The End Is In Sight
Once again, I have to apologize for my lack of updates. What’s it been… 3 months? It’s embarrassing how much time I’ve let slip by. I’ve received a number of emails inquiring if we’ve run out of money or if I’ve given up on blogging—Thankfully, I can say it’s neither. Work has become entirely consuming, my wife is now pregnant(!) and in my spare time, I find myself working at the house instead of working on the blog. What can I say, It’s been over a year now and at this point, I’d like this project to be complete. Thankfully, we’re getting close.
Admittedly, the project has taken much longer than anticipated and we have hit a few bumps along the road. As shocking as it sounds though, we’re actually on budget. The biggest challenge has been maintaining momentum with the trades. One delay, and everything slides. Once that happens, it becomes increasingly difficult to realign everyone’s schedule. That, and we had a number of trades just… disappear. Unfinished work and only partially paid. Poof, not to be heard from again. I don’t know if this is common or not, but I’m shocked how difficult it’s been to get these people to finish what they’ve started.
Thankfully, the interior is close to completion and I must admit, everything has come together quite nicely. It’s entirely satisfying to see the images in your mind finally come to life. I particularly like how everything looks at night (although this is a horrible photo). And I was surprised how difficult it was to find light fixtures that we actually liked (and could afford). Regardless, with everything but smallest of finishing touches left to do, the end is in sight. The exterior on the other hand… Well, we still have a ways to go there.
We admittedly dragged our feet making some decisions on the cladding materials and colours. For some reason it wasn’t really a priority and when we did focus, we couldn’t make up our minds. After months of indecision, we decided on a wood siding with a semi-transparent finish, however just before placing the order, I discovered that the finish didn’t come with a warranty… and we’d need to reapply the stain every few years. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. So we went back to the drawing board and lost another few months disappeared while we sourced new materials, selected new colours, and negotiated material & installation costs.
Once we decided to start over, we had to reevaluate everything. We looked at various product samples and various colours options. However we needed to be mindful of the brick that had already been installed, ‘cause that wasn’t about to change. In the end, we decided on a wood siding for the majority of the house, with a solid stain instead of the semi-transparent (which means it comes with a healthy warranty). We’ll be using HardiePanel for the soffits and fascias, and HardiePanel for entire south wall. Everything has been ordered and if the weather cooperates, installation will begin next week. Fingers crossed.
Once the cladding is finished, we’ll get started on the landscaping… although I doubt we’ll have enough time to do much before winter. Regardless, we intend to move in only a few weeks from now. They’ll be working on the exterior and everything won’t be 100% complete on the interior, but I think it’s been long enough, no?
If you haven’t seen them already, I upload a slew of photos on my Flickr page. Hopefully that’ll tide you over until I get around to writing the next post. Hopefully it won’t take me another 3 months.
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I’ve had the same problem with trades on my project. Many won’t come back, even if they are still owed $1,000 they are still owed. I always tried to owe more than double the value of the work left to be done. My drywall contractor was owed $10,000 and I had to practically beg to get him to finish. He said I didn’t understand and that he had a lot of jobs going at the same time (shouldn’t you finish one and THEN go on to the next?)
Your millwork is beautiful. Who fabricated it?
— posted on October 20, 2009Hi Jeremy,
I’ve been following your progress/guidance as progress on our own townhouse renovation in DC has been moving forward… and I also imagined that you were long done.
It deems like what you’re experiencing is exactly what we are experiencing—that you got to a specific point where it was close-to-done-but-not-quite and the trades started to fail delivering, even when they had money coming to them.
In our case, our GC is about 6 months past schedule, and we can’t imagine why he’d want to be dragging it out rather than just be done with it. We still owe him a substantial amount that he won’t get until he’s completed the work, and at this point, even though the work has been exceptionally good, the late delivery is maddening.
I wish you the best and good luck with a prompt conclusion—I’d love to see your place sometime. Take a look at what we have done so far.
— posted on October 26, 2009Hello, I love your house and what you are doing here. Also as note to you – the people who criticize you for not being green enough have probably never built a house and had to make such decisions and evaluate the diferent options. I thnk you and your wife have done a great job and if everyne building a house did a few things each, the world would be a different place.
Having said that, I am about to embark on building a house and have been following your blog. I have not started construction yet and still have to get permits even though we have been dealing with the city for over a year now. I am coming to the point that I do not know if I will build at all despite having already spent money.
It is coming down to financial for me. I could not get a sense of how much this house is costing you and maybe you intended it that way since every house is different.
I was hoping you could email me privately and give me an idea of how much this is costing you from start to finish and how much of the cost is for the builder/contractor. My husband is in construction and will be the “builder” so we will not have that cost. I realize these are 2 very detailed questions but I am scared to death of running out of money and would rather put off building if i can know now. I also realize that there will be variations because we are different people and will make different decisions but this would really help a lot.
Thanks
Paula
— posted on October 26, 2009hi..i’ve been following your progress and love your design. where did you purchase the group of 3 mesh circular lights?
— posted on November 1, 2009thanks
andy
@Scott — Thanks! Indeed, we’re quite happy with our millwork… it all turned out very nice. I actually a few more photos to upload of the kitchen, as there’s some more millwork in there as well. It was done by Tim Jones at Mainframe Industries (905-403-0906)
@JFRPRR — Thank you… and I love your stairs!
@Paula — We’ll eventually make the budget available… I’m simply waiting until the project is complete. That said, it all comes down to cost per sqft. In our case, we’re tracking towards $270.95/sqft. This includes EVERYTHING (but the existing land costs). If you’d like some more detail, give me a shout at jeremy@360winnett.com
@andy — The mesh lights are called “Random Lights”, and they were purchased from Design Within Reach (http://www.dwr.com/product/random-light-small.do)
— posted on November 3, 2009Where did you get your kitchen done? And what did you use for the countertop? It looks very nice.
— posted on November 13, 2009Really sounds like this guy has lost interest in talking about this project after so much hype in the newspapers and on the web about it. Sad.
— posted on December 15, 2009Love those lights over the kitchen island! Can you tell us the model name and where you got them?
— posted on December 19, 2009I loved watching this blog last year. But it’s now mid-February and the last entry was Oct 7! Let’s see some new pics! I can’t wait to see the finished product.
— posted on February 18, 2010In your last update on Oct 7 says that you haven’t given up on blogging, but it’s now March 10 (5 months later) and not one single update. So, it’s now 8 months and you’ve only put one comment on this blog.
Unfortunate for all of us that were following you and believed in what you were doing…
— posted on March 10, 2010