A great idea worth sharing

Jen from the “adventures in homebuilding” blog on HGTV recently posted a great little trick on her website. I figured it was worth sharing since I wish we had done this.
Her designer suggested she photograph (or film) her walls before the drywall is installed so that they have a record of where all the pipes and wires are, this way, if they want to have work done or install something they have a visual record and know what to expect before they start a project, tear down a wall, or even hang a picture.

Check out her blog for more info on how to do this. I do think it’s worth the time.



Pam

We Have Cabinets!!!

I know it's not ,cool or hip, but I am truly excited about kitchen cabinets. In fact, since we have started building the house I have found my self getting giddy over everything from a hole, to bricks, to tiles and now cabinets.

We had a great surprise Saturday afternoon when we passed by the house. The cabinets that had been delayed and delayed were finally being installed. Our installer, a super nice guy from Victoriaville, was amazing. He installed almost all the cabinets by himself and took the time to check our preferences, measure our wine fridge to make it fit better, and just really make us feel good about his work. Its awesome to see everything together and finaly know we made good choices...

I spent most of my Sunday at the house measuring windows and showing my dad around the property. He took some awesome pictures, they are below:

The Marina

J-f and I took a walk down to the marina that is being built in our development. We bought the house in February and at that time, the marina was still in the planning phase. Since we don’t own a boat, it didn't occur to us to ask for plans. A marina just sounded fancy and posh to us. When we visualized it, we both visualized a yacht club like complex, maybe with a nice café I could go sit at and enjoy the view of the river (OK, I visualized the cafe not JF). , but so far however, it looks like the marina is just a plain old dock you can tie a boat to.

This being said, when we got down there it was awesome. They built a little gazebo, but what was really impressive was the view. It’s amazing that we are only 3 minutes from the city and yet it’s all so peaceful and beautiful. I can’t wait to get my kayak and put it in the water.

Here are some of the pics

Our furniture

JF and I went furniture shopping. We decided to take a chance and order our furniture before we actually moved in. Many people suggested we wait to see how we felt about the house, but neither of us relished the idea of living with a couch or a table for a long period of time. We both want to enjoy our home fairly quickly and the furniture we were looking at required up to 6 weeks to deliver. Living without seating for over a month seems just wrong.

IFurniture shopping with JF was fun but confusing, from the beginning he said he wanted modern or contemporary furniture, when in fact, it turned out he really meant dark furniture. became suspicious of this when he pointed out this type of table. Luckily, he actually likes contemporary though, cause or else it would have been more difficult.

We got a great deal on some chairs at the Maison Corbeil liquidation center. They are beautiful chocolate brown leather chairs and when you sit in them, it feels like your getting a nice warm hug.

The sofa will actually be white... or light grey; I am still trying to decide. We chose thick velvety corduroy (the same as the pillow on the chair), but we are a bit worried about that choice. I know it will look awesome against a dark chocolate of turquoise wall, but I’m afraid, at least slightly. The picture is of the sofa in leather.


The dining room table is very sleak. It’s made of ash and we will be getting it in Moka to match our kitchen cabinets. It’s designed and made right here in Quebec by Poitras.We are taking the table, but we chose white leather chairs to contrast the dark table. They were both cheaper and in my opinion look better. The buffet will have to wait for now.

Counting down the last weeks.

We have Tiles!!!

JF and I had a great surprised when we passed by the house this weekend. They had begun the painting and the tiling was almost finished. All the floor tiling seems complete and only the grout on the bathtub and in the shower is left to finish.

I was initially worried about the bathroom. We had decided to stick with standard choices for the tiles to avoid some insane costs, but the bathroom tiles that were available were a bit limited, I was afraid they may look cheese because they were in fact, just simple gray tiles. In my opinion though, the bathroom looks awesome and definitely not cheesy. Once in their environment and with the light, I find it almost looks like slate.

The tiles on the first floor also look awesome. Here is a picture of our main floor powder room. These are the same tiles as the entrance, the kitchen and in front of teh fireplace

I’m so excited they started the finishing. The cabinetry should be in by the end of august, and I am assuming the hard wood floors and carpets will be in before that.

I can’t wait to see the final product and of course I can't wait to finally move in. Hopefully everything turns out as well as the tiles. I am keeping my fingers crossed but so far so good.

