Summer of 2009 and we had an accepted offer on the house... finally! No small feat when, much like anyone in the midst of buying a property where life does not stop, our life was at it's busiest. On the day we were able to meet the architect at the barn we were 6 months pregnant, Rebecca was on stage daily at the Stanley Theatre playing Eponine in Les Miserables, I was managing Condoguys during the day and appearing at Malkin Bowl in Stanley Park at night as Rooster in Annie. Interesting side note: the realtor for Lions Bay had a granddaughter in the show. Part of me thinks that was helpful for us in aquiring the Lions Bay spot. Maybe?
Another theatre connection: The architect. Montgomery Wood, Monty, is married to a theatre set and costume designer who both Rebecca and I have worked with a number of times. Monty had designed my parents house which they recently completed on the Sunshine Coast. We decided hiring Monty would allow us to better actualize our vision.
Rebecca and I have renovated before. The 1400 square feet where we currently reside is a makeover that took us a year in the midst of planning a wedding and running a theatre company (another one of my many projects). But our new place will be a much larger, more in-depth and hopefully, faster, reno job. The exciting thing about Lions Bay is the challenge of creating a flow within it's unique shape. It is an arched A frame construction, basically a wooden ship turned upside down. And currently the entry level is small and chopped up into bedrooms, stacked on top of a downstairs living space that is dark and accessed by a steep, narrow wooden staircase at the very back of the house.Rebecca knew right away that she wanted to flip the upstairs and downstairs but we had no idea how to do it.
Monty has been an invaluable resource and guide. We would sit down with him and share our thoughts and photo's that we had and he would masterfully fold them into real ideas on the page. When he came up with the plan to accomplish our desire to utilize the view from upstairs and create a flow with the downstairs we started to get excited about the whole project. We are thrilled at the initial drawings and look forward to the next steps and finalizing the plan.
His firm is Montgomery Wood Architect check him out at http://www.montgomerywoodarchitect.com/
Functioning as the General Contractor and Project Manager I'm on a steep learning curve.
The photos are from a planning session we had with Monty after he visited the site, took measurements and pictures and we gave him some basic information about what was important to us.
Enjoy...I will do a video walk through of the house the next time I am there and talk through the plan.
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