Can I Take Down Any Wall When I Renovate?

One of the main reasons that people want to renovate their homes is to create more space. Older homes no matter the size were usually built with many smaller rooms, each room having its own special designation. Today people don't want just designated rooms they want flexible open spaces. To accomplish this you usually require more space, space that usually requires you to remove walls to take two rooms and make them into one.

But is every wall in a house the same? Are they all equal? Well the answer is no.

Depending on the design of the house, the age of the house and the materials that the house is built out of will have a bearing on if you can remove the offending wall and what it will require to remove the wall.

How do you know? You really need a professional to tell you if the wall can be taken down. If you have hired a professional to do your renovation then good for you, they will be able to determine if the wall is structurally important to your home or if its just a basic room divider.

If you are doing the renovation yourself then you need to be careful. You can spend the money and hire a professional like a contractor or an engineer to come in and tell you if its safe to take the wall down or you can start the easy way.

The easy way is that you cut several holes in the ceiling next to were the offending wall is built. Once you have access to the space between the joists then you can tell how the wall is built and if there is posts, blocking or beams that are holding something above you. Also you have to determine if the wall is helping hold up the floor joist.

Even if the wall is holding something up above or supporting the floor joist you can still remove it, but you will need to replace that wall with something. Something like a beam. This is the point were if you are trying to do the renovation yourself you should stop and hire a professional to help you because if you get this wrong you can severally damage the house and or endanger people living in it.

So remember to take your time when contemplating a wall removal, do it slowly and deliberately and if you have any questions don't be afraid to ask someone that knows what they are doing.

Rob Abbott
Village Builders Inc.

I want to demolish a house so I can build a new house

When you are thinking about demolishing an existing home to make way for a new one, make sure that you hire a professional to do the demolition.

Hiring a professional to demolish an existing home might sound like a logical choice but you should know a couple of things before you open the yellow pages and phone the first one that you see.

Here are a couple of things that you should look for when looking to demolish a house;

• Get quotes. A true professional will have no problem coming out to the existing home and giving you a proper quote. This will save you being handed a large bill at the end of the demolition because there was twice the amount of debris created from the house.

• Do your research. It doesn’t take a lot to goggle search companies, ask around or even ask them for references.

• You want experience. Demolition if done wrong can be a very dangerous thing. You are removing a structure that weighs more than any machine that is brought in to tear it down. The last thing in the world you want is to have someone hurt or killed on your land during demolition.

• Insurance. You want to make sure that the demolition company has the proper insurance. You should also contact your own insurance company and make sure that you are covered encase something goes wrong.

If you are planning to build a new house on the property it can be a good idea to have your general contractor (the one you hired to build the new house) handle hiring of the demolition company. A general contractor can also assist you in all the paperwork that the township will require before you are allowed to demolish.

There are a number of services that your general contractor can help you have disconnected before you will be granted a demolition permit. Electrical, gas, telephone, cable and water/sewer all have to be professionally severed from the existing building. If you are planning to build a new house on the property then the connections should be severed back far enough not to impede the digging of a new foundation.
A general contractor a lot of the times will be bringing in a heavy equipment sub-contractor to dig the hole for the foundation. If this is the case you can save yourself some money and have this sub-contractor do the demolition as well. This could save you money because the equipment after it is done knocking down the house can immediately start digging the hole for the new foundation. There is almost no difference in a heavy equipment operator tearing down a house and a demolition company. The only real difference is that a heavy equipment operator will use a large excavator to knock the building down and then load it into dump trucks. As the excavator tears the building down it will separate the different materials and load them in separate bins or dump trucks. This is important because this will save you money when they get to the dump.  Demolition companies will use smaller machines to do the tear down that are easier to transport and will fit into smaller places.

In a dump you will pay per pound. The price per pound will vary depending on what material is contained in the load. Loads that are mixed are the most expensive, mixed loads are when you have wood or metal mixed in with garbage. The cheapest loads are all one material loads such as all wood or all metal. If you end up with an all metal load you can have it taken to a metal recyclers that will pay for the load instead of you paying for the load.

