When we first moved in the front yard was in quite a state.  It was a vegetable/weed garden with rotting wood beds, clusters of tulips were randomly scattered here and there, and about 2 inches of soggy newspapers dating back to 2001 covering the entire yard.  Not to mention the decomposing vinyl sheeting on the path and stairs, a fig tree gone wild,  rusted old railings, and a crumbling staircase.  That was just the start.

Before

During

After

We still aren’t quite there yet, but our neighbours hate us a bit less now (we hope).

This might be the single biggest problem in tackling a home renovation or restoration.  How do you find good people, that you can afford.   Hell just finding contractors who will call you back is difficult enough right now in Vancouver.

Doing the research you find lots of happy stories, and lots of horror stories about contractors.  And the only consistent aspect is that it’s usually impossible to tell what you’re in for till you’re in it.  Scary when you’ve got tens of thousands of dollars as well as months of serious preparation on the line.

One of the folks I’m considering using is making me a bit nervious now.  Adimittedly, I’m probably over reacting.  Still, we haven’t even signed anything yet and he has postponed a meeting 3 times and then promised to get information to me by Sunday night which he hasn’t.  That and the fact that I thought our last I thought that meeting was to sign contracts and set dates, but he wasn’t quite ready yet.

These are fairly trivial, but I’m always looking out for early signs of trouble.  Like I said though, I’m probably over reacting.  But in the spirit of a good blogger, I’m trying to capture some of the raw feelings in renovating, as they happen.

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve picked up some really good deals.

pic	item	paid	regular
	Ginger Empire bathroom lights From Cantu	$5 each	$657 each from manufacturer
	Jado 818 bathroom faucet (some missing parts) From eBay	$47	$589 from manufacturer
	1920s Hoosier Cabinet From Craigslist	$500	$750 + from other craigslist and eBay postings
	95″ double-hung window From Demolition sale we randomly drove by	$200	$1500 From similar Pella and Marvin windows
	Glass back door From Demolition sale we randomly drove by	$150	$800 From solidhardwood doors.com

We’ve discovered these and other great deals by things like craigslist, ebay and random encounters.

Yesterday I removed the double-hung windows from the demo house.  It proved to be a lot more work than I had expected.  This is because I didn’t know what I was doing–but not for lack of trying.  I spent a lot of time searching for information on how to remove a double-hung window and frame so they can be reused elsewhere.  Most of what I found was mostly useless.  So given the dearth of a decent how-to, here’s my shot at it.

To start off, here is a list of all the stuff you should bring:

1. A step ladder. This is important to comfortably reach the top of the window to remove the shims, nails, and/or screws.  If the window uses iron weights you will be able to comfortably undo the knots that hold them, rather than reach up draining the blood from your hands and arms when you need it most.
2. A tall ladder. You’re probably going to have to pull some of the trim on the outside.
3. Cats claw. You’re going to be busting up later, pulling out lath, and prying off layers of wooden trim, and this is a whole lot better than a crowbar.
4. Hammer.
5. Small putty knife.  I say small because the smaller knife surface will give you more leverage as you use it to pry apart tight spots.
6. Masking tape.  You won’t remember what goes where, so use masking tape to write labels on absolutely everything you touch.
7. Permanent marker. No point in writing a label if you can’t read it later.
8. Safety glasses. There’s going to be a fair amount of debris, some of it coming from the top of the window right in your face.
9. Face mask. You’ll want to keep the debris out of your lungs as well as out of your eyes.
10. Gloves.  Unless you’re hands are already made of leather, they won’t stand up to all the sharp nail ends, lath splinters, and coarse surfaces.
11. Reciprocating saw.  If you get stuck, this handy device will often be able to cut you out of it.
12. Metal cutting blade. If there are any nails securing the window frame, a metal cutting blade for your reciprocating saw will go though them like butter.
13. A camera. Helpful to take shots of everything just in case you get messed up later when trying to put it all back together again.
14. Long extension cord.  Just in case there is no power available near the window, and you need that saw to get you out of a jam.
15. A partner. There are times when you need 4 hands and need to be in 2 places at once.  Getting someone to help is just easier.  You won’t need him or her till the very end.
16. Slurpee and a snack. You’ll be doing lots of banging, so you’ll need to keep your energy up so you don’t get tired and wack a thumb or send your hammer through the glass — seriously, bring drinks and a snack.

