Compare cost of renovation vs. new build

How big a renovation is too big? Well, the answer is: it all depends.

Small renovations that tackle specific and identifiable inadequacies to an otherwise functional home are generally the most prudent and cost effective. They generally don't hold enough momentum to initiate "project creep" and, if thought out well, can add significant value both as a livable environment and as a monetary investment.

Project creep is the tendency of a project to grow beyond the original scope of work for various unanticipated reasons brought to light by the renovation -- one may decide to completely replace drain tile around their home after digging up a small portion of it or be faced with a total electrical upgrade after realizing their current system is inadequate -- but regardless of the circumstance, the result of project creep is more work done and a more expensive project.

Medium-scale renovations are far more susceptible to project creep and need to be carefully monitored in order to not grow out of control. It's easy to keep adding to the program until the medium-sized project has grown into something so extensive that both its affordability and value are called into question.

Photograph by: Mike Wakefield, NEWS photo

As renovations become bigger and more involved it's essential to determine whether it's really worth it. An extensive renovation to an older home will likely cost more than building new.

At a certain point in a large-scale renovation the existing home becomes a liability rather than an asset.

Keeping existing spaces and forms is one thing, but transforming everything while being hamstrung by an existing framework is another. One needs to recognize when this point is crossed.

It's good to ask yourself if the cost of the new renovated home added to the value of the existing property will hold its overall worth in its given context? In many circumstances, it might it be wiser to sell the existing house, add the renovation budget to the overall sum and purchase something new that already has what you're looking for.

One compelling reason to keep an existing home, even through a large-scale renovation, is that the existing home gives you something you won't get if you start anew.

This typically comes in the form of an existing non-conformity where the existing building contravenes a zoning bylaw -- in its location on site or in its overall height, for example -- and won't be required to meet the new standards provided the renovation doesn't make the existing condition worse.

If you're confronted with the dilemma of an involved renovation, the first thing you need to ask yourself is if you're committed to living where you are. If so, it then comes down to whether it's renovate or build anew.

For those individuals planning to spend the rest of their lives on a given plot of land, the monetary considerations might not be that pertinent, but for most people, the balance between what you want and what makes good market sense needs to be addressed.

Flexible living spaces are ideal

Are the spaces in your home really designed for the activities that take place within them? Do you find rooms that you use every day to be simply too small while others, some lying vacant most of the year, are just swimming in area?

If the answer is yes, don't be surprised as a vast majority of our homes have been designed on a planning model that is long outdated and in desperate need of a rethink.

Many of our homes have been designed with the notion that separate activities need to be housed in separate spaces, an idea routed in a more formal way of living that's not appropriate to today's lifestyle.

Look around and you'll see it everywhere: a main entry that's used rarely while the more convenient, day-to-day entry is littered with recycling bins, hockey gear or whatever detritus daily life sheds or a formal dining or living area that lies empty most of the year, standing testament to a bygone era rather than being part of the daily life.

A great exercise for homeowners is to look carefully at how they truly live within their homes. Walk around your home and quickly pace out the spaces within it to get a rough square footage area of each. Make a list of these spaces and their accompanying area and write down what activity goes on in the space and how it's being used. The numbers might surprise you. It's amazing how much space goes unused in the average home.

I find such an exercise a great starting point for rethinking the planning of a house. One sees how the square footage of the most used spaces of the home compare to other areas and gives an immediate insight to where a little trimming and relocation of space might be in order.

One should think of spaces in their home not as rooms surrounded by four walls but rather as places that house activity. As one moves through their home they move through a series of these places, some by necessity independent and private and others interconnected at varying levels openness. Spaces within a well designed home will be flexible and adaptable and, above all, will be used every day.

Meet need for personal space

The well designed home responds to the changing social demands of its occupants by providing spaces that allow a gradation in privacy from communal to private.

We as human beings are keenly aware of our personal space and our relationship with others. We feel comfortable in environments that recognize our varying needs for personal and private space and allow us to express ourselves equally as active members of the family and as individuals.

