Notes from a crew that builds houses for a living, on the smaller jobs it likes best.
These are working notes, not a brochure. Each one says what we check, what we’ve seen go wrong, and what we’d build in your yard. Drawings are ours; the photographs arrive as the projects do.
A deck is the room you’ll actually use.
Most decks fail at the ledger — the board that bolts the deck to the house. Ours is flashed like it matters, because on a house it does. After that the questions are ordinary: how big, what boards, how you get down, and where the water goes.
What we check before we quote
- Ledger flashing and the house wall behind it
- Footings to frost depth for the soil you have
- Where roof and deck water end up in April
- The barbecue, the table, the hot tub you’ll buy in two years
Decide about heat, height and the roof before the slab.
A garage is the cheapest building you’ll ever add and the most expensive one to change. Three feet of extra wall costs a fraction of a second garage; insulation on day one is a fraction of insulation on day four hundred.
- Setbacks and lot coverage, from the survey, not from memory
- Slab thickness where a lift might go
- Attic trusses if the roof will ever be storage
- Conduit for the EV charger even if the car isn’t bought
Orientation first, glass second.
South and west glass needs shade and venting; north glass needs heat. Decide whether it’s a room to sit in or a room to grow in — the two want different floors, different roofs, and different plumbing.
Every job gets a binder.
Before work starts you get a binder built for your job: what we require of ourselves on every part of the work, the scope, the price in parts, the schedule, and every decision we’ve made together — dated. You sign it. It lives on site. At the end, you keep it.
- A start date and a finish date at the walkthrough; if one moves, you hear it from us first
- One person, one number, an update at the end of every working day
- Anything found behind a wall is shown and priced before it’s touched
Every house has a different “barely noticed us.”
For one family it means the kitchen works every evening. For another it means nothing before nine and nothing on Saturdays. At the walkthrough we ask what matters most — speed, quiet, a working kitchen, the dog — and build the schedule around it. Working hours: [start to finish], [weekdays].
Read the whole note →[Owner name] started Makez Construction Enterprise Ltd [in year]. Years of building have taught the crew where money matters in a job and where it doesn’t, which is how we keep finding low-cost ways to get high-value results. On paper: [licence], [insurance], [WCB].
Tell us about the yard.
Or call [phone number].