Now here are the steps I took to remove the window (cleanded up a bit through hind-sight):

1. Break some of the plaster at the top right or left hand corner of the window.  This should allow you to easily get an edge of the catsclaw behind the trim.  Pull gently and slowly.  These nails could be 70 years old.  The trim boards will be pretty long, so they’ll be fairly flexible.  Still, don’t try to pull the corner out all the way.  Pull it out a bit, then move down and that out a bit, and work your way across the board.  Then do it again from the beginning, and repeat till the last nail pops.
2. Place each piece on the floor behind you in the same configuration it had on the wall.  Label each piece you remove with a description written on a piece of masking.  Try to you a permanent marker on the tape.
3. Now remove the trim panels covering the spaces between each window panel.  In my case I had 3 window panels, and so 2 trim panels.  This will expose all of the counter weights.  We’ll deal with them a bit later.
4. Remove the lath and plaster from behind the trim you just removed from around the window.
5. Close all of the window sashes — unless you want them to crash when you remove the counter weights.
6. Remove each of the iron counter weights.  That can take time.  The cords are likely very stiff, and very grimy.  There will be 4 for each window panel.  Each window panel has an upper and lower sash (hence the term double-hung), and each sash has a counter weight on the left and right.  These weights are what hold the sashes in place when you open them.  I had a total of 12.
7. Now you need to remove the lower sashes.  There will likely be a thin strip of trim on the right and left side of the sash.  each strip will be nailed into the frame.  These strip hold the sash in place while you open and close it.   These strip will also likely be sealed to the frame by several layers of paint.  Use the edge of the putty knife to score through the paint.  Score several times, but not too hard because you don’t want to damage the wood.  You just want to get through the pain so you can work the putty knife between the strip and the frame.  Once you’ve got that, work very slowly and carefully with the putty knife to pry the strip away from the frame.  Remember, you’re fighting both nails and age old paint.  And also remember that this strip is probably very thing, and too much muscle will easily snap it.  Pull out the knife and score the paint a little more if its giving you trouble.  Once you can fit the catsclaw in without forcing it, you can use both the putty knife and catsclaw to pry the stip off.  You only need to remove 1 strip for each sash.
8. With the strips removed, pull the sash cord through the pully and pops out the side of the sash where you just removed the strip.  This should require next to no effort.  Repeat for each bottom sash.
9. Removing the exterior trim is going to be hard.  This is the stuff that has been exposed to elements for longer than you’ve been alive — probably longer than your parents have been alive.  The nails will be big and rust, and some of the wood may have almost fused together.  Depending on the kind of trim it may be easier to push it out.  What I mean is that the back of the exterior trim should be open to you because you removed the lath and plaster from around the window.   Take a peice of wood about 1 foot long.  One of the old lath pieces might work, but a 2×4 would be better.  From the inside start at the bottom of top of the trim, placing the wood peice on backside of the trim and hammer away it.  This should loosed the trim without damaging it.  This should give your catsclaw enought space to get in and pry.  Be careful, the exterior trim wood could also be brittle, so it you want to keep it pry only a little at a time.
10. Almost there.  At this point your window should be open to the outdoors almost the entire way around.  It will likely be secured by both shims and nails.  It might be easiest to remove the shims by going outside and knocking them back in.  This may take a lot of muscle.  Carefull not to loose your grip and break a window.  You will likely only need to remove the top shims.
11. Get someone to hold the window.  While it should be completely level, this is the point where you’re going to release it, and it may fall in or out.  Use a flashlight to see where the nails are securing the bottom of the frame.  Then use your reciprocating saw with a 4+ inch long metal cutting blade to slice off all the nails hold the bottom.  You’ll be surprise how easy this is.  Cut through any nails on the sides, and then top if there are any.
12. Now with your partner try to lift the entire window frame to make sure it is completely released.  If it won’t budge make sure you removed all the top shims, and make sure you cut all the nails.
13. Before moving the window frame notice that the window sills both inside and out are wider than the hole in the wall.  In other words, you can just tip the window pull.  First lift it slightly, and then shift it either left of right as far as it will go.  This should be enough to get the edge of the sill on the other side passed the wall opening.  Pull that side in the house, and then pull the other side in.
14. Ta Da!  You’re done.  Now you just have to get that thing home, clean it up, strip it, satin or paint it, replace the cords, fix the damage, mount it in your wall, and replace all the peices.  Ah, but its all worth it… hopefully.