Older homes provided distinct spaces for distinct functions with communal areas such as the kitchen, living room or dining room being individual spaces that had little or no spatial interconnectivity with the other communal areas. A person working in the kitchen, for example, would need to leave the room in order to participate in a conversation in the living room, a complete disassociation from one space for the enjoyment of another. These homes are the product of a bygone era when construction methods, mechanical considerations and general lifestyle were far different than they are today.

Photograph by: Mike Wakefield, NSN photo

Modern homes typically try to dissolve this strict delineation of spaces in favour of a more open free-form layout that allows both a visual and acoustical connection between communal spaces. The open plan concept is a good answer to many of the old drawbacks but the concept can be taken too far with large open spaces ideal for parties and family functions giving no respite to a family member who needs to escape the hustle-bustle of household life. Semi-private areas that would allow a degree of isolation, without being disconnected from the family, are absent and the weary occupant is forced to retreat to a bedroom or an equally private zone.

The ideal layout lies somewhere in between. There's no doubt that the modern lifestyle is well suited to the "open plan" concept and with the introduction of so-called "semi-private" zones to this type of layout will meet our varying needs for personal space.

An alcove off the main gathering area is an excellent example of a semi-private area. It allows one to remove themselves from the focal activity zone of say the kitchen or living room without having to move into another room. A visual and auditory connection can be maintained but the alcove still provides a psychological disconnect.

A dedicated room that maintains a visual connection to the main activity hub takes the concept of the semi-private space a little further. Glazed french doors or pocket doors work well in such a space as both doors can remain open to make a strong connection to the communal area or can be closed off if the situation dictates. An office or reading room works in such a semi-private zone, maintaining a connection with the heart of the home while allowing a degree of disassociation.

As much as we require time together we also require time apart. A well designed home will reflect this ever changing need by providing its occupants the opportunity to express themselves communally, privately and every way between.

Hub helps organize home

There's never a good time to receive a bill but picking one up at the end of a day, tired after a long days work, would likely rank as one of the worst times.

The bills and assorted mail that we pick up from the mailbox and bring through our front door are, for many of us, unwanted items that are unloaded as quickly as possible on the most convenient surface at hand. More pressing matters like preparing dinner, managing the kids or winding down are on our mind and the stack of mail can wait.

Unfortunately this scenario, common for so many of us, can lead to mail waiting a very long time indeed as the unwanted pile begins its forced migration throughout the house as its once convenient home eventually becomes less so and the pile moves along to a less intrusive locale until it finds permanent residence -- speaking for myself here -- in that mound that's home to all those other things that will get dealt with eventually.

The way to deal with this organizational conundrum is to create a space that's dedicated exclusively to the processing of mail and other miscellaneous items that enter the house. I tend to refer to this area as the hub and try to design it exactly as one -- a centralized place within the home where mail is sorted and dealt with, where essentials like keys and phones are stored and where disparate functions like leaving a note or finding an address are carried out.

I'll typically locate the hub close to the kitchen -- the preferred dumping ground for all things unwanted -- and design it so that homeowner can use it without interfering with other functions in the home. I'll provide mail slots for incoming and outgoing mail and a recycling bin to get rid of unwanted paper and junk mail. I'll allocate space for essential reference items like the yellow pages and address books and create little cubbies for keys, wallets and the like. I'll typically incorporate a bulletin board or erasable writing surface into the design and make the hub the go-to point for all reminders and messages. For households with school age children I'll dedicate space exclusively for the piles of school related material that invariably makes its way home.

Since virtually everything is done online these days providing space for a computer is a must for any successful hub design. The hub must have an electrical outlet and should be hard-wired for both computer and telephone.

For the more technologically inclined I'll incorporate a touch pad console into the hub, allowing the homeowner to adjust everything from the heating to the music all from this one centralized location.