If you go through the general contractor you will pay a management fee on top of the demolition bill but it will save you money in the long run. Because the services have to be disconnected then with the general contractor in charge of the job they will know exactly where those underground services are terminated and capped. If you do not involve your contractor then you could end up paying later when the contractor starts digging around the site trying to find all the connections that are underground. It doesn’t take much for the marking stakes to be lost on a construction site when you are building a house especially if it’s a small sight.
So remember if you are thinking about demolishing an existing house don’t just pick the first company you find, do your research and ask your general contractor it could save you a lot of time, money and aggravation.

Rob Abbott
Operations Manager
Village Builders Inc.

Renovating vs. Demolition/new build (part 2)

Renovating vs. Demolition/new build

Part 2     Looking at the benefits of demolishing an older house and building a brand new one

It’s easy to think that fixing an older house is cheaper then demolishing it and building a new house. That is true but only to a certain point. A lot of older houses that are extensively renovated can end up costing you more money, especially in the long run.

Most older homes that get renovated, end up being renovated more than once. Even doing a whole house renovation usually leads to contractors coming back at a later date to replace or improve different things in the house because you’re making new things work with existing older things in the house. An example of this is when you are redoing the bathrooms in your house a plumber will replace a lot of the plumbing that is close to the bathrooms, but will usually not replace all the plumbing right back to where the water service comes in to the house. So after installing all of this new plumbing equipment in the house the plumber has to come back and do costly repairs to the existing plumbing because it has been over loaded by the new plumbing fixtures. This is not a warranty issue because the plumber never touched those plumbing lines. Another example of this is the electrical. In most renovations the electricians are not able to replace every wire in the house, they replace as much as they can but in older houses with custom stucco ceilings you don’t want them tearing holes in them. So there end up being wires in your home that are old and may not be able to support new modern electrical needs.

When talking about warranty’s renovating an older home can be a nightmare for getting things warranted.  Because a lot of the time the problem is not with what was replaced but what still exists. New homes come with what is called the Tarion New Home Warranty, which is federally insured program that your builder pays for and registers you into that is good for the first 7 years that you own the house.

Another large problem is that when you add new furnaces and hrv’s in older houses that never had them, you can get shrinkage in the wall studs, this is especially bad in the stairwells. So this will cause drywall pops and drywall cupping even in newly installed drywall. This means that after a period of time you would have to bring the drywallers and painters back to do some costly repairs.

With new houses they all have to be done to a certain building code that is monitored by the local governments. Older houses were not built too today’s standards, which can cause some problems when trying to get permits to renovate older houses. Also certain things like fireplaces and electrical you will be forced to replace or fix because of the licences and the insurance that the contractors have. Also insurance companies when coming and doing a reassessment on the property will force home owners to do certain things to qualify for their insurance. This is especially serious when it comes to fireplaces.

With rising energy costs the norm these days, spending a little extra money to build a new energy efficient house instead of trying to bring an older house up to those standards will save you money for the length of time that you own your house. This can really add up with the new technology that is coming out for new houses.

Renovating an older house gives you a renovated old house. So the old foundation is still old, the roof is still old and will probably need to be repaired in the future. They are old to start with and will not last forever so there is a risk in doing a lot of work near and around them.

Old foundations can be difficult to tie into if you are putting an addition on and can also restrict what you can do with the addition, as in you might not be able to put a full basement in an addition depending on the basement in the existing older house.

The best thing that you can do when deciding where to renovate or build new is to work with a contractor that you trust. They should be able to tell you by inspecting the existing property if it’s better to renovate it or tear it down.

If you’re thinking about this and want to talk to a professional contractor feel free to drop me an email at robabbott@villagebuilders.ca or call me at 705 466-3202.

Rob Abbott

Operations Manager

Village Builders Inc.