I can afford what? Mortgage specialists are nuts

“You must be insane” is what we thought after our mortgage consultant told us what she thought we could afford. After talking to friends, I realized we were not the only ones. Everyone I know seems to have had the same reaction after visiting their bank. Mortgage specialists in general must be on some hallucinogenic that makes them see money everywhere. From what I here, the drugs are even more powerful in the U.S.

My husband and I bought what I consider to be an expensive home and since we made the decision, I have been freaking out. I’m one of those people that obsesses over decisions I already made. So since we bought the house, I continually check new websites to make sure we didn’t make a mistake and buy a house that is out of our means, even though we bought something well below what our specialist told us we could afford.

I’ve surfed financial blogs, governmental websites and everything I could find. In the end, I realized that I was not really content with any of the calculations people proposed. They are either way two generous with your house budget or way too strict. Here is a summary of the formulas to calculate what you theoretically can afford. I’ve added my comments, because well it’s my blog and I get to do that.

The most popular method of calculating what you can afford seems to be the 32/40 rule. From what I can tell, a version of this rule is what banks use to pre-qualify you for a mortgage, it explains their insanity. According to this principal, your monthly payments (Interest, principal, and taxes) should equal a maximum 32% of your gross monthly income as long as your total debt payments remain below 40%. I would add heating costs to this as we live in Canada and this can be a significant expense. For JF and I, the resulting payment was astronomical, way more that we ever figured we could pay without eating Lipton chicken soup for the rest of our lives. You can find a worksheet here to help you calculate what you can afford. I prefer it to calculators as it actually explains the calculation.


Based on the 32/40 formula, a couple with a gross income of $100 000 a year, who owns one compact car that they lease, should theoretically be able to swing a $2 500 monthly mortgage payment (assuming property taxes are about $3 000) or a 354 000 mortgage. However, after taxes, the couple is really only making around $65 000 a year or $5400 a month. Their house, utilities and car combined would take up about 65% of their realized income, and they haven’t eaten, clothed themselves, or paid for daycare yet, nor have they put a penny in savings. It does not seem realistic to me. If you followed this principal you would you nothing left for a romantic weekend or any type of fun activity for that matter. Forget the La Perla lingerie girls, it’s all going into your house. You can read more about how this does not make sense on the It’s Your Money blog.



The same blog that makes fun of the 32% and 40% rule proposes a much more insane idea. Your principal, interest and taxes should equal no more that 25% of your take home pay. So, if we take the same couple as before, there maximum monthly payment would now equal about $1000 (assuming again $3000 a year in taxes).
If as he suggests, they need to pay their house off in 15 years, this couple could afford a mortgage of about $165 000. Assuming they put a generous 40K down, they are looking at a $200,000 house. If you want to see what a $200 K house looks like in Montreal, the picture posted here is of a home in St-Laurent currently on sale for $199K. Keep in mind, the average family income in Quebec, for a couple, is around $55K, so imagine there lovely home if they followed that rule.

My suggestion, I like the idea of the 32/40 rule as long as you use your net income instead of your gross income. This is more realistic in my opinion as it deals with actual cash you will have on hand, not some fictional amount. Based on this, our couple can now look to buy a $290 K home without worry and pay off there mortgage in 25 years. That seems logical to me.

I also think it makes sense to look at your expenses and build a monthly budget based on your actual spending. This will help make sure the payments work with your lifestyle. If you love to eat out every night at the hippest restaurant or travel to exotic locations, it may make sense to spend less on your house and more on other activities. If you decide to buy a more expensive house, you will also be able to pinpoint what sacrifices you will make.

In the end, if you follow the first principal and are over, you’re probably screwed. If you followed the second, your financially fine and can easily afford the Raid you’ll need to fight those friendly roaches that you are sharing your house with. The third principal, well it’s my favourite because it’s about what we are doing for our home and thinking it’s the best method helps me sleep at night.

I promise less serious articles in the future.

Pam

Our Fireplace story

I’m a huge fan of fireplaces. I’ve spent so many nights as a kid warming up next to the Fireplace in the basement or my parent’s home or sitting by a camp fire. The smell, the sound, the heat, and the look of the flames that come with a fireplace make everything seem that much cozier and comforting. Not having one in our new house was really not an option for us, or at least for me. Some people insist on a big yard, a pool, a giant kitchen, I want a fireplace.

