How much is my house going to cost me is the most common question asked of builders. Shira of DOS Design Group and Damian of Newcombe Wood Concepts and Construction suggest working from the top down. Establish your budget, then talk to your designer and builder to help determine your project to define your cost per square foot. Measure Twice, Cut Once co-hosts Jennifer-Lee and Mike tackle how to establish a cost per square foot.
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About the Speaker
Shira Rosenberg, Residential Designer, CEO, DOS Design Group
Shira is an ASTTBC Certified Residential Designer, one of only approximately 100 credentialed in BC. This designation means that she is approved to design new homes.
Shira oversees all design projects and monitors schedules and deadlines. She researches zoning to determine the maximum allowable building options for a project and works with the client to achieve their objectives. She communicates with clients, contractors, and other professionals and ensures everyone is aware of all updates and changes to the project. At the same time, Shira keeps the DOS teams apprised of how these changes need to be incorporated into their work. Her methods help identify hurdles and develop plans for resolving them so the design comes together as smoothly and efficiently as possible.
“Every project is unique, and I adapt the look, so it represents the client’s vision and needs. The most defining aspect of my work is that the layout is clean and efficient. I can’t count the number of times that I hear builders and engineers asking how I had managed to change a design to maximize the usable space. This is a compliment especially when I am reworking a design on a rescue project, where another company wasn’t able to comply with zoning or code, and I find solutions to all of the non-compliant problems and successfully attain permits.”
Resources mentioned in this episode.
Here's the Full Transcript of this Episode
Jennifer-Lee:
Welcome to Measure Twice, Cut Once, the podcast from HAVAN, the Homebuilders association Vancouver.
Mike:
From codes to kitchens,
Jennifer-Lee:
safety to sundecks.
Mike:
We’ll take you behind the walls and all things homebuilding design and renovation,
Jennifer-Lee:
And give you the ins and outs from the experts
Mike:
To help you build and renovate the right home for you.
Jennifer-Lee:
in plain language,
Mike:
focused on home, building design and renovation.
Jennifer-Lee:
I’m Jennifer Lee Gunson,
Mike:
and I’m Mike Friedman. Now that you’re here, why not hit subscribe? And you’ll never miss another episode.
Jennifer-Lee:
Hey Mike, here we are again, back in the studio.
Mike:
Hey Jennifer, back in the saddle, back in the studio long time. No talk, I’m happy to be here again.
Jennifer-Lee:
Me too. Today we’re taking a deep dive into the team you need to build or renovate your home and just how much it costs.
Mike:
Take it for me, based on my experience, it’s easy to think you can design your own home or be the general contractor to save a few dollars, but with all the technology required today, coupled with zoning and building bylaws, I think our guests might paint a slightly different picture.
Jennifer-Lee:
Agreed. After speaking with Babak Nikraftar from Condoworks and Jamie Banfield Design last week, it really hit home. the value of working with a good designer to increase the livability and a contractor with systems and the knowledge to help expedite, permitting, and bringing resources to help save time and then money.
Mike:
And cost is a huge issue. We all see amazing photos of beautiful homes and Instagram and house, but really don’t understand how much taking the time upfront to properly plan can impact your budget. It can be really intimidating to spend the money upfront, but often saves you quite a bit in pre-construction.
Jennifer-Lee:
Well, our guests today are going to help us walk through the people you will need on the job and why and how to work out the costs. Let’s bring on Shira Rosenberg, Residential Designer and co-owner of DOS Design Group and Damian from Newcomb Wood Concepts and Construction. Welcome guys.
Damian:
Hi.
Shira:
Hi
New Speaker:
Guys, welcome to our show. Great to have you.
Damian:
great to be here.
Jennifer-Lee:
So before we begin, tell us about your journey in the industry and how you came to be where you are today. Shira.
