Custom Homes

Riverside builds four to five houses at a time, in St Andrews Heights, University Heights, Rosedale and Bearspaw. Paul is on every site each week. The trades are people he has worked with for most of twenty years, which is why the schedule holds and why the finishing is what it is.

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  01 · The lot

  Lot selection and feasibility

  Inner-city lots are unforgiving: setbacks, slope, mature trees, a neighbour ten feet away and a city process that rewards patience. Before anything is bought, Paul walks the lot with you and tells you what can and cannot be built on it, and roughly what it will cost. That conversation is free and it has talked people out of lots more than once.

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  02 · Design

  Architect and interior designer

  You choose the architect. If you would rather not, Paul will introduce you to two or three Calgary practices whose work suits what you have described, and sit in the early meetings so that what is drawn can actually be built to the budget being discussed. Costing runs alongside the drawings rather than after them.

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  03 · Build

  Construction and site management

  A typical custom home runs 14 to 22 months from breaking ground. You get a written schedule at the start and a cost report every month against it. Site meetings are weekly, on site, with Paul. Changes are priced before they are ordered, never after.

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  04 · Finishing

  Trades, millwork and handover

  The last four months are where a house is won or lost. Millwork is dry-fitted in the shop, plaster is hand-finished, and the deficiency walk happens before you move in, not after. A one-year warranty follows, and Paul answers the phone after that too.

On film

Walk through completed homes.

Riverside's own tours of finished custom builds. Nothing loads from YouTube until you press play.