Yay! The Royal Bank of Canada has come through for us! Thank you Sherry Taylor, RBC Mortgage Specialist! With Sherry’s help, the bank has approved our building style and design. They’ve approved its value. And, they’ve approved us. Sherry’s been great. We look forward to sitting down with her to work through the details of…
Here’s something everyone should know about building an “outside the box” home that is smaller than the average 1250 square feet per person and environmentally friendly – a home that damages the land as little as possible. Once you’ve found a builder that sees the vision and has the skills to make it a reality……
So far, the folks at Kent Homes have been exceeding our expectations. They’re in touch with us daily, as they report progress on working out design details and sourcing items for our home. For example, today, Laura reported that the push-to-open hinges we liked for our cabinetry are very pricey (about $3,500 in total). Yikes!…
One of the truly handy things about building a single module prefab home is it can be expanded and contracted length-wise until you have the right balance of space versus expense. When we first decided to work with Kent Homes, we were thinking 16 feet wide (that’s the maximum width that can travel on Nova…
Our nearly finalized plan with Kent Homes is here! Just a couple of minor tweeks and we’ll be able to sign off and get scheduled. This image is very small, so if you’re like me and enjoy walking yourself through floor plans, click on this link for the larger sized PDF Plan Perhaps you’d enjoy…
Nearly everything in our new house will do double duty. For instance, our dining table will have clever design features so we can place it against the wall, parallel to the refrigerator and at counter height for additional kitchen workspace. With a drop cloth over it, it will make a fine painting studio work table…
OK. We’re back. After two and half months of meetings, waiting for replies and researching options – all in an effort to stay the course of building small and staying within budget – we are surprisingly calm and feeling that all will fall into place in the best possible ways. The deadline of June 30th…
Perhaps you’re wondering what’s been happening with our project. It’s been a while since I’ve posted. During this time, we’ve been sourcing building bids and investigating prefab versus site-built options. To enable this information gathering comparison of apples to apples, we’ve needed to play our cards close to our chests. This is still the case,…
For safety reasons, stairs need to be lit properly in all buildings, including your home. Often, in renovations and new builds, I see that little to no thought is directed toward how this could be done. Here are some brilliant ideas to light your stairs in creative and beautiful, yet functional ways. LED Tape Light…
Recessed lights, like all directional lights, make for excellent task lighting. They’re designed to direct light onto surfaces. Sadly, sometimes we see recessed lights laid out in even, tidy rows on the ceiling in an effort to achieve ambient lighting. This grid approach certainly does light things up, but the effect is flat and the…