Percolator

The Move is Made

By Elliott Smith on July 3, 2010 3:42 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Whew. That was a long day. On July 30th we did the move, and have survived to tell the tale!

The movers (Angel Movers "Making your move a heavenly experience" which may be a slight overstatement even though they were great) arrived 8am and the look on their face as they saw our 3 story Toronto house -- plus two sets of stairs to the curb -- told us that this was going to be a long day. Luckily, it was a gorgeous day and not too hot so at least we had that going for us.

We were a little stressed about the timing actually, as the buyers have proven to be quite difficult -- first asking if they could move up the closing date by 3 weeks (!), then making a fuss about the central vac system not being operational (which is a whole other story). We had this fear that they would show up at noon on the dot and insist on moving in or us paying them or something.

Anyway, we packed the kids off to various locations and got to work. As the movers started getting boxes out, I loaded up odd-shaped or fragile things into the car to just drive up myself. Hooray for only moving 2km! There were three of them, and by around noon is was clear that they would have done well to have brought a 4th body with them, as getting the big stuff like the couch down from the 3rd floor was probably half an hour for 2 of them alone. I continued to load up the car and expanded my mandate to take other stuff as well just to try and save time.

By about 3:30pm, it was clear that in fact they weren't going to get everything in the truck. So luckily our neighbour let us put some stuff in their garage so I could come back and get it while the movers unloaded at the new house.

Carol and I did our last pass through the house, and ur lovely neighbour Catherine came by with a bottle of champagne to say goodbye. We'll miss them. We got her to take a picture of Carol and I sitting on the floor in the empty living room, just as we did 12 years ago when we bought it. Yup, a lot has changed since then, if nothing else the size of truck required to move in vs move out.

We locked up the house, dropped the key through the front door, gave the porch a little pat to say goodbye, and headed up to our new house on Delaware. The load in was much faster as so much of the stuff was simply going through the garage door and into the basement. The poor movers looked absolutely wiped by this time, although they kept fighting the good fight. One of them, a young Russian guy, came with me to get the last items from the garage, then I went and picked up Leighton and Adele, and then we all had pizza for dinner.

The movers left around 6pm, a long day for sure, but we were now officially in our bright, big new home!

Next up: finding out where the heck everything is packed away to.

(Photos to come.)

Project 595: D-Day Minus One!

By Elliott Smith on June 24, 2010 7:21 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

So tomorrow is the day when we get possession of the Delaware house, so Carol and I go up to the lawyer's office today to sign the papers that will release hundreds of thousands of dollars into the account of the seller.

Eek!

Our bank (ScotiaBank at College have been great) has arranged bridge financing to cover us for the five days until our buyer releases hundreds of thousands of dollars into our account, but until then the main goal is to get serious on the major packing items like kitchen, garage and basement.

The garage is truly unholy, but my plan is to simply throw most of it into the back of the car and take it up myself rather than try and pack it for the movers.

Then on Friday evening, the real estate Gods willing, we'll go over with the kids, some treats and maybe a picnic, and have a little celebration in the large and empty living room. I think the hockey mini sticks may be required too.

PROJECT 595

By Elliott Smith on June 18, 2010 5:56 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Let the fun begin! I'm going to do my best to document the process of moving to our new house, and especially the renovation process, right here under the Project 595 monicker.

Yeah, like CNN, I have a logo for everything.

First up: Meeting the architects and discovering how much money is really no money at all.

Summer already?

By Elliott Smith on June 18, 2010 5:41 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Wow, it's been awhile. Most of my posts about work have been moved over to my work-based blog, so if you liked that stuff then check it out.

On the other hand, if you like family news or especially stupid stuff of no professional or intellectual significance, this is the place my friends. This is the place.

To wit, writing legend William Faulkner. It's not easy to dress well in the summer for men, but nothing's worse than a poor effort.

Me and Iggy

By Elliott Smith on May 18, 2010 6:58 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

I had the pleasure of working with Calgary Flames' captain Jarome Iginla recently. He's a wonderful guy, and you appreciate it all the more when you see what a force of aggressive nature he is playing hockey.

Here's a shot of us going over his script, and I'm really taken aback seeing our bodies side by side like that.

I mean, if it wasn't for his lack of hair, we'd be hard to tell apart.

And... SOLD!

By Elliott Smith on May 15, 2010 3:50 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Whew. That was a white knuckle ride I must say. But the house sold on Monday afternoon without too much fuss.

We started with our agent warning us that the market sentiment in TO had really shifted in the last 3 weeks; not many bidding wars, buyers playing wait and see, avoiding multiple offer situations, and lots of houses going for asking or less. So we were pretty nervous about what the two offers were, although grateful there was at least two so we had some competition.

The initial offers came in at almost exactly the same, about 10k over asking, so our agent said to their agents, "Look, knowing what we know about how buyers are feeling, let's not prolong this. Just tell them to come back with their best offer and we'll wrap this up." I was nervous that someone would just walk away, but they both came back with more -- and one with quite a lot more. Best of all, they were "clean offers" -- ie no house inspections or conditions -- which keeps things simple.

