The Squamidian Report – Mar. 25 / 17
Issue #774
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
I'm not writing very much for this week as its been a bit of a
stressful one. Our dog Willow has gone down hill to the point where we
had arranged for her to be put down on Friday but the Vet called at the
last minute to reschedule to next week which just added to the hell we
are going though. We are having to help her into and out of the back
yard, up and down stairs, and so on. As well as going down physically,
she is now blind. She is understandably not a happy dog anymore. So
I'll leave it at that for now.
Luckily Greg has written an interesting story about the house they built. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.
doug
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THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
Is it just me or does time fly by unreasonably quickly for everyone? I
was just sitting here trying to think back on some of the more
interesting challenges I’ve had over the many years of my life and
realized that it’s been 27 years since we designed and built our house
in Linwood. It seems like only a few years ago that we went through
that amazing and interesting experience. I guess it’s like anything
challenging once you initiate the planning stages of a major project it
just seems to consume your every waking moment until it’s completion!
That was definitely the biggest and most challenging project in our
married life so far! Carole and I had purchased a 100 x 200 foot lot in
the town of Linwood just as an investment. After sitting on it for a
few months, we were talking one evening and I believe it was Carole who
said, “Why don’t be consider building a house on our lot and moving to
Linwood?” At that time, Adam was about to start High School and we
figured we should make a move before he got settled in at a new school.
If we moved to Linwood, he would be attending Elmira high school
instead of Cameron Heights in Kitchener. So, that very evening we sat
at the kitchen table and with a few sheets of graph paper and a pencil
and compass set we began to draw out a floor plan for a two-story
house. We talked about the features that were most important to us in a
house and since we had already lived in three different houses in the
short time since our wedding in 1973, we had some good ideas to put
down on paper. Carole liked a centre hall plan with functional main
floor. So I drew a large rectangle and began placing rooms in it at
each location we thought would be best suited to our liking. As you
entered the front door, we placed a set of French doors on the left and
the right of the foyer. To the right was the dining room and to the
left was the living room. The staircase that led up to the bedrooms was
straight in from the front door. I had no idea how to calculate the
distance to the steps from the door so I just took a guess and as it
turned out, I hit the nail on the head with that guess.
We decided that the hallway would lead to the left of the staircase and
strait into the eating area of the kitchen. As we entered that area, I
placed the family room to the left of the eating area and the kitchen
to the right, off the eating area and directly behind the dining room.
From the eating area of the kitchen, was a set of French doors that led
out to a deck overlooking the back yard. So at this point we had the
basic floor plan set. From there we decided that there should be a main
floor laundry room and a two-piece washroom. So to the right hand end
of the kitchen I placed a doorway into a wide hallway that contained a
laundry setup to the left at the rear of the house and to the right
toward the front of the house I placed a two-piece washroom and also a
second entrance door leading out to the front porch. With this being
the utility end of the house I drew a large 30’ x 30’ garage that also
had an entry door from the laundry room into the garage. The
laundry room also had a door that led out back to the rear of the
garage so we could erect a nice long clothesline for drying the wash.
This turned out to be very handy! The garage had two overhead doors for
the vehicles and also a man door on the front wall. When we placed the
man door on the garage, we decided that 4’ in from that we’d like a set
of steps that led down to the basement.
With the main floor pretty well decided on we set out to design the
second floor that would contain the bedrooms. The idea was to have
three good-sized bedrooms and two full washrooms on the second floor. I
drew in two bedrooms to the left side of the house with a full washroom
at the rear of the upper hallway. As the staircase curved 90
degrees from right to left as it ascended, it faced the two bedrooms at
the top. I drew in a balcony that went to the right of the head of the
stairs into the bathroom. It also went to the left of the stairs toward
the front of the house. At the front of the house the balcony also
turned to the left and entered into the master bedroom. The master
bedroom took up about 18’ of that side of the house and then at the
rear end of that bedroom I included a walk in closet and a large
en-suite with another set of French doors. I also made use of pocket
doors on a few of the rooms so as to save space that would have been
used up by swinging doors! As it turned out, the final size of the
house was just less than 3,000 square feet. When my uncle’s brother who
was a cement contractor agreed to do the concrete work for us, he
suggested that we make a basement under the garage. It would make a
good workshop or storage space. We agreed to let him do that, as it
would cost only $1000.00 more than filling the foundation under the
garage with gravel!
