E. P. Connors House - Classic Prairie Style in the heart of Westboro

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If you read this blog regularly, you'll know that I love to find examples of architectural styles in the Westboro neighbourhood of Ottawa, particularly Modern and Prairie style architecture.

Once in a while I find a real gem in the 'hood that deserves its own post. In this case, it's E. P. Connors house at 166 Huron Ave.

This house, designed in 1915 by Francis Conroy Sullivan, is a classic example of the modernist Prairie school of architecture in Canada. Sullivan was strongly influenced by the Prairie school and worked for several years with Frank Lloyd Wright, the best known architect of the prairie school movement.

Sullivan, who once worked for the federal Department of Public Works, was a prominent architect in Ottawa from about 1907 to 1917. In addition to frequently designing schools for the Ottawa Catholic School Board, he designed several buildings of national historical significance, including the Banff National Park Pavillion and the the Horticulture building at Landsdown Park in Ottawa.

Although strongly influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, Sullivan's style was different in several important ways: For example, whereas horizontals predominate in Wright's creations, Sullivan used strong verticals to create tension in his designs.

It's interesting to see how architects working in Ottawa today are influenced by Sullivan's and Wright's work. Barry Hobin, for example, at least to my eye, seems to be a disciple of the prairie school and often seems to incorporate strong vertical elements reminiscent of Sullivan's work into his designs. Just take a look at some of Hobin's designs in the pictures below.

(If your interested, you can see more pictures of the interior of these homes at the Modern Ottawa blog and on Helen McCallum's website.)

Barry Hobin also designed the houses at the the old Olgivie estate in Westboro, which were built by Uniform Urban Developments. Again, notice the influence of the Prairie school.

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Is Ottawa seeing a resurgance of the Prairie school movement. I think so. Arts & Crafts is still very popular, but there is no doubt that there is a shift happening.

Contract signed

Well after much delay over the past few months, it looks like things might actually be underway.

The financing came through last week and, subsequently, we signed the contract with the builder. If all goes well, they could be breaking ground by mid- to late-September.

The next step is to contact the building movers and see if they are still interested in buying the house.

Finally, some progress

Well, arranging the financing is still plodding along at a snails pace (I'll provide more details about that once everything is finalized), but we have made some progress with the builder.

We do not want to enter into a contract with the builder until we have the financing in place, however, summer is marching on and we were worried about getting the house started on time. In about another month or two it will start to get more expensive to build, primarily because after November 7, a 7% winter handling premium is applied to the cost of concrete and any masonry work has to be heated to ensure the mortar cures properly.

So, we met with the builder today and agreed to start some of the necessary soil engineering studies. These studies take about two weeks to complete and cost about $2500, but are required before a building permit application can be filed. If the financing falls through (which I don't think it will) then we're out $2500, but on the other hand, we could be two weeks ahead when the financing does come through.

A word about windows

When I come across a pretty decent contractor or supplier, I like to talk about them.

When we were still researching the old design of the house, we did a fair bit of research into windows (given that we were looking at about a $45,000 bill for windows).

We checked with a couple of different window suppliers in Ottawa, but one person who really stood out for me was Paul LeDuc at Golden Windows in Kanata. He spent a fair bit of time with us and did a really great job of explaining the differences in window styles and materials. Plus, he was transparent and pragmatic about costs and quality. He knew we were trying to keep costs down, so he offered some good solutions, such as using more expensive windows in the main living spaces and using cheaper windows in the bedrooms. All in all, I found him quite helpful, even though we did not end up using Golden, because we decided to go with Uniform Construction.

In case your interested, here are some tidbits of information about the windows we investigated:

• Aluminum clad wooden frame windows are the most expensive, but also offer the widest range of colours on the outside and have a beautiful wood finish on the inside.
• Coloured vinyl windows are about 20% cheaper than wooden windows, but only come in about 4 colours on the outside and only in white on the inside.
• Plain white vinyl windows are about 30% cheaper than wooden windows and are white on both the inside and outside.
• from an energy efficiency standpoint, there is virtually no difference in the efficiency of wood or vinyl windows
• Marvin Windows also makes a window from a product called Ultrex, which is a fiberglass based product. The exterior of the window frame is made of Ultrex and the interior is made of wood. It costs about the same as coloured vinyl windows, and has a beautiful wood finish on the inside, but is limited to about 4 or 5 colours on the outside. Ultrex also has the advantage of being thermally stable, so the window frame does not expand and shrink as the temperature goes up and down.
• Wood doors look great but are twice the price of steel or fiberglass doors, primarily because the locking mechanism is more complicated (wood doors typically lock at three points to prevent door from warping, whereas steel and fiberglass door locks are simpler, locking at one point).
• Fiberglass doors now come in a range of faux wood finishes, some of which are remarkably realistic. Fiberglass doors also do not dent like steel doors can, but steel doors are stronger.

