What is ‘Project Fresh Air’?

My husband and I bought our bungalow in 2014. At the time I was starting to receive diagnoses of disability and had spent weeks unable to leave our apartment because I could not get down the stairs, or drive.

We bought a fixer upper because a) that was what we could afford and b) I thought I would recover enough to do most of the renovation work myself. I didn't want to accept the disability diagnosis and thought the move to a bungalow would help me recover enough to do the renovation work. I was wrong, but the bungalow was definitely the right decision.

With the help of contractors, we renovated part of our basement into a secondary dwelling unit, creating an apartment that was rented for a few years. And during the last few years, we have been slowly learning about our space, the place that has become our home, and making notes about the ways it could be improved to help support us.

During that first foray into renovation we discovered several things about a residential building created in 1961. Lead paint, high levels of radon coming through our foundation walls, and high energy use due to significant solar gains in the summer made us delve deeper into how our house could provide us with a cleaner, less energy dependant space.

We were further inspired by these climate change reports to also consider what future weather changes in Ottawa will look like. We had discovered that our insulation was minimal, and the increasing number of heat waves were making the interior of the home unbearable during the summer, and challenging to heat in the winter. Beyond the monetary cost of this, the discomfort typically aggravates the physical symptoms I have been learning to live with, and a sudden change in weather could cause a pain flare.

In the past few years we have become a multi-generational household. Our neighborhood has experienced tornadoes and massive storms that have eliminated power for several days at a time. Many of the issues we had been considering suddenly became real problems for us, and affected us all in different ways.

So we have embarked on Project Fresh Air; re-imagining a mid-century bungalow to make it more accessible, energy efficient and literally bring in the fresh air (when available - Hello wildfires).