The early design process

While neither Chris nor I are very artistic (hello, an accountant married to an engineer!) we did want to be able to converse intelligently with the professionals we were trying to hire about our likes, dislikes and must-haves. So we took long walks with our camera and took photos of houses we liked – even if it was just one aspect so our professional could eventually put those various ideas into a final home for us.
Some elements we photographed will never be part of this house - either due to size/budget constraints (my poor bay windows!) or due to spousal veto (I am still not sure if Chris is kidding about wanting a turret in the “next” house). But we did find a number of elements that would hopefully make it into the plan.

• Stained glass windows

• Large inviting porch

• A material or colour change so the house doesn’t look “blocky”

• Symmetrical window layout

After we hired Allison we started taking walks with our camera to look for specific design areas such as full-width versus half-width front porch, styles of porch columns, and house colours/combinations.

City Hall

In the midst of interviewing the architects and designers, Chris and I got to thinking that since several of them recommended that we talk to the city about our plan, we should probably get right on that.

Not that we expected much – this is City Hall we are talking about. “You can’t fight city hall!” and all that. I had a bit of trouble believing that there were warm and fuzzy people running around there just waiting to answer our questions and help us with our renovation plan. But actually, there were.

We went onto the City of Vancouver website (http://www.vancouver.ca/) and were impressed but quickly overwhelmed by all the information available: bylaw details and definitions, neighbourhood design requirements, renovation checklists, and application requirements to name only a few. We then found a bit of calmness in the storm when we came across the Home Renovation Centre (HRC) (www.vancouver.ca/commsvcs/developmentservices/general/homerenovation/hrc.htm).

We were able to call up the helpful people at the enquiry desk and ask questions about our house and get general information about what we are allowed to do in the neighbourhood. In hindsight, we should have called them up before we bought the house, but that will have to be filed under life lesson learned.

When we began asking more specific design questions about our house, we were given the contact information for the current “Development Planner”, Mr. Tim Potter, and advised to make an appointment. It appears that the City of Vancouver decided several years ago to hire an architect to work with the HRC to be available to answer questions from home owners and their design professionals about the feasibility of building or renovating in the city. Considering there are 10 zones for single-family dwellings, 17 for duplexes and 13 more for multiplexes - each with their own requirements - and that this guy had to know them all, that is amazing! (www.vancouver.ca/commsvcs/BYLAWS/zoning/zon&dev.htm)

By this point we knew that our renovation was not going to be a simple affair. We didn’t know that we’d end up taking several extra months of planning and review and have to go to the Board of Variance for approval, but we did confirm at that meeting that the house we wanted to build would not fit the zoning requirements perfectly.

We took several photos of our house and of our neighbours’ houses for the meeting, and here is the one that we think got the city firmly on board with our plan. Chris calls it the “money shot” (please note: his words not mine) as Mr. Potter kept picking it up to look at our itsy-bitsy house next to its tall, stately neighbours. He was so taken aback by the contrast in size that he called our house the ugly tooth in a potentially beautiful smile! Thanks, I think…

The search for professionals

I’ll admit it. We had done all our previous renovation work without permits and based on pictures cut from various design magazines. It was done well, but did not really flow well from one space to another. This time, we wanted to add an entire new floor to the house which also meant upgrading all the outside “stuff”: roof, windows, siding material, exterior doors, front porch… we needed to deal with it all! We knew we needed a good plan of action which meant we needed an architect and a general contractor.

It sounded so simple – find a good architect for the renovation to ensure we are doing things right and a general contractor for stuff we don’t want to do. In reality, finding the right professionals was super stressful! How do you find people like that?!?

Architect/Designer

We asked friends, but found no one had ever hired out design services; they did what we had done in the past. So we met with referrals from co-workers of friends (of friends); referrals from the company who replaced the roof on our fourplex in Kits a few years back; and people from the Home Show including someone hanging out at the Architectural Institute of BC (http://www.aibc.ca/) booth.

Not knowing what the heck we were doing, we googled for list of questions to ask architects. Here is more or less what we asked:

1.  After hearing about our project, does it interest you? If not, could you suggest another firm or firms that might be better suited to our project? 
2. Does your firm have time to give us the service we need?
3. What kinds of services do you offer? Is there more than one way to engage your services? And if so what are they?
4. What are the challenges you see in our project?
5. Have you worked before on projects similar to ours?
6. If we were to work with your firm, how would you approach the project?
7. Who will be the project leader if we retain your firm for services?
8. May we have a list of past clients that we can contact, who have worked with the person who will be in charge of our project if we decide to proceed?
9. How long do you estimate the design process will take for our project?
10. What would you anticipate the length of the construction process to be for a project of this scale and scope?
11. Would you describe the steps involved in the architectural process?
12. How do you establish fees for a project? Are there different ways in which you structure your fees?
13. Will there be any engineering consultants involved in our project? Are their fees included within your fee?
14. How frequently do you bill, and what are the conditions of payment for work to continue on our project?
15. How do you manage and communicate about money during the process?
16. Is there any cost estimating involved along the way?
17. What can we do to help keep our project on target related to our budget?
18. If the scope of the project changes as it proceeds, will there be additional fees?
19. What services will you provide during construction for our project?
20. Are there any other issues we haven’t asked about that you’d like to tell us?

