The Extension That Wasn’t - Part 1

Once upon a time, a little over a year ago in fact, we embarked on a journey to do a large-scale renovation to our Tudor house. Not so much changing the current parts of the house (which we dearly love), but adding a sizeable extension to enable us to have a second living room, a much larger kitchen in the style we wanted, a real butler’s pantry, laundry room, mudroom etc. – plus an epic master suite above all of this. All things we had become accustomed to in our last home. We of course wanted to keep stone masonry and the Tudor revival style throughout the extension, and not just make it look like a modern addition – so we found an architect who we thought was versed in period / historical work and ploughed ahead. We wanted to do the extension fairly quickly and then move in (again just like we did with our last house which was a ground-breaking 9 months from start of planning to moving in). We got about 6 months, a full set of current blueprints, a first draft of extension plans, and well over $15K into the process and we brought everything to a grinding halt, and parted ways with our architect. The biggest question was WHYYYYYY? And also, why I went completely radio silent about it on Instagram too.

So here’s the 3 main reasons behind it all…

(1)    Our Come to Jesus Moment

Note: This little anecdote happened well before the BLM movement came to the forefront this summer, before George Floyd’s death, before a lot of worldwide reparations for an ugly past. But the story follows in the same vein of recognising privilege and adjusting.

We were in the middle of our kitchen demo and had a lot of junk to get rid of, along with the 40 year old musty carpet from the master bedroom which we had ripped up. We called a junk company to come and get it, versus hiring a dumpster (mainly due to getting rid of old appliances). Two junk trucks turned up and the 3 guys went to work getting it all loaded. The kitchen stuff done, two headed up to the bedroom to grab the carpet. I followed a little behind just to show them where it was. One guy was able to carry it himself, and I noticed the other one (a young black man probably only a few years younger than me), looking into the other rooms of the house. I didn’t see that as a problem, I’d want to do exactly the same upon pretty much any new house so can’t blame the guy for being curious. But he stopped and very respectfully said “maam, does every bedroom in this house have it’s own bathroom?”. I’ve never quite grown accustomed to being called “ma’am” in this country especially by people my own age, but he was being courteous. I matter of factly answered “almost – except for the two back bedrooms, which share a bathroom.” He just replied with a quiet “woah”.

It wasn’t until we were downstairs again by the truck that he said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been in a house this big before”. And it was a full gut punch to me. I struggled to contain myself and not say something stupid, I kept it to “we are very lucky” as I was floored for what else that I could say. There wasn’t anything correct to say…  He wasn’t angry or upset to have never been in a 4 bedroom, 3 ½ bath house before, he was just in awe. And that gut punch took me straight to realising again just how much privilege we had to own this house AS IT WAS. Stu and I try very hard to recognize that we have been dealt a great deal of life advantages, and to never be ungrateful for what we have. But I realised in that moment (and we discussed at great length later) that we had been chasing something for all the wrong reasons. We did not NEED any of it, we had just got used to having it in our last house. It was time to abandon a lofty goal that gave us a ridiculous master bedroom with a balcony, another living room with a bay window for a Christmas tree, and lots of other frivolities that came sinking in as egregiously over-the-top. It had to stop. Here was a man that had never even seen a house this big and we wanted to make it 30% bigger.

Following all of this, we also talked a lot about our roots, or at least my roots, combined with Stu’s 7 year experience of living in the UK (along with all of our family’s homes dotted around the English countryside). English houses are small, and if they’re not, even when they’re big homes, they still usually contain a lot of much smaller spaces. Not big sprawling great rooms, enormous island kitchens, elaborate basements, and so forth. We LIKE small spaces, we like walls containing rooms, and we enjoy the cozy, despite having built two huge lofty window filled rooms in our last house. We realised that we missed that aesthetic, which simplified life, focused on less stuff and materialism, and centred life on the experiences in the place, not the place itself. And given that this was an English Tudor style home, it was the perfect time to get back to that ethos and stay true to our roots.

(2)    The Architect / Variances / Lawyers

As that little but important moment occurred, we had also just discussed the first draft of extension plans with the architect in early February. Now I had gone into our very first meeting with them with a fully fledged set of plans and ideas drawn up – that is what I do, as I find that (if they listen and with good communication), it reduces revision rounds and overall costs to have these ideas ahead of time. We weren’t beholden to them because we know that we don’t know all the local building codes, what’s physically possible in some spaces, nor were we completely set on certain areas. BUT we were crystal clear about parts that were important to us. One of these indelible items was maintaining the historical integrity of the house (i.e. not removing or moving any original features), and then there were smaller requests like wanting a separate bathtub in the master bath, no stacking laundry areas, built-ins in certain locations, etc. And throughout we were careful to point out that small English spaces didn’t scare us, if code would allow it, toilets under beams and stooped heads were FINE.  

