the old elm trees that line a few of the Killarney streets are back and looking great after the long winter. The semi detached project is ready for sidewalks and landscaping.
Killarney is looking good. Note the wild mini tree at the front of the lot was cleared of brush and debris.
the crew is back to put in the underpad and carpet in the basement of unit 2. Even the pad changes the look of the room tremendously. Track strips get glued down to avoid puncturing the heat lines in the slab. Before and after pics to follow.
pad is down.
This post will be a picture only
Drivers on 33 st will have a hard time not seeing the nearly complete rowhouse exterior.
All the drywall is hung and that means it is time to tape. All this will take place over a one week period and ceiling texture work is booked for the next weekend. After that we can prime the walls and start interior work.
Rowhouse project is looking a lot better cleaned up and ready for taping.
The first Killarney semi detached home has hit the mls (c4182007 listing ID). The pictures look great, just exterior work remains.
Project is sold link no longer works
The semi detached home unit 1 is ready to list and we’ve finished the photos. The last details seemed to take a week to deal with but we are very close now.
Finally ready for sale.
The interior at the semi d project in Killarney is nearly complete. While a lot of exterior work remains, we had the stagers arrive and set up some furniture. Looking good so far.
We are staying one step ahead of the boarders with the rowhouse sound mitigation project. Application of a generous squeeze of green glue between the two layers of drywall should contribute to dampening vibration through the wall.
Jp has applied the compound and is now hanging the next layer
The lower sheet is ready to go.
exterior work is taking shape now with the cladding crew on site to start installing trims and the corrugated metal cladding. With the warm dry conditions a good portion of the site is now dried up mud and the remainder melting snow and greasy mud. A vast improvement over our formerly glacial front yard.
a great start on the wall with all the service penetrations and meter bases.
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.