself tuned in to HGTV by default. I remember one night over ginger beef and egg fried rice talking about all the renovations we had done throughout our lives and quickly it turned into what Ryan wished he had done with this house. Now I have to confess I am the jerk that compared his cute little house to a kindergarten or Rubik’s cube. His living room was sunshine yellow, the kitchen had a greyish purple wall and countertop that continued in the main bath, he had landed on Canada flag red for his bedroom, and the boys had also chosen primary colours for their spaces. The design made little sense to me and to my relief it made no sense to him. It was a physical representation of coping for the sake of the kids.

We discovered we both get really excited about renovations or home building in general. At one time, our fathers both had home reno businesses and we grew up covered in saw dust and paint spatter. Neither of us can help but think about what we would do with spaces and homes when we enter them. So naturally we found ourselves daydreaming about all the possible changes that could be done to his home. The thing that was painfully obvious was how poorly the main floor functioned. The Livingroom space was long with a fireplace offset toward a beautiful bay window. If you configured the furniture around the fireplace and window then you were leaving an awkward space where someone might put a very small dinning table. But the square footage of the house didn’t really call for a formal and informal dinning space. So, you will notice in pictures that instead the decision was made to put up an entertainment center on the wall separating the Kitchen and Livingroom, ignoring the fireplace and window with the idea that the children could have space to play on the floor. The space turned into a toy graveyard really and just made the space cluttered and messy. The question soon became, “How can we make this space work for a house full of kids but a remain a home that could be enjoyed by everyone?”

Taking the wall down was the key to everything. If the wall between the kitchen and the Livingroom no longer existed, then there would be a clear sightline for whoever was making dinner to the Livingroom where kids might be doing summersaults or practicing their rear naked choke on an unsuspecting sibling. The countertop could be extended creating a very informal space for eating, or crafting and homework. The fireplace could truly become the heart of the room, providing a warm inviting place to watch movies, or read a book by the bay window.

If you are a fan of home improvement television then you are aware that to move a wall you have to answer a very important question. “Is this wall load-bearing?”

Enter my hole. No, No, No… our hole, the one in the kitchen ceiling.

It was a lovely summer day when a big old red pickup truck pulled up in front of Ryan’s house. He had rushed home leaving me at his son’s rugby game to meet the driver. A bear of a man posing as an engineer named Larry. The two men made small talk about the weather and these types of renovation jobs and the two made the decision that carving 6’’x9’’ rectangular opening in the ceiling would be the best method in determining the structural integrity of the ceiling joists and the wall dividing the main floor. To this day, Ryan regrets this decision. So, lets ask him.

“Hey honey, how would you now determine the integrity of this wall in question?”

Welp…Step one would be to be organized ahead of time and have kept the blueprints for the home handy that were found in a stack of papers much, much too late after the fact. In the absence of that demonstration of practical home ownership, our next recourse was to get a hold of the builder to see if I could scratch up a set of plans for the house, since this was a very popular design when the house was constructed in the 90’s and they were bound to have something on hand to guide our decision making. So who built the house? Man, that would be a good thing to know. Shit. Ok…welp…I know for certain that there at least a dozen homes in the neighbourhood that are the exact same as this one, so maybe one of the neighbors could help. I set off to go door to door in search of someone who wouldn’t kick me off the stoop for daring to ask questions about their home and builder and questions about whether they’d done any of the same rennos Stacey and I were considering. Easy for me, given my professional experience doing similar things in much more dynamic situations. But apparently not an easy interaction to initiate in the current world.

Lucky for me, I’m apparently easy to talk to and people ultimately really opened up to me and a few folks were incredibly accommodating. Some even going so far as to invite me in to their homes to show me the lay out and talk about all the changes they themselves would like to make. As it turns out, unlike us, not many people had even considered going to the efforts of knocking out such an obviously essential wall. But the one universal commonality I did discover, was that none of us had kept the blueprints on hand and I was pretty much out of luck…until I hit the furthest house on the block and my last hope for information.

A very friendly elderly woman, whom I had seen driving in and out of the neighbourhood but had never spoken to, was the original owner of her home and was one of the original homeowners in the entire area. She recalled the name of the builder and even had a relative who used to work there. “Oh, that’s tremendous luck you have that information. Would you happen to know the name of the builder then or have a contact num…what’s that? They’re now out of business due to some shady situation after they were purchased by a larger conglomerate? I see…Shit.

I’m digressing.

Long story short, we needed a hole.

The only option was to cut the ceiling open to see which direction the joists were running, what their load bearing capacity was and what we were likely to find once we opened up the wall. Standing in the kitchen with Larry, who was one of the most compelling and interesting story tellers I have had the pleasure of crossing paths with, I didn’t manage to think strategically in where to place said hole so as to make filling or repairing or masking said hole less of a pain in the ass when making everything pretty again (There’s a joke here that Stacey wanted to add about a pretty hole being important…but again, digressing). Just as an aside, it turns out, and some of you who know me may not be shocked to learn, I’m apparently very good at demolition and can be very bold when the task of breaking things needs to be done. So, when Larry and I needed to see the bones, I did what comes naturally and hopped up onto the kitchen counter and cut into the ceiling where it joins the wall. Mission accomplished. The joists run the length of the home and it was, in fact, a load bearing wall. Removing the wall would require holding up the rest of the house, which could be done in a number of ways. A problem that we easily solved with Larry’s guidance and a steel beam that was installed with the help from some very good friends.

But Ryan, you say, what about your hole???

Welp. Now over two years after managing to put the beam up, box it in after rerouting a number of major utilities through an alternate path (an entirely separate post all on it’s own), we still have a gaping hole, given the fact that my skills fall more on the smash end of the demolition-renovation spectrum, patching drywall and finding a seamless way to repair a popcorn ceiling without it looking awful are not my forte and I’m trying to ensure I get it right.

All this to say, if I could go back and give myself some advice, it would be this. If you can’t find your blueprints, and if you can’t contact your builder, and if you absolutely must breach the integrity of an otherwise perfectly intact ceiling, cut the hole in line with an area that you are going to be smashing and tearing out anyway once the wall is removed. The location of where I cut the hole made finishing it back up a much more difficult process. Plan ahead, just give some thoughts as to how to best facilitate the finishing work and save yourself some difficulty in the long run.

Ok. So what I should have said was… Welcome. Come on in and check out these pretty quartz counters? Right Honey?

Honey I Found The Blueprints!

My Hole…