It rained really heavily over the past couple of days. Joe and crew has been busy building forms. When I got there the 1st Linwood package arrived!
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
Clearing, excavation and backfill and compaction - 3 days
Our bay on Lake Muskoka is surrounded by two highly elevated peaks, but in he middle, where we are, the land is only 3-4 feet above the water table. During spring thaw the ground water comes up quite a bit. So we designed the cottage to sit on a "mound" of sorts. Our plan was to dig to the virgin soil, and backfill with engineered fill (sand), compact it, and pour the footings.
Here are some pics of the clearing, excavation and backfill:
"Virgin land" (minus the tree clearing):
All of a sudden, a CAT appeared:
Excavator using surveyor foundation stakes as guide:
Piles are building:
Down to native soil (beach sand):
Crew trailer arrives:
Joe Belanger proudly stands by excavated castings:
Choose your General Contractor wisely
We had gone with a general contractor that had really good credentials and references. We visited the owners of past projects and they had nothing but high praise so, we thought we were in good hands. He had repeatedly said that the budget was fine, and our quote would be ready by the Canada Day long weekend. After the long weekend, he needed 1 more week. So we waited the week. After the week went by, he needed another week, and another. Finally we got a quote..... which was $80,000 over budget - and we hadn't even broken ground yet. Ouch. He had also promised to do soil tests (for our building permit), and fill out the septic application for us (also required for building permit). Weeks went by, nothing was done. We had been talking to the guy since April. You'd think we would have gotten a little further. Now it was end of July - we had just submitted the Linwood drawings to the building inspector, and we crossed our fingers in hopes that we would get our permit.
Then the guy said that he wasn't really a general contractor and that he was more of a carpenter / worker. Great....... We decided to ditch him and find another contractor. This was a stressful time.....
My buddy and I decided to install an aluminum dock and tow the boat to the new lake (even though we didn't have a place to stay, yet.). Might as well get some fishing in while there was a couple of months left in the season: Turned out quite well I thought..... and I could destress on the lake:
The chief building official got back to us 2nd week of August and stated that we needed HVAC, plumbing, engineering letters (w.r.t. the flood plain elevation), and soil engineering tests. It took another 1.5 weeks or so of running back and forth, getting quotes for all of the requirements. They got done and everything was submitted. We had also chosen a septic guy to fill out our application.
In the meantime I had to assemble foundation, excavation, and framing trades and get quotes from all of them. I learned something valuable in this exercise:
a) if you want 3 quotes, then you need to talk to 10 people - many of them don't get back to you
b) prices vary by up to 200-300%
I was pretty tired to trekking 2 hours north every day to meet with trades, and the clock was ticking in terms of the financing (they require that you get to lock-up / rough-in within 90 days of land draw). So after much research, we went with the Belamann Group out in Peterborough. They agreed to stay on-site in their trailers and have the shell up by November. Sweet.
Linwood Homes
When we were going for construction financing, we needed to have complete drawings and plans from the builder. We decided to go with Linwood Homes and selected a design which we liked. We elongated the design, added a couple of bedrooms and washrooms and got the drawings made for submission to the bank.
When banks give you money for construction, they give you the money in traunches. In our case the traunches were:
1) Land draw (50% of the value of your land, which must be owned free and clear)
2) Rough-in (foundation, framing, windows, sheathing, house wrap, electrical / plumbing rough-in)
3) Drywall (heating, exterior siding, drywall installed)
4) Complete (all flooring, doors, trims, paint, landscaping, occupancy permit obtained)
Banks only pay for the money you have already spent, so make sure you work out the entire cash flow schedule before you embark on your construction financing. They also hold back 10%, which is to be held back from contractors for a 45 day period after the end of the contract.
It took a lot of juggling, but we made the budget work.
Before the machines and workers came.....
In spring of 2010, we found this little piece of land on Lake Muskoka. About 1 acre, with 110 ft of sandy beach waterfront. The lot is flat as a pancake. It seemed reasonably priced, but why was it still around? The home buying market was crazy in spring of 2010, with the HST looming, and rate hikes near, it seemed to compell people to go out an buy.
Turns out, the lot had a number of mortgages and court orders on it. Wow. What were we getting ourselves into? Good thing we had an awesome, awesome real estate lawyer. After seemingly endless visits to the town, a big scare about whether or not we would have owned the waterfront or not, and rights-of-ways, we finally closed on the lot in late May.
While we were doing our due diligence on the lot, we also had to secure construction financing. In order to get financing, we had to have:
a) complete drawings
b) an executed contract
We even wrote a business plan with value assessments for the neighboring properties, potential rental values etc.
It was only the beginning of our adventure:
View from the waterfront:
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