10 mm glass has a heft and substantial feel to it, making for an excellent stair railing insert option. The Killarney project benefits from a significant amount of glass insert and door glass. The first home is just about ready to go to market in the last week of April.
stairs are looking good.
One of the odd requirements of servicing the new multi family sites is the size of the incoming service. I have always found it ridiculously overcapacity. Generally the requirement is a 2 inch water line. These are so stiff, and awful to deal with where they enter the basement slab. I have had to assist the plumber fighting these 2 inch pipes many times. It doesnt help that it is super cold and rigid, in an awkward location and needs 200 ft pounds of torque to thread the brass fittings on so it won't pop off and cause a major inundation.
The massive pex pipe is immediately throttled back to a usable diameter. Right now this is feeding a single connected hose bib.
The rowhouse sound transmission reduction project is well underway. It is a multi step affair and incorporates some specialized products. The first is a roxul stuff cavity, followed by the mass loaded vinyl. These two items muffle and deaden sound as they are dense products. To decouple the vibrations we then use a rubber isolated clip followed by a layer of dense drywall. This is a costly and labour intensive process to detail but it makes a lot of sense to do so in the multi family projects. Words cannot describe accurately how hideous it is to install the heavy mass loaded vinyl product. The 4x25 ft roll weighs 100 pounds, and combines the nastiest elements of hanging drywall on a ceiling with stapling poly vapour barrier.
step 1 - roxul
step 2 - mass loaded vinyl
step 3 - metal furring strips are clipped into the rubber isolating piece.
The appliance package was delivered during the recent blizzard, and we've invested some time to start the install. I am usually interested in doing my own appliance installs, especially once when I had received an installation quote for a package of appliances where the wall oven supposedly needed a $250 bill to put it in the cavity and screw in a couple screws. Often in construction there is no relationship to the value of the service provided and its price, and that is a clear example of something being utterly not worth it. Other installs can be considerably trickier, such as range hoods where they are bolted to the wall, often a tiled backsplash, and are cumbersome to hang.
Hood fan body is mounted nicely, now it just needs the HVAC crew to duct it and the electrician to wire it. Appliance install is a team game and getting it all organized is the key to success.
Rather than dual oven, the kitchen features the full sized oven with the compact oven/microwave combo. This is a costly but desirable appliance upgrade.
The rowhouse project got a much needed top to bottom cleanup. This took an entire day but at least we have an empty and swept out building to smooth the transition to insulation. With delivery of the material the sound reduction project can start. We’ve got the best materials on the market and we are going to find out how well it works.
Lots of thermal and acoustical insulation is on site.
whenever I start a garage I often remark how much easier it is to build than a multi family building. From my perspective it almost seems to build itself. All the frustration and complexity that comes with underground sewer and gas installation and structural design work doesn’t really apply to the garage. If you have the right crew in place the garage can be completely done in a couple weeks.
shingles up in one day
wiring done today as well. Framing took 2-3 days but there was a blizzard involved.
Mid April and we finally have the warm enough weather to get the stucco on the wall. The crew has a number of days of work to get the full house done so let’s hope the spring like temperature sticks around.
EDIT - as of February 2021 the local area plan for the Westbrook group of communities is stalled dealing with the challenges of managing an engagement process during covid. The guidebook for great communities is moving along again and is set to hit council in March. Progress is slow but seems to be gaining momentum again.
EDIT - as of summer 2019 the arp process has been cancelled in favour of grouping communities together into district area plans. While this may be a good outcome the immediate planning needs of the community are still guided by the outdated ‘86 ARP, and that is very unfortunate)
The City has chosen to resource a select few area redevelopment plan updates, and Killarney was among the winners. You could argue that Killarney is among the inner city communities that has the greatest disconnect between the land use regulations and the demographic of the millennial buyer, who make up a large portion of Calgarians that would like to relocate to premium neighbourhoods.
I don't see this as a restoration project, because I want the new ARP to be a significant change to what currently exists. In some cases, we need to start from scratch, such as the 26 ave corridor, that desperately needs a redo. So much ill timed and disorganized development has taken place, much of it now seems to be a misallocation of precious resources. The ARP needed redone years ago, maybe a decade or two, but we were living with a hideously outdated 1986 document.