Our very first interview ended rather abruptly after only 15 minutes. That was how we discovered that there are companies around that provide turnkey services – you tell them what you want; go away; and a “short time later”, you move into your finished house. We, on the other hand, wanted design and construction services only to a particular point as we wanted to do the (high-margin) finishing work ourselves. Luckily the other interviews went much smoother.

We ended up meeting with SIX different architects and designers (people with experience and schooling in architecture but without some requirement or other in order to use the title). Which was probably too many, but we wanted to know our options. Which led to the question: do you go with the designer with years of renovation experience (and associated daunting hourly rate), the trained architect who works at a big firm and does small-scale residential work on the side or the designer who used to work at a big firm and recently started her own firm?

In the end, we chose our designer, Allison at one seed design + interiors (http://www.oneseed.ca/) based on personality, budget and common taste. Her website showcased her commitment to sustainability which mattered to us and more importantly, she “got” us and what we wanted. As a bonus, she was responsive via email which is our preferred method of communication.

General Contractor

We somehow cobbled together a list of FIVE contractors (they ended up being referrals from all the architects and designers we had interviewed) and via more googling, a list of questions for them:

1. Are you available for our expected work timeframe?
2. How long have you been in business? Done many similar projects of this type?
3. Is your work crew employees or contractors?
4. How many simultaneous jobs will you be working on?
5. What security do we have against being abandoned mid-project?
6. Who runs the site? How often are you present?
7. Who owns (pays for) construction mistakes?
8. Can we have a copy of your standard contract?
9. Do you work on a fixed cost basis or pay-as-we-go?
10. How is payment handled? How do you account for holdbacks?
11. Any problem with us living in suite during work? We need to stage work so that ground-level structural reinforcements (pillar pads, reinforcing timbers, joist work etc) is done, then pause for move and main-floor demo, then restart construction.
12. Are you comfortable with our scope of work?
13. Can your company do all trade work?
14. Do you have a relationship with any structural engineers? Who hires the engineer?
15. Are there any arrangements for us to make during the project?
16. Who arranges inspections?
17. What are the warranties on envelope, construction, … ?
18. Can you provide us a ballpark estimate for stated scope of work? When can we get a detailed estimate?
19. How long will the job take?
20. How often do we meet to assess progress, etc?
21. Please provide us with references + addresses of similar projects. 

We also had a few issues with the contractors. Our first set of quotations from all the vendors just about gave us a heart attack as everyone quoted approximately DOUBLE what we were hoping to pay!  After significant review of our requirements, assessing where we were willing (and able) to break the job into phases and me running several sets of numbers to confirm affordability, we requested that everyone quote on the new scope of work.

This time, the decision was made based on:

• Flexibility - they were willing to stop at “lock-up” which is where the building is is water-tight, but only finished to the studs on the inside
• Budget - they were on the low-end of the range, but not the absolute cheapest
• Experience – the cheapest guy hadn’t done a significant renovation in Vancouver so wasn’t familiar with all the local requirements, and
• Reputation – Drytech Construction (http://www.drytech.ca/) is registered with the BBB and had no unresolved disputes when we checked them out.

Once we selected the professionals and confirmed they were willing to work with us, we needed a contract. That was a somewhat different experience!

How it started

It was in early 2007 that we looked around our small-ish (1,000 sq ft) condo in Kitsilano and realised:

1. Not one wall or floor surface remained from the original we purchased
2. Unless we planned on re-doing a room, once the last project was finished, we were done as we could not make any changes to the outside per strata rules
3. Chris wanted to “earn more equity” from real estate, which really means a house with a basement that we could rent out
4. I missed going up stairs:  living on one floor is rather boring.

So we resolved to start looking the following year as we wanted to enjoy the benefits of our renovations… I miss that house right about now.

We hired a real estate agent in February 2008 but did not find this house until October 2008. Working against us was a super-hot real estate market; a self-imposed search area of 14 x 8 blocks around Main Street (with additional caveats as we searched); and needing a house that was not “move-in perfect” as we then couldn’t put out stamp of ownership on it for several years. Over nine months after we started, we had actually given up and only THEN did we find this house. Was that a sign?

Here is a picture of the house as we bought it. It’s a post-war (1946) bungalow with a basement suite in the midst of beautiful turn-of-the-(last) century homes. Our dream is to have the house eventually look like it always belonged on the street with the rest.

Because we had to sell our condo, we moved our possession date forward to February 2009 – over a year after we started out search. It was also in the midst of rather stressful global economic conditions - ugh. Enough said about that time.

Our initial course of action was to determine

• What we had,
• What we wanted, and
• How could we get from point A to B without going into massive debt?

We knew, even before we moved in, that we’d need to engage several professionals – the most important would be an architect. And while Chris is an amazing handyman, he’s no general contractor so we’ll need one of those, too.