In the end one cannot overstate the importance of creating a space that manages the piles of mail and other disparate items that invade our homes. This seemingly small element can go a long way to easing the frustrations that come with clutter and disorganization.

The House of Tomorrow

What will the house of tomorrow look like?

Environmental concerns, changing lifestyle patterns and a shifting demographic are just a few among a list of forces that are shaping our house. Here's my top 10 home design trends you can expect to see in the future.

- Go green or don't go home: The green movement is here to stay. More environmentally sensitive means, methods and materials will be the standard for the construction industry. As environmental consciousness grows, greater demand for greener alternatives will be the norm in the residential design world. Construction methods will become far less wasteful. We will see a forgoing of plastics, laminates and off-gasing materials in favour of natural, more healthy alternatives for construction materials and finishes within the home. Also, the general layout and design of a home will become more sensitive to the climatic and environmental characteristics of a given locale.

- Smaller is better: The over-sized monster home will become a thing of the past with a trend toward more efficient, better-designed homes. Architects like Sarah Susanka have been professing the concept of quality over quantity for years and the concept seems to be taking hold. More efficient space-planning and more flexible layouts will allow for dual-function spaces that can adapt to changing needs.

- Prefabricated homes: Prefabricated homes are garnering much greater attention in the market today. Make no mistake, though; these are not the trailer park variety but rather cutting-edge architecturally designed modular homes that are factory-made and come in a range of bold, contemporary styles. Modern housing publications such as Dwell have taken great interest in this trend and dedicate lots of editorial ink to its development.

- The outdoor room: Moving our living to the outside is becoming increasingly popular these days. The line between inside and out is less defined with the trend for more glass and larger openings. The patio and garden are becoming essential components of an integrated house plan.

- The home office: Advances in technology are allowing many of us to work effectively from home and, as a result, there's a growing trend to incorporate well-designed office space into our households.

- Accessible living: The age wave is upon us. People are living longer and more and more elderly people are still living independently at home. We will see a trend of more accessible design in our homes. Main floor master bedrooms, wider corridors for wheelchairs, mini-residential elevators and single level house designs will become increasingly popular in coming years. In 1900 the life expectancy in the United States was 47 years. Today it's 78. We're living longer and our homes will need to adapt.

- Storage, storage, storage: With smaller, more efficient homes comes the necessity for storage. Designers and architects are listening to the mantra "there's never enough" and are providing more storage space in ever more creative ways.

- The flexible floor plan: The open floor plan arrangement that forgoes separate rooms for dining, living and kitchen areas in favour of a single multi-functional living space (often referred to as a great room) has been a popular planning concept for years now and will remain so. As homes become smaller and more efficient, flexibility in a layout will become increasingly more important. For centuries, the Japanese have been the masters of flexible living through the use of screens, sliding doors and folding partitions. Expect to see new homes incorporating these concepts as well.

- Energy efficiency: Homes will become increasing energy efficient as we move into the future. The industry-endorsed R2000 Standard -- a performance standard for energy efficiency and air tightness within a home -- is the Canadian benchmark for residential energy performance. Currently the R2000 Standard is a voluntary regulation but expect this to change in the near future. The promotion of cost-effective, energy-efficient building practises and technologies will invariably become entrenched in our national building codes.

- Mitigating risk: As environmental risk assessment becomes more and more sophisticated so to will our ways to mitigate those risks. Earthquakes, landslides, floods and storms are always on the minds of planners and building code authorities. Recent disasters in Haiti and Louisiana demonstrate what happens when risk is not adequately addressed. Homes of the future will adhere to ever-stricter national building codes and regional zoning provisions to ensure the health and safety of the occupants.

Natural Light

On a gloomy north shore November afternoon it’s hard not to reflect on the importance of natural light in our homes and how it makes us feel. Natural light is likely the single most important factor that determines how a space is perceived and how a mood is created.

Architect Christopher Alexander states in his tome A Pattern Language: “If the right rooms are facing south, a house is bright and sunny and cheerful; if the wrong rooms are facing south, the house is dark and gloomy.”

