Certainteed

Back in the fall, when I was trying to decide on exterior colours, I went to an old Totem store (now known as Rona) looking for colour options for Hardie fibre cement board. I called around in advance, and the store furthest from me claimed they had samples at the contractor desk. So I drove across town to pick up some samples. The guy at the contracting desk told me that they didn't have Hardie samples, in a way that suggested I was wasting HIS time. Guess where we are not buying any materials for this build?

While there, I did find a sample board of Certainteed fibre cement board. What attracted me to it was the fact that it came in "wood" colours, and was reasonably believable for fake wood. I figured it would work well on soffits, where we wouldn't be close enough to it to see that it wasn't real.

I found from the Certainteed website that Gentek was the local distributor. I went to Gentek for some colour samples. While I was there, the salesman mentioned that they don't sell much Certainteed, that most people prefer Hardie board. But he gave me a Certainteed colour deck and a Hardie colour deck. Hardie doesn't have any faux wood options.

Now that I'm getting quotes, siding companies are having trouble finding a supplier for Certainteed. So they are suggesting Hardie. Or another product I've seen, which happens to be about 6 times the price of Hardie. MrDinks pointed out that if Rona had a sample board, we should be able to buy Certainteed at Rona. So while I was at a different location (picking up materials for a project at the old house) I stopped at the contractor desk to find out about Certainteed. They didn't have the sample board there, and the manager had never heard of it. So he called the other store, and the guys there didn't know where to get it. I mentioned Gentek, and we found info on Certainteed in the Gentek book. So the manager called Gentek to get a price.

This is the conversation I had with Gentek, through the Rona manager.

Gentek: It's a special order.
Me: That's okay, I don't need it immediately.
Gentek: We won't bring in single boards, full boxes only.
Me: I'm building a house, I'm sure I'll need at least a few boxes.
Gentek: Actually, we won't sell it by the box, we can only bring in a forklift pallet load.
Me: How much is that?
Gentek: More than you need.
Me: Let me be the judge of that, how much is in a pallet?
Gentek: Too much. You should consider Hardie board.

ARGH!!! I'm so sick of people suggesting Hardie. Seriously people? It's probably the most commonly known brand of siding. If I've done enough research to know of a different product, I assure you, I have heard of Hardie. There's a reason I'm asking about something different.

So I went back to the Certainteed website with the intention of calling them and letting them know their distributor was actively preventing people from acquiring their product. Gentek is no longer listed as a distributor, Taiga is the new local distributor. Gee, I wonder why? I called Taiga, and they were SOOO helpful. Yes, they can get it in. The smallest bundle I can get is a box of 16 boards. It also comes in pallets of 188 boards, 12' long each. Yeah, okay, that's too much.

So I called Rona, and gave them the new distributor name. They got me a quote. Yay! Now, I just need to call them back and find out if that price was for the bundle of 16, or per board. Because if it's the price for the bundle, this stuff is insanely cheap. Hmmm...

We also got updated drawings from Ryan, with measurements, which the truss guys can use to give us a quote and drawings for the roof and joist systems. On these drawings, I noticed that all our interior doors are 36" wide. Our doors now are 30" wide, (except on the laundry room, which is 32"). I checked out a couple of sources for interior doors, and 36" are not common, easy to get or cheap. They exist, but not in all styles, they're special order, and usually at an extra charge. We had a meeting with Ryan, and he said that he always specs 36" doors, and it would take about an hour of drafting to change the doors to 32". MrDinks didn't think it was worth doing.

So over the weekend, I decided to visit some new build open houses to see if doors are just wider now. MrDinks tagged along. Most doors we found were 30", except on laundry rooms. A couple of closet doors were 36" wide. MrDinks agreed that they looked wrong, disproportionately wide.

While in the meeting, Ryan said that he needs to do an electrical drawing, and we need the truss drawings, and an engineering report, and then we'll be ready to apply for a building permit. 

Fun Times at City Hall

The house that used to sit on our lot had an attached garage that was accessed from the side street. There is still a slope in the sidewalk for getting up the driveway. Before our DP will be granted, we needed to provide a $5500 security deposit to guarantee that we will have the sidewalk restored.

I went down to city hall today to drop off the bank draft.

Step 1. Pay city parking authority for 45 minutes of street parking.

Step 2. Find the building permit office.

Step 3. Figure out which line to wait in. It was reminiscent of a passport office. Hundreds of people sitting in chairs waiting to be called up to the counters. But there were 2 front counters, assigning numbers to people before taking a seat. One of these counters had about 6 people in line. The 2nd had nobody waiting, but the sign was labelled "pick up and drop off". I was only "dropping off" a cheque, so I went to this counter first. I explained that I needed to pay a security deposit to ensure my sidewalk was repaired. The guy looked confused. I explained that it was a condition of the release of my DP. He suggested I wait at the other front counter, with a comment that, "I've never heard of anyone having to do that before."

Step 4. Wait.

Step 5. Hand the letter from the city that says we need to provide a deposit to the woman at the counter. She says, "Oh, that's Urban Development. That's the other office down the hall, where it says 'cashier'." Gee, it would have been nice if the first guy could have told me that.

Step 6. Find the Cashier's office.

Step 7. Wait.

Step 8. Hand the letter to the guy, pointing to the 4th page where it explains what I need to pay.

Step 9. Fill in contact information form.

Step 10. He looks through his procedure binder to figure out how to process this payment. He says he doesn't know anything about this, and he has to go get help.

Step 11. Wait.

Step 12. The help comes out and she's started reading the letter from the beginning, and stopped at the part where we have to pay $100 if we want to appeal the DP decision.

Step 13. Point out the paragraph on pg 4 where it explains the sidewalk security deposit.

Step 14. She notices that this is related to "Roads", and they don't take payments for "Roads". But she has a friend who works in Roads, and she'll call her for me to find out what to do.

Step 15. Wait.

Step 16. The friend in Roads doesn't answer her phone.

Step 17. Helper woman tries reading the letter again, and once again found the comment about appealing the DP with the $100 fee. So she suggests I could pay that.

Step 18. Explain that it's not a $100 fee, it's a $5500 fee.

Step 19. Helper woman and original cashier look at each other helplessly.

Step 20. Other cashier, who has been serving other residents this whole time, overhears. "$5500? Is this a security deposit for a development permit?" Yes!

Step 21. Other cashier points out the page in the procedure binder that details "security deposits".

Step 22. They take the 7 pages of development permit information that the city sent to me, and photo copy it. This includes the page with nothing on it but my contact information that I just filled in.

Step 23. He hand writes a receipt for the $5500 bank draft.

Step 24. He asks me my contact info, which I have filled out on the paper, so he can enter it in the computer.

Step 25. The computer prints out a receipt for the $5500 bank draft.

Step 26. He hands me back the documents he has photocopied, including the contact information form. You know, in case I don't remember my phone number. The 2 receipts are now stapled to my documents.

Step 27. Pray to the gods of house building that this $5500 eventually goes to someone who knows what to do with it.

Step 28. Thank the gods of house building that the 45 minutes of parking fees was just barely sufficient, that you didn't need to go add more, and you don't have a parking ticket that would now need to be paid at the city cashier's office.