To bin or not to bin...

Simultaneously to the house coming down, we are now experiencing some pretty challenging logistics problems on the job site.

The demolition comes in two phases. First, the front facade of the house and the "guts" are pushed inside the "pit" and three walls are left standing. They will load all the debris from that first wave of demolition into bins and clear up the pit. The second phase consists in pushing the remaining walls in and taking away that load which is mostly bricks. Anyhow, witnessing the talks about what needed to be done and how it would be done was pretty interesting and kind of frustrating.

The main problem we have to deal with right now is to get the bins close enough to the pit to load them up and take them away. We need a total of 50 bins and so far, we were able to load... ZERO on the property! That sounds promising. The thing is, the access to the front lawn is very VERY difficult and the discussions this morning were about "how are we going to bring these babies up". Well, it looked almost as painful as the G-8 meetings... BIG PROBLEMS... RIDICULOUS/UNACHIEVABLE SOLUTIONS involving the goodwill of others... Forget it... It was, in fact, close to this:

Well, OK, obviously... not really, it wasn't even close to that.  It looked more like 5 guys at loose ends, pulling their hair out (or what was left of it for some), trying to come up with some kind of a solution. Granted, the problem is quite substantial but it sounded like we were going nowhere. It turns out that we need to widen the lane way to access the front pad with the truck. And this requires the City's approval: JESUS, are you fucking kidding me??? Please let's not involve the City in this, it is going to take 200 weeks to get the go-ahead and we can't afford to delay the project any further. Guys, LET'S KEEP THE CITY OUT OF  THIS!!!! Is anybody paying attention here??? I guess not (see picture above... *_*).

Let's see what comes out of a week-end of intense thinking about how to get what we want without having to deal with more bureaucracy and stupid permits. Now, this got me wondering: what's worse? Dealing with the City or with the neighbors? I'd say if I could avoid dealing with either one of them, it would be grand... but that's wishful thinking. Interacting with the City is plain frustrating because there are so many absurd and arbitrary rules to follow, it turns everything into an assault course. The thing is, the City doesn't necessarily want you to FAIL, and that's the main difference with the neighbors-from-hell. They will do everything to see you bomb. So I'll pick the City over them, any day of the week, thank you very much!

It is most definitely happening.

Quick trip to the house and yah, demolition is definitely happening. Nobody has stopped us so far, let's keep our fingers crossed. It looks, sounds and feels kind of scary. Here is a picture to illustrate the topic. 
Photo taken with my hand held device AKA blackberry which is why the quality sucks, but you get the idea, it is pretty intense. 

So intense that I decided to not stick around... also because the neighbors were there and looked both pissed off and in shock. And again, since I am not a complete insensitive bitch, I really didn't want to crow in front of them. Let's not add pain to injury, although with the amount of grief they've caused us, it would have been well deserved... but I am a nice person so I won't go that route. 

Funny thing though... which confirms the fact that these people are COMPLETELY demented... When an excavator starts to eat away at a house, you really, REALLY, want to stay away as much as you can. It wouldn't come to my mind to, let's say, use the back door to get into my house. Using the back door implies walking in between the two houses (one being shaken like a house of cards) and you would have to be either nuts or foolhardy to want to do that. Well, listen to this, #1 shows up to the house next to ours (where her mom, the old lady lives) while the demolition was happening and asked us if she could use the back door... Are you fucking insane??? for real? Seriously, you want to go in from the back door??? For god's sake, what's going on inside your head??? Is there anybody in there??? Obviously, we advised her that it really wasn't the best idea and that she should use the front door for the time being. A few minutes later, what do we see (or rather who do we see?)? #2 walking in between the two houses to get back to her car, kind of like "Look what I can do"... OMFG! I am speechless witnessing so much idiocy/dementia. It is beyond foolish, it's suicidal. A brick or a whole piece of a house could fall on your head you dumbass and then what????? Jesus Christ, why take so much risk to make a point??!!

