The Bid

Where to start. It's been quite a week since my last post. In what's becoming sort of an obsessive behavior, I stopped by the house on Tuesday morning to snap some picks of the progress I've made since I started ripping things apart and couldn't help but pick up the crow bar and start taking stuff down. So, there I am in my dress slacks, shirt and sweater pulling down walls and swinging the hammer. Yeah, I got a little dirty, but it was well worth it. :) Here's a quick before and after.



These are actually taken from the same spot. The before on the left is the original wall structure just with the wood paneling taken down. The after, on the right, is with that wall completely removed showing all the paneling that's been taken down. I'm hoping to remove the wall in the back next.

I have to say, I've been itching since then to get back out, but as always, work seems to get in the way.

Outside of that, we knew the bid from Mike Otto was coming and that we'd meet on Friday. We've also been spending time looking over lighting configurations and options. I think we made some good progress, but it was something like trying to decide how many canned light vs flushmounts to put in a room. Or what flushmounts we like for certain rooms. Or what heads we like for a monorail system we're hoping to do in the music room. Any votes?....



By Wednesday, we finally got the call on "The Bid". Mike Otto, our preferred builder, has been putting together a firm bid on where the plans are at today. In probably a good move, Ann took the call and found it was coming almost 20% above our ceiling. Not good. We weren't exactly a couple of happy campers that night. We had a couple of tense, but productive conversations the next day with Mike and Ryan, our architect. We made it clear that we were way over our number, but that we were open to working that down.

We hoped that that would be that and we'd meet on Friday and work through things, but oh no... We got the detail Thursday night (up to this point, we just new the total) and found out that their number didn't include things we thought should be in the plan... like a bathroom, cabinets in several of the rooms and other things. Apparently, there was some confusion about what was an option.

Anyway, Ann and I got ourselves positioned best we could for what we thought was going to be a tough conversation today. On the bright side, when we walked into the meeting today, Mike and Ryan had worked through enough things to actually get the total down to our budget amount. Good, right!? Well, they had some good ideas, but once we added our not-so-options back in, we're still over.

The meeting was productive and we talked through cost saving measures like different siding options, different roof options, insulation options, etc. Some were big (like taking the stone completely out of the exterior or adjusting the insulation) and some where small (taking out the skylights), but it looks like this weekend is going to be full of interesting discussions, decisions and hard choices.

There's too many to share here, so maybe I'll update as we go through the weekend. The big one for me is what we do regarding the insulation of the house. I really want to take a different approach and apply rigid foam to the exterior and nothing between the studs, but apparently that means big time custom windows because you end up with thicker walls. Decisions, decisions.

Oh, and I owe some pictures too. I'll try to get on that now.

Lights, Tile and a Pending Bid

It's Sunday night, the end of a weekend, which have become synonymous with house-goings-on.

We're in a bit of a lull right now. Not in the sense that nothing is going on, but we don't have anybody bearing down on us for critical decisions. Our Architect, Ryan, feels he's got enough information to get a pretty tight bid from our builder of choice, Mike Otto. Mike had his subs walk through the house almost three weeks ago and now we're just waiting for the results. Tuesday (3/24) is the day. We've got a meeting with Ryan and Mike to review the bid.

Ann and I seem to be a bit pessimistic. The low end of Mike's original ballpark bid was above our budget number. And while it's certainly possible he could come in on the low side, I doubt it. It's showing up to be a situation of either what do we cut out, or how do we get Mike to go lower.

Back to this weekend. We do still have some decisions to make, namely around Tile and Lighting. We're able to bid these out using allowances that assume we'll make selections within a certain price range. I think the tile selection is more elusive than lighting, but that's not simple either. At the core, we just need to find some pendants we like and be done with it. As with most things, easier said than done. The right combination of look, price and light output seems to be a challenge. We're taking a bit of an unusual approach to lighting in the bathrooms and are hanging pendants in front of the mirrors, so we've got a fair bit to pick out. We'll do things like find a light that "looks" cool, but at 3W, these LEDs aren't going to kick off much light. So, maybe these guys are better. But $260 a pop isn't cheap when you need 8 of them. And on it goes.

The lighting trip was fine, I suppose. We eliminated a few and we'll call that progress for now. Next up on Saturday was tile. We've actually got some tile picked out and I'd post links... if they existed. The tile world doesn't seem to be online yet. So, we went a looked, and looked, and looked. Only two stores, so not bad, but with tile, we confirmed what we liked but didn't really narrow the gap for what we needed. Slate. That's the direction right now... it's just a matter of which ones.

