The First Bill

I'd love to see the look on Clinton's and Matthew's faces as they realize that I'm writing about their first invoice... Just read right through, guys, and things will be ok.

When one starts talking about building or renovating a house, one's friends, family, acquaintances, and hangers-on get very interested in the financial side of it. How much is your budget? Are you borrowing money to do it? What rate did you get? Once people find out we hired an architect they ask things like - Isn't that expensive? I thought you guys were on a tight budget?

Well, we got the first invoice from our architects about two weeks ago. And we happily wrote the cheque on the weekend. Why do I say happily?

Those of you who know me know that I'm cheap. I don't really like to pay for things we don't need - heck, I don't even like paying for some things we do need! Do we really need orange juice? Some would say that we then fit the profile of people who would go down the road of the generic design build - thought to be the cheap solution for a new house. The problem is, I don't think that's the best financial decision. Vancouver is full of evidence that it's not the right design decision - there's no shortage of half-baked design-build houses littering our streets. But financially, it's a more complicated story. Why do we have to build a cookie-cutter, inefficient, mediocre house just because we're on a budget? Why not pay somebody smart (Measured) to create a cost-effective design (to reduce construction costs), an energy efficient design (to reduce operating costs), and a livable, beautiful design (so we never want/need to move)? It seems to me that building is complicated and the best time to bring in people who understand design, building construction, and building science, is up front in the process.

My expectation - yes, I have high expectations for this house - is that Clinton, Matthew, and their crew are going to give us a great house that fits inside our budget. Are we willing to make compromises to do this? Absolutely. I'm much more comfortable paying someone a bit up front to give us the tools to keep construction and operating costs to a minimum. In return, we're looking forward to an interesting building with a great interior plan that is as easy on the planet as we can make it. It can be done, we're going to do it, and yes, it means we have to pay for it. And that's ok with us.

We got the first invoice recently. Are we getting value for our money? Absolutely.

10/16,2008 Posted to Architecture

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The Joys of Zoning

I’ve been interested in buildings and design topics for some time now, thanks to a friend who morphed from marine science (my original line of work) into architecture. But it wasn’t until we tried to get our reno off the ground last year that I really got into the innards of city planning and zoning bylaws.

Our little piece of heaven is zoned RS-1 – one of the more restrictive residential zoning districts. I’m all for planning guidelines and zoning to protect the integrity of neighbourhoods. What I don’t particularly understand are some of the quirky side effects. As an example, when we were going to do our reno, we made sure that we followed all the rules and guidelines (e.g., window area, height restrictions, FSR, building envelope, etc.). I’d be happy to nerd-out and post the various spreadsheets that we used to assess these things but I’m not going to. If you’re interested, drop me a line and I can send you the tools we used. I assumed that the fact that our house was 18 inches too close to the property line on one side would be grandfathered, given that the house was built over 80 years ago. No such luck. Krista met with the city while I was off on yet another work-related road trip. The first request from the city planner was “please move the house.” Yeah, I don’t think so. I don’t think we’re going to spend an extra 50K (minimum) to raise the house, re-pour a code-worthy foundation 18 inches to the south, and then redo the required structural work, plumbing, gas, and electric lines as we drop the old house onto the new foundation. With us nixing that idea, the only way we would be able to do the planned reno was to go to the Board of Variance and ask for a relaxation of the side-yard rule that our builder violated 85 years ago. Long story short, we did that (after a 3 month City strike) and the BoV ruled in our favour.

 

Fast forward to 2008 and now the topic is parking. The City’s parking bylaw states that we’re to have one off-street parking spot for each dwelling unit. It has an admirable goal – to control parking congestion in dense neighbourhoods (anyone tried to park in Kits in the last 20 years?) and to put the onus on those who build to provide parking for their buildings. OK, but what about an RS-1 neighbourhood like ours? We’ve got lots of parking on our street (though many of the houses have suites below) and no back lane (which would have provided us with a “free” solution for this). If it was just a cost, I’d suck it up and do the right thing. The real issue we have with this is that to make two off-street spots, I’m going to end up cutting the curb and eliminating two on-street spots. How dumb is that. Not only that but what about life beyond the car? Krista and I have one car and we both ride our bikes to work (or take transit). Do we really think that in 50 years (and this house is still going to be around then) people will have the same reliance on the automobile? Not likely. In this forward-thinking city we’re still beholden to the car. We’re in discussions with the City on this point and we’ll keep you in the loop as things move forward.

 

07/13,2008 Posted to Architecture

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