Satellite view

Satellite view of the Jiulia Lakes housing development, courtesy of maps.google.com. This image is about 2 years old - the three lakes are all connected now.

It's not related to our house, but this is a cool demo... science zoom

Day 11 - Excavation continues...

Trench to drain weeping tile from around footings out to ditch by the road.

We have found some people who will take any excess rock and miscellaneous dirt/rock off our hands, and even cover the loading/trucking costs. That's great, because we've already blown the excavation budget!


Trench dug to well. Water line from well needs to be buried below frost line for winter protection.


Shovel, resting after a hard day's work (at end of day Monday, April 18th), sitting on top of a pile of rock broken up by hoe ram, and piled up.

Day 8 - excavation continues

Rock still to be removed, in corner, at end of day Friday April 15th.


Excavation - at the end of the day on Friday, April 15th. Lots of rock for everybody!!!



Driveway base - made of crushed bedrock removed from the excavation.

Day 7 - Time for the hoe ram!

The hoe ram, hard at work, destroying a knoll of the bedrock. The rock is soft, so it is not too difficult, which is great because it is $238/hour!!


Steve Berry, one of the developers of the Jiulia Lake Estates. Steve is currently landscaping the ponds at the back of the properties.

Front and rear elevations of the house

Front/rear elevation views of house

Arts & Crafts inspired

Well, I will post a drawing of the front/rear elevations of our house shortly. It is Arts & Crafts inspired. "Inspired", since it is not a strict following of the A&C design rules, but rather is a more modern interpretation.

Day 1 - Permit

Yesterday we wrote the cheque for the permit and development fees, so we should have our building permit today -- which makes today, April 8th, DAY ONE of our build.

Of course, it's raining which is no good for excavation, so that will start on Monday.

I haven't posted a view of the front/rear of the house, and our floor plan, but I will do that soon.

Contract signed!

Well, tonight we signed the contract to build our new house!

And so we begin for real...

Permit application and action...

Lots of things happening, still in the preparatory phase...

• Charles applied for our building permit
• Charles has a crew lined up to work on our house, once we get our building permit.
• Sent contract to lawyer for review - got his comments back.
• Another meeting with the bank people. lots of fees! (have to keep their revenues up!)
• All window quotes came in a lot over budget - the closest one was 21% over budget. That quote was with all of our wish list. Now we're working to find lower cost options.
• Looking for flooring. Want to have real wood (need engineered flooring as we are on hydronic radiant heat). Don't want to get laminate if we can afford not to. May be hard to find and stay within flooring budget. Found some nice porcelain tiles for ensuite bath!
• Getting close to making a decision on cabinetry. Company O uses up the entire budget with laminate countertops only. We can come in slightly under budget with Company L including getting granite countertops :^) -- if we get the granite for a different supplier (L's granite supplier charges a lot).
• Heard that American Standard is having trouble supplying the Town Square products. Fortunately we can afford a long lead time...
• Found nice faucets for main bath (sink and tub/shower) as well as for laundry room sink at Canadian Tire for better than 50% off!! Excellent!
• Changed our mind about the vendor who we were going to have install structured wiring. The person we dealt with was full of lies and never got our name straight. He asked us to drop off a plan for him before we met for the first time. We did this almost 2 weeks before our first meeting. It was obvious at that time that he hadn't really looked at the plan for more than a few minutes. Then, after taking about 45 minutes, he tries to hit us up for a big "design" fee. Yeah, right.... We'll find someone else...
• We can start the site prep soon, while we're waiting for the permit to be approved.
• Still to do: visit trim suppliers, another plumbing fixture supplier.

That's all I can remember for now.

Herb Lagois

Herb Lagois, award-winning designer and owner of the company that designed our house.

Check him out at www.lagois.com.



The person who did the drawing and most of the technical part was David Jones. I don't have a photo of Dave (but have asked him for it and will post one if he sends it to me).