And how to break the stress!? Demo!! Yes, more has come down since my last foray with the hammer. I took done several closets and consolidated my many piles of wood paneling. On the South side of the house, instead of three rooms in succession, I now have one. And when you walk in the front door, rather than closets to your right, you can now walk right into the bedroom there. Good stuff. I so want to go in and do more, but I've got electricity in my way. And my track record with the stuff ain't to good. I suppose I just need to cut the juice, cut and cap and I'm good to go. Easier said than done. That's the next task though.

I'm not sure whether any more of this demo is actually worth while. But, I'll say it's fun! Since I've got no building skills, I might as well partake in some way.

That's enough rambling. I'm trying to figure out how to get back out for more demo, but work is getting in the way. Damn work.

Got an Itch?....Scratch It

I couldn't take it anymore. 5 days of not being in the house was getting to me. I had to go. And not just to look or show someone around. I needed to swing the hammer! So, that's what I did this afternoon. I only got in a half hour, but I managed to take down the open stud wall between the "library" and the neighboring bedroom. I found out a couple things:

It might have been the angle of the wall, but as per my previous post, this wall wasn't so simple to move. Yes, it had four nails (two top, two bottom) that were left a 1/4" out so I could pull them with a claw hammer (as per the last post), but one end of the wall was anchored as well. Nothing a few swings of the hammer couldn't handle!

I also figured out that the hardwood floors have been sanded and refinished at some prior point. The floor under the wall is about an 1/8" higher than the surrounding floor. Hopefully that shouldn't matter. We've asked our potential builder to quote out the cost to pull up the hardwood and lay it back down... probably in the new upstairs.

I know our flooring choices have the potential to be budget benders. I love the idea of re-using the existing hardwood. It's in good shape and it's already there and we own it! It won't be enough, so the next best thing I've found is Elm harvest from Elm trees taken down in the cities due to Dutch Elm Disease. How great is that... take wood from trees that have to be taken down, which probably would just be chipped or burned and put them in for flooring. All from the fine folks at Wood From the Hood. But, at $6.50ish a sq ft...that's not nearly as cheap as a ~$3 sq ft oak. Sigh.... Kind of depressing that's it cheaper to throw stuff away and buy new.

Guess I need to look at what it'll take to pull that hardwood up myself. Hey, at least it gives me a reason to keep demoing!

A History Lesson

I'm back again... Stu that is, although I can here David Gilmore asking if anybody is out there. No matter, I'll just keep rambling on.

The demo over the weekend peaked my interest. The house is so odd in many ways. There's wood on virtually every surface (floor, walls, ceiling). There are five bedrooms, all the same size and that size being small. Some oddly place rooms and some oddly placed walls. And that's ignoring for a second the lack of a basement, the cabin-like appearance, etc.

I was particularly intrigued that while taking down the wood paneling over the weekend that the interior walls had been built after the wood floor had been laid. But, the wood paneling had been put on the exterior walls before the wood floor had been laid. So, kind of an odd sequence....
1. Shell of a house (stud walls, ceiling joists, floor boards)
2. Wood Paneling on exterior walls
3. Wood floor and wood ceiling.
4. Interior stud walls
5. Interior wood paneling on those walls

Well, I decided to do some searching online. I new the address and sort of knew the former owners last name, along with the fact they were in the lumber business. After some false starts, I finally hit gold. I got a search result for a recently published book about St Paul architecture. The only pages the preview would show me where the notes, but it was enough to further my search.

Continuing to nerd out on this, I found the book at B&N. Much to my chagrin, not only was the house mentioned in the book, but there's a picture of it with a brief write up on it's architectural importance. Whaa?! The house that we can hardly find anything worthwhile about is architecturally important?! Well, as is turns out and as you can read here, it's one of the few Modern houses from the early '50s in St Paul. And there was a reasoning behind how this thing was built. Apparently, the reason for the interior walls being built after the floor and ceiling were put in was so they had the option of moving those falls should they need to. I guess this was a sort of compromise to get a mortgage on a house style (Modern) that banks typically didn't like to loan out on. Innovative? Sure. But, that's about as far as I'll go with it.

Now, that said, there's a couple of old magazine articles from the early 50's that apparently talk about the innovative building technique of the house in more depth. So if anyone has a copy of issue 84 of Mississippi Valley Lumberman from Nov '52 or Issue 17 of Northwest Architect from Jan 53, let me know!

It'll be interesting to see what the rest of demo reveals, although it already appears that beyond techniques or style, the house is pretty simply and won't have too many surprises. Fingers crossed.