Shira:
I went to school in California for product design and industrial design. I was basically prototyping, came back to Canada and actually ended up as a sculptor for science fiction movies, um, making props and weird, crazy pointy things, because that’s what I really enjoyed. Somewhere along the line I came to the conclusion that I was better off making architectural scale models. And so I went from prop – making to architectural scale models to designing architectural scale models to Nick convincing me to make scale models for his games so that he could eventually figure out how to convince me to date him. But that took like 15 years. And in the meantime, he also convinced me that we should quit our jobs and start a company. And that kind of went in that direction. And then we owned a design firm.
Mike:
Damian, you came from a slightly different background. Can you tell us a little about your story and how you got from there to here now?
Damian:
I went to school, to BCIT to become a carpenter. I ended up working in a luxurious, company that did ground up construction for new builds in West Van and the endowment lands. After I finished five years there, I decided that I was going to go into commercial construction and try that route. And I ended up working as a carpenter for a while in the industry. I had the chance to join a larger general contractor working as a superintendent. So I did that for three years and was really enjoying my job and realized that I see all these other companies doing it for themselves. And why don’t I do it for myself?
Jennifer-Lee:
Shera. I’ve heard you say without the builder in, at the beginning, you cannot provide accurate information and without the designer, the builder cannot give you an accurate cost. The two of you of course, work hand in hand, which is what we’re learning a lot through this podcast throughout the seasons. Can you expand on this concept?
Shira:
The most important thing you’re going to do with your project is your scope and your cost. What do I want to do and how much money do I have to do it? At the end of the day, you kind of want to start with what’s the cap you’re willing to spend on this property because it is real estate. You’re kind of already in a kind of luxury market when you’re starting to do custom things, but you want to make sure that if you’re only willing to spend $200,000, that you’re not designing something, that’s $500,000 because you’re wasting everyone’s time and money going in the wrong direction. So you figure out what you want to do and how you want to do it. And then you get the designer and the contractor and we collaborate with the client on how to get them, the things they need on the budget. They’re looking for in compliance with code and zoning. And then you’ve got one point of contract, which is usually your project manager, which is hired by or supervised by the general contractor, or is the general contractor depending on the size of their company. And they’re sort of collecting all the data from everybody and making sure that everybody knows everything. You don’t want your designer to not know what the engineering is, and you don’t want the engineer to not know what the geo tech is doing. We can’t do our jobs without the information from everybody together.
Mike:
We’re seeing this already. We’re seeing a shift towards a different integrated design process. And I want to give you an analogy for our listeners so they understand. Picture people swimming. I want you to picture image. Number one is a bunch of rows where people are racing against each other. That is the old way of doing business. Now I want you to picture a bunch of synchronized swimmers dancing in unison. That is the new way of doing business or the integrated design process. And it is definitely a better way of doing things as we’ve learned through many, many conversations. What I’m hoping we can do is expand a little on the integrated design process, about talking about getting a team of people together and what we want to get out of that team as well. And Damian, maybe you want to start on this because you’re, you’re sort of at the receiving end of this, once all the other pieces are put together.
Damian:
A lot of that usually just comes down to time and money is as every project does. But your analogy is it was really good. As a team, if we’re all swimming together, it’s more efficient and we’re all working together on the same thing at the same time, you know, going the other way. Yeah, we can still pass the finish line, each one of us going ourselves, but it takes a lot longer and costs more money. And we end up going back and forth in that. Unfortunately, when we’re doing rentals, nobody wants to pay for rent longer than they have to, or stay in an Airbnb longer than they have to.
