Working hand in glove with your contractor is essential when taking on a major renovation; when your goal is a home that blends seamlessly with its beautiful natural setting, it takes on the status of an ethos. That’s why the relationship between Alair Homes and the Philippson family, forged during the transformation of an awkward dwelling into a dazzling yet unobtrusive waterfront sanctuary, was key during the process.

The result of the strong bond is a stunning single-level home with a spectacular view, and the fulfillment of a long-time dream.

Click the Expand Button on the magazine to open the full article.

Renovating a home so as to include a secondary suite, which is to say a self-contained dwelling within a home, has its benefits. It is an ideal way, for instance, for people to bring elderly family members under their care while, at the same time, affording both households their independence. It is also an excellent strategy for homeowners who wish to offset some of the cost of their mortgage through the generation of rental income.

It is not necessarily possible for all homes to easily accommodate a secondary suite and, furthermore, not always legal, even in homes that can accommodate them, to build secondary suites in all municipalities. If you are unsure as to the legality or feasibility of building a secondary suite in your home, contact a Vancouver Island home renovation contractor.

Even if you know for a fact that your local zoning allows for secondary suites and that your home is large enough and laid out in such a way as to easily to accommodate one, the construction of a secondary suite should absolutely be left to professionals. For a secondary suite to be deemed legal it must conform to all building codes and pass a building inspection.

In Victoria BC, you can apply for a grant which, should you qualify, can offset 25% the cost of a newly constructed secondary suite (to a maximum of $5000). Applications can be picked up at City Hall or downloaded through the City Of Victoria website.

Not planning a renovation?  Why not builder your custom home in Victoria, call Alair Homes.

By Helen Morris, Nest Egg

In a tight market, searching for the right home at the right price can be a challenge. If you find what looks like your ideal home, but needs significant renovations, it is essential to budget both for the purchase price and the cost of the renovations.

You may decide to take out a mortgage based on the current value of the home and arrange separate financing for the renovations, perhaps using a line of credit to pay.

Another option is to take out a purchase-plus-improvement mortgage with a minimum of 5% down and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) mortgage loan insurance.

“If you have 5% down and you purchase a place that you plan to put on an additional $30,000 of improvements, we can get a mortgage approved based on the 95% of the end [improved] value,” says Cara Savege, a mortgage consultant with Invis in Vancouver.

Read the full article here.

Often our basements end up being used the way they do simply because they don’t feel appropriate for much else. Unfinished and semi-finished basements have a tendency to feel dark and cavernous. A home renovation contractor can finish your basement. Gyprock walls can easily clad the concrete. Electrical outlets can be installed. A proper floor can be laid down. Ceiling tiles with inset lights can be hung.

Light is important. Floor, ceiling and walls should be as light as possible. Dark wood panels and carpets will only swallow up what light there is. The overall wattage of lighting required in a basement often tends to be higher simply due to the scarcity of windows – in a future article we will talk about the enlarging of small basement casement windows.

Even if you don’t have a specific plan for your basement, finishing the space properly will open up opportunities for use. It is also worth pointing out that the money spent finishing an unfinished basement directly impacts the market value of your home.

If you have a home in Victoria BC with a large unfinished basement, talk to a licensed home renovation contractor for a quote.

Many of us have underutilized basements lurking beneath our Victoria homes. Large unfinished or semi-finished spaces, cave-like storage areas for tools and Christmas decorations, a dungeon to which the washer, dryer, furnace, and water heater have been eternally sentenced. In some cases these are substantial spaces which a home renovation contractor can help put to more productive use.

Often our basements end up being used the way they do simply because they don’t feel appropriate for much else. Unfinished and semi-finished basements have a tendency to feel dark and cavernous. A home renovation contractor can finish your basement. Gyprock walls can easily clad the concrete. Electrical outlets can be installed. A proper floor can be laid down. Ceiling tiles with inset lights can be hung.

Light is important. Floor, ceiling and walls should be as light as possible. Dark wood panels and carpets will only swallow up what light there is. The overall wattage of lighting required in a basement often tends to be higher simply due to the scarcity of windows – in a future article we will talk about the enlarging of small basement casement windows.

Even if you don’t have a specific plan for your basement, finishing the space properly will open up opportunities for use. It is also worth pointing out that the money spent finishing an unfinished basement directly impacts the market value of your home.

If you have a home in Victoria BC with a large unfinished basement, talk to a licensed home renovation contractor for a quote.

If your Victoria home features an unfinished basement, and you are considering some sort of renovation, you will want to look to the windows before you consider anything else. If you have a small ground-level basement window which cannot be used as a means of egress, you should seriously consider hiring a Vancouver Island home renovation contractor to replace it with a legal egress window.

An egress window cannot be more than 112cm from the floor and must provide an unobstructed open area of no less than 0.35m² with no dimension less than 38cm (0.5m² / 50cm being a preferable benchmark). The installation of a basement egress window will usually require cutting into the foundation and the digging of a window well. The well cannot be deeper that 112cm unless it is stepped and should be no smaller than 1 meter square.