Foundation repairs

Here are a few pictures of the foundation problems we discovered in the house after we were able to rip down some of the walls in the basement. These and some other problems are what conviced us to build new rather than renovate. While anything can be fixed for a price, it was hard to justify the cost of these repairs while still ending up with a seven foot basement and a sloping floor.



In the image below, this crack was directly beneath a window. The wall did not have enough strength to hold back the force of the ground on the other side. To fix it would have required pulling out the window and pouring a new concrete sill heavily reinforced with steel, which would prevent the wall from buckling in. The cost was estimated to be as high as $5000.









In the two images below, a large crack (about 1" wide) can be seen running down the wall from the ceiling to the floor. Amazingly, the basement window is also bent, but the glass is not broken.

The image below is from the garage, where frost has made its way under the insufficiently insulated floor. It's hard to tell from the photo, but this whole section of wall is buckling inwards due to the uplift of the floor and the force of the ground on the other side of the wall pushing in. To fix it would require supporting the house above while the entire wall is ripped out and rebuilt. The cost for this repair alone was estimated at $15,000 - $20,000

It was interesting to hear from our builder some of the history of these types of cinder-block foundations. Apparently, when these houses were built in the '50s, poured concrete foundations were available, but were more expensive and required a trained crew. A builder could save some money by using cinder blocks because the blocks were cheaper than the equivalent volume of poured concrete and the builder's own workment could usually do the job.

Interestingly, today the situation is reversed and it would now cost more to build a cinder-block foundation (not that I think you ever would want to).

Hurry up and wait

One thing about building a new house, no matter how hard you try to hurry some things along, they just will not go any faster.

Almost three weeks ago we got a draft contract from the builder along with some drawings and technical specifications. We submitted these to the bank for review so that they could finally do the building loan.

Since then, it has been a painfully slow and unnecessary wait for a bank that has a funny interpretation of customer service (not to name names, but it's a national chain that hails from the province with the name New Scotland)

When I submitted the documents, I asked if there were any other documents I needed to submit. "Oh no," said the Bank, "we have everything." One week later I asked for a status update. "we need a letter of employment" was the curt reply". Within one business day I sent off the letter of employment and asked if they had completed the appraisal of the land. After two days with no response, and almost two weeks after submitting the necessary paperwork, I was on the phone to the bank manager seeking some answers. The bank manager agreed they may have dropped the ball, but then said the delay in ordering the appraisal was because they were waiting for documents from me! huh? This week, I finally met the appraiser at the house. Hopfully, by this Friday (three weeks after I submitted the paperwork) we may actually have a loan.

Once we have a loan in place, we can sign the contract with the builder and away we go.

The new house design

Well, here it is - the new house to be built by Uniform. It's called a Brantwood and it is an Arts & Crafts inspired house. Some of the details include:

First floor

• Large two-story home has four bedrooms and a generous front proch. A home with an open family dining and kitchen area overlooking the rear yard
• the two-car garage has direct access to the muc room and powder room with an opening window
• the standard plan features a private quite space retreat off the front entry alonw with a home offic/den (in reality, we will probably use the front "quiet space" room as an office and the middle room as a TV/toy room.)
• an oversized great room includes a fireplace and is open to the second floor

Second Floor:

• A large master retreat occupies one end of the secon floor. It features a vaulted ceiling, two large his/hers closets and a five-piece master bath with double sinks
• An oversized laundry facility comes complete with a large linen closet
• Three generous bedrooms have easy access to a common bathroom

What are we missing in this design that we would have had in the house designed by Linda Chapman?

• No mudroom off the front door so I can already imagine how messy it will be
• no walk-out basement
• less interesting architecturally
• the vision of the whole land and how the house integrates into it is not as strong as with Linda's house.

Otherwise, though, this house has all of the features we wanted and with a decent landscaping budget we can integrate the back garden into the home more effectively.