So I freaked when our contractor let us know that the gas fireplace and “to die for” mantle were no longer feasible. Well, at least not the natural gas one that we had in our contract. I had been told to expect things to suddenly be unavailable; we had expected the brand of the air conditioner to change, or maybe our tile for the bathroom to be out of stock, but a fireplace

No, out of all things it was the fireplace. Apparently Gaz Metro had changed the rules and was now charging $2K for the pipe for clients who did not have gas heating (it used to be free). If you are reading this and say: “yeah, well so what? It’s not your fault; make sure you read your contract. Our contract clearly stated that the contractor could replace items with other items of equal or greater value. But what exactly is the equivalent of a fireplace and what happens when the feature no longer available was a key factor in your decision process.

Our contractor’s suggestion, we will hook you up with a propane fireplace. When we checked into it, it turned out that a propane fireplace meant we had to rent a tank, get it filled and although I didn’t confirm this, even potentially increase our home insurance costs… equivalent my eye.

Anyway, we lucked out. My contractor turned out to be a fairly nice guy and we came to an agreement. We would change from hydro electricity to gas heating (including gas stove hookup, bbq hookup, and water heater) which he would provide at half the cost. We also found out he would be using our house as a guinea pig for NOVOCLIMAT

We are the first house they are building according to these new norms, and as a result, it’s free.

In the end, I think this worked out in our favor, but it took a lot of negotiating and preparing for it. Its always intimidating to negotiate when you have little to know clue what you are talking about. So far so good though.

See you by the fire

Pam

Quick update on the house

Here is our house. It’s gone up so quickly it’s been hard to follow. According to Jean-Francois, the superintendent, the brickwork should be done by Friday and they should have started the Gyprocking of the walls. The wiring and heating systems have been installed, as well as the plumbing.

Unfortunately, the construction holidays are approaching so whatever is not done by Friday will have to wait 2 weeks… oh well.

They are currently testing our house for air leaks as our house was upgraded to NOVOCLIMAT standards, YAY!, The housing equivalent of the energy star rating.

Since my last post we have had many adventures, and Oh yes, in most cases they were actual adventures:

-We finalized our interior choices (I’ve changed them many times)
-Had to deal with the fact that we could no longer get a gas fireplace
-Had to revise the kitchen plans over and over because we kept getting them
Wrong
-Met our wonderful future neighbohrs
-And learned a lot about construction, material, and what to do differently.

I just can’t wait till its done and we know that everything looks fine and there are no more choices, decisions, or negotiations. I am so anxious about how the kitchen will look.

I will give more details on some of our adventures shortly.

Pam

Buying new appliances - the decision

So after all the advice I gave in the previous post, we ended up following none of it. Well not all of it. We knew we wanted some decent quality a fridge that was big enough for family growth and some added features for convenience. We ended up going with Jenn-Air appliances because (and yes this is not the most scientific reason) but the handles of the Jenn-Air Eurostyle appliances match our cabinet hardware.I hope that matching the handles was a good idea... humm...

The Fridge

We did end up with some of the features I criticized including a water distributor and an ice-maker, however, after doing some research we found out that a water dispensor is environmentally friendly because it avoids having to run your tap water while you wait for it to cool down.

http://www.jennair.ca/productdetails.aspx?id=60

The Stove

This was my little luxury, it has both a warming burner and a warming drawer, not to mention it has a convection oven

http://www.jennair.ca/productdetails.aspx?id=640

The Dishwasher

This was JF's luxury, which is odd considering he doesn't like to use our current dishwasher. It has a stainless steel interior, has a soil sensor, and delayed start.

http://www.jennair.ca/productdetails.aspx?id=89

The Big Dig

We got the call today, the one telling us that work has begun and our house is now officially under construction. So what did we do? We went down to visit the hole and inspect our soon to be basement. Here are some of the memories.


This is us standing in front of the hole
Here I am in our future garage
Having some fun with the machinery. I wish I had a hard hat

JF eating his celebratory Wendy's double burger

Interior choices

These are the tiles and the cabinet colour selection for our bathroom, we will not be using the smallest tiles. The big ones will be on the floor, the medium ones on the bath and shower

OK, so the time came to meet with the designer and make the choices for the interior of the home. This was a major point of stress for me and I found the idea of it fairly overwelming. So I dragged JF on many excusions to try and figure out what we liked.

We went to many a furniture store and looked at many photos on the internet to try and decide what style we wanted and so on. We also spent some time at the model house looking at all the samples to try and get ready. I like to mull over decisions for a while so this made me rest a bit easier.

