Passive house

Building the Kitchen

/ Emily / Leave a comment

Our original plan was to install a custom kitchen, but in the end we decided to go with IKEA for a number of reasons:

  1. to save money (at least $10K less on cabinets and labour)
  2. we felt they were good value with the number of features included
  3. our kitchen layout was relatively simple (l-shape and island)
  4. it seemed like it would be within our capabilities.

In hindsight, we were a bit over-optimistic about how straightforward things would be (and man, was it a lot of work!) but we’re glad we did it. It was not without some frustration along the way though. 

Picture of garage with stacks of ikea cabinet boxes
The boxes for the kitchen took over every inch of our garage
Picture of ikea sektion rail on wall
Hanging the cabinet rails took careful measuring
picture of ikea kitchen cabinets in room
Our cabinet assembly line moved quickly

Some things that went well:

  • Designing the kitchen is fun with the online planning tool which lets you configure things how you want them
  • Once designed, you go to the store where an associate checks over your measurements and creates the order, which is a straightforward process
  • You get a plan and, after a good sorting and organizing, it’s easy to figure out which cabinets go where
  • Assembling cabinets is indeed a lot like building IKEA furniture and gives you a confidence boost starting out. Working as a team on an assembly line, we could power through them quickly.
  • Returns are easy
  • Having pictures of all the plumbing and electrical placement pre-drywall made things a bit less dicey drilling into walls
  • The hardware works well and its really nice having soft close drawers and doors
  • The accessories make for functional, organized interiors
  • Having all drawers on the bottom is the great and really makes everything more accessible
  • We made sure we had lots of task lighting
  • We ended up with a lot of storage and lots of work space, which was a big wish list item for us
picture of ikea kitchen under construction
We’d work until we couldn’t see anymore
picture of ikea kitchen under construction
Levelling everything took hours
picture of ikea kitchen under construction
Work was a bit easier once we got electricity

Things that didn’t go well:

  • Some of our delivery experiences were a hot mess with things arriving in a jumble and broken
  • Sorting things out after delivery went awry was absolutely wonky.
    • In one case, I spent a week calling daily and being assured by multiple associates that my replacement pieces were on their way and to call back the next day if I hadn’t received anything, only to find out on the 6th day that, in fact, there was no record that any replacement parts were being sent and that I should call the store for a resolution. The store then told me I was not allowed to call the store, but after some back and forth, finally sorted it out.
  • Inventory seems inaccurate at best with multiple confirmed orders only being partially completed due to stock running out.
  • Cover panels are sent with no instruction as to what goes where and need to be measured and cut to size on site, which is a bit more involved of a process than anticipated. In fact, despite the instructions telling you that you can do it all with a screwdriver, a hacksaw, and a bit of pluck, we made full use of a garage full of borrowed power tools and don’t know how we’d have made it through without.
  • Hanging cabinets based on the IKEA system would be a cinch under ideal circumstances, however, you don’t realize just how uneven your walls and floors are until you try to install a kitchen perfectly level. Having unevenly spaced studs is also really annoying when trying to hang cabinet rails.
  • Our kitchen came with enough cardboard packaging to cover our floors twice, which was great for keeping floors clean but a mess to clean up after
  • The screws and nails are not the best quality and we ended up getting replacements from the hardware store for some things

We read in reference book that a few adults can install an IKEA kitchen in a weekend, which was a joke, at least for the kitchen we made. It took 10 long days of hard work (with many thanks to our helpers!) and we’re still picking away at things, with a few handles and cover panels to go, not to mention a backsplash, which we’ll get to eventually.

In the end, we’re happy with the end result. There are some things that, if you look closely, are a bit off or that we’d have done differently, but nothing we can’t live with. We were also feeling confident enough after to tackle storage for our ensuite bathroom, mudroom, laundry room, and walk in closet, which helps bring some order to the chaos of a mostly built house.

