A neighbour a few doors down has been doing a major, and I do mean MAJOR, renovation on one of the four units in his heritage fourplex – a twin of our building. The design is a Fred Hollingsworth and his daughter lives in one unit, and another is occupied by a co-owner. He owns the other two and both were rented. A couple of years ago one rental unit was fully renovated and then re-rented. The other rental unit was vacated back in December and the main building owner took the opportunity to renovate it. They have lived elsewhere and I learned during a chat with his son, that his father (the owner) was renovating with the intent of moving himself and his wife into it, bringing them closer to their children and grand children.
We’d estimate that he’s probably into it for somewhere between $300,000 and $500,000. It’s been going on for many months.
He’s a retired architect.
That’s a point worth making in this story.
And he was not absent during the renovation. Since we were all working from home in the spring and early summer, walking along our upstairs breezeway presented a daily theatre of the progress of the works. And the owner was frequently on site going up and down ladders, pointing and directing, and making changes (apparently) fairly frequently.
They completely gutted it, tore walls out, turned the garage into a room, closed in the outdoor courtyard and turned it into a room with sliding doors and windows, pushed the front entryway out six feet, moved the exterior wall out to well past where the back deck used to be, expanded the master bedroom out over the top of the garage, added an addition upstairs over the newly roofed courtyard and probably doubled the square footage upstairs by expanding the second floor out over the newly built room in the former courtyard and expanded living room off the back.
In all they probably doubled the square footage.
And it looks like it is going to be a stunning complete renovation top to bottom. I’d love to get inside to see everything that they’ve done.
However….
It hasn’t been a straightforward rebuild, and the upstairs parts, which we could see happening, included putting in a new window in a wall that formerly had none….and then taking it out and tearing the wall open to do something else, then putting the window back in, then taking it back out to do something else, then repeating that at least two more times. Chats with other neighbours and we were all wondering why they were doing things repeatedly.
Eventually, about 6-8 weeks ago, they resurfaced the roof and so we thought they were close to being done.
In all of this, I and a few other neighbours had a slight concern about some piles of debris that had been pushed to the edge of what amounts more or less to a natural ditch that runs between their property and the next neighbour over. Not being sure if it was something of concern, given fish bearing water further afield, I penned a note to the District Environmental office and asked if someone could drive by and take a look to ensure that there was no risk of leaching chemicals or other materials from 70-year old driveway material having been scraped to the edge of the trickle of water as a result of the building renovation.
The District official said she would visit the site, but double checked back with me because she thought maybe I had the address wrong; she said that she couldn’t find a building permit on file.
No, the address is correct.
She visited the site to check the environmental concern for me and contacted me the following day. She did not feel that there was a need for concern regarding the debris pile and the small water body, so I was relieved to hear that there was no risk.
But she also said that she was concerned about the scope of the building that she’d seen when she visited and was requesting a building inspector to visit the site the next day.
Then this showed up on their fence the day after that.
It’s been very quiet in the neighbour hood for the past five weeks……
I feel a little badly that I unintentionally halted their renovation…. I just wanted to make sure that water wasn’t being polluted and there was no risk to fish downstream….but I also can’t believe someone would forgo the minor inconvenience of a building permit and risk a full stop order and the, presumably, higher costs that will be incurred to get back on track.
And I imagine it won’t be easy to get the contractors and building crews back quickly once he does get things back in order.
Did I mention that he’s a retired architect?
In other words…wouldn’t you “know better”?
I really do feel badly though, I was only concerned about the water next to the debris pile and potential for leaching from the rain. I never anticipated that the request for an environmental evaluation would lead to a building inspection that would shut his renovation down.
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