Merry Christmas and Odds n' Ends

A belated Merry Christmas to all our readers! What I should be blogging about is the Christmas snow we received and the fun I had with my new snow blower at the house. With a driveway, there would have been a lot of shoveling, so it was time to step up and bring in some horsepower. We got a 28" two stage Craftsman and man, did it make easy work of the snow we got. I didn't think to snap any pictures, so I'll least have to take some of the snow covered house next time we're out.

Which was actually today, but didn't think to get that shot until after we left. Nothing's changed on the exterior after all. Ann and I made a trip to the house to do a little homework. We had to mark our final changes to the master shower, mark where we wanted dimmer switches, figure out the sizing of the cabinet pulls and look at the stone.

The cabinet pulls were the primary job. Not very exciting, but we've been looking at this pull from Top Knob, which comes in all sorts of lengths. It's was one thing to sit and look at plans and spec out the measurement, but once we actually got in front of the cabinets, we ended up changing quite a bit. Of course, we ended up going for longer pulls, which of course will mean more money, but hopefully we're talking a change of less than $100.

Figuring out the dimmer switch location turned more into an exercise of trying to remember what switches did what. We honestly couldn't figure out the kitchen...hopefully the electrician can!

The biggest pain was the stone work. Everytime I look at the stone, I see the gaps between the pieces. While it's natural stone, it come in rectangular pieces that are dry stacked, which means no mortar in between. Unfortunately, the mason just didn't get the pieces tight. Kathleen has asked us to mark every gap we'd like him to fill in, but honestly, I see every single seam, so I'm not sure how we're going to fix that. I'm a bit stumped and frustrated.

In the last post, I mentioned the house was all full of paper to protect finished surfaces from the coating being sprayed onto the wood. Here's some updated pics of that.



And these are from a few days later and during daylight

Poof! and cabinets appeared

It's a couple days before Christmas, I've got the day off and I'm stuck here waiting for the replacement dryer to be delivered. Oh well, I could be at work.

So, while I wait, let's talk about cabinets. They've started to go in and it's another one of those steps that gets the excitement level up. Sure, they don't have drawers or doors on them yet, but especially in the kitchen, you can start to see the rooms come together.

They're all Doug Fir wood with melamine interiors. The doors and drawers will be the Doug Fir as well. This will match all the Doug Fir we reclaimed from the paneling, which then got planed and cut down into trim pieces. (btw, it never occurred to me until picking out our xmas tree this year, but half the trees out there are firs and a bunch of those are Douglas Fir. So, I guess we've got xmas trees throughout the house!)

Let's have a look at the kitchen...


The middle two shots are kind of fun because they're the before and after. There's one uninterupted 15' run of granite that will go one side and then the rangetop and sink will go on the other. That last shot shows were the bartop will be, which is over and extending beyond the sink.

Here's the music room coming together.


This room will be fun with space for guitars (hanging above the desk), an amp (in the cabinet in the first pic) and then the bench sitting right in front of the tall windows. With the 10 foot ceilings, this room will look really nice once it comes together.

And here's just a quick, unexciting pic of the kids bath:


Overall, I think things are coming along really well. The painters have been at it for the past couple days coating, sanding and then second coating all the wood. It looks like a disaster zone in there with that varnish and saw dust soaked and stuck to all the tape and paper covering the floors, walls and ceilings.

Supposedly some of the granite counters went in today, but we'll see. I'll snap some pics of the mess if all the paper and stuff is still there. The cabinets in the mud room, which will be out of laminate are delayed, so it will be a while before those come through. We'll see what Kathleen and Mike can do to get those sped up.

Fireplace Door $election

In our latest round of negotiations, we selected and moved forward with fireplace doors today. I can tell... you're really, really excited about that. Well, we've got to blog about something, right?

There's all sorts of stuff going on at the house right now such as cabinets going in and woodwork getting stained. And tomorrow, some of our counter-tops get installed. Now, that's exciting.

Anyway, we had to put new fireplace doors in. In part because what was there was merely a screen and that both seemed unsafe and well, yucky. Also, apparently to get our LEED certification, we needed to close that opening. And to be honest, that matters more than just a certification. That's a big opening and the air flow has at least got to be significant.