So far I’ve been using the following tool to manage this renovation project:

Google Docs Spreadsheet

• For collecting a log of which contractors and which suppliers I’ve contacted, when, and the results. This is crucial for keeping track of who you need to follow up with.
• For listing all the work that needs to be done in detail.  This is helpful to give to contractors when the come for a quote.  It also help make sure all the contractors are quoting on the same list so you can compare apples to apples.
• For sharing live documents rather than exchanging attachments, which makes version control a breeze.
• And of course for tallying up costs of both labour and material

Microsoft Project

• It may be a little heavy handed, but I already own it.  The Gantt chart is incredibly useful for visualizing the entire project over time, how long each job will take and the dependencies between each job.  Not sure I could plan out the scheduling without a Gantt chart.

Sketchup (www.sketchup.com)

• This is an invaluable tool.  I want to marry Sketchup.  Designing the kitchen, bathroom and landscaping would have be practically impossible for us without it.  I realize people have been doing this on paper for years, and some guys designed the pyramids without even that.  Still, this tool allows you to see exactly what you imagine, and quickly.  Take the time to get over the learning curve, start with detailed, accurate and precise measurements, and you’ll be set.

Email is usually a tool I find very helpful.  What often happened to me was that I’d call a contractor, discuss, and then email a link to all my photos and models.  It seemed like a really helpful thing to do.  Pictures are better than words for describing a design, and the models contain enough detail and measurements that it shouldn’t be necessary for the contractor to spend their time coming in person to quote.

The results, however ,were often that the email would be ignored and I’d have to follow up with another phone call, only to get some ballpark figure based on… well I often wasn’t sure what, because I wasn’t sure if they’d actually seen the photos and sketches.  When this happened I simply dropped contractor from consideration.

Having never done anything even remotely like this before, acting as the designer and general contractor has been an enormous amount of work.

I’d the say the hardest, and most time consuming thing has been the design.  There are so many options available.  So many it’s almost paralyzing.  Over the past year I’ve been chipping away at it in Sketchup.  I’ve gone through dozens of different designs, and probably hundred of minor variations.

Acting as the general contractor has taken a lot of my attention too.  After get a few sporadic quotes over the past year for a thing here and a thing there, I got serious about 6 weeks getting quotes for labour and materials.  We’re now just starting to make specific choices, lay down the credit card, and commit to dates with people.

6 weeks isn’t bad, but since I run my own company I’ve been able to take time away from my work for this.  If I had a 9-to-5 I’m not sure it would be possible–at least not possible for the first time.  After we’re all finished though, and have learned so much, I’m pretty confident if we do this again I can probably get the entire project organized and underway in about 3 weeks without even taking much time from my real work.

So far our ad-hoc process for renovating this old house has gone something like this:

• Contact kitchen designers, and find ourselves disgusted by the idea of paying $150/hour for some one with a specialized but relatively simple domain expertise.  We decide to design it ourselves
• Designing ourselves with the help of Sketchup is slow going.  Partly because we’re not experienced in kitchen/bath/landscape design, and partly because I’m really busy with real work and can’t devote much attention to this.  We determine $150/hour is an offensive rate for a kitchen designer, but overall would have helped us avoid many headaches and got things going faster.  However we’ve gone too far ourselves now and won’t bail.
• With design complete we determine how long we can live with the chaos of renovation.  About 6 weeks seems to be what we’re comfortable with.  After that the microwave lunches and eating out will start getting a little old.
• Early July we make a rough list based on the design of all the jobs that need to be done, and which trades we need to call
• Mid July, and with the help of the yellow pages and the BBB site I start contacting contractors.  This yields very slow progress.  The Internet is of no help, and searching it to find good contractors ends up being more of a time sink than anything else.  There seems to be a ratio of thirds.  Call 3 contractors, 1 will respond; with 3 responses 1 is worth considering.  In other words you’ll have to speak with at least 9 contractors to find one you like.  Multiply that by the number of different jobs you need done.  That’s a lot of calling.
• Calling is a complete pain in the ass.  You’ll call and sometimes you’ll get someone, sometimes you won’t, and sometimes you’ll get voicemail.  I found that I almost always had to followup more than once to actually get the quote.  Often I’d have to make several calls.  The supply and demand ratio is not on our side right now.
• What turns out to be helpful is asking some of the contractors who do one thing, who they’d use to do something else.  This seemed to connect me to more available contractors more quickly and accelerated things.
• I visited lighting, window and eco material stores.  Yes I spent some time at Home Depot and Rona, but more from price and availability benchmarking than actual shopping.
• After 6 weeks of sourcing contractors and materials I had enough information and quotes to start deciding on who I’d like to work with.
• And now I’m just about ready to pull the trigger and break ground on this renovation.