Shira:
Houses have become more complicated. They’re more like rocket ships now compared to these things that anyone could buy in a magazine and just build. Back in the day, houses were extremely simple. You bought them in a Sears catalog and put it together yourself. And it was really, really easy. Anyone could do it. But they didn’t have a lot of stuff going on. They were just two by four walls with installation, if you were lucky and really simple wiring and not a lot of stuff going on, you probably had one washroom in the house. Now we’ve got these big complex houses with more complex requirements by government. All things we’ve learned while building houses over the years is how to make them safer, how to make sure we don’t have mold, how we make sure we have proper venting. Every professional evolved has like a little specialty they’re doing right now and it’s, we all each do our own piece and we don’t cross over very much. The bare minimum you need to build a house is you need a designer. Well, you need a project manager, some point person in the beginning, and then you need the designer to figure out the layout, whether or not it’s compliance, whether or not it meets all this code, you need a structural engineer or they’re going to make sure it doesn’t fall down. Depending on what your ground’s made out of, you need the geo-tech, whether or not the house is going to sink into the ground. You will have an envelope engineer or a CA and they deal with the composition of your exterior walls and roof. What is on the outside of the house and how well the heat stays in and out. You’ll have a mechanical engineer now and they’ll have HVAC, plumbing and electrical, and that’s all these things are complicated. It’s like the difference between the cars we used to buy in the eighties versus a car you’ll buy. Now. When I had my first car, it was this old junker that my friends could just take pieces out and put pieces in by themselves. And it was really easy and it wasn’t a big of deal. It was before we even had YouTube to ask how to do it. And now if I go get a car, I open it up. My, my car’s electric. It’s got a box on the inside and I don’t know what it does, and I really shouldn’t touch it. And of course the cars are more expensive now just for the base model. But that’s because there’s so many more pieces in it. They’ve got, electrical, everything where back in the day, it was all handles and nubs and stuff you could fix on your own. And that’s how housing has evolved as well.
Mike:
Analogy for the car. And it works for two reasons. First of all, yeah, a new car is more expensive than an older car, but you get so many more features with a newer car, so much greater efficiency, so much more options as far as what you can do. So I think there’s nothing wrong with pushing up the envelope and increasing the complexity of what we do as long as the payoff, which is the efficiencies there as well. And again, this goes back to planning will get us better results throughout the process.
Damian:
The same thing as bells and whistles like somebody’s a bathroom back in the day was just a bathtub, shower, curtain, and a rain shower head. Now we have steamers and heated floors in the shower and niches with, frost-free mirrors. It’s a lot of these things we can’t, sometimes we can’t, um, install them afterwards without deconstruction, what we’ve already done. That’s why it goes back to all of its pre-planning before we actually start the easy part.
Jennifer-Lee:
I know we talked a little bit about the different roles, but what is a residential designer versus an interior designer?
Shira:
Due to a lack of regulation, basically anyone can call themselves a designer, . This is all about Part 9. Part nine is the building code. It was created so that we could originally so that people could design houses and build them themselves. But it’s kind of gotten out of hand and it’s more complicated than that now. And that’s where we ended up with the certifications and registrations. So you’ve got a registered interior designer or a certified residential designer or a certified building designer. These are people that have actually passed tests and certifications with the ASTTBC or the Interior Design Institute of BC. And they’ve been shown that they’re qualified to interpret and apply building code. They’ve proven that they understand the process. They understand the rules, they understand the complexities. It’s much like, uh, um, with the car. You can’t just hire some guy that’s sitting at a bus stop and say, yo, fix my car. You should go to mechanic. And the mechanic should have some kind of certification to work on that kind of car. And that’s where the certifications come in. So a certified residential designer and a registered interior designer have both passed the same tests out of two bodies that supervise us and we can interpret and apply code. A lot of other people don’t understand the significance of the term interior design, and they can vary anywhere from people who pick colors and pillows to people who actually design single family homes. There’s no protections for the homeowners. If you’re hiring somebody that has no qualifications and because the word isn’t protected, anyone can call themselves a designer. So there are, regulated words that people can’t pretend to be like, you can’t just call yourself a realtor. You have to pass a test and then you can give real estate advice. That is how the registered interior designers and certified residential designers function much like the realtors we’ve, we’ve passed a test. We have a stamp. We have to requalify every year, proving that we are still on top of our game. And because there’s no regulation, there’s nothing to protect homeowners from random person at the bus stop saying, I’ve decided I’m a designer today. And just going out and telling someone they’re doing it and giving them bad advice. It’s buyer beware. It’s all about protecting yourself and understanding where you’re at and most houses like your average house starts at a million dollars these days. That’s a lot of money to build something and not getting a qualified person because you’re trying to save five or $10,000 at the very beginning of a $3 million possible build is crazy.