There are two benefits to an egress window. One is that it will flood a great deal more natural light into the basement. The other, of course, is that it affords individuals another potential escape route in the event of a fire. If you ever plan to install a secondary suite –or even a bedroom for that matter– in the basement, the building codes will require egress windows.

If you are contemplating a home addition for yourself and your family, know that it will be more expensive than most renovation projects but, obviously, far less expensive than buying a new home. A home addition will grant you more space than a renovation project which (assuming it is the aim of the project) will simply make better use of your existing space. While you may be far more limited in the potential space you could gain through an addition (as opposed to  to simply moving to a bigger house) a home addition affords you the benefit of staying in your current home and neighborhood, which depending on the locations of schools and work can be a legitimate consideration.

If you are planning an addition to your Victoria BC home with an eye to improving its eventual resale value, know that it is likely a sound decision. Generally, you are will make back a higher percentage of your investment from a well-built addition than most other renovation projects. You should be careful, however, that the addition doesn’t eat up too much of the property around the home. A large yard, especially if it is treed, adds its own intrinsic value to a home and it is possible to inadvertently offset the increased value of the home with the compromised value of the property as a whole.

The problem is that you don’t always have a convenient place to plug in your iPod and you don’t always want to have to find a place in the living room near the flat screen TV where you can balance your laptop and you shouldn’t have to go digging around for the HDMI cables or portable speakers every time you want to listen to something or watch a movie.

The good news is that you don’t have to.

If you are planning a home renovation, consider this: most modern flat screen TVs can be mounted directly on the wall and there are any number of very good wireless speaker systems available that can be discreetly mounted in any room of the house. Increasingly, there is less and less need for devices like CD and DVD players because media can be streamed wirelessly from your home computer; a media centre tucked away, in whatever room houses said computer, can broadcast music, movies, PVR programs, and even radio to speakers and screens anywhere in the house. And all of this can be controlled by remote apps on most smart phones, iPods, and tablets.

Ask a renovation contractor about the possibility of a media centre in your home.

The Purchase Plus program is a Canadian mortgage product that allows clients who are purchasing a house to access an additional ten percent of the purchase price of their home for any custom home renovations or improvements that they would like to do.

Alair Renovations works together with your finance provider to deliver this program as the general contractor assisting in the design, construction, interim financing and warranty of these renovations. As a team, we turn a nice house into the perfect home.

The Value

• The Purchase plus program takes the strain off the client to come up with the finances required to complete the renovations with zero risk of renovation cost overruns
• Clients have the advantage of historically low mortgage rates, saving thousands on interest compared to a line of credit or other finance options
• Alair has a design team that gives the client a truly custom renovation experience
• Alair’s project management system allows clients to interact and get updates on the status of their projects online, 24 hours a day
• Alair covers all interim financing cost relating to the renovation project
• Alair provides a two year warranty on the renovation
• Alair only employs certified, licensed tradesmen, ensuring quality in service and workmanship
• Alair’s impressive buying power is utilized to bring the highest value to our clients on each renovation project
• Get your home exactly how you want it when you purchase without waiting to do renovations at a later date

Purchase Plus Program

Eligible Projects

• Basement upgrades and finish
• Bathroom replacement and renovations
• Kitchen replacement and renovations
• Custom landscape projects
• Decks
• Complete flooring replacement packages
• Trim and door update packages
• Exterior window and siding replacement packages
• Complete interior upgrade packages including paint, plumbing and electrical fixtures

Start With The Best

The first and most essential step to renovating your home is choosing a quality contractor.

Each Alair location is locally owned and operated by industry professionals with extensive experience in quality renovations, custom home building and commercial developments. The background of our team translates into a superior knowledge of the building and renovation process who understand the importance of having a clear, well defined plan. At Alair we have a deep passion for building custom homes of outstanding quality and superior renovations. In fact, Alair Homes has been chosen on several occasions as the feature home builder in National and International magazines, as well as being a recipient of several awards for our outstanding projects and business practices.

Alair’s design consultants with degrees in both architectural and interior design bring to each project an unequalled expertise and talent. At Alair Homes we are proud to give our customers award winning homes and renovations inside and out.

The First Step

Call or email us to set up a FREE, no obligation meeting to discuss your renovation project.

Download your copy of the Purchase Plus Program brochure.

Read - Can I borrow reno money? Special in the National Post

The Vancouver Island contractor you eventually hired suggested that, as you seem to be sparing no expense, you might want to consider a final luxury before the new tiles go down: heated floors. As much as the project had already well surpassed its original budget, you could not help but agree.

Heated flooring can, of course, be installed anywhere in a house, but it is especially nice in a bathroom. There are a couple of different options, but as this will be the only room of your house with a heated floor, your contractor suggested a simple electric system over a larger, more involved hydronic system. A hydronic system of underfloor heating pipes would be more expensive and difficult to install but would also allow for floor cooling in hot summer months.

If you are already tearing up your existing flooring, and the idea of a heated floor appeals to you, before you lay your new flooring, call a home renovation contractor and ask him what would be involved to install either an electric or hydronic system in your home.