Anyhow, I think that once the house is gone, maybe they'll feel better, a page is being turned, maybe we can all move on and look forward to the birth of a new beautiful home (of course, it is modern so they might hate it... oh well, too bad).

We are good to go.

Apparently, we are now good to go (hence the fireworks!!!). That's what the Ministry of Labor inspector has decided yesterday after a few hours of intense suspense. Well, I just have to say fucking finally!!!! seriously, better late than never. Quite frankly, I wasn't that hopeful yesterday morning, things were not really going our way. For a few hours, I thought that maybe the neighbor-from-hell had put a spell on the inspector. Maybe not... he is not THAT powerful. So the work can start again today with hand demolition first, then with the big ass excavator which will make its way back to our front lawn on the week-end. Well, that's all swell and groovy, except that all this extra work is costing an arm and a leg. 

As listed by our super-nice builder below, here is the breakdown:

"The extra cost is as follows (pour yourself a stiff drink first and be prepared to use a string of profanities followed by the name #3).

 

1.       Engineered drawings/procedure $2,500

2.       Bigger Excavator with Grapple $1,500

3.       Delivery and pick up of bigger Excavator $1,750

4.       Demo chimney’s by hand $1,500."

Wow, not only do I need a stiff drink, but I also need also a few valiums or just a diaper handy. Total amount of the work is $7250... *_* ...

THANK YOU VERY MUCH fuckface neighbor-from-hell for costing us all this extra cash. That's great!

Suck it up and move on. It is part of the contingency fee. Let's take a deep breath. It is out of our control. Must keep our eyes on the horizon, must keep our eyes on the horizon, must keep our eyes on the horizon. *_*!!!!!

Now I will drive to the house and see what's going there. Must keep my eyes on the horizon.

Project stalled rimes with diaper abuse, sort of.

So nobody has been on the job site over the past two days courtesy of our asshole neighbor (there is no need in even striking this swear word anymore...) who has managed to fuck us over big time again slow us down once more. Of course, when I was told on Monday about the stop work order, I was totally pissed off. I needed to blow out some steam after a hell of a bad day so I took my frustration out on a diaper. "That's it! This diaper is going down"!!!! Well, to my surprise, diapers are f*cking resistant because no matter how hard I pulled on the damn thing, it wouldn't even slightly tear. Anyhow, I guess it helped with the anger management because after a few minutes of diaper abuse, I was back to my senses. My husband was watching the whole thing, kind of half amused-half worried... "The frustration comes from the fact that it feels like we can not control anything" he explained. He is right, that's the reality, it feels like everything is spinning OUT OF CONTROL!

Virtually, all we can do is wait. We were hoping the workers would be back today but they didn't show up because the demolition plan had not been sent to the Inspector yet so they were not allowed to set foot on the site. Tonight, the plan has been faxed so the Inspector is supposed to come back to the site tomorrow to cut the tape (he used the same kind of tape as for a crime scene... weird... (o_O)) and the cutting of the tape means that we are reopen for business. I am not very optimistic about tomorrow.

I have decided to expect the worst while hoping for the best. If they don't start tomorrow, then they'll start the day after. Whatever... I have about 500 diapers that I can abuse in case things get messed up again, so I should be fine... In the meantime, I have to keep my eyes on the horizon, that's what matters in the end, the final product: our HOUSE.

Would you like to buy a vowel?

So as expected, the asshole, shithead, dick, jerk, douchebag, jackass, moron, neighbor from hell (#3) has managed to stop work right away this morning. As the demolition crew was about to cause some serious damage to the house, he showed up with the Ministry of Labor inspector and asked to see a demolition plan. Now, the demolition company has been in business for over 20 years and has taken down over 30000 houses so they don't usually use a demolition plan because they kind-of-know what they are doing. So needless to say, they didn't have a demolition plan. My husband was on the job site and therefore dealt with #3 and the inspector. Basically, we don't have a choice, we need to provide this document to be able to keep on working. Neither the demo company nor the Inspector had to deal with a stop work order in the past 20 years so that will give anyone who is reading this an idea of what we are up against.