Jennifer-Lee:
It never works. You never say money. Time after time.
Shira:
But it’s insignificant. Once you start building your house one question that has to be asked in a day costs $5,000 because people need to put down tools and stop and figure out and maybe undo something and do it again there. Just because you got permits doesn’t mean that it’s built, right, or that it’s drawn, right. That’s still on the contractor. And on the homeowner. the building codes are there to protect other people, not so much you as the home builder or as the home designer, they’re there to make sure that you don’t set your neighbor’s house on fire, or that you don’t fall over into this other house or that if there’s a flood your house, doesn’t pop up off the foundation, float down the street. That’s why all this building code is created; is to create a safe environment for everyone around your house, but they’re not responsible for checking. So you could have a designer and you just go hire the, the, the cheapest guy on Craigslist, because they were only $3,000 and they’ll design a house for you sure thing. And you get through the permitting process, the cities, it’s not their responsibility to check their work.
Jennifer-Lee:
No, it goes down to hiring the right people that are going to guide you into the proper practices, which brings me to, when do you hire an architect versus a residential designer?
Shira:
So that’s all actually legislated and really easy to process. And it’s back to the building code. So building code has 11 parts, one to 11. Part nine design, is single family, residential and part three is architecture. So there’s an Architects Act. It’s available on their website and everyone should know this and access it and use it. And it tells you when you can and can’t design something without an architect. So if you have more than four units in a building, if you have a commercial building over about 3000 square feet with a bunch of other caveats, or it’s an assembly use like a theater, a restaurant somewhere, how many people will die in your fire essentially is really what building code comes down to. If more than your personal family will die in a fire, you need an architect and because they’re regulated, nobody can pretend to be an architect or do an architect’s job without being one. It’s illegal. The Architects Institute sues companies and people every day. And it’s all over their website of people doing work that record an architect without being one. In an apartment building. if you’re going to take two units and turn them into one unit or take one unit and divide it into two units that legally requires an architect because that multi-family building has more than four units in it. It requires an architect to make it, but a single family home falls under Part Nine. You do not need an architect.
Jennifer-Lee:
Oh, wow. I’m learning so much. I didn’t know all the difference about this.
Damian:
We have one job where an owner owns four units that are side by side, and she wanted to just amalgamate two of the units and just take down a 10 foot wall. And she could have, you know, an open living room that was huge. And then you could have the two families that would live together, as simple as that is, both sides are just residential we can work on that. We need an architect just to do that little bit of work for the whole building.
Mike:
Sounds like they’re expensive things to catch after the fact, which goes back to what you were talking about, trying to save money at the beginning, by not hiring a person who ironically will save you a ton of money by saving you steps and getting you better prices on materials and stuff like that.
Shira:
Well, also telling you in the beginning, before you go like $30,000 in starting to take out walls, cause some unqualified person told you, you could, um, right at the beginning, Oh, this requires an architect. This architect is required to do the following applications and calculations and fire safety. They be able to tell you for actively look, look, even without construction you’re in at $50,000 worth of professionals and life safety assessments. And if you don’t have the stomach for that, you don’t even start down the process. Maybe I shouldn’t have bought these two units thinking I could just combine them because I didn’t ask anyone. And I just made decisions without advice.
Damian:
Yeah. It’s, it’s sad to see a lot of people. They do that, and they do get two units each other and they figure, well, I have two units. I can just join them together. You know, I’ll get a call saying, Hey Damian, can we get a price for doing this kind of work? And I said, absolutely, it’s totally possible. It’s expensive and saying, well, how much is expensive? As Shira said, we’re at $50,000 of professional fees. Plus the actual cost of work, which is the cheap part. You could turn down quite a bit. And then three, four months down the road, when, once again somebody doing work and you get a work stop from some, you know, the, the banging of the noise or whatever it is, then that general contractor or whoever is doing the work. If they’re not qualified or if they don’t know what they’re doing, they leave and they pack it up and they don’t return the calls. And, and now that homeowner’s stuck trying to fix that. And at that point, now they’re spending all the costs of what they paid that contractor plus, you know, our original quote.
