Hello, Here’s What’s Up

My name is Julie. I live with my husband, Tyler, and our funny little dog Piper in the sleepy seaside town of Sooke, British Columbia, near Victoria on Vancouver Island. We purchased our first home here in August 2007. “A Story” is the chronicle of this monumental learning experience and the rollercoaster ride of buying an older home that “needs a little work.”

Beginning this record in January 2008 poses some challenges in terms of sequential events. I plan to write about what’s going on with the house currently, but I will intersperse the current posts with the stories of our experience from the beginning (these will be in chronological order). Older event posts will be titled something like: “Rewind: Title/Date”.

Some History of Our New Home

Our Victorian-style farmhouse was built in the early 1900s near the Gorge in Victoria. Our records indicate a date of “circa 1914.” However, before 1914 registers didn’t require documentation of year built, so houses older than this year were recorded as being built in 1914.

In 1990 the house was moved to Sooke on a barge from the Gorge to Cooper’s Cove. In the middle of the night, after all the powerlines had been temporarily taken down over the main road, the house was moved to its current location on 0.28 of an acre on the bank of the Sooke Basin (except for those pesky Western red cedars in the way). A walkout basement was created and it is now a two-bedroom rental suite. Because of current building codes, new electrical, plumbing (septic system), foundation and walls were installed throughout the whole house. From what we can deduce, a new roof was likely installed over the old one at this time as well. The original fir floors were kept. The builder put in two new wood stoves to replace the old brick chimney, which had to be decommissioned. The bricks were used as the facade for the front of the new lower level.

Between 1990 and now, we have a few bits of history on what was changed, but not much. A fellow and his wife lived here before the previous owner, and for a time they ran a boarding house. We’ve heard some real roughnecks roomed here. The lady we purchased the house from owned it for only 10 months, and in that time she renovated quite a bit. Apparently it was in pretty bad shape when she acquired the property. An interior designer with experience in home remodeling, she renovated the entire kitchen, both bathrooms and the suite. She installed new hardware, light fixtures, etc. Nearly all of the walls are a light yellow (“lemon tea”)–not a terrible colour but because it’s everywhere I’m finding it rather insipid. There are two new wooden decks as well. But there is still much work to be done…

The rest will come out as I write about the purchase, moving in, and beginning our own renovations and upgrades. It has been a stressful but exciting time, and I can say with certainty that so far I’ve never learned so much in so little time.

I hope you enjoy these chronicles of our experience in first-time home ownership. Please drop a line and say hello.

Filed under | Comments Off