As well, getting this plan costs A SHITLOAD OF MONEY because the demolition company hires an engineer to come up with it. And who is paying for all this? Us. We have to face a substantial raise of our expenses because of the mountain of shit this neighbor from hell has managed to raise. More money spent on neighbors, less money spent on the house, of course and also more stress on us. To me, they are abusing their property rights, by constantly trying to undermine us. But apparently, there is nothing we can do which I find both hard and revolting to believe. (>_<)

On a positive note, hopefully, the plan will be ready tomorrow and the work can start on Wednesday. If there is any kind of justice or fairness in this world, I think that we need to be granted a break from these idiots. Go away and leave us alone... and GO BUY SOME VOWELS!!!

Construction about to start.

Today, the construction is about to start. The demolition crew has managed to bring a huge backhoe on our front lawn (I didn't think it was even possible). It looks pretty frightening I have to say. Now, I am saying we are supposed to start today and that's unless (one and only one reason):

- our neighbors-from-hell decide that they want to interfere with the work again. Last week was pretty intense, they got upset because a worker was cutting concrete on our property to prepare for demo. #2 came out of the house, yelling and gesticulating, to asked the worker to "cease and desist" his work because it was making too much noise and that she was going to call her lawyer (who BTW is her husband)... Oooooooh, I am scared! Seriously, she is already asking to stop the work because it is too loud... Ahem... FYI, REAL WORK has not started yet!!!! It MIGHT GET LOUD(er)!!! Today is going to be brutal noise wise since they are taking the house down so I am not sure how they are going to cope. They might attempt something dramatic, such as throwing themselves in between the backhoe and the house to stop the work, kind of Tien An Men square style, expect that, of course, that they are far from being oppressed revolutionaries. They are just complete ball-breakers!

There is NO doubt in my mind that they are going to block us as much/often as they can.  I just can't understand their logic though. The faster we take the house down and rebuild, the better for everyone. However, by constantly interfering and getting in our face (they even hired their own structural engineer to go and snoop around on our property (which BTW is private so this guy should keep the fuck out away from the construction site or I will file a complaint for trespassing)), they are making the process longer. The longer the process, the more they suffer. So where is the logic? I don't see it here... But that's just me.

When work including excavating, digging, jack hammering, banging, dust, tarp, started in front of my house (because the City had to open up the road for the tenth time in two years, who knows why???), I wasn't thrilled but I was sucking it up because I just wanted to be done with it. And when it was completed, it looked much much better... Except that the year after that, the City decided that it was time to redo the side walks!!!!! Go figure...

At any rate, all I am trying to say here is that change is inevitable, construction in a big City is inevitable but that's just the way it goes. Calm down and go about your own life. I guarantee you that the new house will be much better than the old piece-of-crap-full-of-asbestos house that's there right now. Actually, there might just be half of it standing as I write this.

We have our building permit!

Today, we got our building permit and all I have to say is: "Let's get the champagne (good thing that stuff doesn't go stale) out of the fridge and cheers!!!!!!!
（ ^_^）o自自o（^_^ ）

The ongoing saga with the not-so-friendly neighbors.

One other pleasant and not-one-bit stressful experience when you decide to build a house is dealing with the total shitheads not-so-nice neighbors . Of course, as any other "normal" person, I do realize that the neighbors would not welcome us with open arms, champagne flutes and cute cupcakes when we would tell them that "yes, we are taking the old crib down and rebuilding something totally kick-ass style instead". I am not delusional. I have been exposed to construction in the past and I know it is not exactly that much fun.... But I do believe that some (most) people would be more willing than others to accept the idea. If you tell them exactly what you intend to do, how long it will take (roughly) and let them know that you will do your absolute best to minimize the problems/ inconvenience inherent to a construction site, they will tolerate it. They might not be thrilled with it but they might just say "that's ok, congrats and good luck".

