a recap

To recap our story to this point:

We love our neighbourhood. We have a decent sized, but awkwardly designed house, including a strange 1976 addition we've dubbed the "Uncle Louie Special:" a DIY Disaster of epic proportions complete with fake wood panelling, odd little closets, upside down paintable wallpaper, and a sponge-painted toilet room on a platform with a curtain for a door and a leaky RV sink. Uncle Louie allowed us to afford to live in this neighbourhood, but has become the bane of any attempt to re-design our space.

Since moving here, to our "starter home," our family size and the housing market have exploded. Our house is worth triple what we paid, but our wages haven't tripled. And all the other houses have tripled in cost. To buy a perfect house (four bedrooms, an ensuite) not requiring renovations, we are looking at over $800K. So we make do with Uncle Louie. We are walking distance to schools, shopping, parks, and the beach. Our neighbours are awesome. But now our boys are growing and no longer so happy to be all in one room. We would like a kitchen with an eating area (we have no dining room). We live in about 1400 square feet of our home, but we have a basement we could use.

So we're trying to renovate. I say trying because it's taken us so long to get to this point. Two years of looking for a house, a year of designers, architects, and contractors trying to make sense of our space and failing. Our plans went BIG, then reasonable, and now, minimal. We didn't want to be candidates for "Til Debt Do You Part." Now minimal is becoming smaller and smaller. To meet lot coverage requirements, we now have no stairs designed to go into our home except the front door. All existing furniture will have to be chopped into pieces to be removed from the home. Or there is that airplane emergency exit idea I had...

Although our renovation consists of: one kitchen, one enlarge window, and one closet, all the problems with building code, bylaws, and variances, have had to do with our basement/non-basement. Because the house is not deep enough in the ground, our basement is considered a first storey, not a basement (ie. looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but is a horse). We must now meet all codes affecting two-storey homes.

On Friday, I submitted a second set of plans, heavily white-outed, for "non-variance work." That is, building a closet and starting on fixing floors and heating.

On Monday, I submitted a separate variance request for the kitchen renovation.

It's been 5 days and no word from City Hall yet, although the inspector is "away for the first week of October," which must be government-speak for "you will be ignored from the week before he leaves until the week after he gets back" and that we will be delayed into mid-October, then must try to get to two City Hall committees before the November council elections. November elections! We started in August! For a KITCHEN.

I consider it a credit to my amazing self-control that I have not lunged across the City Hall desk yet (plus the woman there is really sweet). We began our permit process on August 4th. It is now September 30th and I don't have permission for anything. I cannot imagine why people do renovations without permits. Stupid HGTV, do it once, do it right? How about "do it quietly, under the cover of darkness?"