Infill Housing #6

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Two of my grandmother's expressions are running through my head:

1. The way to hell is paved with good intentions.
There have been so many times over the past six weeks that I intended to post something here.

2. Give every devil their due.
Now I'm not saying that this particular developer is a devil. No, it's the whole infill housing situation that I find evil: the destruction of homes, the transformation of established neighbourhoods and the incredible waste of material.

However, I'll start off with a couple of positive observations. (I was going to make this a completely positive post, until they tore up our front lawn this morning.)

The Good - Our contractor has kept the worksite fairly tidy. On several occasions I have witnessed him cleaning up the site and sweeping the adjacent neighbour's driveway. We certainly appreciate these efforts to keep the mess to a minimum. Also, we're very happy with the materials used to cover the house. Considering some of the unattractive infill houses around, we are feeling lucky.

We are not faced with red or orange or corrugated steel. We are not looking at a completely dark hulk. So many of the new homes are dark brown or black, which seems very intimidating and unfriendly.
Instead we are looking at this!

The light coloured stucco and stonework is a relief.

So, after years of wondering what we would be presented with, we are pleasantly surprised.

The Bad - Just when you think that all the noise is over, that all the work left to do is on the inside, you wake up to the noise of trucks and machinery. I guess it's not a big deal but it would have been polite and considerate, if we had received some kind of notice that a portion of our front lawn would be dug up today. Just a note in the mailbox, explaining the procedure would have been nice. I feel badly for the workers who are hired to hook up gas. They appear unannounced and are often berated by neighbours when they go about their jobs. That's what they told me when I went out front today to ask them what was going on, how long would it take, would the street be dug up and would the sidewalk section be replaced? 

A section of the sidewalk being removed.

At one point the entire house was shaking as they worked at removing a section of the sidewalk. However, they didn't need to dig up the street again so that was good news.

The work was completed by mid-afternoon.

The Ugly - We are left with a temporary sidewalk patch. Another company is hired to come around and replace this with a permanent sidewalk. If we're lucky, it will be done this fall but we won't count on that.

I know, in the grand scheme of things, with all the troubles in the world, this is nothing to complain about.  However, I think that neighbours of new infill houses don't like to feel like they have no say in what is going on around them, even in their own front yards.