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.