In spite of the lofty name, Anchovy World Headquarters is really our small two-story house in the St. Clair and Caledonia area of Toronto. We've been here about 6 years, and for much of that time, we've been kicking around the idea of doing a major renovation to make the house bigger. Behind the original house, there is a single-story addition that sits on a slab without a basement. This space is our kitchen and a little room behind the kitchen. The idea we had in mind, at its simplest, is to bash down the addition, dig a basement, and rebuild a two-story addition.
Well, we're going to do it, starting hopefully in the spring. We've been working with an architect to develop the design. We had a meeting with her tonight to discuss the plans in progress. There is a lot to think about, but we're making some decisions. Some of our goals are to make a nice basement studio for Tuffy P. and to create some good storage space in the basement for paintings. Upstairs, we want to create a modest music room for me, to house my instruments, and to provide a place to play where I can make some noise without the world hearing me. This may be used for recording down the road as well.
There are questions about the current stairways, about how best to use some of the spaces, about how much attention the washrooms need, what the kitchen should look like and more. To answer some of these questions, we'll have to develop a better understanding about cost for different options and play that against our budget.
The whole business is tremendously exciting.