Picture of finished kitchen
Our more or less done kitchen
picture of finished kitchen
We purchased countertops via IKEA as well

Service Hookups

/ Emily / Leave a comment

We’ve been on a weeks long sprint now and things are coming together. After painting was done, we needed to get services to the house so we could get electrical, plumbing and HVAC done.  Because we’re on a rural lot, that meant that we needed a septic system for sewage disposal and a private well for drinking water. Normally these things come first in the build sequence, but we did it all backwards to complicate things (because framing the house pushed so long into the winter, we ran out of time and had to wait for spring).

Our original plan had been to install a conventional septic system with a septic tank and leaching bed and effluent feed via gravity flow. We had to adjust course after we got a gob-smacking quote for the amount of fill that would have been needed to grade our lot to accommodate this. Our redesign adds a pump chamber and dosing pump to distribute effluent over a mounded leaching bed. This was a bit more expensive than a conventional system, and means we have a big mound on our lot, but still better than spending $100,000 on dirt in our books.

Picture of excavated land
Initially excavation went quick
Picture of septic tank and dosing chamber being installed
Septic tank and dosing chamber
Picture of septic tank and dosing chamber next to house
Tank connects to the mechanical room
Picture of mounded septic system
A finished septic system isn’t much to look at, but there it is

Excavation made us no friends with the neighbours as the septic installers had to hammer through bedrock to install the septic tank. Once that was done, however, things were looking like they’d wrap up quickly when our electrician popped up with bad news – Hydro Ottawa had decided that we could not run our electric hookup along the side of the driveway as planned, but rather, we would need to install a trench under the driveway and encase the cables in concrete. This, naturally, entailed even more bedrock hammering and rendered our site mostly inaccessible for other work for a month and a half while we waited for all the necessary inspections. Oddly, the hydro inspector was a bit perplexed about why we’d been required to do all this, however, we’re thankful the work got in under the wire just before Hydro Ottawa went on strike. With electricity hooked up, we could move along with everything else.

Behold the trench
Picture of concrete forms in trench
This was a painful process
Picture of two baby skunks in gravel trench
We had multiple trench inspections

For the well, we had to wait for seasonal load restrictions to be lifted for the 80,000 lb truck to be able to come and drill. Spring is not an ideal time to drill wells, and there was some hemming and hawing about whether the ground was too soft to bring the truck in, but it was ok in the end and no one got stuck. 

Picture of well drilling truck
Drilling went well
Picture of well head with tread marks nearby
Alls well that ends well and no one got stuck (though looks like it was a little dicey)

The well technician found water at 140’ down with a good flow rate of 20 GPM. We needed to test the water to make sure it was safe to drink. Public Health Ontario provides free well water testing for bacterial indicators (E. coli and Total Coliforms). Our first test came back with a result of overgrown for Total Coliforms, but we discovered our contractor hadn’t disinfected anything after installing. So, we shock chlorinated the well and it’s been fine since. Though only bacterial testing is required for occupancy, we also got the water tested via a private lab for general chemical characteristics and heavy metals. Those tests told us what we’d suspected – that we have very hard water and will need a water softener to prevent scaling in our pipes and appliances – but we’re happy to know that we have good water quality overall. 

It’s much easier to work on a house with electricity and running water where you don’t need run in and out to switch a generator on and off or try to clean things with bottled water. It really helped us with our next big task: installing our kitchen.

The Lay of the Land

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Image of excavated land
Who knew excavation could be so exciting (not always in the best way)

Permits in hand, we were ready to begin work. We got our culvert and temporary access (i.e., our driveway) installed, then had the surveyors place pins for excavation, and sought official quotes for excavation. This was the source of our first major snafu. 

We were expecting that excavation would be no sweat, our land was relatively flat after all and we didn’t need to dig a basement. However, while chatting with the person installing the temporary access, he mentioned that from our grading plan, it looked like we were importing an awful lot of fill. This was an understatement. When the quotes came back, it was about $100,000 worth of fill, not to mention the labour to install it and the gas to ship it. We were floored. This could be a knockout blow before we even started. It also wasn’t what we wanted, our house would have towered over the landscape, perched on a hill we built.