Shira:
And if they don’t have the money for the professionals to actually do it, right, the only option they have to them is to produce a permit, to return it to what’s last exact permitted state. So now you’ve spent all this money to return it to the way you bought it.
Jennifer-Lee:
And that’s not what we want to do. That does not accomplish our goal. And that, that leaves us usually with less money, uh, when it comes to custom homes that are more than two levels, with concrete, do you need an architect for that?
Shira:
You need an architect if you have a four-story home or more. More than three stories or more than one story of concrete, that might need more description. So the theory of Building Code is never remember it, always go read. So when I go read, there’s a certain amount of basement that needs to be basement to not count as a story. So you can’t have more than three stories above grade. Once you hit four stories, it requires an architect flat out, no question. So your basement usually has a foundation either right up to the main floor or a portion of the basement that’s fine. But if you want to keep going and you want to have an extra cellar underneath it, so you have a full seller and then a concrete and then a floor above it, and then another floor that’s also underground. That would be more than one story of concrete. And that would require an architect as well. This is basically building code says, you can build up to this and anything beyond that is not Part Nine anymore. So you need an architect because you’ve fallen into part three.
Jennifer-Lee:
So if you’re building just a one story home with a basement, depending on the size, you don’t need an architect?
Shira:
Absolutely not. As long as it’s single family and has less than 4 units.
Mike:
Shira and Damian this is awesome information for people looking to build or renovate their home. Now that we have a more clear picture of who’s who and why you need various specialists, depending on your project I want to dive a little bit in the cost factor, but first we need to take a quick break to thank our podcast sponsors. So hang in there, we’ll be back in about 30 seconds.
Jennifer-Lee:
Measure Twice, Cut Once is grateful for the support from our podcast partners BC housing, BC, Hydro, and FortisBC. Their support helps us share expert knowledge and resources like we’re hearing today from Shira and Damian to help build, design and renovate the home right for you.
Mike:
And speaking of resources, the BC Energy Step Code is a provincial standard that is moving the entire home building industry forward to build homes to better energy efficiency standards, which means better comfort, health, and safety. Be sure to check out www.betterhomesbc.ca and you’ll find a variety of rebates for construction materials, home, energy evaluations, plus mortgage and tax refunds.
Jennifer-Lee:
There are also rebates for renovations. Just click on the rebate search tool button on the homepage of www.betterhomesbc.ca to find cost saving resources for your next project or talk of your licensed builder or professional contractor. They’ll help guide you. Now let’s get back to Shira and Damian.
Mike:
Earlier we talked about having the right people doing the right jobs and having, you know, avoiding overlap and redundancies. So essentially we’re talking about a separation of church and state where we’re siloing everything, but we’re all still working together. We know it was in the church. Let’s talk about the plan. We talked earlier about the builder providing accurate information at the beginning with specifications, from designers and other industry experts. Shira, can you help us dive a little bit deeper and how to work out the numbers and maybe talk a little about the difference between soft costs and hard costs.
Shira:
People will always start with, okay, well, I can build a $300 a square foot, but what does that actually include? So when somebody is going to build a $300 a square foot, it doesn’t include taxes. Let’s start there. It doesn’t include your permits, your design, your structural, your excavation, your demolition of the existing home. Everything you do before you actually dig a hole on the ground is a soft cost. And that’s never included in your price per square foot. The price per square foot goes up the fancier the inside of the houses. So the fancy of the outside of the houses, but those pre costs don’t really vary. It’s going to cost this much to dig a hole that doesn’t really matter how fancy the house that goes into it is it doesn’t matter how deep it is, but generally speaking, they’re always the same depth. Permitting fees. They’re not huge variations in it, but once you get into the building, the house, you get massive variations. Are you going to do vinyl signing, Hardie siding, wood siding, Dekton siding? Your siding costs can go anywhere from $5 square foot to $500 a square foot. It’s the same size house, but the costs go all over the place, depending on what you’re making.