But when they came back with a first plan, many of those items had been ignored, including annihilating two of the original dormer windows in order to accommodate a full bathroom in the attic (which was a request, not a requirement). Rather than pick up the phone or type an email to say, we can’t fit a whole bathroom let’s talk about a couple of options, they had just removed two striking features of the house and moved on with an enormous wood-sided dormer that completely offset the balance of the house. Not cool. When you’re paying $250 per hour of planning work, and that full plan probably took 10-20 hours to work up in CAD and SketchUp, a simple phone call would have saved us a full 10 hour revision. They had equally added a huge porch, which we had mentioned in passing once on our first meeting, but had not requested to be added to the extension – the porch was designed in craftsman style which felt completely out of character too.

In addition, we were going to have to ask our local township for a 1 foot variance and the architects sent us down the road of getting lawyer proposals for this, who’s fees alone would have cost $7K for a single preparation of paperwork and attending the variance board meeting. After speaking with locals and neighbours, we were informed that is highly unusual to need in our township and variances happened all the time, especially when they were small like a single foot of space. And then we learned that they did not have civil engineers as part of their practice (we had to bid out for that too), and then a first invoice from the architects themselves for work to date which was a third more than we expected.

So we felt like we were being run through exercises and costs that were unnecessary or over-done. Our gut feeling about this group was no longer so tight and we started to feel quite uneasy about forging ahead. Our budget wasn’t small, but this group kept pushing for the higher end of everything. This is where we had an INCREDIBLE experience with our last architect who happily communicated with us when things could or could not work, we landed on a plan we loved with only one set of minor revisions because they listened and we trusted each other’s expertise. Our costs remained reasonable due to the work I had put in ahead of time, and their expertise in delivering service that we requested was perfect. This time around, it was a vastly different experience that meant money was flying out of bank account much too fast. I’ll write a separate post all about our architect experiences – but my big takeaway is always getting cost proposals in full detail, upfront.

(3)    The “Rona”

AND THEN… the dreaded COVID-19 hit in early March. Suddenly, instead of searching for a new corporate job which was going to pay for the extension (I had taken a break from corporate life because Henry did not take to daycare very well when he was a baby), I was at home all day with both kids, tearing my hair out. Being a stay at home mother is not a job I am cut out for as much as I wish I was. Jobs suddenly went away in a flash and we were a bit floored how to move ahead. So, we adjusted and the grandparents started taking care of the kids a couple days a week while I spent more time DIYing at the house to save money. We are lucky that we have a decent savings to hold us over, but it certainly adjusted our long-term view of life and impacted our thought process in terms of adding another significant chunk of debt (something we actively try to navigate away from). It was the final nail in the coffin that killed the whole extension process. Even now, 9 months into the virus and quarantines with jobs available again, we stand by all of these micro-decisions together and are glad that they each occurred to prevent us from making a big mistake.

So what now?...

Ever since all of that occurred in one fell swoop of a turbulent month, I’ve been slowly meeting with a umpteen different contractors (and sometimes waiting months to get responses) – from HVAC to masonry, to door consultants, arborists, landscapers, waterproofing, builders / GCs, etc. to work on getting estimates for a much more phased approach to small-scale renovations. We have figured out areas where we still want to improve flow like adding some patio doors to the dining room leading out onto a new outdoor entertaining space, items that we are deeming necessary like adding air conditioning through the main floors and adding an office space in the attic. So we started planning a three or four phase plan for each floor or area of the house. Many of these items blend into each other which we know will create project creep as we get stuck in, and also many will result in a chicken or egg situation where we’re not sure what to start with first. We’re carefully trying to plan for the renovations we can tackle (slowly) ourselves versus the renovations we need to hire out for expertise, or timing, reasons.

That has taken A LOT of energy and thought, which quite honestly has me feeling fairly overwhelmed and in limbo. But like any good project manager, I’ve started a house GANNT chart to help us organize where we need to start and where we need more help. Not familiar with a GANNT chart?? It’s super nerdy but simple project management tool, I’ll share once it’s a bit more complete. We always knew this house would be a long-term 10 year plan, and this just solidifies that process more. We do plan to employ an architect again for two small sections of renovations (the dining room doors and the attic), but we’re in no hurry to do that immediately. We’ll finish the kitchen, the kid’s rooms, and our main living room (sarcastically called the Parlour), move in and then take everything else one step at a time.  

If you want to see current blueprints, and then the first draft of extension plans, I’ll post another write-up of that soon! My plan is to introduce one of these areas each week to talk through the thought process and how we are going about it – whether it is just re-decorating or a full renovation. I do hope you’ll stick around for it all, as it’ll be quite the journey and we’ve many exciting ideas still waiting to happen…!

Love & cuddles,

Lex