Yay Kat for starting the new thread.

June 2 hydroseeding

June 25

Timber landing and stairs to the carport sundeck.

Trailer load of rail building materials. That is next weekend and many more.

Hope the hydro seeding goes better than ours!

Looked great going on. However, it turns out the operator had just done a property with some sort of high weedy grass and hadn't cleaned out the machine before going on to us. (Not to mention the mess on the bottom of our stone walls that I haven't gotten to yet with a pressure washer.)

Anyway first serious showing today. Friend of the buyer of a new build across the street.

Our neighour.

Worthy, hope you got a discount, or your money back, for the weeds!

LOL! (This is the construction/destruction business, where your money is finders/ keepers, including everything on site.) Just had a new battery-powered hedge trimmer vanish with only drapery and security guys on site. Mysteriously, the camera system went down. Hmm.

Still looking forward to Kelly M's foundation adjacent creek.

you'll be waiting a while on that, @worthy

I am up against my permit and things that do not pertain to an occupancy permit are way back on the list.

Ugh our hydroseed was not a success - not inexpensive either, we have tons of tall weeds also? we have not done this before so wasnt sure what to expect (lakeside done in sod and that all looks great)

Still reporting in from the floor plan phase. Kelly M -- thanks for the note last month about designing from the site first. That's exactly what finally unstuck us. Down to two plans now, and for the first time the shortlist feels like we got there on purpose rather than by elimination.

Kat, the exterior color call sounded stressful. Glad the sage doors landed right.

Watching everyone else get into tile and trim makes the lobby feel a little longer, but at least we know what we're doing now.

Kat your house looks beautiful! I am trying to find the right white paint color for our house too. I had the painter paint samples of SW Natural Choice and BM Feather Down- they look awful- way too beige. I had thought I might use Alabaster for the trim. The front of my house faces just a tad north of west, so a lot of direct sun in the afternoon, but also a lot of pine trees around so some possible green reflection issues…
Back to the color wheel, and I might ask the talented Houzz color gurus for some suggestions.

Apparently our wood floors were installed last week, so that progress is exciting. I’ll visit the site again at the end of the month.

End of the month? I couldn't build with that much confidence in the building crews!

We rented in the same neighborhood and we were at the site first thing in the morning when subs were arriving and in the afternoon after they left. No one knew the plans better than I did and we quickly caught any issues. I also speak several languages, so sometimes I would translate for my GC when I could see the subs weren't quite understanding what he was explaining!

I also speak several languages

Farsi and Portuguese, perchance?

Yes, to the second one!

The framer and his son came out to put the 3x6 deck on the landing, and I am slowly getting up to speed with the custom fabrication on the handrails and barrier rails.

I had a conundrum with the slope of the deck and placement of the landing but I solved it at design last year. The 3x6 cantilevers out 8" or so, and is plenty strong for that duty.

generous 6'+ landing to bring things up if you are against using elevators.

Stair Rails are getting fabricated in place, removed and painted and installed.

The barrier is modular and also supports solar panel awnings.

A lot has happened on site in three weeks. Drywall is finished, all but one room has been painted (seven days of painting by me & my husband), master bath tile work will be done today, stone on the fireplace installed, rear porch deck finished. We're in a bit of a holding place right now though waiting on the siding above the roof line to be installed. This is preventing attic insulation, AC start up, and wood floor installation. I drug my feet on making a decision for the siding due to the HOA material limitations. Choose Mastic Everplank and received a call a week later that it was being pulled from the shelves due to delamination issues. Pivoted to Ascend composite cladding. We're hoping for installation next week, but this puts our wood floor install three weeks behind schedule, at best. Here are some progress pictures.

I hate it when you spend a bunch of time picking a product and then it gets discontinued!

Good they pulled the siding before you got to deal with it.

Why would siding install impact insulation?

@Jeffrey R. Grenz, General Contractor we had a small amount of water come in from a heavy wind rain storm. We believe it came from where the siding is not installed on the side gable, specifically the most west one. We don't want to chance getting more water with an attic full of insulation.

