Renovation (Week 28, Part 2)

The house is done. It is really done. We could move in today. A detailed set of photos from this weekend can be found here.

We knocked down a couple walls, reconfigured to the space to be more useful, gutted the kitchen and bathrooms, replaced all of the electrical and plumbing, rebuilt the chimney, replaced the roof, replaced some of the hardwood floors, refinished the rest, and it only took 7 months. :-)

I'm not sure that I'll be able to accurately reflect on the process very well in this post. It's kind of overwhelming to think about. I had never been around anyone who had ever done something like this before so I didn't really know what to expect. Everyone in my family has always done their own renovation work and hired people to only do specific jobs that they didn't want to do themselves. Even my friends have been doing the same.

I'm very happy with the results but I don't yet have the perspective to tell me whether we could have gotten more for less money if we had done more ourselves. Yes, of course we could have assuming that neither Laurel nor I had jobs or could have dedicated more of our mental abilities to the job or we did it over a 15 year period of time. But would we have been happy in those situations?

It might have been much less overwhelming if we had thought of these projects in separate chunks. In fact, we had at some point, but we kept on getting back to the idea that if we do something we might as well do other things at the same time so our lives are only disrupted once. There's probably something to be said for that. We could have done the roof and the chimney completely separately, it would have cost less because we wouldn't have had to pay the general contractor's 15% overhead and profit. We could have done the front bedroom extension into the entryway by itself but we probably would have never thought of it if it wasn't for the architect. I really had no idea that knocking down non-load-baring walls wasn't that big of a deal. The kitchen would still have been a major project, I really did want to get rid of the wall between the kitchen and dining room from the beginning, but I never would have thought to close off the other entrance and shortened the hallway. I can't imagine that Laurel or I would have thought to make the built-in lighting so nice. There were a lot of little details, like the way the lines continued from the peninsula to the cabinets across the kitchen, that are nice and make the house look amazing but are things that we never ever would have thought of, or really even cared about.

A lot of people have asked me about whether the whole Architect/General Contractor thing was a good choice. I can't really answer that because the outcomes would have been completely different. I probably would have been happy with both. I am definitely happy with our current situation. Though, I did feel like at the beginning we were being whirled around into a land that we weren't completely comfortable with. I can't speak for Laurel, but I'm not used to the idea of spending lots of money thinking about the interior lighting of our house. I can appreciate the difference between nice lighting and bad lighting, but I never would have explicitly decided to pay somebody to make our house's lighting "better". At one point during the design process I felt like there was a cabal of architects and contractors who plan to make people give their money to them. I know that it's not explicit like that, but it is indeed an industry that needs to keep itself afloat.

So, I didn't answer the question. Here's my one-size-fits-all answer:

1. If the project is small and not scary then do it yourself.
2. If the project is small but a little scary then hire a contractor to do the job.
3. If the project is large and overwhelming and you don't mind spending some time coordinating things then hire an architect on an hourly basis and get advice from him. A full set of drawings is probably not that important. Hire contractors to do the work as necessary.
4. If the project is large and overwhelming and you can't deal with each of the contractors or how they are going to interact with each other then hire a general contractor.
5. If the project is large and overwhelming and you can't spend any time dealing with stuff hire an architect and general contractor to do everything.

So, we're done. We are going to move back into our house this Saturday. We're both so excited.

Renovation (Week 28)

Today was a busy day. I think that it was the first day that people could go into the house after the floors were redone. I got there at 8am and the electricians were already at work finishing the trim out. Then a lady from one of the Blinds companies arrived to measure our windows. She noticed the far window in the front bedroom and immediately knew that it had used to be in the entryway. She said that she renovated a house on 4th Ave in Queen Anne that had almost exactly the same configuration.

Then the cable guy arrived to install the cable internet service. It took a lot longer than expected because he decided to replace the coaxial cable coming into the house. I wonder if that's something that would actually improve my internet connectivity or is something that allowed him to charge more to Comcast. Anyways, after an hour or so I finally had internet access at home. Now I can move in!

Right after the cable guy arrived the architect arrived for the "punch list". I guess that just means "finally review" but architects like to use fancy words. There really wasn't much to complain about. The contractor had already tagged some locations on the walls where he wanted the painters to fix a problem. He used small pieces of blue duct tape which I really really wanted to take off. I guess that was my OCD kicking in. The architect found a few issues with the places where the different pieces of wood at the bar connected. There were also some weird spots where the trim met the cabinets that need to be dealt with. The trim line on one of the cabinet sides was bored out of cherry laminated plywood instead of a solid piece of cherry so you can see the plywood part if you get on your hands and knees and look. The contractor didn't have enough nickel screws so he used brass screws in the floor electrical plates. This is the level of detail that we are at right now. Obviously, there's not much more to do.

In fact, our moving date is Saturday October 20th, so it's just a tad over a week away.

Renovation (Week 27)

It's really almost done. I promise. Laurel is shocked!



Yes, we are really closing in on being finished. Notice the color of the kitchen. It may look slightly different from before. Yeah.... that's because it is a different color. A week or so ago Laurel voiced her distaste for the kitchen color. Then the architect chimed in and said that he didn't like it either. Now, the interesting thing is that the color that it had been for a month (two months?) wasn't the color that Laurel had picked. When the painters were about to do their first coat long long ago they put in their opinion that they thought that it would be too dark. So, stressed out, Laurel drove to the paint store and bought something several shades lighter, which is what they ended up using that day. Now, (months) later we are back to the kitchen color. They put up the original color in a spot. Then mix together a few in-between shades. And which one do we choose? The original color. So that's what is in the photo above.

The gas is now hooked up.

This week they also installed the front panels.





We also now have a fancy-shmancy thermostat with working furnace. It was on when we arrived on Sunday!



We also now have a mirror in the bathroom.



Ok, now I am running out of things that are left. Let's see, the floors need their second coat of the Swedish Finish (yes, we choose the nasty-horrible-for-the-environment high-V.O.C. crap so we wouldn't have to reapply it in a few years). The sconces need to be installed in the bathroom and kitchen. The oven needs to be installed. There are some light switches that need to be installed and the wall plates for all of the outlets need to be installed. Oh yeah, and the electrical outlet in my "server room" still needs to be added. Uhhhhhhhhhhhh. I can't think of anything else. It's pretty much done. This is the last week. Then we wait a week and we will actually move on Saturday the 20th of October.

The rest of the photos from this week can be found here.

Renovation (Week 26)

The range hood finally went in last week. It looks great (man, I really do say that too much). It was another one of those things that I hadn't seen in real life until it was installed. It has a lot more power than anything else that I've ever had, and it actually vents to the outside, unlike anything else that I've had in the past.









They also put in the bar height part of the counter top. It didn't go in before because the metal brackets that were supposed to hold it up bent right away. Not good. So the contractor ordered much stronger brackets. They will eventually be hidden by some Cherry panels.



They also put in the Paradigm in-ceiling speakers next to the range hood. I've never liked in-wall and in-ceiling speakers, but I really like Paradigm, and I figure that I might as well try them out while we're at it.

All of the photos from this week can be found here.