Glad you are enjoying the blog. TM...I had 4 years of formal French so I can read it fairly well. However, conversational is a challenge, partly due to shyness, partly due to my Southern US accent! LOL I have trouble putting together sentences quickly enough to keep up with conversations. I can carry on simple conversations that are needed for traveling such as ordering at a restaurant, asking for directions, polite chit-chat that is expected when you are shopping. My husband has an equal or better understanding of the language, but his Southern drawl is so much worse than mine! LOL What we found is that if you begin speaking in French and the person speaks English, they will switch over for you. It's always best (polite) to attempt even bad French first rather than expect them to just know English. If they don't speak English, then we continue with our French. Not eloquent, but it works. In Paris a few years ago, the French were not particularly friendly and truly annoyed at our attempts at French (and our DS2 is totally fluent, taught by a French woman). In Provence, they were slightly nicer and DS2 did most of the talking. In the South of France (without DS2), the people were totally outgoing and friendly. We got 'bonjour' just passing folks on the street and especially on the trails. In fact, one French lady told us that they (on the Riviera) prefer Americans over Parisians! Too funny! For a refresher book, we use the French for Dummies . We carry a little pocket size dictionary along, but tend to look at it only when looking up terms we don't know on a menu (like daube which is a sauce). We found that we also "blended in" better along the Riviera because it's so casual and is not overrun with American tourists. The reason it isn't full of Americans is because there aren't a lot of museums or other monuments to attract tourists. It's a resort area for vacationing French with a mix of British. We had French asking us for directions (in French) or striking up conversations with us on buses or in stores.

Thanks again. It is really beautiful in this area. I've been fortunate that ever since I moved to Canada in 1973 I've always lived in a relatively secluded, beautiful place. The first was on Vancouver Island north of Victoria. I rented a log house on the property of a well to do lady and went to her house and cooked 5 nights a week. The house was on the ocean and a world away from Southern Calif. where I grew up. The first house my husband and I bought was on Salt Spring Island. That was a great experience for the time. We lived on a small lake. When our kids were small we decided it was time to move. A friend lived in Salmon Arm and when we visited him, we loved it. No taking ferries anywhere would have sold me on just about anywhere! Paul, we already have a McDonalds, A&W, Dairy Queen, Wendy's, Joey's Only, Dominoes Pizza, Subway and probably others that are thankfully slipping my mind. I call this the lousy resturant capitol of Canada. We are 45 minutes from a slightly larger town of Vernon that has everything except Cost-co. I'm perfactly happy to go there if I want to go to Wallmart or Home Depot but nobody asked me! The planning here is really pathetic. I've often felt that those in charge should be made to actually GO somewhere and see what is done in other places with a shoreline like ours. Where the wharf is in the pictures coming toward you is East. This area between the wharf and the nature preserve has been the subject for controversary since I've lived here. The person who owned the land between the wharf and the nature preserve walk wanted to develop it. I can't really remember what he wanted to do but whatever it was the city wouldn't let him. He was so frustrated at one point he was threatening to put an RV park there for spite. It was already zoned for that so they couldn't have stopped him. Gradually some buildings were built in this area. The first ones were government offices. That's where you went to get your drivers license and file claims about bad tennants. It was so weird. I pictured something like the Steveston area in Vancouver or Monterey in Calif. The vision was certainly lacking. Now there are a couple townhouse developments which are for retired people plus a big very expensive, care facility. The bay is very shallow and the railroad track runs between the town and the shoreline. That seems to separate the town from the shore in a weird kind of way. If you don't have particular buisness across the tracks, you don't go there. The property being fought over for wallmart is West of the wharf. I've been told it's the only spot large enough to accomodate the type of shopping center they want to build. I guess there are 'politics' to deal with no matter where you live. Sad....

The important issues in a cost plus contract are how will the subs be selected and paid and how will the GC's own forces be paid. Overhead is not a cost of the work unless it takes place on site. The difficulty is that few home builders or owners are capable of managing the contract without training. It should not be confused with a Time and Materials contract. Because it can reduce the owner's pricing control, a Guaranteed Maximum Price is often used. A shared Savings feature is another good idea. But because most of the costs are from subs, how the GC writes the sub contracts is critical. For large projects the sub contract work is bid competitively after the GC'S is hired and the owner approves the bidders and picks the winner. This post was edited by Renovator8 on Sun, Aug 11, 13 at 10:57

Omelet's right. All architects are different to some degree but no different than that of any other profession. But as others have noted above, most successful design results come from a highly collaborative effort with the client involved every step of the way. A couple of weeks later I asked if we could meet and he showed me his preliminary plan. To be honest, that scared me a little bit. I'm a believer that the best designers are fast on their feet. Coming up with the basic concept, or "big idea" ("Parti" in architect speak), should be highly interactive with all the conceptualizing done right there. Depending on project complexity, we all have to go "back to the shop" to some degree to fine tune up the "big idea" but if a guy/girl ALWAYS has to do that, IMHO he/she is probably not that creative. I do these sessions all the time, call them design “charrettes” and they typically last 4 or 5 hours and at the end of that time we have a house conceptualized. And no spectators are allowed as everyone there is an active participant! And you’d be surprised at the number of great design ideas a builder or owner can come up with. I do all the drawing freehand and if a “straight” line is needed, I just use the edge of my scale. A computer drawing may show what I know but a sketch will show what I’m thinking. To remove some of the mystery and to give you an idea of what you should be shooting for, here’s a recent charrette and it’s interesting in that the sketch in the photo I'm working on is the first floor plan (first sketch photo) and you can see how close the final “hard line" is to that sketch. There's usually dozens if not hundreds of sketches. This highly condensed explanation might make it appear there's one per floor!! I put a little star in a circle on the ones that are important so I can find them later in the debris field! That’s the builder in the grey shirt flanked by the owners and me with pen in hand. We started at 8AM and by noon we had the freehand sketches below. I hardlined them later so everyone could understand what we did but most of the designing was done in that meeting. And here's the actual charrette sketches, the fine tuned sketches (done later) and the final. Hopefully you can see the concept is all carried forward from the first "big idea" to the final. And also, everything is thought of simultaneously. We're not coming up with a floor plan and then "tacking on" elevations. And we're stopping design at the property lines, not at the exterior walls, like most posted plans in this forum do. This sketch is the actual one I'm working on the the charrette photo: First floor "Big Idea": Second Floor "Big Idea": Elevations and plans interposed Fine tuned up Final....not much different from the freehand conceptuals that were developed interactively: