The popular ecoEnergy program was quietly cancelled back in 2010 and many cheered when the program was renewed and extended to March 2012. When the renewal was announced, home improvement companies quickly jumped on it, putting out promotions to help homeowners take advantage of the program.

What's not to love about it? Homeowners get extra money to install energy efficient upgrades that will cut down on utility costs and reduce their home's environmental impact. We just hope they'll keep extending this program! 

 Happening alongside the ecoEnergy program are smaller provincial programs that are giving out additional rebates and incentives. If you're in Ontario, you can get up to $150 off your energy audit. That's not bad. Not bad at all...

Most of the information about  the program is on NRCan's website. Admittedly, it's a lengthy and complicated read. In collaboration with Myra Phan, we created this infograph to lay out the most important information.  

(View a larger size version of the infograph here.)

I recently had the opportunity to interview Lena Simkin - a great lady who switched careers from being a software engineering manager at a well-known high tech company to being a successful real estate agent.

Prior to her career change, she and her husband had taken on the challenge of acting as general contractors for their home building project.Lena and her husband have no background in construction, but their combined experience in engineering and finance allowed them to be comfortable with the technical details and project management aspect of the work. It was a challenge that they took on out of necessity (as you'll hear in Part 2 of the interview), but the diligence and hard work paid off - their home is breathtaking and the lot they chose is beautiful - it was like being in Muskoka.

I interviewed her at her home, as she recounted her first (negative) renovation experience and let me in on some of the strategies and resources she used to successfully complete her home building project, on time and within budget. She also gave me some quick notes on how renovations can (or can't) affect a home's resale value.

Part 1 - The First Renovation - A Learning Experience

Part 2 - The Home Building Project - Stumbling upon a great lot, finding the trades to complete the work, and the books that helped her. 

Part 3 -  Renovations That Are Worth The Investment, Renovations That Aren't. 

To learn more about Lena, visit www.lenasimkin.com

Lena's Renovation Booklist:

1) Layman's Guide to Contracting Your Own Home

2) Documents, Contracts, and Worksheets for Home Builders

3) Do-It-Yourself Housebuilding

By now, everyone knows about it. My neighbours. My co-workers. My family and friends. And you.

I even shared my reno nightmare story with a taxi driver named Luiz.

Luiz left Italy in his teens and immigrated to Canada in the 70s and late 80s, when he took on a trade as a painter. Luiz said he was good contractor, back-in-the-day: he believed he was honest; he finished jobs he said he would complete; he cared about the satisfaction of his customers. 

Luiz drove me to the Lawrence Avenue subway in Toronto, Canada’s biggest metropolis, and arguably the largest renovation hub in Southern Ontario.

Of my situation, I'll never forgot what Luiz told me that morning: “You’re not alone, Tina. These are dangerous times for the consumer. It’s not like the old days. It’s so easy to be misled now. Things are different now.”

Luiz took another sip of his coffee, yet I was the one who felt refreshed and reassured. Was it because he was, at the time, the first real person to acknowledge my renovation-reality was one so many people in Canada faced? Was it because he was the first person to assist me in defeating the myth that I could have ever known, 9 months ago, what it would mean to be prepared enough, educated enough, involved enough to prevent the reno-mess I was in?

I'm not sure. But my conversation with Luiz changed my way of thinking. I started to consider, not the things I should have done right -- according to other people’s successful projects or past experience -- but the things I could do now to actively reconcile my own particular and unique renovation situation.

One week after my chat with Luiz, the unthinkable happened.

It was the day we were to drive down to Ohio for a friend's wedding. Just 4 hours before our departure, my husband called me at work, saying he told our Project Manager to halt the already extremely slow work being done to our condo. (This man had taken on way too many jobs. Ours, I found out later, was a very low on his priority list.)

It was a flood.

Water everywhere.

Underneath the new floor we installed.

Inside the walls of our bathroom.

Undereath the shower base.

All the progress we had made since July was ruined in 20 minutes in November.

The pipes in the shower and the bathroom vanity failed. The piping was flimsy. The job, incomplete.

Our supposed Project Manager, we learned, decided to build the bathroom without bothering to make sure the plumber properly finished the job 4 months earlier, that is when he promised us the project timeline was only going to take 3 weeks. Lies!

(SIDENOTE: After the flood, we figured out our PM didn't check up on a lot of things. He also thought it convenient to blame me for requesting the bathroom, not the kitchen be a priority. What a joke.)

He came over. Helped us slice open the walls we paid to have built. We ripped out the floor we paid to have installed.

Weeks later, we were told by a third-party we'd need to dismantle the bathroom and bedroom millwork that were installed.

The flood triggered a breaking point in me. I was mad.

I thought I felt better after we met with a big construction lawyer, changed our locks, complained to our city councillor, talked to other industry professionals about our dilemma, dealt with insurance, and re-started the search for new contractors.

My husband and I had travelled this road to renovation before. This time, with a chance to begin again. And we knew what was needed: someone we could trust. Someone who was willing to help us pick up the pieces and put our lives back in order. Someone who just cared. But how was such a person to be found?