I am optimistic that the ARP will lead to profound improvement in the community and that many big ideas will be not just considered, but acted upon.
First community event takes place on April 24th.
Typical of this horrible winter and spring, outdoor work is suffering from weather related troubles. Scaffolding is going up and materials are on site. With a good forecast for the weekend perhaps we will see some stucco applied.
too much snow to stucco
Are we finally seeing a mild pullback in the sky high valuations of Killarney development land? Anecdotal evidence does seem to suggest that builders are behaving a little more rationally lately (i.e less like idiots) than they were through the winter.
I suggested that $700k was just too high for land value and would lead to builders losing money or building at margins that make little sense. Occasional premium lots may still quickly sell, but the momentum clearly has settled down. The market has created a lot of supply out of those sellers who didn’t want to put product on the market during the recession. Perhaps next year it will escalate again?
Sellers reluctant to drop prices but if they need to sell and the builders are slowing land purchases then more price cuts are in order.
the rowhouse project has now progressed to the stage where we need to get serious about the service installations. We’ve now prepared for gas meters and the six electrical bases where the utility provider will install the overhead wires and meters.
This work generally requires a fair bit of lead time, inspections and creation of accounts. I’ve taken care of the bulk of that and we can now call the providers to connect.
six electrical meters are due to be installed here. The service is overhead rather than underground from the garage. This is a much easier way to do it, though less clean looking.
dual masts are bolted to long smartboard planks that I’ve prepainted. What a relief to have warm enough weather to do some outside work in relative comfort.
the monster concrete firewall at the rowhouse continues to be a costly feature as we detail the building pre-drywall.
Given the enormous heat loss and conductive property of the concrete some extra spray foam appears to be a sensible approach. If poorly insulated there is a likelihood that frost could creep into the building along the wall and later on thaw and create moisture issues.
lots of foam to keep the cold at bay. The other side of the wall is exposed to the elements and could be a trouble spot if left untreated.
the Richmond project is now in advertising with a sign on the lawn. This is a really nice project stay tuned for more info.
looking forward to launching the next project
Back at the Killarney semi detached project we are working on the final paint for the first house. The oak railing is on so we also had a gallon of custom tint stain made to attempt to match the hardwood floor. Looks good so far. With a bit more work complete we can start cleaning and readying the house for appliances.
the wiping stain coat the orangey feel of the oak very nicely to match the white oak hardwood
We are tackling a basement project in a new suburban house for some family members. This will give us some interesting insight into what it actually costs to do a basement from scratch basically. A lot of trades and logistics are involved in these projects. I typically don't tackle any job with a construction budget less than $1/2 million. So doing a job and trying to squeeze everything into $20k is fun. I will post the final cost to do the work at the end.
Basement taping underway. We've done Framing, mechanical, vacuum, electrical, plumbing and a lot of cleanup work and logistics to get to this point. Plenty if permit fees too, the city made some nice profit on this job.
2018 has proved that snow management and removal isn't a strength of Calgary. While the main streets get taken care of the side streets and alleys are left to wait for a Chinook to melt. What happens in a year without any Chinooks?
well into April and still we need the jackhammer to clear out frozen sidewalks that refuse to melt.
More premium finish components installed at the Killarney project master bath.
Fine tuning the tub filler
and they are tucked in and put back to bed
The master bathroom shower is a completely custom hand made piece of work involving many trades and materials. Cost of these can get fairly extravagant. Here is the final piece of the shower now installed at the Killarney project.
the detached garage has been a major obstacle at the semi detached project. We couldn’t get the pad done in the fall, and with the cold and snow refusing to melt we had to thaw the ground with a heater, yet still it was too cold to pour. Today the crew decided to sneak in the pour and had it all troweled and set up by midday. We will cover it until it is time to frame the walls.
a recurring question is how much do these garages actually cost. I may add it all up and post it here once we are done.
the powers that be decided to require sprinklers at the rowhouse project (months after approving the building permit). Given the time constraints and need to proceed with inspections I went ahead with the install rather than pursue an alternate solution. Certainly over time we expect the city to demand more fire protection but realistically the city now added another $20k in cost to the building that arguably isn’t needed.
a lot of specialized components go into the sprinklers, all expensive.