First interaction with the neighbors (AKA as the shitheads) to the North of us (Neighbors to the North of us are: THE old lady, her two daughters #1 and #2 and the brother-in-law AKA #3 (and husband of #2). I hope that's clear enough...)).
- neighbor #1: "So when are you moving in?"
- us: "not for a while, we are planning extensive work around the house, well, actually, we are taking the house down".
- neighbor : "what, why, when, who, how???????"
Oh the 5Ws... But why are you taking the house down, it is beautiful (really???), it has belonged to our family for many many generations (like what 300 years???) and we don't want to see it go (oh, so why did you sell it in the first place?), and oh wait, you are building something modern?????, but how modern, oh modern, really???? (yeah, we are going to build a concrete box with no windows... *_*!). When are you going to start??? You know, Mrs Z. (THE old lady) who lives in the house is 150 years old and the construction will affect her well-being and wow, what are you guys thinking? You are such insensitive people... OK, so now we are the evil young couple trying to ruin the someone's life by building a house. Thank you for the positive feedback, really appreciated!!!
The following interaction with the neighbor #1 is via email and in essence, it is saying "they" are totally against the construction because THE old lady is fragile. Next step is for us to meet with neighbors #2 and #3 and, apparently, it's not going to be a piece of cake. I can't wait!!!


In dealing with your neighbors, just follow these steps:

STEP 1 (cut a hole in the box) : meet with #3 at his office.

First, #3 decides that he has to make us (me, hubby and super-nice builder) wait in his lobby for about 30 minutes because, you know, he is a busy man, has tons of shit to do and really can't be bothered being on time for a meeting he has scheduled himself. His time is more precious than ours, ok we get it. Once in the meeting room, again, it is all about the guilt, and although we are coming up with a million ideas on how to make this as tolerable as possible for the old lady, not one of our solutions is acceptable. The main problem is that the neighbors don't want to us to block the access to the lane way while we build our foundations (2 weeks) in essence, they are very (make that extremely) bitter about the whole thing. But the official excuse is that apparently Mrs Z. can only go out the back door because there are less steps (read one less step). Literally, that's what we are being told... Here are some bits and pieces of the conversation:

-super nice builder: "how about we build a covered passageway from the back to the front and you can wheel your mother-in-law to the front and get her in the car".
- #3 : "no, that's impossible."
- me: "I propose that we build an access from the front entrance, a ramp that will slope very slowly so you can take her out through the front entrance instead."
- #3 :"not, that's not possible either. Do you want her to fall down and kill herself?"
- me: " but of course, shithead, I wish death upon people... WTF is wrong with you???" (*_*) "Look, we are just trying to figure something out here".
- hubby: "How about we create a passage through the north of your property, your neighbor has offered to give you access through his own lane way so it is safe to pick up Mrs. Z".
- #3: "no, that solution will make a mess of our fence. Not possible" (fence which BTW, is already in the worst shape).

Wow, now, that sounds like a very productive meeting, I think we are getting somewhere... NOT. Complete waste of time! The highlight (or cherry on the cake) of the meeting comes when #3 requests that we cut the grass on our property... Are you joking right now? You can't be serious, you are giving me nothing and you are asking me for something in return??? What an interesting negotiating technique...


STEP 2 (put your junk in that box) : receive some nasty emails from your neighbors.

After this very successful meeting, several emails were exchanged. To make a long story short, the neighbors reiterated the fact that they would not give us permission to block the lane way and, after being informed of the building permit application, did their absolute BEST to fuck us up big time to slow down, even stall the project. Not only that but they started harassing our workers (who had started to clean up the inside of the house and prepare it for demolition) by:
- taking photos of the workers and their cars and license plates.
- asking them to NOT smoke outside on OUR property because it was disturbing Mrs. Z (who BTW, was inside her house).
- yell at our builder and ask him to move his truck from the lane way, truck which BTW belonged to someone who was servicing their house...
So, after receiving complaints from the builder and his crew, I decided to write #1 an email asking her to call me when her and the other numbers (#2 and #3) would have complaints, provided the complaints were not ridiculous and laughable, I also asked that they stop their awkward and disturbing behavior towards my builder and his workers.

