Gerry Lewarne

Review of Kenorah Design+Build

We purchased a beautiful lot with an old house on ...

We purchased a beautiful lot with an old house on it, with the intention to build our dream house. We had had previous experience renovating an older house and wanted to avoid the cost plus model. We have found the cost plus model to be too expensive for people like us, who have great ideas and no expertise about how much those ideas cost.
We were looking for a fixed cost budget and so began researching firms that could help.
At the BC Home show we found two companies that qualified, one of which was Kenorah, who bill themselves as a Design Build company. We also considered a 3rd firm, a cost plus company, represented by a friend of ours.
The Kenorah process was to first identify our budget, then sit with their architect and engineers to actually nail down the final design and the final budget for construction. The design cost was separate from the construction cost, but it is money well spent because we invented then discarded a number of details. At times Jake, the lead at Kenorah had to be firm and say No we can't have this or that, otherwise we would be way above our original budget.
We moved out of the old house in October 2015 and moved into our new fantastic house in October 2016.
Kenorah stuck to the original budget, even when some things went wrong. When there were problems, Kenorah solved them. Their contract is real and valid throughout the process. All of the people from Kenorah and their sub-contractors were pleasant to deal and did their best work on our house.
We are very happy.