@Chispa, it is nervewracking to be building a house from so far away. I'm not familiar with the vendors, I don't get any help from local showrooms when I want to just check on a product as their sales staff work on commissions and don't want to waste time on me! Luckily, I have hired my architect to help oversee certain items, and my builder is wonderful, he is easy to reach, and is great about keeping us in the loop. He also encourages us to visit as much as possible. Which isn't as much as we'd like.

When we knocked down our house in Florida, and rebuilt while renting a place ten minutes away, I had more trouble than you can imagine.

That builder installed the floor trusses between the first and second floor incorrectly, and refused to correct the mistake. They were hanging lower than the top of the windows! He wanted me to just make a little "well" in the ceiling by each window to accommodate the error.

(This was the proverbial last straw, I went straight to a lawyer, and we ended up firing him) Also under his "watch", the roof trusses were installed backwards. I was standing there and told the installation crew that it was wrong and the truss guys refused to listen to me and stop! I called the builder who sauntered in about an hour and a half later, and told me it was "no big deal" the inspector from the city would have caught it!

Later in the process, while installing countertops, I informed the crew that I was in the back yard and not to drill for the faucets until they came and got me.

Nope! Drilling wrong. On and on...So given that countertop experience in particular, I am planning on renting a place close by this build for the last 60-90 days of this project. Fingers crossed.

Strangely reassuring to hear that incompetents are so sure of themselves here, there and everywhere!

We're 99% done with them. But thefts keep showing up. Five designer w.c. brushes--yes there are such things--walked away. Keeping the missing hedge trimmer company, I presume.

Someone stole my nice new vacuum cleaner that I left overnight at my build once! I took it over to clean up some mess, didn't quite finish before dark and when I came back the next morning, it was gone.

Saw some really weird items deposited in the dumpster at the site too.

Accumulate enough debris on site to fill a bin. Then in and out with no freeloaders. Our security camera once caught the bin truck run over a temporary fence section the driver threw aside, saving us the $200+ fee for the damage.

(I started my working life at a supermarket with an armed guard at the entrance.)

My first and only French door install

I machined up the stop that goes on the fixed door, cut in cane bolts, all the hardware etc.

Installed with screws and cut plugs.

Brother got all the balusters fitted up and blocked and glued and clamped to the toe board today. Easing the elevator up a few inches at a time to be in the working sweet spot.

I built a custom vanity with a Kraus deep bar sink and some Corian-type solid counter.

That bathroom is the one by my shop and the laundry, and I wanted more than a little teacup vanity and less than a big old utility tub. This fit the bill.

Our shed going up.

Naturally, the neighbour who signed a petition to stop our build and called inspectors repeatedly during the build materialized to complain: it's too high, too big and too close to the property line. She asked to see my survey. I replied, "Sorry, can't find it. I guess you'll have to get your own survey." And decipher the City's Comprehensive Zoning Code without our assistance.

Lucky for you @worthy

Sometimes neighbors are not the welcoming committee & belive they should have a say in the construction of your home. Be prepared.

Immediate neighbors were fine, but our ARC was run by a bunch of miserable people when we built. I volunteered for it this year and we haven't turned anything down. Most people are spending a lot of money to renovate the older homes and we believe they have good intentions, until they prove that they don't.

Worthy - gotta love neighbors. And there's always one....

Are you considering staying if you are construcing outbuildings? or is this for future marketability? (and what's gonna be in the shed?)

Our neighbor called the ARC so often when the lot clearing started claiming that too much was being cleared, blah, blah, blah...

He had also called them when my husband was trying out his new weed whacker on some grasses in the driveway a couple of years before, claiming that he could hear us cutting down trees. Several members of the board who were available to go to the "emergency" hopped into their ATVs and came racing over to confront the bad tree slaughterer. My husband said they all looked very embarrassed, and then annoyed, when they saw what he was actually doing.

So, after an initial blast of complaints from him when we started our project last summer, it seems they have told him to stick a sock in it.

