What we started with

This house is not something we would have bought if we had been the type of people who didn’t like renovating. It’s not that it’s hideous or anything, but it’s far from stylish and, due to the basement suite, not as large as we wanted. 

 

The outside of the house was painted in the recent past to cover and blunt the broken-glass style stucco. This is good, however it was painted a VERY unattractive beige-ish taupe colour. To compensate, the previous owner also painted the front door bright red, so at least the front façade is not completely boring.

 

When the house was first built, it had a front porch – a small covered area at the front door so that newspapers would not be turned to wet pulp, and people waiting for the door to open would not be rained upon. It probably hadn’t been much larger than an entry mat, but it had existed.

 

At some point in the past 60 years, someone noticed that there wasn’t anywhere to store coats and shoes near the front door and proceeded to build in the puny front porch so they could instead have a puny, awkward front closet. How awkward? It is not possible for two small women to enter the house, take off their shoes and coat in the “entry way” and close the front door behind them. We will not mention what happened when two medium-sized guys came to visit.

 

So right off the bat on our “to make it better, this house must have” list we noted:

• An attractive colour
• A functional front porch, to keep newspapers and visitors dry on a rainy day
• Enough room in the entryway to open the door and have more than one person enter or leave without creating a socially awkward moment 

On paper, this house has three bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen/eating area on one 867 sq ft floor. It turned out that this measurement was taken from outside wall to outside wall and so includes all exterior and interior walls, plus the hallway and all closets. Obviously someone in sales came up with that lame method.

 

The master bedroom is a good size and probably has enough closet space for some women, but to call the other two rooms “bedrooms” is a gross exaggeration. One measured 64 sq ft (inside dimensions) while the other was 78.5 sq ft. We later learned that a “typical” bedroom in new construction in Vancouver must be at least 105 sq ft. Or put another way, a double bed takes up just over 28 sq ft without taking into account space around the bed to walk – neither of those rooms would have fit more than a single bed.

 

Add to the must-have list:

• At least one “normal” size spare bedroom for out-of-town guests
• A study big enough that we each can work on a computer with a normal-sized screen, as sharing a computer sucks. 

A newly-created wish list:

• A much larger closet in the master bedroom
• The potential for a third bedroom for resale value (which is not happening for at least a decade!) 

The kitchen and eating area plus living room currently take up one half of the house and so in theory should have been sufficient for us – except the proportions were lousy and there is a rather inconvenient wall separating the two spaces. I still find it astounding that a kitchen three times the size of our last one in Kits has less than half the counter space!

 

Add to the must-have list:

• Increased counter-space in kitchen  

Add to the wish list:

• No walls between kitchen and living room, for a feeling of spaciousness
• Change of layout with eating space moved to between the kitchen and living room 

Which brings us to the bathroom. Other than the annoying lack of storage and the complete lack of personality, there is really just one other problem with it: there is only one. We have a happy marriage due to common interests, similar goals, and the fact that we don’t share a bathroom.

 

Add to the must have list:

• At least one more bathroom
• Storage space!

Add to the wish list:

• Powder (2-piece bathroom) on the main level.
• Lots and lots of storage! 

Finally, we have the laundry “room” which is really the entry way to the basement suite. From the main floor, one must go outside, go down the back steps and then unlock the first of two doors to the suite in order to get to the machines. Did the previous owners not wash clothing in bath weather???

Add to the must have list:

• Laundry machines accessible without having to go outside
• New, energy efficient machines that were built in the last decade

 

After adding up all the must-have list items, it was clear that we needed to add an additional floor to the house – which rather conveniently allowed me to have all of my wish-list items, plus more!