I guess #1 forwarded my letter to #3 who sent me an incendiary answer that I started replying to and I then thought "what the hell, these people are crazy... why get drawn into this dispute?". The best is to keep calm and carry on. Just get the building permit and then figure things out, you'll have more leverage when you have that piece of paper.


STEP 3 (Make her open the box... that's the way you do it.): deal with it.

You now have a couple of choices :

- you can get even more adversarial and waste a huge amount of time going back and forth with nasty letters. I have considered this option, in fact, I have written one nasty letter to #3, it made me feel better as I was doing it but I think that this sensation would have been short lived. He would have answered something nastier and I would have been dragged into a spiral of negativity. I don't think it is healthy.
- You can also decide to just focus on your goal and avoid communication. The less you tell, the better it is. What's important is that the house gets built and it will, hopefully.

Dealing with the City re: parking on our property.

Now, this must probably be the weirdest most twilight zone-y experience we have had dealing with the City and its ridiculous regulations so far. Needless to mention that we still have not received our building permit, although it has been issued so Veuve Cliquot will continue chillin' peacefully in our fridge. But this is not the topic of this blog today.

Topic of today's blog is: interdiction to park my car onto my own property, on the parking pad that's located in the front of my future house... because a handful of people who should get a life, really, decided that ONE should not be able to park on their front parking pad anymore and actually passed a by-law to enforce their decision. So practically, what does this mean? Well, it is not that complicated, although completely idiotic: everyone parks at the back of their properties now, please. You know that nice backyard which was probably the reason why you bought that property you now proudly own... well, you are going to fill it with cars... Instead of filling it with beautiful garden furniture and a kick ass jungle gym for your kids, even maybe a wicked lap pool, you are going to use it to park your 4x4. Yes, I know, it makes total sense that the backyard is now turned into parking territory and the front yard may now be used to do... NOTHING! If you are lucky enough to be able to park your car on the street, I'd say you should be fine... I mean, you still have the restrictions with street parking permits but at least, you might be able to park near your house. As for us, it is another story: our new house is located on a street where there is no parking... so here is our call to the City:

- Us: "so if we can't park on our front parking pad (that, I forgot to mention existed when we bought the house from the previous owners who had a parking license... but the parking license is void in case of new construction... but of course, that goes without saying O_o), where do you advise we park?"
- City employee: "well, you can park on B. st, that's the closest to you"
- Us: " WTF are you talking about? Are you out of your fucking mind? . Yes, but B. St is 5 blocks away from our house, we have two little kids, how do we park 2 kms away and walk back home with grocery bags and two toddlers in 60 cm of snow and -40 degrees?"

At this point, we thought a trip to the parking and licensing office was becoming a NECESSITY so we could better explain the ridiculousness and absurdity of the situation.
Funny thing about the Parking and Licensing office: there is no parking there... which should give you a hint. Don't be too hopeful: you might find a poor soul that will listen to your complaint but nobody will do anything about it. Forget getting your problem solved, not gonna happen.

Here we are barging in the office with our file, looking like responsible adults, and interacting very politely with the person in charge (although, at this point, we are ready to murder someone). The employee is very very understanding (I'll give him that) and tells us he totally gets it, he will talk to his boss and will follow up with us. OK, that's not bad we thought, we can have hope, maybe they will give us a break... ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! Who are we kidding??? A couple of weeks later, the sentence falls "sorry but the bylaw is the bylaw and unless you manage to reverse it, (which basically is as easy as building your own rocket and flying to the moon and back successfully), you'll have to park at the back of your property or 5 blocks away from your house! And if you park on your front lawn, you will be likely to get a ticket"... Holy sh*it, a ticket??? Seriously??? Is this some kind of sick joke? Am I going to wake up now?

Quite frankly, at this point, I am pissed off. We have bought this property and we have to follow a ridiculous-absurd-unrealistic rule that was passed by complete morons who didn't even think about the consequences of their acts. I AM BEING TOLD WHAT NOT DO ON MY PROPERTY and wait, it is not like I am planning to build a nuclear facility on this piece of land, I just want to park my car on my pre-existent parking pad for God's sake!