However, I have been toying with ideas about how to really annoy him if he starts up again during our final stretch, and my favorite idea so far is to host sunrise skeet shooting parties in our backyard. (He is the only neighbor close enough to hear the gunfire)

Random gunfire!

Now there's a solution.

***

Are you considering staying if you are constructing outbuildings?

It's on the market. The shed will hold tools and supplies, screens and a hundred storage bins clogging up the garage. Still cheaper than renting storage space.

Planning to reno the temp house we bought while building this one. We rented it out starting 1 Aug.

Planning for an addition over the garage...but only if the municipality permits us to even up the garage with the adjacent second floor.

Tempted to spray foam the exterior, then clad. (It's a 1970s home with minimal insulation.) The likely half-rotted boards in the stucco are now covered by crudely-nailed bent aluminium.

Inside, we'll open up most of the first floor. And see what we can do to create some height in one room at least. Ceilings are only 7'6"! I will miss our current 10 and 12 ft. ceilings!

Trusting our architect has some radical ideas.

The kitchen is installed. Building a 3 family home. It's been challenging. My builder is sick of me hahha I'm reading Guide to Becoming a Builder by Hasan Wally right now. Builder says half of my questions are in the book. Can't wait to finish.

Review your list, make sure you've completed all seemingly minor decisions, order what you can.

@worthy if you have rented the house out for August 1, when do you plan to do the renovations?

Any follow-up from your neighbors friends who viewed the house?

@Sean Tee Do you mean 3 separate unit spaces connected by walls, or a single family home that 3 families will share?

when do you plan to do the renovations?

Next August. Fingers crossed!

In Canada, any gain on sale of your principal residence is tax exempt, provided you have lived in it for at least one year. Our occupancy permit was issued 26 January 2026. so we have to wait at least that long to close a tax-free sale. (As well, the buyer would have to pay a 13% sales tax.)

And that's assuming there's a buyer!

Home sales and prices are in a cyclical slump. Ten years of Trudeau the Younger is coming home to roost in an economy also caught in a Big Wind from the South

High-end homes are being hit hardest. But since we bought the lot in 2010, we have a cost advantage. Still a leap of faith!

We are finishing the month strong! This week has been full of activity; crawlspace insulated, HVAC operational (not running full-time), concrete in the garage and front porch poured, garage doors installed, but most importantly..... siding! We are so pleased with how it turned out. I selected a color that matched the windows perfectly. It all just quietly blends together. Now that the siding & soffits have been installed we will insulate the attic which means we can run the ac full time, and then hardwood flooring in two weeks!

I did update our schedule this week and pushed it back four weeks, but we are still making great progress. This week marks 18 weeks since we broke ground. I'm determined to watch fall football on the back porch.

Joy M -- 18 weeks in with siding done and HVAC running is real momentum. Fall football on the back porch sounds like it's actually going to happen.

Still over here in the floor plan lobby. At least watching everyone else's progress keeps the end state concrete.

Worthy, the spray foam plus cladding idea on the 1970s house sounds right if the envelope is as leaky as you're guessing. The ceiling height is the harder problem -- 7'6" is a constraint that an open floor plan helps but doesn't fully solve.

Our electricity bill in the new home for June --5,650 sf with ceilings from basement up of 8'7", 12' and 10'--was less than in the '70s house! (The basement in the '70s house is 6'3"-6'8".)

I could not live in a house with 7'6" ceilings! Most of my houses have had 9 ft ceilings with some vaulted areas. Our current house, which we designed, has mostly flat 12 ft ceilings, with a few secondary rooms having 10-11 ft ceilings. I love the feeling of the higher ceilings.

"Trusting our architect has some radical ideas."

I certainly hope so! The best radical ideas are the ones that after a time if ponderance the conclusion is, "That's a really good idea."

New August thread is here.

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6580582/august-2026-how-s-your-build-going#n=0

@Mark Bischak, Architect did you notice the diamond window that you suggested? It makes me smile. Thank you again for your help.