We all know this but, for many reasons, often fail to act on it. The tenet is a simple one and if held onto without compromise will create light filled spaces that are desirable and a joy to be in.

The position of the sun in the sky is determined by the time of day, the season and the particular location of a property. In northern latitudes, facing south means facing the sun. It rises in the east and sets in the west. It’s obvious information that’s often forgotten or ignored when planning a home.

Rooms should always be organized to best take advantage of the natural light a site provides. This typically means maximizing southern exposure to one degree or another and often tends towards a structure stretching along an east-west axis. But since not every property will permit such a layout it’s essential from the get-go to understand the unique movement of the sun on your piece of land.

This might translate into an en-suite bathroom that basks in the warm glow of a morning sun or a breakfast nook that nudges out into a garden with full morning light. It can mean a home office that faces directly south to maximize its sun exposure throughout the day or a covered porch that catches the dying light of an evening sunset. In the end, the more we anticipate how natural light affects our layout, the more we move towards an optimal design for our homes.

Technology has given us the ability to create functioning spaces even when we ignore our natural environment but invariably something gets lost in the process. The intensity and spectrum of colour in sunlight can’t be matched by artificial light. We innately sense daily and seasonal changes through the light of the sun. The long, cool rays of a winter’s afternoon can never be confused with the sharp brilliance of a mid-summer day.

Everything seen in space is perceived and understood through the light that falls upon it.  The quality of this light adds to the comprehension of what we’re looking at and affects our feelings for it. It’s easy to see why natural light is an essential aspect of any well designed home.

Three dimensional form

How does one move from dream to reality when designing a home? The answer is through a fascinating creative process that architects and designers perform every time they work on project.

The movement from conceptual imaging to tactile reality is one of the most enjoyable aspects of architectural design. I still remember my first built project – a small, very modest basement renovation – that I saw finished just after graduating architectural school. Up to that point everything I had designed had been conceived in the more abstract world of the school studio and never went beyond the conceptual drawing phase but now, after years of imagining things, I was confronted with the three-dimensional reality of my architectural musings. It was an amazing feeling of surprise and satisfaction and proved to be a very important learning experience as well. Certain features that looked good on paper were less convincing in reality while other elements that I had reservations about during the design process seemed to work out perfectly.

What I learned was that the physical realization of an idea can be quite different from the original concept if one isn’t thorough enough in the design process early on. Through my early years of architectural work I would always build a physical model of the project I was working on. Made from cardboard or heavy stock paper, these miniature creations helped me fully understand the three-dimensional form I was constructing. I would bring the model up to eye level and pretend I to inhabit the tiny world, trying my best to get a feel for the object and space being creating. I would continuously sketch snap-shot perspectives of interior and exterior details all the time trying to come to terms with the form taking shape. The idea was to rationalize exactly what was being created, to take the guess-work out of the process.

As years went by I would take note of spaces and forms I liked and would even go as far as to sketch an element that interested me or pace out a room if I liked its proportion and scale. Colour combinations that worked were always put to memory as were the use of interesting materials or the creation of interesting compositions. It’s essential when designing three-dimensional space to have a grasp of what the space will feel like when built. This can be very challenging when one’s limited to a two-dimensional graphic medium.

I still sketch when designing but rely more and more on 3-D graphic software programs that allows me to quickly and easily mock-up a ‘virtual’ worlds in which I can test my ideas. I use a fun, easy-to-learn program called Google SketchUp. I encourage folks so disposed to give it a look. The standard version is free to download.

Regardless of the process, the objective is the same: fully understand what’s being designed before it’s built. It takes years for an architect or designer to be able to look at a two-dimensional plan for the first time and see it in three-dimensional space. Expecting a homeowner, likely with little or no experience in this area, to be able to do just that is unreasonable. For this reason I feel it’s essential for the homeowner to request as much 3-D information from their design professional as possible. The more they know and agree upon early on, the happier they’ll be in the end.