Why we are rebuilding and not restoring
Hello Friends, I hope your first week back after the holidays is off to a great start. I currently have a sick hound dog on my hands, but that’s another story!
If you’ve been following along on my Instagram stories, you would have saw that we are rebuilding our home shop and apartment after 2 yrs+ of owning it. Heres why we decided to rebuild instead of restore.
After many months of planning to restore our 1890’s commercial building we came to the unfortunate realization that it couldn’t be saved. After peeling back many layers, we discovered multiple alarming issues such as, a crumbling foundation mixed with a non-existing foundation (half of the building’s foundation was on cement blocks), the framing was held together by just 2x4’s, we found multiple electrical fires within the walls and I mean nothing was up to the commercial building standards. To be completely frank, the building was essentially made up of two summer cottages pushed together. This building was a result of decades of neglect and poor ownership.
This wasn’t our plan. My husband and I sold our new build to buy and renovate this commercial building. My dream has always been to own and run a home shop and this felt like the right step. Our plan was to buy, renovate and open within 1 year. We did not anticipate the amount of back and forth of logistics we had to endure with our township to eventually realize that the next sensible move would be to tear down and to start from scratch.
Not a restore but a rebuild. A few meetings, a new set of drawings and 1 year later, we completely demolished our old building and started digging the foundation for our new one. We kept a fairly similar design and front facade of the original building, but took some space to create a driveway and gained it back by adding more square footage to the back of the building. Our goal is for the building to look original and not brand new.
Where we are now. The foundation has been poured, the building is completely framed, our roofer is scheduled for next week and the windows will be installed shortly after. We just had a meeting with our builder to discuss the exterior and interior finishes and I’m currently working on the cabinetry drawings.
We are more than happy with the process that has been made on our building! Once the building has been completed, it will look like the original building but be structurally sound. I will continue to share the building process with you guys and I hope this answers all of your questions. We are so excited to bring this little building back to life!
Until next time,
Skye
Here’s our photo storyline thus far.
The original building.
The building when we received it.
The demolition of the building.
The last structure of the building to come down.
The lot with the building completely down.
The new hole for our new foundation.
The footings are done, now placing the forms for the foundation walls.
The forms poured.
Foundation walls are complete.
The framing has started.
The majority of the framing has been completed.
The roof is on and this is where we are currently stand today.
The building’s Elevation.