In the end the day went really well and it was not as hard as I thought. The designer, Julie, was helpful at telling us where we should put the lighting fixtures and as for plugs, well we had so many in each room, that it was not really a big deal. With 1 to 2 plugs on each wall, I'm pretty sure we won't miss any.

This is our kitchen selection, can you seen why we fell in love with the marble

We did screw up a bit with the counter choice. The granite counter top we chose turns out to be marble. We had asked the designer because after years of being quizzed by my dad about igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rock, the slab did not look like granite, but she insisted it was granite. Chances are we will need to change it because apparently marble sucks as a countertop, but we will call the designer on Monday to check.

Let us know what you think

Pam

Photos of our exterior choices

Here are some photos of our lot and the choices we made for the exterior of our soon to be home.

Paving your Driveway

Just a quick reference to a site we found that talks about what you should ask and look for when hiring someone to pave and excavate your driveway. Its in French, but if anyone needs a translation just let us know through comments and I will take a few minutes to translate it.

Pam and JF

http://www.consommation.info.gouv.qc.ca/fr/sortie/interne.asp?/fr/fiche.asp?sujet=181http://www.opc.gouv.qc.ca/dossier/semaine_thematique_asphaltage.asp

Buying new appliances

Part of the reason we saved enough money to afford our new dream home is the fact that over the years we have invested next to nothing in quality furniture or in some cases basic furniture.

In reality we are at least one step below Ikea furniture. Check out the current state of our kitchen chairs. We have more than once hosted a BYOC party (bring your own chair). So as the house gets nearer, the need to upgrade is obvious and the first step is buying new appliances.

As we get closer to the purchase date, I will post more precise ideas of what we chose and why, but hear are some initial tips I can share.

1) Don’t trust sales people
Ok, this sounds harsh, but so far I am not impressed with “appliance” salespeople. Every salesperson seems to have a different understanding or explanation. One salesperson tells you a “stainless steel” interior for a dishwasher is a must because it cleans better, the other claims it has no impact on cleaning but will ensure a silent wash, while number three says it’s just more durable.

The answer, based on about.com and a few other references, a stainless steel interior is primarily for show, although it is slightly more durable and will not stain like plastic.

2) Don’t get caught up with features
They sound great when you’re in the store, but in reality once you take a step back you realize you most likely don’t need or won’t use the feature. In truth, have you ever said…? “Hummm, I wish I could watch TV on my fridge” and do you really want to start sorting your dishes based on what material they are made of before turning on the dishwasher? Isn’t that more of a pain than anything else?

3) Ask friends and family what they love and hate about their appliances
Ok, so this won’t make you the most popular people at a party, but our friends and families definitely had an opinion about their appliances and if they screwed up, why not learn from their mistakes. For example, I realized that almost none of my friends use the convection setting for their oven, that the warming drawer they wanted so badly ended up being a pot repository, and that if you put your dishwasher in an island, you should splurge on a quiet model.


4) Ask sales people to compare styles for you so you can make a better choice
Despite my complete distrust of “appliance” sales people. I did get some pretty good style advice from them. They hear a lot of comments from other shoppers and some had some good insight. For example, I was and still am hesitating on fridge styles. Although I was told the French door style was very popular, one sales guy asked if I was planning on having kids. He said one woman with an infant mentioned that having to use two hands to open the fridge would drive her nuts, especially if she was carrying her bundle of joy in her other arm.

I hope this helps and feel free to offer your suggestions to us.

Have a great day

Pam

Our exterior choices

Hummm, well we haven’t been that good with the blog, but hopefully as things move on we will get better.

We have already chosen our exterior for the house. We went with “Boston brick”, they are dark brownish red bricks that mix multiple tints within them giving the house a spotted look. Our doors and windows will be black and the aluminium siding with is a light almond tint, a beige that is more grey then yellow.

The whole process took less than a half hour and hubby and I got along wonderfully, which is hopefully a good sign. We disagreed slightly on the roof, he wanted black, I wanted brown, but we compromised on a more grey toned roof.

Now off shopping for furniture and interior ideas… the interior choices are coming up in a few days.

The Big Day

So today was the big day. We signed on Tuesday and went to pick up the official contract this afternoon. It was so exciting, we are officially homeowners even though we technically do not have a home until September, we do have a nice 4000 sq feet rectangle of dirt with an electrical box and a phone box.