Back to the drawing board. S.O.S. Renovation rescue and beyond.

Yet in these situations, one can only look forward.

To err is human. To forgive divine. 

In the end, there is no one solution to the human errors that accompany any home reconstruction and renovation.

Every project is as different as every client: there are unknown factors that won’t even be considered or imagined, and when lots of variables are part of the equation – plumbing, millwork, countertops, flooring, doors, paint colours, and the potential for mistakes, incompetence, and closed-minded hired help.

If you are someone who has never undergone or lived through a major home reno project, and has no friends or family with any informed experience or advice, the renovation industry can be a daunting and sometimes dangerous one.

Even if you think you’ve done the grunt work, remember that any contractor, even with a good rating, can make mistakes.The key is finding one that will deal with issues honestly, justly, properly and professionally.

Renovations are a cooperative game in a market economy.

All members involved – the consumer, the contractor, and the government – need to partner fully if the job is to be done right.

You don’t claim to know all the answers. Nobody does.

The blog articles in this series of postings will provide consumers in the GTA, who are renovating for the first time, with some sound advice on how to take control of the most important elements of any project: the timeline, the budget, and the project’s overall quality.

You need to walk the road to finding solutions that work for your home.

By asking the right questions, you can approach the project table with a strong knowledge of how to create a satisfying reno-project and live in a home you can proudly invest in.

See you online.

Tina -- the S.O.S. RenoGirl

If you scan the shelves of your bookstore, you'll see that there's lots of books and magazines offering home decor and design ideas. There's also a good selection of books and magazines that discuss how to do a home reno project yourself. But in comparison, there are very few books that stand out as being the go-to resource for doing home renovations with a contractor or a tradesperson. 

A great (and free) resource is Canada's national housing agency - the CMHC (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation). Among their list of publications and articles on home renovation, there's one that gives a great summary on how to find and work with a contractor. The article talks about what types of things to look for in a contractor, how to create a payment schedule for the work completed, and what details you should get in writing before the work starts. It also provides a good list of questions you should be asking when meeting with potential contractors. You can view the article on their website, and it is appropriately named "About Your House: Hiring a Contractor"

After reading a few home renovation articles or books, I'm sure some of you still have a few questions about hiring a contractor, or about the home renovation process. If you do, feel free to post it in our comments section! We'll see if our team can help you out!

“Carpenters, you know, usually make the right choice in everything.”

Some years ago, Frank Filipas brought home a Stonycreek Furniture catalog that featured a rare oak table. He eyeballed it, guessed at the measurements (399 x 2900, he recalls) and then he built it by hand. Because he loved the challenge.

Frank isn’t just a carpenter. He comes from a line of carpenters who date back over a century … literally. When Fucic—the workshop where he apprenticed in former Yugoslavia—celebrated its 100th birthday two years ago, the entire town came out to celebrate. Pieces of furniture made during the 1800s were found, dusted off, and internationally televised. Their construction is still flawless. 

Today, Frank lives with his wife in Burlington. Their house is tucked neatly into a rounded cul-de-sac of an equally neat suburb. When we met for our interview, they were both wearing matching, off-white, cowl-neck sweaters. 

“I’d like to tell you about when I came to Canada,” Frank says. He speaks with a halting, breathy, Eastern-European accent for which he is apologetic. 

I was not ... never good at talking. I prefer to show how the way [of] doing something. I was no good at talking. Many young people want to learn how to be a carpenter and I was no good to explain to him. I get nervous, you know? I prefer [to] show him and you copy. That’s what I was doing when I was young.

It’s no surprise that people want to learn from Frank. The man has been in the business since he was 14. After immigrating to Canada in 1961, he bounced around various unions in Ontario, finally settled in with Toronto-27. He stayed there for more than thirty years building a career out of an unwavering adherence to “quality, quality, and quality.” 

I learned the trade by the book. Properly---no cutting corners. When I came to Canada, I find out they say “no, no, no, that’s not the way to do it. They were always against me—and you see them 'spike, spike, spike, hurry up. Quality’s no good; just a quantity.

His policy is one built on persistence, and painstaking attention to detail. A culture of tongue and groove over hammered in screws.

I never cut corners. Sometimes I have to work 10-12 hours a day to get paid for 8 hours. In the end it pays off because then all the people want you.

During winters that many contractors spend wiling away the jobless hours, Frank was always busy. His customers often came from the highest echelon of society---millionaires who wanted furniture nobody else had. A hand carved bar that their brother-in-law would envy. Frank relishes the memory of these jobs—the challenge of a truly unique design with something “extra to think about and do something different” paired with a wealthy benefactor who’d foot the bill. It lends him the air of an old world Renaissance master.

Which isn’t to say that he’s without flaws. As his wife, [sp?], says gently, “yes, he’s great at what he does, yes he has a style but ohhh does [he] have a hard time changing [his] style.” 

