A hip renovation for a tough False Creek penthouse
Kerr Construction’s award-winning reno job has been called many things by the people who have seen it. One has called it a “False Creek masterpiece”. Another even called it a “crown jewel”. Elton Donald, however, has another name for it. He was the project supervisor on this deluxe, ultramodern transformation.
“I call it Murphy’s Law,” Donald says with a laugh over coffee at a SoCam café. “Every little thing that could come up and give us a problem, did. Everything that could go off, including weather, people, and trades, did.”
But even Donald, who gave a year’s worth of his own effort to this urban makeover, will agree it was worth it. The finished product, after all, is stunning. An open-living design, this two-level, one-bedroom subpenthouse on the water boast tons of natural light and some very awe-inspiring millwork.
Not surprisingly, completing this state-of-the-art free-flowing space—which garnered a finalist nod at the recent 2009 Georgie Awards for best residential renovation in the $500,000-to-$749,999 category—had its share of challenges.
When Donald arrived on the scene in the summer of 2008, it was little more than a gutted hole atop a funky Beach Avenue condo complex. Apparently, the owner and the original contractor didn’t click and parted ways. So it was up to Donald and company to pick up the pieces and fully execute the vision of architectural designer Leo Chester of Capsule Designs.
One of the most impressive features is the warmly lit concrete staircase, which has individual step lights running up the side and a custom-made, sawtooth-shaped bookcase built in underneath.
“It was every bit as hard as it looked,” Donald assures. “There’s, oh, I don’t know, 120 or so of these stainless-steel inserts that we had to put integral to the concrete floor and have them be perfectly levelled”¦just purely for aesthetics.”
Another standout aspect of this one-bedroom makeover is the series of suspended walnut-wood shelving cells that start in the kitchen, continue on to the dining area, and end in the living room. Because of strata restrictions, nothing could touch the window behind this “floating media cabinet”. But they still needed to deal with the wiring behind most of the cells. So Donald and his crew had to get creative with a seamless aluminum tube for all cords.
“Normal guys who work with you on other jobs would come in and go, ”˜I don’t want to touch it,’ ” Donald says. “There were certain things about the job that they weren’t familiar with and”¦a good tradesman usually won’t take it on if he doesn’t think he can produce it to his level.”
That was the exception rather than the rule. For the most part, his Kerr Construction crew was up for the challenge and fully cooperating.
As Donald recalls, the task of installing the wall of sliding glass doors was rife with setbacks and challenges. They couldn’t rent a crane that could access the lot, so they built their own. There were also delays getting the actual windows, and then there was nature to contend with.
“We checked the weather reports,” he says. “It was looking good. It was supposed to be sunny. Then it started raining, and it came in so fast I couldn’t believe it, and this is after all of the [old] windows were out. So we had to get them in. There’s no way you would ever leave that site not closed off.”
Incredibly, they got the job done.
Another problem-solving challenge for Donald was finding a way to support the granite cream-and-cherry-veined bathroom counter—a nonnegotiable for the client.
“It’s two feet out, and she really wanted people to be able to sit on it,” he says. “It was one of her pet things. ”˜I want to cantilever my stone top with no support underneath, no legs.’”¦That’s a bit of a challenge. So you really have to scratch your head, ”˜Well, how can I make it that strong if it doesn’t have legs and I can’t fasten it to a wall?’ There’s no hover clips, so what we ended up doing is we made these super heavy-duty steel columns integrated into the cabinetry build.”
Through most of these trials and tribulations, the owner was there to watch how Kerr handled them.
“It would have been really cool to do it í la Mike Holmes: ”˜Okay, you go away for a while and we got this.’ It doesn’t work that way. You have someone who’s spending a lot of money, who wants to see how things are fitting, so you can’t just say, ”˜Hey, I”˜ll make it right—you don’t worry about it.’ ”
It turns out he needn’t have worried. The owner was more than pleased with the results.
“Yeah, she had an incredible reaction—I hadn’t seen her smile that big at all,” he says, adding, “It was really fulfilling for me to see.”
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