Thinking it over, a few things brought us to this point:

  1. We decided to build a raft slab foundation. Our project manager had recommended it to save cost and our architect agreed. This is a foundation that essentially floats on the ground. You insulate on all sides of the slab, obviating the need for footings below the frost line. It isn’t the norm for this area but is becoming more common. And it seemed to make sense for our house and our land, where there’s bedrock close to the surface. It would save us having to blast.
  2. Because it’s an unusual construction type, the foundation seemed to stump a few people, including our grading designers, who designed the grading similar to how it would typically be done (like in a house with a basement). We would have appreciated a discussion of the different options and implications.
  3. Our lack of experience and construction knowledge meant that we didn’t glean any of this from the grading plan – and it wasn’t obvious to anyone else involved (or wasn’t flagged if it was).
  4. Because the subtrades weren’t willing to provide quotes ahead of time, our project manager’s estimate was based on previous jobs rather than our specific circumstances and ended up missing the mark.
Image of gravel pad for slab on grade house
We got our pad!

We had to get the septic and grading plan amended and resubmit for approval. The whole process set us back over a month. Our excavation cost was, in the end still higher than originally estimated, but we hope to make it up in other ways along the way. We’re just happy we didn’t have to build our own mountain.

Finally, in August 2022, we had our pad and were ready to start the structure!

We did hit another hit another minor snaggle with excavation when the surveyors came in to pin the foundation. They thought the excavator put the pad in the wrong place. We checked and it was exactly where we wanted it, so if that was a mistake, it was a happy one for us, though it did lead to a little finger point between the subtrades. You win some, you lose some.

What Next?

/ Emily / Leave a comment

There are a million paths you can take to building a house from the relatively straightforward to the long and twisty. As we looked to build, the options as we understood them were:

  1. Buy a new build in a development. This is the (relatively) easy route, where you pick from a set array of houses and make limited choices about finishes, customizations, and paid upgrades.
  2. Buy from a smaller builder. You see these advertised on real estate websites sometimes as ‘to be built.’ You buy a package from a builder and have perhaps slightly more choice over selections than in a big housing development.
  3. Fully custom. The most complicated option, where after the excitement of finding land settles, you’re hit with the realization of just what you’ve gotten yourself into, peering apprehensively down the long path ahead of you and asking yourself ‘what next?’ 

As it turns out, we’re gluttons for punishment and opted for the long and twisty route of a fully custom build.

Building a house is no easy feat, as we learned by watching some neighbours a few lines over.

Now there are options to make this somewhat easier, with several companies offering house packages. These packages include a floorplan, construction drawings, materials, and project management. We seriously considered going this route and in fact, spent a fair bit of time trying to make it work with one such company. Our sense was that this was a great choice if your needs are straightforward. It was also the custom build option with the most transparent pricing, as we’ve since found out.

Ultimately though, it didn’t work out with the package company. As we thought through what we wanted in our home, a list of goals took form. We spent hours measuring out rooms, thinking how we would use different spaces, and sketching floorplans. We found in the process that it was easy enough to sketch up a house with different elements we wanted but not so easy to bring it all together to make a home. We wanted advice on what did or didn’t work if we wanted to achieve different goals and we’re getting that. So, we parted ways with the package company and ate part of our deposit.

Back to the drawing board, we began exploring another path: hiring an architect. We were initially skeptical of this option, thinking it was beyond reach. We interviewed a few who sent back quotes that confirmed our suspicions (no way did we have $70K+ just for design), but then a builder we talked to suggested someone they’d worked with previously. 

We met with this architect who had experience designing passive houses, had designed her own passive house, and seemed to understand our goals. Her fee was also within our budget. We hired Jane Wilson and dove headlong into the design phase. This is where the fun begins!