So our final price was right about what we'd originally been hoping for. This gives us enough left over to renovate the new place with a kitchen and an opening to the back garden... At least, we hope it does.

So overall, we feel fortunate to get what we were hoping for, plus a pre-HST closing date (June 30th) which saves us a lot on taxes. And it sounds like we got in just under the wire, or at least, on the wire, according to an article in today's Globe and Mail.

Alright, who wants to help paint sometime around June 26th?

Housing Report May 5th

By Elliott Smith on May 6, 2010 5:27 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

"I've have knots in my stomach from this house."

So said Carol this morning, as we wait to see how this house thing plays out. It's been a roller coaster ride for us all, but especially her, as every new development seems to bring new worry. I mean, she's a fundamentally balanced person, but it's stressful for sure.

In response, I've been trying a new approach which is to be like a farmer about this: We've tilled the soil, planted the crop and now all we can do is see what the weather brings. I've had some mixed success with this approach but it's all I got.

The latest news on Tuesday was that a house down the street also went on the market same day as our; a highly renovated place that looks really nice in the photos. They are asking $749k for it, which Carol took as bad news for us. It looked like a much nicer place and would put a ceiling on what we could get. My view was that it was good news, as it set a higher benchmark for prices on the street. And the beautiful decor aside, I know that house and it's not that great. Thinner than ours, at the bottom of the street on not such stable ground, and only so-so curb appeal...

So, meh. Who can say? Let's see what the weather brings.

It was made worse that on the day our listing went up there was no IMMEDIATE response, and Carol started crunching numbers which showed that if we only got our asking price or a little more, by the time we'd paid off all the fees and taxes, we could maybe afford to renovate a regular coffee up to a latte in the new place. Eek.

I said that even if that were the case, we'd still be in a much bigger house -- albeit less attractive -- but anyway we still had each other and that's all that matters...

A bit quiet on the response. Heh.

I have to say, even I went to bed feeling a bit stressed about the whole thing. I love our current place and location, and although I know I'll be happy at the new place, I wondered what I'd agreed to with this whole "new house reno'd with the profits" plan that we took on with so little research.

Then two things happened: On Wednesday at the agents' open house at our place, they had all seen the "other" house, and agreed that it had some big problems around settling foundations etc. They seemed to think ours was the better property overall. So that brought a little sunshine. Then the requests for showings started... and haven't stopped. We have a bowl absolutely full of real estate agent cards, and more bookings today. Hooray, still shining.

So all good, although will it translate into a good price? Who can say? The cute house across the street had a ton of people too last week, but we haven't seen a Sold sign go up yet.

Me, I'm just watching the sky dispassionately, chewing on a straw and...

Carol has asked me to stop with the farmer thing already.

What a nice house

By Elliott Smith on May 4, 2010 10:08 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

View it bigger »

It's amazing what 3 weeks of preparation and a wide angle lens will do to your home. The listing is now up and public.

Housing Report May 3rd

By Elliott Smith on May 3, 2010 7:31 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Whew, that was a lonnnnnnnnng weekend, but we scrambled about like crazy and at around midnight last night I had the last of the stuff either put back in the house where it belonged, or stored away where it was out of sight.

It looks very nice. I'd live there, except there's no way in hell we could afford it if weren't already in it. Funny how that works.

Here's what we did to "fluff" the house:

Painted, patched and redid the floors of the boot room and laundry area (which was basically a grotto)

Painted the baseboards throughout the house (totally trashed after years of having toy cars smashed into them)

Repainted the front porch, and straighten the wonky column (which we should have done years ago*

Patched and paint the basement ceiling where it had some water damage

Emptied out the back sunroom of years of crap and junk and turned it into a storage area that Martha would have been proud of

Painted the trim on the back of the house

Painted both back doors

Filled a storage locker with stuff that would make the place look more open and spacious

Filled a small junk truck with stuff that made the place look like a junk heap.

Then last night I cleared off the back porch, hosed everything down and put out the chairs on the back patio. Oh my God I was sore and tired. I'm still feeling it today. (My last official task was I quickly mowed the back lawn this morning.)

But with the exception of the Kid Brother studio in the basement, which is still jam packed with stuff that Carol wants for work, the place looks open, airy and just lovely. This morning the photographer came with the agent to take pictures for the listing, and Carol tells me the sign just went up.

Let the crazy real estate games begin!

* This thought applies to pretty much everything we did.

Housing Report

By Elliott Smith on April 30, 2010 6:39 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Interesting news on the street: the first is that our neighbour Jessica who lives on the other side of our semi-detached, has sold her place! Bad news here is she seemed to be in a hurry to get out -- maybe the Smith chaos just drove her away -- and she sold it without an Open House and appeared to take the first offer. She must be one of the few people to sell a house for less than asking in Toronto.

