I must be crazy. I guess you could say I brought this all upon myself, but in my defense... there were plenty of good reasons for me to go ahead with plans to renovate in 2021. If you haven't heard already, the construction industry is going through some very bizarre and unpredictable times. Supply chains have been disrupted, costs of materials are through the roof, and certain trades and supplies are experiencing so much demand that they simply can't keep up. Therefore, delays and headaches are inevitable. My wife and I bought our 2nd home in Western Lachine back in 2012. We had purchased our first home before starting our family back in 2007. It was a cute little 3-bedroom townhouse in Pointe-St-Charles and we lived there for 5 years. But after having 2 boys and knowing a 3rd baby was on the way, we decided to make the move to Lachine in order to gain more space. We fell in love with Lachine West because of the proximity to the water, the spacious backyards, and the overall charm of the community. The house we found, built in 1952, originally had 3-bedrooms, but a single garage with extra living space above it had been added at some point, which allowed us to create a 4th bedroom.

We did some renovating and remodeling to the house when we first moved in 9 years ago, but our budget was fairly limited at that time, so our renovations reflected that! We never got around to doing the kitchen, but at least we converted that space above the garage to our master bedroom, we fixed up the bathrooms, got rid of some old carpeting and had the hardwood floors refinished.  We always told ourselves that eventually... we would get to that kitchen! In fact, for the past 5 years my wife has been constantly reminding me that she's still waiting for her new kitchen. And you know what they say, "Happy Wife - Happy Life"!  Towards the spring of 2019, it finally looked like we would be able to afford that kitchen renovation, and we decided that we might as well look into extending the house at the same time. Our current home is barely 1,600 square feet, so it's not exactly a castle. 

Neither of us liked the idea of moving at this stage of our lives, and with 2 kids nearing high school age and 1 not far behind, we figured the time to do this was now or never. So we started getting estimates and having plans drawn up to extend the back of the house - making both the kitchen and master bedroom a little bigger, adding about 400 square feet in living area to the house.  But even at the planning stage, there are surprises. It turned out that our garage had been built with concrete block foundations and no footings. We had kind of suspected this, because our bedroom above the garage always had new cracks in the drywall each year. The garage showed signs of serious movement and obviously wasn't very stable. Our contractor warned us that it would be a bad idea to build a new, stable extension attached to an old, unstable structure. And so our plans evolved. Now we were looking at knocking down the old garage and building a new one on proper concrete foundations and footings. Well, if that was going to happen... we might as well put a pool in while we're at it, right? Luckily we crunched the numbers and spoke to our bank and it was all within our reach. So in January of 2020, we went ahead with the architectural plans and aimed for the work to begin in the early spring of 2021. Little did we know what other surprises lay waiting in the long grass ahead. Sure enough, when the pandemic hit and the lockdowns began, we seriously considered putting all the plans on hold indefinitely. But by that time, we'd already submitted our application for a demolition permit with the city, and were in the process of revising our building plans. Needless to say, municipal office workers became increasingly difficult to communicate with, and after 9 painful months and countless back-and-forth revisions, our plans were finally approved and building permits were granted. 

We were then just weeks away from our planned start date and now had to decide: "Do we go ahead with it? Are we crazy to be doing a renovation under these conditions? Have we come too far to turn back now?" The contractors were all lined up, the timeline was planned out to a tee, and the cost of lumber was up by more than 40%. What could possibly go wrong? Turns out everything can! The big machine came to tear down the old garage on April 30th. The pool was supposed to start going in a few days later, but instead we waited over 2 weeks before that happened. The pool then took about a month, apparently due to a shortage of concrete. Finally, by mid-June the pool decking was complete (still no liner) and we were ready to dig for the foundations to go in for the new extension to the house. 

Unfortunately, we were informed once again that we couldn't get the new foundations in because nobody could find concrete. Then our foundation contractor just cancelled on us completely, leaving us to scramble to try and find another foundation framer. Keep in mind, we had booked all these trades over 9 months ago, only to have them cancel on us at the last minute because they're all overwhelmed and have no concrete!  We finally found another foundation guy to take our job, but we're still waiting with our fingers crossed, hoping and praying that he can source the concrete he needs to pour the walls and footings. Until then, we're simply sitting in limbo with absolutely nothing going on.

While all this work was being done, we also had to find a temporary place to live. The renovations were supposed to be done by October. There are currently 5 of us crammed into a 2-bedroom apartment a few blocks away from the house. The rental is costing us $1,450 / month and we don't see any sign of us moving back in anytime soon. At this rate, we’ll be lucky to be back by Christmas!  My wife and I are completely losing our minds. I can't begin to articulate how incredibly stressful this has been for us. We're both losing sleep over it, grinding our teeth at night, and lashing out at our kids because we don't know if and when we'll ever be able to move back into our house again. All this to say, it's been a very humbling experience so far. I've gained a new appreciation for general contractors and the challenges they’re all facing under these circumstances. I'm literally on the phone with my GC, Jared Pomkoski, every day asking for updates and trying to help solve problems. It must be extremely stressful for him as well. My hat is off to Jared and his team at BLDRS. I wouldn't want to have his job this year, that's for sure! There were whispers of good news this morning, and with any luck, we might have a line on some concrete to pour the footings before the end of next week – even though it’s now the Quebec construction holiday. If not, we're going to be stuck waiting another 2 weeks with nothing happening.

Wish me luck! 

Signing off…

Cap’n Mark