How it started

It was in early 2007 that we looked around our small-ish (1,000 sq ft) condo in Kitsilano and realised:

1. Not one wall or floor surface remained from the original we purchased
2. Unless we planned on re-doing a room, once the last project was finished, we were done as we could not make any changes to the outside per strata rules
3. Chris wanted to “earn more equity” from real estate, which really means a house with a basement that we could rent out
4. I missed going up stairs:  living on one floor is rather boring.

So we resolved to start looking the following year as we wanted to enjoy the benefits of our renovations… I miss that house right about now.

We hired a real estate agent in February 2008 but did not find this house until October 2008. Working against us was a super-hot real estate market; a self-imposed search area of 14 x 8 blocks around Main Street (with additional caveats as we searched); and needing a house that was not “move-in perfect” as we then couldn’t put out stamp of ownership on it for several years. Over nine months after we started, we had actually given up and only THEN did we find this house. Was that a sign?

Here is a picture of the house as we bought it. It’s a post-war (1946) bungalow with a basement suite in the midst of beautiful turn-of-the-(last) century homes. Our dream is to have the house eventually look like it always belonged on the street with the rest.

Because we had to sell our condo, we moved our possession date forward to February 2009 – over a year after we started out search. It was also in the midst of rather stressful global economic conditions - ugh. Enough said about that time.

Our initial course of action was to determine

• What we had,
• What we wanted, and
• How could we get from point A to B without going into massive debt?

We knew, even before we moved in, that we’d need to engage several professionals – the most important would be an architect. And while Chris is an amazing handyman, he’s no general contractor so we’ll need one of those, too.