So what does that mean for us? Well, on one hand it's easy to say our house is worth more. Her place has an oil furnace, radiator heat, no A/C, an unfinished basement and very old kitchens and bathrooms. So you could make the case that if you wanted to get it to the level of our place it would cost you 100 grand. On the other hand, from a psychological point of view, you've got to figure that people would balk at paying a huge price differential for a house that from the outside doesn't look much different.

Who knows? All I can say is that suddenly the crazy irrational Toronto housing market just doesn't seem crazy and irrational enough. Bring on the rich desperate homebuyers!

I knew it!!

By Elliott Smith on April 28, 2010 7:59 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Here's me, writing these Porktrasher songs and trying to be inventive with chord structures and all that when all along there are only four I need to know to write the hit that will pay for our house renos. So. Much. Time. Wasted.

How you know you've made it

By Elliott Smith on April 26, 2010 8:20 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

(Photo: John Clark; Dwell, May 2010 )

My brother-in-law Scott is a successful architect in Seattle. He's won all sorts of AIA awards, spoken at conferences about design and sustainability, and was recently made a partner in his firm. He's also just a wonderful guy. So yeah, he's made it by most standards.

But when you've really made it is when your work is satirized, and some of his work was recently featured in my favourite site about modern architecture.

I'm all verklempt with pride.

In da house!

By Elliott Smith on April 21, 2010 10:12 PM | 2 Comments | No TrackBacks

Oh sure, it's not quite as big as Tim Gill's new place, but I'm pretty thrilled that we've bought a new house!

Carol and I have talked for quite awhile about trying to find a larger, more modern house to give us some more room as the kids get older. The idea was we'd find one of those boxy triplexes or something fairly neutral (ie no more Edwardian rowhouses) in a less trendy neighbourhood (Little Italy is "hot") and use the price differential to pay for a reno that would open it up into a modern dream home.

Heh. Not so easy, as it turns out.

The gap between a reno'd house in Little Italy and a dump near the Galleria Mall is not as big as we'd hoped and early viewings were pretty depressing. However, on Friday we went to see a house not far from where we live now and it was very well maintained and giant -- without the usual giant price. We saw it at 10 am, made the offer at 11 and were signing papers by 4. Very exciting!

If you look from Google satellite (the red roof is ours, although stalkers note that Google conveniently shows the wrong address) it also has a nice big backyard -- huge ice rink next year!

View Larger Map

Interestingly, a lot of houses on our current street have gone up for sale -- including the other half of our semi-detached - so it'll be interesting to see what they all go for.

Then all we have to do is fix up our current place, empty it of all the crap, sell it for buckets of money, then just use the buckets of money to fix up our new place.

Easy peasy... gulp.

Hanging the bell on the Tiger

By Elliott Smith on April 8, 2010 6:20 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

This latest Nike piece with Tiger Woods is is the most red-hot viral video I've seen in quite awhile, and not surprisingly. So first, here it is:

Whew. That's it. I have no great pronouncements to make on the content or concept behind it other than it's pretty freaking good.

What I'm really interested in is what it takes bring a spot like this to air (is that what it's called online, or is it space?). It's much more that coming up with the idea itself: Although it's obviously very good, the relationship between mentor/father and superstar/son is a well-established trope in our sports (Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky come to mind immediately), and certainly with Nike. And the idea of betraying the values of said idolized father is incredibly powerful -- it's a story that's been told since Biblical times.

So okay, it's a great concept. But I think equally importantly, the ability for this piece like this to be conceived and executed you must have:

A creative team who knows Tiger as well or better than he knows himself. My first thought was "How did they even know that recording existed? Where did it come from?" I suspect there's a huge library of this type of content at Nike, and the team knows every kilobite of it. Knowledge is the source of insight, and they have it in spades.

High level connections and trust between agency and client. Obviously Wieden & Kennedy and Nike are joined at the hip, but I'm guessing this is the kind of concept that doesn't get pitched by mid-level creative teams to mid-level marketing people. This is the kind of concept where Dan Wieden calls the Mike Parker and says "Listen, we want to do something big here." Or maybe not. But it's most certainly a product of trust and not tricks.

High level connection and trust between Nike and Woods: Can you imagine going to Tiger and his representatives and saying, "Okay, so we're going to create a piece where Tiger's dead father is speaking from the grave and what he's saying directly calls out Tiger's recent behaviour. Tiger does nothing but listen to the voice. Oh, and we're going to release on the first day of Augusta"?

I can't. But they can, and did.

And that's why the world is watching Tiger Woods and thinking about Nike at the same time.

QWERTY love

By Elliott Smith on April 1, 2010 2:22 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

I don't know why I love these old objects. Is it because I only work with virtual objects that I love the tangible, tactile look of these? Or just the complexity and texture in the designs? The sense of weight? That I can't figure out how half of these would even work? All of the above.

From the Martin Howard Collection, in Toronto as it turns out.