The building permit headache.

So here we were, after the architect debacle, with in our hands the plans for our house which took about 7 months to be completed O_o , a floor plan that we absolutely loved and exterior elevations that we were thrilled with. At this point, we thought that we were so close from getting started. Our new builder, a remarkable man who is the best thing that has happened to us since the project started, couldn't wait to get going. Our architectural technician had a complete set of drawings ready, including the drawings from the mechanical and structural engineers, that he was now bringing to City Hall. Oh the excitement on that day, the feeling of something HUGE about to happen, the tears in our eyes (well almost) when we got the green piece of paper to post on our construction fence saying that we are officially applying for permit. And the promise of an answer from the City in 10 days!!!

Roughly 4 weeks later, our permit is pending... which means that we have not started construction yet.

WHAT HAPPENED??? Let's rewind a bit here and illustrate our point with some pieces of "live" conversations.

Our technician (who is bringing the permit application on our behalf), Murphy, called us on his way back from the City "it went well but the head of the building permit office is a bit of a dick very detail oriented and has the reputation of being picky so it might be taking a while..." Us "ok, well, we will have to wait and see". About 10 days go by when we get a call from our technician saying that "we have passed the zoning stage" and that we are moving on to the building reviewing stage. Apparently passing the zoning stage is like getting into med school and finishing first of your class. We are almost celebrating with Veuve Cliquot and fireworks at this point. But NOT so FAST... A few days later, Murphy calls us with some news from one of City building examiners who is asking for a whole new bunch of drawings from the structural engineer (who meanwhile charges $250 an hour so you'll want to use him sparingly), demand that we suspect is courtesy of our super giant asshole neighbors not-so-nice neighbors. Two weeks later, drawings have been accepted and status of the permit on the City web site is "pending"... wow, that's great... but why is it still pending when we know we have successfully completed the brutally difficult obstacle course that was nicely laid out in front of us?

That's because the City loves to make you jump through as many hoops as possible and also because they are complete amateurs who don't give a shit about their job completely overwhelmed with work. In our case, the building permit office was supposed to transfer our file to Forestry (so Forestry can ask us to put a huge deposit on a tree located on our lot but "belonging" to them in case we would damage or kill the tree) but didn't... so here we are having to wait for Forestry to go and take a look at the trees on our property and let us know whether we will need to give a $12000 certified cheque or a $20000 certified cheque. Hum hallo... what is this??? The word now is that we need a $12010 certified cheque and that we will finally be granted our permit. Holy sh*t, seriously, that's all it takes????

I am now running to the bank, getting the cheque, my beloved husband is driving to the City to bring in the cheque and to get the permit... Ouff, so close... yet so far! It turns out that we are missing yet another document that needs to be provided by the structural engineer (here goes another $500) in order to get the permit! I mean, come on, how much more difficult can it be? The missing document is emailed to the City and we can now see that the building permit has been issued but that it can only be picked up once the demolition permit has been issued... I am sorry, what was that??? *_* OMG, it is a good thing that I don't own a kalashnikov and that I am not a complete psycho!!! That process would drive any unstable person up the wall.


So to wrap up the building permit chapter, the key here is to try (and it is quite challenging... wait make that extremely challenging) to not lose your mind. Apply the Zen philosophy principles to each of your dealings with the City. It will drive you insane otherwise. Now, I am just hoping that Monday morning I will be holding in my hand my Building permit and I have champagne in the fridge to celebrate this major event!

The architect headache.

Last year, around this time, my other-half and I finally found that property that we had been looking for. After months of unsuccessful searching, as we were driving the kids to the park, we spotted a property up on a hill that we thought could fulfill our latest dream: building our own modern house. Shortly thereafter, we were the proud owners of 000S. Rd. Of course, we didn't care much for the house sitting on the property, we didn't plan on keeping it, it was an old 1930's house and although it wasn't terrible, it didn't appeal to us and we figured it would cost pretty much the same to take down it completely or to renovate it entirely. The house was filled with asbestos, lead pipes and it was in rough shape. Better to start fresh we thought. We weren't completely foreign to construction and knew that it would be a long process but we were far from guessing that a year after we bought our house, we would not have started building yet. Along the way, we have learned a few things, that are listed below.

