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.