I took a look back and amazingly, I don't have many picks of the fireplace. Here's a good one of what it started like and then where it stands just before the doors go in.



Apparently because of that L shape, we're immediately into a custom situation. MOC pointed us right to Fireside Hearth and Home and from there right into a single product with a few different style differences. Not much choice doesn't sound like a good situation for getting a good price.

We were recommended to go to with Stiletto style. It seemed fine, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to talk with the sales guy about price. We had a good conversation and after a couple back and forths, he claimed he put the wrong labor code in the original estimate. Hmmm, really!? Anyway, he adjusted and saved us ~$300. Not a ton, but it's something.

And guess what, that only took us a week to figure all that out! OK, not as good as a few days, but it's done and for that to be off the list, I'm relieved. Up next, the master shower doors and granite.

Second Floor Flooring Is In

A quick post here while Ann and I are in transit back to Minny from Fresno. I was just checking out the pics we haven't posted and while the process of putting the floor down on the second floor isn't that exciting, the pics have got the kids in them, so why not.

As seems to be consistent with the process so far, nothing is done without some level of struggle. As you know, I pulled up all the wood floor from the house prior to demo. It came up pretty well and I didn't have to throw away much of it.

We figured we would put it upstairs and since the area it came out of was slightly bigger than where it was going back into, it seemed like a good fit. After a slight delay in getting the flooring guys out (apparently there was too much humidity upstairs to lay it out... love the fact that the flooring guys care that much, but how far do you take that?), they came a couple weeks back and started with the "play" area outside the kids bedrooms. We then got a call from Kathleen saying that we would be short of wood by half a room. I found this hard to believe, but what are you going to do? I explained that we should have more than enough. She said the extra would cost $1200 (for half a room?!?!?). Well, remember the post from a couple days ago talking about winning some battles and losing some battles? In this case, we kept pressing and sure enough, the flooring guys tried a little harder in their guestimate and lo and behold, they had enough. Barely, but there was enough.

Enough with the story I guess...

A Stoop, Showers and some Paint

So, what's been going on of late?

A couple weeks back, we started to put some finished paint up. Nothing terribly interesting, but since we had the time, we painted the ceilings in all the bedrooms, the mud room and exercise room. We also did some of the closet walls and the mud room walls too. And, we even managed to recruit a helping hand...



Yep, that's Lauren applying her skills.

On the more frustrating side of things, we discovered the plumbers roughed in plumbing in the master shower and guest shower for a typical setup, which would of course be fine if we had a typical setup. But, instead of doing just a shower head and handle, we're doing a wall bar that will hold a hand shower. The part of this that makes this a real pain is that no one discovered it until after the tile went up. We've made our case and of course the plumber thinks he did it right. I have no idea how he can think that, but supposedly we're going to meet with him to discuss this week. Sounds like a frustrating discussion.

We also had a temporary front stoop built. Since we never built out a landscape plan and instead are allowing our house to a be a (landscaping) class project, we've been creeping along with no stoop or steps to the front door. Apparently you need one for an occupany permit. So, rather than adding the design of a permanent one (which has implications over other landscaping issues for the front yard), we had MOC build up what will essentially be temporary. It's nothing fancy as you can see from the pics, but it gets the job done.



Ann followed that up by creating a walkway with some cheap pavers from Mendards, but it snowed quickly there after and I didn't get a picture of it. The point is that we're (or you, really) aren't walking through mud to the front of the house.

Speaking of the front, no that's not our permanent front door. Lovely, isn't it? The real one is coming, but is still a couple weeks out.

Death by Bleeding.. a response

Ah, my dear Ann. Does that make me the pessimist? I'd like to think I'm neither and merely a realist. But, I'm sure there's a gaggle of psychologists out there willing to tell me to get off the fence and pick a side.

Ann's right though. The changes are getting annoying and the bleeding is making us weary. But, as frustrating as it can be, there's a small part of me that likes arguing with these people over money. I've won some and lost some, and through it, I seem to have found my place in the process. Ann's much better at managing the to-do list and I guess I'm responsible for managing the piggy bank.