First (pain in our asses) thorn in our side: the architect. We were very excited to work with an architect, we had a vision for our house and were impatient to see it translated on paper. We interviewed a few architects, specialized in modern houses, and picked the one we thought would be the most experienced and closest to our design idea. Most architects have the same standard fee, more or less. The one we hired was a little less than the others (we were going to design many aspects of the house, namely the kitchen and we got him to lower his fee on that basis). We had a preliminary meeting with him, it looked like he "was getting" what we wanted. We thought it was going wonderfully... until we started to realize that our vision of the house was kind of getting diluted completely getting overshadowed by the architect's ego in plans we couldn't relate to. As well, although we signed a contract (that we quite didn't understand totally and looking back, we should have asked more questions) with the architect in which the overall budget was CLEARLY mentioned, we realized that he had decided that the budget was irrelevant and that it was time to crank it up a notch... Of course, as everyone knows, MONEY FALLS FROM THE SKY and budgets are expandable. Naturally. It is amazing that although you are the one paying for your house, you have to feel terrible when you tell the architect that maybe "this kind of very expensive cladding" he has chosen is NOT something that you can afford.
Example of a conversation in the architect's office:
- us, the clients: " hum... and how much will this cladding cost roughly"?
- the architect, looking annoyed: "Pffffffffff (raising his eyebrows in an irritated way...), I don't know but I think it would be a SHAME not to use it".
- us, thinking "and who the fuck is going to pay for it" : "yes, it is nice but is it not going to drive the budget to the roof?"
- the architect very annoyed: "well, I don't know (what do you mean you don't know... that's what we are paying you for!!!!) but by NOT getting it, YOU would compromise the vision I have for your house and it would be a real pity... blah blah blah..."
- us I think I know where I want to shove the zinc cladding "ok, well, we will have to think about it. How about you show us the front facade elevation of our house in the meantime?"
- the architect proudly pulling out his drawing (that kinds of looks like that the house he did last year, I guess it is his signature style...) "here it is"...
- Us looking at it and not saying anything for a while until I finally burst out " But wait, it looks like a face... the two windows are the eyes and the door is the mouth..."
- the architect (about to kill us at this point!) : "A face??? I don't see a face... Your imagination is wild."
- us: "OK, hum, sorry but could you come up with something a little different"?
- the architect (reluctantly): "Well, I am going to offer a couple more options but any changes after that would be an extra charge"...
- us: "O_o ... (*_*)!!!!"


A few more meetings later and MUCH MUCH more frustration later, we were wondering what to do with that "relationship status". It went from amazing to kind of promising to not so convincing to "this guy is getting on our nerves" to "it is time to dump him". Of course, before we took our decision, we talked to friends, builders, lawyers and they all came back with the same answer "Fire him now before you start construction"...
So here comes the final meeting at the architect's office where his fee calculation is being closely examined... and where it is noted that not only the architect wants to drive the price up constantly to get paid more but is also charging fees on top of fees and fees on top of taxes. The final meeting was the one where we finally decided to fire him.

After firing the architect, our next step was to hire someone new to finish the plans (an other architect who got us back on track) and have an architectural technician prepare the drawings for the city. That was probably the smartest thing we did which allowed to save money and move on at a faster pace to the obtaining of the building permit.

So to wrap up the architect section quickly: pick someone who FULLY understands the budget constraints and who is COMFORTABLE with them, read your contract and ask questions, examine the fee structure, work together with the architect to design the house that you want (not the one that he is pushing for).
In insight, it surely was not a pleasant experience to have to fire the architect. I would have preferred if things had gone well, especially since I think that our architect is somewhat a talented person, provided he has a huge fucking budget sufficient construction budget to start with. What we had to spend on this house really wasn't what he could work with and I only wished he had told us from the start, it would have avoided a lot of frustration and uncomfortable situations.