That’s the process so far.

Last December I signed an agreement with Rona to replace the roof on our garage and carport.  It took us another 4 months to get the installer to bring the right shingle swatches from the right supplier so we could choose a colour.  Granted I got really busy wrapping up a project, we went to Malta, and we really weren’t in much of a hurry.

In April the installer said he would send his carpenter by to estimate reframing our carpot to make its slope steeper.  I followed up with him twice, and then didn’t hear anything back for the next 4 months.  Again, not a big deal becuase we aren’t in a hurry and have many more pressing matters inside the house.

Then today Rona called asking about the roof job.  Weird, because i planned to call them for a refund today.  Looks like fate beat me to it.

With this kind of pre-sales follow through, what could I expect for post-sales support?  I’m not interested in finding out.  After 8 moths of no action, Rona agreed to refund my money.

Right now our kitchen has a couple awkward window that face onto the back yard.  We want to open this up with a single large window centered on that wall.  This of course means getting the window soon because we’ll be opening up the wall when we demo the room, and we can’t leave an open hole for very long.

We want to open it up with a single large window centered between two pantries with bench storage just beneath it.

We got a couple quotes from Heritage Windows and Home Depot that were really high — like over $5000 high.  After calling around a bit more to places like Marvin Windows and Pella, I got prices around $1500 for the window itself and another $1700 or so for installation.

Obviously these would be new, energy efficient windows with all the handy hardware.  But they would be new windows, made in a factory according to a strict template.  In other words, we could choose the size, color and material, but that would be all.  This was a problem because all the frames I saw were simply too decorated and wouldn’t quite match the rest of the house.

But sometimes you just stumble on things, and the plan changes.

This past weekend we took a drive out to UBC.  Normally we take King Eddie, but like nearly every other major east-west road, it is now under construction.  So instead we took 33rd, which is somewhat less convenient.  Just as we passed Arbutus, Lola saw a giant spray paint sign that said “Demo Sale”.

We pulled over and wandered in the house to take a look.  It’s took bad they’re demolishing the place, becuase it looked like it was really nice once upon a time.  However, decades of mistreatment from being partitioned into several rentals has pushed it beyond repair.  Their loss is our gain.  Everything was for sale.  Windows?  Yes.  Doors?  Yes.  Everything.

So for about $200 we pickup a 3 paneled, double hung period windows that will just barely fit the space we have.

Sure we have to take them out ourselves, but that extra $1500 in our pocket should make us feel better.

They have a door and some hardwoord flooring that we might also pick up.

We had taken a drive-by of the house before our real estate agent set up a viewing.  It was a mess.  The front yard was a ratty vegetable garden covered in decaying newspapers, the path and stairs were hidden behind a cracked vinyl cover, the back yard was filled with trash and covered in dead moss.  Not to mention it was painted Pepto-Bismol pink.  There was no way we were interested in purusing this one.

However we forgot to tell the agent, and he set up the viewing.  Not to be rude, and because we had other houses in the area to see anyway, we went through with it.

It turned out to be a lot less bad than our first impression.  And the closer we looked, the more we liked it.  To be honest, it was the small things that got us–a little rounded door with nice hardware, coved ceilings, a telephone nook.  A little renovating and we might have something worth keeping.   Here is what we see on that first viewing.

I’ve been trying to get this party started for a very long time now. The story is simply that we felt a bit cramped in our edge-of-downtown concrete condo, and started looking around for something a little bigger and a little closer to the centre.

We ended up finding a house a bit further away from downtown, but it was a whole house, with land, had good bones, and had been largely unmodified since it was built in the 30s. Sure it looked like a complete mess on the surface. But just beneath, there was something worth bringing back to life.

Renovating this old vancouver house was going to be a lot of work, and I wanted to capture it.  Unfortunately this all started over a year ago, so I’m way behind.  Fortunately we haven’t accomplished much in that year, so I’m really not that far behind. 

So let’s get this party started…