I'm not as skeptical over the contractor earning his money back. Only a few of these changes have been misquotes or oversights. We did after-all agree to the more expensive windows and stone. But, when the contractor completely misses the specs for cabinetry or the chimney, he's definitely taking it on the chin.

The end is near though. More and more of the finished products are going in and that's exiting. I'll get some more of those pics up soon. I'm off to brave the snow on the way to look at granite over lunch. Ah, good times....

Stop the bleeding!

No, we haven't had a bad encounter with a power tool, we've just hit a spot in this project where we feel like we're bleeding money. On top of the expected costs of buying new furniture, draperies, etc. we've been getting "dinged" with what feels like a bunch of little up-charges.

First, we needed to build a temporary front stoop to get our occupancy permit. Then we needed to pay for an extra half dumpster after we tore down the deck. Then, we got an up charge for our carpet selection even though we didn't know that our selection was above our allowance. And we're still struggling to make our lighting selections fit within an allowance that was developed without any room for exterior lights.

While none of the expenses are huge (at least relatively), they keep adding up and have started me wondering why we worked so hard to bring the budget down when we initially bid the project out. The cynic in me starts to think that our contractor is just trying to earn back at least part of the budget they lost when we were negotiating hard.

Can you tell I'm frustrated?

As the optimist in the family, I've been pretty positive throughout this whole process. But at this point, I just want it to be done. Ironically, the process has worn me down enough that I have little energy to haggle over the costs. Emotionally, I just want to write the check and get it over with. But rationally, I don't want to pay another penny over budget.

So, I'm a bit of a tormented soul these days. Thankfully it looks like we should only have 6 to 8 weeks left. Yeah! (There goes the optimist in me again...)

My, That Redwood Looks Nice

Way back in March when I posted my first entry, I kicked off my contribution to our story by talking about pulling down the wood paneling that covered just about every wall in the house. As wood lovers, the original owners hadn't messed around with drywall. And why would you when your family is in the lumber business and you've got access to great quality wood. I can't say Ann or I shared that love quite to the extent of full coverage, but we did recognize the quality of the stuff and that there was an opportunity in those walls.

With the help of my dad, we pulled every panel off the walls. Then, working with the architect, we worked the paneling back into the new house. The most impressive of the wood was the redwood that surrounded the entry way and great room/living room/dining room (i.e. room with all the windows). The bedrooms were all covered in Doug Fir and that strange room coming in from the garage was full of knotty pine.

Working with Ryan, we decided to selectively place the wood in only three places in the house. There was symmentry in this as the walls with wood would only be on the North/South axis. The walls that we would add stone to, including the front of the house would all run the East/West axis. Pretty cool, I thought.

The showpiece of the wood application would be the staircase. We would place the redwood there as well as at the end of the hall, and hopefully if we had enough, on a wall in the guest bathroom.

All the wood was sent off to a mill to be planed down. Essentially that just means it was sanded down on one side to remove all the stain. We got all that back a few weeks back and the carpenters worked their magic. Early last week, the staircase started going up...



Pretty cool application, I think. We turned the paneling on its side and went horizontally. Ryan drew in the fins on each side of that front wall, which turned out well. We'll eventually do a final sanding and put a clear coat on top.

Up next was the wall at the end of the hall. Not as impressive in size, but does bookend the staircase nicely.



The challenge we're now faced with is that we're most likely going to run short of redwood. It doesn't look like we'll be able to carry the redwood up the staircase and do the wall on the second level. We'll also probably have to use the Doug Fir in the bathroom. But, we haven't gotten there yet.

These pics serve a couple pursposes....



They show all the wood that's left. The biggest pile is the knotty pine, which we really don't intend on using. Closer to the fireplace is what's left of the redwood. Not much, but we'll see if we can make any thing of it. And remember that Doug Fir? We'll, 50% of that got milled down to be used as trim throughout the house. So, if you look at the windows in that room, all the trim around them is the Doug Fir paneling from the original house. The baseboards and trim around the doors in the other pics are that Doug Fir as well.

So, we're not quite finished yet, but it's fun to see the re-use come into play and how good it looks. Hopefully we'll get the rest of the walls finished up this week, but as usual, we'll see.

Next post will be back in the cold of home. That's it from warm and sunny So Cal. Ah, warm and sunny....