Damian:
You got to hire the right people to do it and, and, and go back to having the right team, uh, that has everybody’s back during the process. Um, depending on what city you’re at permits takes certain, certain amount of time planning it, our idea, designing it, everything does take time and that’s right.
Jennifer-Lee:
And having the right team includes having an interior designer. And I know sometimes we’ve talked about this. A lot of people don’t want to have that person because they think it’s going to be a huge cost. But can you talk about some of the cost savings of when actually hiring an interior designer onto your team?
Shira:
You have a job and it’s not that. So if you’re doing your job all day, and then you come home and you have one hour free time trying to do a full-time interior design job for your entire project, having no experience and nothing to do with the industry, all you’re doing is slowing down and making mistakes in your project. You’re going to go ahead and you’re going to order this fireplace. You’re not going to talk to your contractor or anyone else on the job, because you’re doing it yourself. You show up on site that that fireplace is there and, Oh, well, this fireplace can’t be installed in this situation. It can’t be vented. It’s illegal because of new laws that have been in place, then you bought it in the U S and it’s, you’ve now spent $10,000 on something that you can’t use. You can’t return. And your contractor is now behind schedule by 10 weeks because he has to go bring one in that actually meets code. And these kinds of mistakes happen all the time. Oh, I’m just going to go buy tile. Well, that’s great. Did you even check if your wall towel, is it wall tile or floor tile? Because if you buy wall tile and put it on the floor, it’s going to crack and you don’t know what you don’t know.
Mike:
Well, we spent a lot of time just talking about materials and costs, but we should also talk about one other element too. And that is time. Yes, you can save time getting a design more efficiently, but there’s also things like coordination of trades. And if you don’t know what you’re doing, all of a sudden, a week, extra dry walling, that electrician’s not sitting around waiting for you to call them, they have other jobs. So managing this can actually reduce significantly the amount of delays and that correlates to less rent you’re paying while you’re waiting for your place to be built or having to move that much sooner or getting into enjoying your new lifestyle as well.
Damian:
It goes back to communication as well. One analogy is about the bathtub was my place. Shira designed me a beautiful bathroom, and I loved it, but I wanted a bigger bathtub. So I found a bigger bathtub and I bought it and said, Shira, make this work in here. You know, depending who the owner is, some people are okay with delays or certain part of the house not being completed. Now, one of my bathrooms not being done, I don’t mind, but in this case it completely changed the layout. Now if I had told Shira beginning, actually you know what? On hindsight I think I want a bigger tub. It could have been designed right the first time. And then we wouldn’t have had this problem, but sometimes you make changes on the fly. When you do get in the space and you see it. And as long as people are openly communicating,
Jennifer-Lee:
It’s super important to be honest with your design aspirations to your designer, but you should also be honest about how much money you actually can spend.
Damian:
That’s huge. And once again a lot of people say Hey, I want to do a bathroom. How much is it going to cost? It’s like, well, we can do a bathroom $10,000, or we can do it for a hundred thousand dollars. It’s you always work backwards. How much money are you comfortably spending versus how much money do you actually have before there’s no more money in the bank? And that’s what happens. Cause sometimes when we’re doing it and somebody says, Hey, Damian, I actually want to put a steamer in the bathroom. It’s like, Hey, well I know what your top dollars. Yes, we can do that. Or right off the bat, it’s like, nope, not going to happen. It’s just keeping everybody in check from the beginning, rather than going too far down the line. And you end up with disappointment. I want to make sure everybody’s happy. And, and the project’s smooth right from the get-go.
