We are starting this blog to share with you our journey of tearing down our older house and building a new one for our family to share for many years to come hopefully. It took us many years to come to the realization that this was the best solution for our family. We bought our house before the real estate market exploded in this very busy metropolitan city in Canada. We love our neighbourhood, our neighbours and all the facilities that are readily available within walking distances. We need more space because our family has expanded since we bought the house but could not find anything within our budget that we were all completely satisfied with. After many years of struggling with moving or renovating, we have decided to stay put. Our current house is over 75 years old with poor insulation and mechanics, no basement and with 2 bedrooms + 1 bathroom. There are 4 of us living in the house now and we are running out of room as the girls get older. To renovate would mean redoing the basement, add another bathroom and bedroom and upgrade insulation and mechanics. This will be almost equivalent to rebuilding the house and getting an energy efficient home. Hence the decision to tear down and re-build.

As I am writing this, we have completed the house plan and are going to the city to start the permit process. We are aware we will have to go to the committee of adjustment and have shared our plans with our neighbours to prepare them in advance for the communication from the city re: committee of adjustment. We have received positive feedback so far from them but are aware that there will still be a handful who will make their way down to the committee of adjustment hearing.

Next step will be to request quotes from the contractors that we have spoken to and get something as close to our planned budget as possible.