VANCOUVER FALL HOME SHOW RETURNS FOR 2018
Event offers chance to ask experts about renovations, decor
The Vancouver Fall Home Show, which runs Oct. 18 to 21 at the Vancouver Convention Centre West, is known for being an event that offers variety in terms of both its vendors and guest speakers, interior designer Sarah Gallop says.
The Sarah Gallop Design Inc. principal is taking part in the show for a fifth year and will be speaking on the Urban Barn Main Stage at 11 a.m. on Oct. 20 and 21 on how to build a dream home. It’s something with which she and her team are very familiar.
“Most of what we do is working with homeowners to create the picture that’s in their head,” she says. “You know, make it real.”
It’s all about planning and organizing in the early stages, says Gallop, who finds that most of her clients think they know what they want when it comes to building their dream home, but don’t know how to execute it.
“A lot of people are pretty overwhelmed by the process in general,” she says.
“Building a house — even renovating, but building especially — there’s so many moving parts. So my presentation’s focused on guiding people through the process. What kind of things they’ll need to think about, talk about and eventually decide upon to be able to give a builder a road map on how to execute their project.”
Gallop, whose work is well recognized within the design industry, winning multiple Canadian Home Builders’ Association of B.C. Georgie Awards and Greater Vancouver Home Builders Association Ovation Awards, says that pulling off a successful custom home build comes down to a few key factors. The main one is having realistic expectations.
“The biggest thing I can say to prep people,” she says, “is to have realistic expectations, because if your expectations are not realistic to begin with, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment down the road.”
Gallop says this can have to do with your budget and what you can realistically achieve with that budget, or putting unrealistic time constraints on a project.
Listening to people who have gone through the process before is a good idea, she says, as well as heeding the advice of industry professionals.
“We have a very clear process that will guide people through,” she says.
There are a lot of new custom homes being built in the Metro Vancouver area, Gallop says. Indeed, Bob de Wit, CEO of the Greater Vancouver Home Build- ers’ Association, estimates construction began on around 3,480 new custom single-family homes last year. The total number of new builds that began construction last year in Metro Vancouver, including condominiums, was a record number at 29,000, de Wit says.
The price of building has gone up for “everything,” says Gallop, averaging somewhere between $300 and $1,000 per square foot for new construction.
“The construction market is always going to be tied to the real estate market,” Gallop notes.
“You’ve also got a high demand and not a ton of qualified people to do things, so they’re spread quite thin, and the good guys realize they’re in high demand and charge accordingly. So your labour rates are high, and your material costs are high, you’re going to have a high cost to build overall, so you need to be efficient with your dollars.”
Gallop says that having an interior designer “put eyes” on architectural drawings early on is a good idea because you want to make sure your ideas for the interior of your home match up with the big-picture plans.
“If you’ve got a house that’s planned out in spaces, but hasn’t been thought through in terms of how the inside is going to function, it can be a bit of a disconnect,” she says.
Another good tip, says Gallop, is to put your money into the areas of your home that are most used and achieve the biggest wow factor.
“Most people will focus, priorities wise, on their kitchen and great room,” she says. “The areas they spend more time in.”
Some other Fall Home Show highlights, says assistant show manager Stephanie Gatzionis, include presentations by Todd Talbot from HGTV Canada’s Love It or List It, Vancouver, along with Colin McAllister and Justin Ryan of Cottage Life’s Great Canadian Cottages and Tiffany Pratt from HGTV Canada’s Home to Win.
There will also be a DIY furniture upcycling workshop led by Leigh-Ann Allaire Perrault, Gatzionis says.
“It’ll give people more expert advice on how to upcycle furniture versus Googling how to do something,” she says.