Mike:
The other thing I would think about is also cost overages to you. No matter what your budget is, whatever you I’ve identified that you can afford. I have yet to encounter a construction project where some change hasn’t happened or a wall has been opened, and there’s been something back there. The bottom line is you need a buffer and a contingency and the right personal, helping, not only plan for the immediate cost, but also create a bit of headroom for you should that happen where the, you know, you found old knob and tube wiring when they opened the wall or something like that.
Damian:
Yeah. Depending on the year of the house, that’s, that’s why I always say like, I have to know how much money you’re willing to spend versus like what’s a top dollar before that’s it. And a lot of times, if we only have $100,000 to spend and that’s every penny in the bank and that’s just what they have budgeted, you know, we might only budget for $80,000 knowing that, hey, this house, this year has asbestos, or it has aluminum wiring. We know these things are going to come up budget for them so that we always end up in the amount that that can get paid and that doesn’t leave anybody in a, uh, you know, doing free work or putting a homeowner out in a bad spot,
Shira:
You want to plan for these things at the very, very, very beginning. You don’t want it to be a surprise when you open the door and, or open the wall. And they’re like, Oh, now I have to deal with this. When you’re working with experienced team, they know houses in this era had asbestos. So like they’re already planning.
Jennifer-Lee:
You said it well. Like it’s a fact that like picking the right professionals and choosing the right professionals that are going to help you make the decisions, make the best planning decisions, because these people know if they are contractors, they’re going to know what age of the house and what type of things that they need to look for – is asbestos going to be an issue. And they’re going to be able to put a cushion in there for you if there is asbestos.
Mike:
Okay. I got one question, for the design end of things. Okay. So say we’re, we’re going to do a new home or renovate our home. As we started talking, my family is in there. Is there such thing as sharing too much information? Or how deep should I get? Like, should I tell you everything, no matter how awkward or embarrassing, or is this something that we’re just going to find out magically by accident later?
Damian:
I would love to hear every little detail. I mean, it makes it like a fun part of the team. I want to know all the weird quirks and I want to know all these things and that way, while we’re doing the project, I kind of know what the homeowners want or for sure aren’t going to like, and we can kind of plan accordingly. I think it’s fun. I think it’s fun when you do share too much. Cause it doesn’t really matter.
Jennifer-Lee:
Well, maybe not too much.
Shira:
Actually, there isn’t too much. When you’re planning, these people are going to live in this house, knowing weird quirks about what they love to do or what they don’t love to do that might not be something you thought of like how many people need to fit in this bathtub? If I didn’t ask that, I wouldn’t know that I needed a really big bathtub.
Damian:
Some people think, yeah, like too much. It’s like, it’s like rain showers in the bathroom. Do you want to rain showers in the bathroom? And people are like, well, why? And it’s like, well use your imagination, right? I find it for people. It’s these very, everybody has very small, weird quirks and that’s what can make or break a project. Surprisingly. Um, I had one homeowner that couldn’t have any of his door trim cut at any location, trimmed or shaved to fit at all. So we ended up moving all of the interior walls and the whole house, just so that the door was, you know, four and a half inches off the wall, not an inch and a half. Wow. And that small quirk was a huge cost and said we had spending $20,000 reframing the house, just so that trim didn’t get cut.
Shira:
You know, there’s trimless doors. Right?
Damian:
But that even needs to get framed properly for it.
Jennifer-Lee:
Is there any other outrageous requests you’ve ever had for design anything interesting and neat and anything like really cool that you’ve had to build that’s obviously not typical?
Shira:
We had one where they wanted, they had the master bedroom on a loft and they wanted all glass railings and were like, well, you know, everyone in living room, we can see you. And they’re like, it’s okay. We just don’t wear clothes in the house. I’m like, all right, then I don’t have to worry about where the glazing is. Let’s do it.
Damian:
That is more surprising than you think, having these big, open windows in a bathroom, in a shower, in a bathtub. And it’s like, Hey, like what about the blinds? How are we going to give you privacy? It’s like, well, nobody’s going to look into my suite and your neighbor’s going to look straight into your house. People, people don’t care.
Shira:
Some people like it.
Damian:
Yep.
Jennifer-Lee:
Shira and Damian, this episode provided so much valuable information to help lay the foundation for a successful new build or renovation. You have given our listeners, and now I feel like I need a bigger tub, a lot of great information and resources. So thank you.
Mike:
Yes. This season of Measure Twice, Cut Once has been all about finding and building or renovating the right home for you. Today we learned about how the right people are important to building and renovating your home, who the players are and the importance of bringing everyone together at the beginning of the project to help define the project and realistic costs about being open with your builder as he or she will be able to determine the team, identify the soft costs and help you identify and define your square pot cost per foot. And if someone is willing to give you a price with no information, don’t hire them. The change orders will likely extend past your budgets and your dreams. If you could leave our listeners with just one last piece of advice Shira and Damian, what would it be?
Shira:
Don’t cheap out in the beginning. I’d say half of the projects that come in are emergencies and problems because they weren’t ready. You’re going to build a $3 million house, but they’re not ready to spend $10 or $20,000 for the instructions on how to build it. We get this weekly with the one that came in this week that I have to start next week- she hired a designer on her own, got a design, got permits, hired a contractor, got a quote for those plans, started building it. And now they are at framing and the plans are unbuildable. Literally the foundation doesn’t line up with the walls. Doesn’t line up with the roof. They have to stop work halfway through construction. And now it’s costing them $5,000 a day to sit and wait to hire a new designer, to fix the plan so that this house can physically be built and adjust everything because then once you start fixing them, now, the things they bought don’t fit. The bathtub is the common one because they are exactly five feet. And once you start moving a wall an inch or two it doesn’t go in the home anymore. It’s going to cost them so much more than the most expensive designer ever would have cost in the beginning to sit and hold while they fix it. And so do it right in the beginning. You have to be prepared to spend the money for the whole project. Not just once you start hitting ground and Oh, now I’m ready to spend money because if you didn’t do it right in the beginning, if your instructions aren’t good, your build won’t be good.
Damian:
Yeah. And for me, I guess it’s interview each other. Don’t just call somebody and ask for a price. Call and meet up with them. And with, uh, the situation we’re living in right now, I mean, that might be a little bit more difficult, but make sure you meet with a person and that you guys like each other. And hopefully things go smoothly from that. And we had a saying, when I was an apprentice, if you’re failing to plan, you’re actually planning to fail.
Mike:
Well, that makes sense. And that applies to almost everything we do and what a great way to end our conversation together.
Jennifer-Lee:
And if people want to find you after hearing this episode, how can they get in touch with you for your services?
Shira:
Well, we’re DOS Design Group. Just Google DOS Design and show up. We’ve got a big team. Everyone’s there to help, and everyone has their individual specialty there.
Damian:
And if anybody wants to get touches me, my Instagram post is NewcombeWCC. You can message me there. All my contact information is on the page.
Jennifer-Lee:
Thanks, Shira and Damian, and to our listeners. If you enjoyed this podcast, please follow this and share it with your friends and families. The more followers we have, the more people will find our podcasts and the excellent resources our guests are sharing. I’ve learned so much today about who to bring on and why, when building or renovating and how to calculate the cost to create a realistic budget
Mike:
For notes and links to everything mentioned on today’s episode, including resources shared on the episode today, go to havan.ca/measuretwicecutonce
Jennifer-Lee:
Thank you guys so much for coming in.
Damian:
Thank you for having me.
Shira:
Thanks so much, guys.
Jennifer-Lee:
This has been Measure Twice, Cut Once the podcast from HAVAN, the Homebuilders Association Vancouver, Thanks for joining us today
Mike:
For notes and links to everything mentioned on today’s episode, go to havan.ca/measuretwicecutonce.
Jennifer-Lee:
Follow us and review us to help empower homeowners like yourself to make the right decision the first time.
Mike:
Until next time. This is Mike Freedman.
Jennifer-Lee:
I’m Jennifer Lee reminding you to measure twice.
Mike:
and cut once.