We did several interesting things to this house that no mass-produced
homebuilders would have included. For instance, Carole decided that
having a linen closet in each upper bathroom as well as one in the
upper hallway would be a handy thing to have, so that’s what we did!
The porch was the entire length of the house, which was 50’. Our
concrete guy also suggested making a fruit cellar/storage area under
the entire porch. That was another amazing feature. We used to call it
the bowling alley! With ideas flowing, I suggested we install an
intercom system throughout the house with the main station in the
kitchen. This turned out to be one of the handiest features of the
house. We could answer the front door from any room in the house! We
also had a large wood-burning fireplace in the family room as well as a
Franklin stove directly beneath it in the basement for future
recreation room use. The house was heated by a Lenox Pulse propane
furnace and our hot water was supplied by a wall-hung Instantaneous
Propane water heater. We figured there was no sense heating and
reheating water that we weren’t using so this feature made a load of
sense. Since propane was and is a lot more expensive than natural gas
it made sense to make the most of high efficiency features. The entire
home was built with 2x6 studding and the highest insulation available
at the time. We also used Roxul Insulation throughout the house for
better R-value.
With the plans roughly finished, I asked one of the guys I worked with
a WFD if he thought his father-in-law (who was a draftsman) might draw
up an official set of plans for us. His father-in-law agreed and in two
weeks we had our official plans. I had checked with an architectural
firm in Kitchener and they had quoted me $3,500.00 to supply 2 sets of
drawings. My coworker’s father-in-law supplied us with 4 sets of
plans and charged us only $600.00 for all 4 sets!
We started construction in May of 1990 and moved into the house in late
August 1990. Of course it wasn’t finished but we had to be out of our
house in Kitchener by the end of August. We packed all of our
belongings into a 45’ rented trailer from a local transport company and
parked it out in front of our lot in Linwood. We had enough bare bones
items on which to sleep and cooked on a primer stove in the basement of
the house while I worked every spare moment on the trim and flooring
etc. I had all the interior doors and trim to finish as well as the
installation of the kitchen and bathroom fixtures. Carole and Adam took
showers under our garden hose and actually had to use a bucket as a
toilet for a couple of weeks until I could get our plumber to hook up a
real toilet and shower. LOL! Of course I didn’t have to rough it that
badly since I was working at WFD Station #3. I could shower etc at work
and I tried not to rub that luxury into Carole and Adam too badly! Of
course after a couple of weeks things were a little more civilized with
the plumbing. We were able to live in the upper parts of the house by
the end of October and from then on it was smooth sailing. It took a
full year to finish the house, interior and the landscaping and by the
second year we had an asphalt driveway in as well as a lawn and a
lovely deck out back. There were of course other challenges such as the
septic system included in the project but once we had things to the end
of the first year, we were happy and proud of our great
accomplishments! It was an interesting year indeed and we enjoyed
almost every minute of the work we put into it! LOL!
Anyway, once again, it seems like it was only yesterday that we sat at
our kitchen table drawing those plans and “Bang!” 27 years later here I
sit reminiscing about what is almost ancient history!
Oh well, it was all worth it and if anyone would like a nice set of
plans for a two story home, give me a call! I doubt that I would ever
attempt such a project again since I’m not that young or ambitious
anymore! LOL!
I hope you enjoyed my trip through this project and I’ll look forward
to talking to you all again next week in The Ontarion Report!
Bye for now … Greg
PS: Something To Think About>
What country consumes the most food per capita?
The United States!
They eat an average of 3,770 per day each!
Shamefully, obesity is becoming more of a problem every year.
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Have a good one..
the doug
The Fine Print!
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