The Seven Most Important Building and Renovations Tips

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• Timeless Homebuilding Patterns
• Build a Scale Model
• Beware of Mold
• Choose the Best Roofing Materials

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When friends ask me for advice about building a house or taking on major renovations, I always start by giving them the same set of seven suggestions. Sure, you’ll have to deal with many more points than these before you’re done, but following these will get you safely past the really important challenges and into a terrific home.

Consider Timeless Homebuilding Patterns

Fashions come and go, but the home designs that make people feel good really don’t change.

• Consider layout features for your house that allow natural daylight to shine in on two sides of your most important rooms.
• Take note of the wonderful effect created by a cascade of steeply pitched roof surfaces.
• Create transition zones between indoor and outdoor spaces.
• You can learn more about the patterns of aesthetic success in the classic book A Pattern Language (ISBN 0195019199 ), and the recent sequel Patterns of Home (ISBN 1-56158-533-5)

Build a Scale Model First

Few people have the ability to visualize a house or addition in 3D while looking at a set of two dimensional drawings. It’s tough. That’s why building a scale model offers so much value, even with renovations. You'll need:

• A sharp utility knife
• Some 3/16-inch thick foam board
• A roll of masking tape
• A ruler 

Experiment with window size, door placement and roof pitch on the model. You’ll find a scale of 1/2-inch to the foot is ideal for most homebuilding projects.

Beware of the Mold Hazard

Canadian homes are especially susceptible to interior mold growth because of our cold winter weather. As warm, moist indoor air filters through cracks around windows, doors and electrical outlets, it cools, creating condensed, liquid water droplets within wall cavities.

• At a minimum, insist on the very best vapour barrier installation to seal against this.
• Better still are the new condensation-resistant construction systems like structural insulated panels (SIPs), and walls made of insulated concrete forms (ICFs).
• Even an exterior layer of rigid foam applied to the outside of a stud frame wall greatly reduces the potential for condensation inside wall cavities.

Choose the Best Roofing Materials

• A large part of the cost of any roof goes to the people nailng down the shingles.
• That’s why paying more for the best roofing materials is the least costly long-term option.
• Today’s top asphalt shingles offer twice the working life of standard ones (up to 50 years in some cases), yet should only add about 25% to the overall cost of a shingling job.

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