It’s now the end of February. My last post was 2 months ago, and if you’ve been following on Facebook, a TON of progress has been made since then. My little bungalow is now a 2-storey home!
I wanted to take a step back and talk about some of the planning, and permits, required to take on such a job. I mentioned previously that I had found a great architectural designer who also is a framer for his family business. Super lucky find!
Just a watchout that I can share: I had no idea as a homeowner playing the role of General Contractor, that part of the permit application requirements was a formal HVAC Plan. I’d pretty much assumed that my HVAC Contractor would talk to the builder and figure things out and – ta da! – it would get done. Not the case. When you submit your permit application to the city, you MUST include a full HVAC Plan that includes calculations of the size of the duct work, the placement of the supply and air return lines, a calculation to ensure that your furnace and air conditioning units are sized appropriately for proper heating and cooling, etc. My architectural designer is not an HVAC designer. My HVAC contractor also doesn’t do the plans. So a couple of days AFTER I submitted my permit application to the City of Woodstock, I found all this out and scrambled to find someone to create my HVAC Plan. Did I mention that that day was December 17th? That’s right, just a week before before Christmas. My builder was hoping for permit approval so he could start ripping the roof off and framing up the addition between Christmas and New Year’s and there I was on December 17th finding out that I hadn’t submitted everything required. Face palm.
Luckily, my HVAC Contractor recommended someone that he’d worked with before. I looked them up and Surprise! it was someone that I went to High School with! I sent an email to Derek at DJ Design and within minutes he responded. Despite the fact that they were closing for the holidays the very next day, he assured me that they could get the plan out to me pretty quickly. By 3pm that afternoon, I had what I needed and ran it over to the permit office. Talk about saving my butt!!
I was able to get in touch with the permit office within a couple of days and they approved my plans, so we were off to the races! Oh, also, the fee for the permit was $1145.05 of which $460 was a damage deposit. As long as we don’t damage city property such as curbs or sidewalks when we’re doing the build, we will get that deposit back.
On the 28th of December, Ryan from Cocchetto Solutions got to work. First step was to demo the chimney in the middle of the house. Specifically, it was about a 2ft by 2ft structure that ran up from the basement, through the small (5×8 ft) bathroom, and up out of the roof. It wasn’t pretty brick that we could turn into a feature wall, it was just ugly cement. And after day 1, it was gone! Here are some photos originally and once it was just a memory.
Bathroom – Chimney on Right 
Chimney Still in Place During Demo 
Bye, Chimney! 
Chimney is Gone from Basement
It was pretty crucial to remove the chimney – otherwise, it would run up through the middle of the new kitchen. Not okay!
I’m sure most of you have been following along on Facebook as I have been posting updates. I will try to add a slideshow that walks through the process from ripping the roof off to building the 2nd one – but my images need some optimization, they’re too big right now, so I’ll post this and make that a separate post.
Hope you’ll keep following along!