Hubby and I decided to celebrate with a nice home cooked steak dinner and some yummy wine. (he is doing the dishes right now). Restaurants are a bit pricey given all the spending coming up. We also went grocery shopping at our soon to be neighbourhood grocery store. It's a nice IGA in the style of a Loblaws.

We will be finalizing the mortgage on Thursday although the approval process went smoothly. Our next big step will be choosing the exterior colours and bricks.

As for advice, I have two big ones

1) Read your contract. The agent told us it was standard, but we found a bunch of things that had been removed, added or altered in the favour of the contractor. We went to pick the contract earlier and compared it with a copy from the "proteger vous" magazine. We asked her to change all the entries that had been modified.

2) Get your mortgage deal in writing. The gal from RBC played dumb when we talked about rates right after we had agreed to it. I'm sure this will go in our favour, but I hate when things like that happen. It feels like they are playing you.

Good Luck everyone

Pam

The Mortgage

I think we are doing something wrong.

Our builder recommended two banks but neither of the consultants seemed to know much about mortgages. The initial one from RBC insisted that mortgages are not negotiable, which is a very strange comment. Meanwhile, when I asked the gal from Desjardins to explain how she calculated that the 5% yearly dividend on our interest would reduce our rate by .27%, she responded that I should think of a dividend as money that falls from the sky. If only money did fall the sky, buying a house would be so much simpler.

I also tried thinking out of the box and called my in-laws banker at CIBC. Apparently, this was too complicated for her so she sent us to a mortgage broker. The broker seemed really nice and promised to calculate the Desjardins' price for me and explain it. When I e-mailed her back to see if she had done so, she said that she had, but had decided to transfer my file to another broker... she never explained the calculations (apparently she did them for her own benefit).

The other broker explained that the reason CIBC had transfered the file, because why would a bank want you to go through a broker, was because CIBC owned the brokerage firm. When I asked if they preferred CIBC since they were owned by them, she hesitated and said "Well, we try to do what is best for the client".

I don't understand. A bank can make 100s of thousands of dollars on a mortgage, why is it so hard for them to treat you well. I'm also starting to wonder what type of training/education you need. It seems like every time I ask a question they need a day to get back to me and the answer is always half assed and weird and in some cases has nothing to do with the question.

Arrghh. I will keep you all updated on our banking adventure.

Pam

The decision to buy

So how did we find this dream home?

I’m guessing most people make the decision to buy a home after a deliberate and even in-depth reflection. Maybe most people even sit down and make a plan, figuring out how much money they need and when they can really afford a home. Searching for a new home for us was really about taking a break from a hectic workday.

JF and I had a brief discussion about starting to look for a house… in about a year, but as usual I was impatient. So, when things got stressful, I would take a break and log onto the Remax or MLS (multiple listing services) sites and look at homes and imagine our new digs. I would then e-mail JF with my favourites and let him talk about how far they were or how much he disliked them. It became a sort of game and I was really enjoying it, I even convinced hubby to take a drive to a suburb to look at a few homes (from the outside only). Well, one day I discovered the site of this new development, close to the water, with a marina, a stream, parks, and only 3 minutes from the city. We drove down, walked into the demo home and never looked at another house.

Obviously, the house is more expensive then we thought, not even built (we were initially looking for a pre-existing home), and gorgeous. So what could we do, we were smitten.

So now, we have negotiated an offer, we are negotiating our mortgage and I am getting more and more nervous (there goes my stress release). My mom keeps calling to tell me how beautiful the house is, but ‘can you guys really afford this?’ I keep asking questions about things I don’t understand like what type of insulation, whether we can put an electronic filter in our furnace (who new filters were electronic?) and driveway drainage, will the garage flood?

Hopefully things work out!!!

Pam

About this blog

My husband JF and I are in the process of buying our first home. Although, all the literature out there suggest we do this with a cool head and make decisions based on different lists of needs and wants, resale value, and budget; we simply fell in love with a new development and a specific house.

As we try to figure out all the steps and complexities of buying a new home and especially a new construction, hubby and I have come to terms with the fact that we are going to make tons of mistakes, have to tighten our belts financially, and sacrifice a few of our luxuries to get our dream home. Instead of crying over our naiveté and ‘noobishness’, we figured the least we could do is share our story so others could learn from our mistakes and hopefully our good choices. I’m also thinking this may be therapeutic for me, so expect a few vents and rants as we move along in the process.

As we go along, please feel free to comment, give us advice or simply share your story.

Yours truly,

JF and Pam