We are extremely pleased with the package. The home is exactly the kind of home we both wanted - usable and attractive, the kind of structure you can live with for the rest of your life. Moreover, although the home is expensive and large, it does not have the pretentious air about it that characterizes too many modern custom homes: the remarks we get from friends suggest quite the opposite, "homey", and "airy," and "reminds me of Arizona." Everywhere we look there is light streaming through the windows onto the gorgeous wood.

K & P CONTRACTING

Our first contact, through friends we trusted who recommended Francis Keating most highly, was with Francis and with K & P. Trust is an essential in building a custom home, and it is a quality that is usually missing in the builder-owner relationship. Indeed, I know of few homeowners who did not come to loathe and distrust their builder in the course of construction; fewer still who did not walk away feeling fleeced and abused. Francis Keating is a different kettle of fish entirely: from the beginning, if something was done wrong, it was fixed; if something was not clear it was explained: if something was inadequate, it was made right. I came away from the deal with a house we both love; and with even more respect for Keating than I had at the beginning. There aren't many builders in this province with that kind of reputation, and there are fewer still who live up to their reputations. I guess this is a thank you, to Francis Keating, and to Interhab, for a job well done. Good luck to you all.

The standard 3-bedroom CMHC bungalow is a simple thing to construct: the architect's plan is pre-formulated and pre-tested, the workers have done it a hundred times before, and all the potential bugs in the system have been eliminated years ago.

But this is not the case with a custom home, designed according to the personal needs and specifications of the prospective home owner. Here, most things have been done only occasionally, and many of the things will have not been done before at all - perhaps an unusually high wall is exposed to our ferocious winds, or a plumbing pipe necessarily twisted at a different angle, and so on.

Thus, paradoxically, just as a Rolls Royce is much more finicky than a Toyota, the expensive and high quality custom home usually has more potential bugs in it than the standard bungalow. It is here that the honesty, integrity and reliability of the builder becomes a paramount consideration, since no custom home can be completed at once, and a fly-by-night firm operated by a less than utterly trustworthy contractor will leave you high and dry among your malfunctions. It will leave you feeling as a Russian colleague of mine swore I would if I purchased a certain eastern European brand of Jeep - "you will curse the day you were born."

It is on this point especially that we thanked our lucky stars we chose Francis Keating (and K & P) as our builders, because not only is Francis easy to get along with, not only does he treat you like a human being and not try to squeeze every last nickel out of you, but when the bugs begin to appear, he responds promptly and thoroughly. If they are small bugs he'll wait a while until he has a moment to deal with them; but if they're big matters, he is there at once,and the problem is attacked relentlessly until it is solved. He also does not go by the book: if a major problem still occurs a few weeks after the year's warranty has expired, no matter. He's not cheap, heaven knows, but quality never is. And he can't think of everything, so you better make sure you do; but he tries.

By the way, we love our house. We designed it precisely according to our taste (we like lots of wood and open space) and our needs (we both work mostly at home), knowing that we will almost certainly spend the rest of our lives in it. Moreover, construction and insulating techniques have improved so much in the 23 years since we built our first home that the heating costs for the new home - triple the size of our old bungalow - are much the same as the old. A house cannot make you happy, but a well constructed and appropriately designed one by Francis Keating will make your life more civilized, more comfortable, and more agreeable. You can't ask more of a house; and you can't ask more of a contractor.