It’s true; Frank will fight tooth and nail to make sure things get done “right.” That is, that things get done his way. (The fact that his way is often the right way, notwithstanding.) 

Take for instance, a recent job he did for a friend who disagreed with Frank’s insistence on putting an apron on a kitchen counter “to make a little bit more sturdy, the legs.” Met with resistance, Frank replied, “if you want me to do it this way, you do it yourself. I don’t do it.” And just to underscore his point, he pulled up Google images of similar counters. Every one of them had aprons. His friend’s counter now has an apron.

It’s easy to mistake this kind of stubbornness as pigheadedness rather than what it really stems from … pride. After being in the business for so long, Frank has learned to live by his work. 

When asked how to identify good contractors, Frank seemed near confused because the answer was so obvious: just look at their work. 

The trust has to be built. You give them a small job. You see ... the work they do.

When Frank retired, he spent nearly two years helping his company search for a replacement. After a series of strikeouts, he finally found the one he was looking for.

I found this guy, Jake. He had good hands. I asked if he could do what we do, if he can make it better. He’s working now two years because the job he’s doing is fantastic and he does the finishing with an artistic flare. He’s good and he loves it.

And that’s the final secret. Frank loves what he does and the contractors he stands by are the ones who love it too. 

Place any piece of wood in front of him, and he could tell you what kind of tree it came from and perhaps even the area of the world it grew. When he talks about wood, his hands mold the air in front of him like a sculptor, to illustrate. 

You can’t cut the wood any time you want. Room temperature, all these things affect the wood when you cut the tree. 

Much depends on the cut and the grain. Some can make paper and the grain comes different. But if you slide it and then open up ... beautiful. Slide the tree and then you open, then you see two of the same grain that goes together. They change slowly. Then you glue like this.

And then Frank’s palms press shut—like a tongue and groove—as he looks up and he smiles.

(download)

Click here to download:

good-contractor-frank-filipas-syuuqkmvmcdsjuxdCixH.zip (548 KB)

You’ve done it.  

You’ve made what is likely the biggest purchase in your life: a home.  Whether it’s tucked away in a suburb, or mile-high in one of the condo buildings that now dominate our skyline, you are a homeowner and this blog is for you.  Because now that you’re swimming in laundry lists telling you how to care for your home… it's time for something different.

This is a blog about the word ‘good’.  A word that, in the fear-dominated renovation world, you don’t hear often.  After completing scores of interviews with both customers and contractors, this blog simply asks the question:  What does it mean to be a good contractor?  How do we, as customers, hire them?  And how do we even begin to tackle the wild-west reno landscape?

"Tear it all down"

If you are at all into the renovation culture, this is a familiar call to action.  You can't watch an episode of HGTV's hit renovation show, Holmes on Homes, without hearing it. The scene is always the same. As Mike Holmes surveys yet another customer's disaster renovation, Holmes' catch-phrase sparks a Rocky-esque reno montage. "Move out of the house", "who were these yahoos", and, of course, the now ubiquitous "make it right."  

The show’s success lies in the simplicity of the fairytale. It begins with the heart-wrenching story of a family losing their home, their castle. Then Holmes appears as the white (t-shirted) knight in shining coveralls, out to save the castle from peril.  And because all good stories need a villain Holmes pits himself against the nebulous “bad contractor”.  

And really, can you blame him?  Ask any homeowner or tenant in the GTA and, if they can’t tell you of a personal reno-gone-bad story, they can certainly name a friend or family member that has one.  No one can argue that the situation exists; there are bad contractors out there.  The real question after seven-or-so seasons of syndication is, so what?

In search of a solution

While it makes great television, tearing it all down for tens of thousands of dollars is a solution that, for most moderate-income families, is simply inaccessible.  

Our next hope is to then turn to other forms of protection like insurance.  But these measures only help after things go wrong. They do nothing to dodge the nightmare that the customer is out to avoid in the first place.  

License checks are proactive and are an excellent indicator that a contractor plays by the rules, yes.  But if it’s true, as one contractor recounts, that “you can get a Metro Toronto License after a five-minute conversation at city hall,” then does licensing really have anything to do with quality?  Is a good contractor someone with a license?

Let me be clear. All customers should look for licensing, insurance, WSIB and a valid business number when renovating (at minimum.)  But after countless hours of interviews with customers and contractors, new home owners and seasoned DIY’ers, we’ve found that identifying a good contractor is a lot more complex than you’d think.  And also, that there are many more out there than mainstream media would have you believe.

“Tradition and ethics cannot be licensed”

As one of our contractor advisory team told me once: “Tradition and ethics cannot be licensed.”  That is what the Good Contractor blog exists for.  Not to give you another laundry list of todos that promise the heartache free reno, but rather to figure out what’s truly ‘good.’  To tell you stories from real customers and contractors in order to answer that question.

All we ask is for you to consider this: maybe "tearing it all down" isn’t the answer.  Perhaps what needs to be torn down are your preconceptions of what makes a good contractor.

If you can do that, then welcome to the conversation.