Demo

Stu here... I'm hijacking the blog and am going to pretend like someone's actually reading it. :) I see Ann hasn't posted since Dec 31st and a lot has happened since then, but rather than try to write two months worth of stuff, I'm going to get right to the good stuff.... demo. Yes, my readers, it's begun.

Now, truth be told, that demo only includes me and my dad, who must have had a moment of weakness over the weekend. But hey, we've moved beyond making choices and have started to swing the hammer!

I'll post some pictures tomorrow, but the crux of the situation is that, as you may or may not know, the house, as it sits today, has got wood paneling covering every wall in the house, except for the kitchen and baths. It's great stuff. 3/4" thick Redwood in the entry way and main living area, vertical grain Doug Fir in the bedrooms and some Knotty Pine in the mystery room.

In our effort to re-use and carry forward some of the history of the house, we're going to take that paneling and use it in select places. The redwood will be turned on its side and put back up on a few select walls. The doug fir is destined for cabinetry, and the knotty pine.... well, anyone need some knotty pine paneling?

So, the past two days were spent carefully pulling paneling off all the walls. We actually managed to get every interior wall complete. The exterior walls are going to be tough because the construction of the house is such that the hardwood floors where put in after the paneling on those walls... so without too much more detail, it simply means that the floor has to come up first to get at those panels.

Maybe I'll jump back on later today or tomorrow and update with some pics. I'd like to potentially get out and look at kitchen faucets and lighting today or tomorrow. We've got all the other fixtures picked, but that kitchen faucet is alluding me for some reason. I don't know... I suppose I should be working anyway.

Going up

Over the last few weeks we've made some important decisions about the house:

(1) We'll be adding a second floor instead of expanding out horizontally. Adding a "real" basement is still under discussion.

(2) We're putting the kids' bedrooms upstairs along with a "loft" space that can start as a playroom and grow into a "hangout" room as the kids get older.

(3) We will be adding an open "music" room near the front door to showcase Stu's guitars and some beautiful paintings from one of our favorite artists.

(4) Our main living space will include an open plan family/living room, dining room and a BIG kitchen that will finally allow Stu to socialize while he's cooking. We're looking forward to 30 linear feet of counter space -- yippee!

Today we met with the first of four contractors we are considering for the project, Michlitsch Builders, Inc. Leon and Marvin Michlitsch have been in business for over 30 years...which is pretty amazing considering that in addition to being business partners they are also brothers. They seem to be very down-to-earth, experienced, practical and trustworthy. Conveniently, they also recently finished a comparable remodel on a house just three doors down the road from us. Guess we'll be knocking on our new neighbor's door soon.

While we didn't walk away from the meeting thinking, "Wow, these guys are the most amazing contractors ever," we're not sure that we would ever really have that kind of reaction to any contractor. But, only time will tell. I'm sure we'll have more to say once we talk to the other three contractors and have something to compare.

Next steps for us include:

* doing more homework on appliances so we can make selections soon,
* trying to get a better sense of what "finishes" we want to see in the house (e.g., tile, floors, counter tops, etc.),
* meet with more contractors, and
* continue to refine the design - both interior floor plan and outside elevations.

We'll continue to keep you posted on our progress...

How much would you pay for a refrigerator?

While Ryan was working on the preliminary designs for the new house, he took us on a little field trip to look at appliances. The objective was just to get oriented to what's out there, think about what we really need from our appliances, what that might be for the interior design and how much of our budget we want to dedicate to appliances.

It was definitely an interesting trip. I was stumped wondering who would buy a built-in dedicated steam oven? Built-in dual cappuccino maker? And most strikingly, pay $15,000 for a refrigerator...and that's without a freezer! My apologies to anyone I may have just offended...I just can't relate to spending that much money on one appliance.

The trip did help us to think about how we might rank the "value" of each appliance based on how we use them. For example, since Stu does so much cooking...and is good at it...the quality, function and layout of the cook top is really important. On the other hand, while we like clean clothes, we're not obsessed with getting the top of the line washer and dryer set.

We did find ourselves having lots of discussion about refrigerator and freezer sizes and configurations. Egged on by the showroom sales person, as we evaluated each model we keep coming back to the question "can the freezer fit a turkey?" In reality, that question is pretty irrelevant for us. In over 11 years of marriage, we have NEVER had a frozen turkey in our freezer. The only time we have prepared a turkey, we got it fresh and kept it in the fridge. (Thanks Mom for continuing to host Turkey Day!)

So, who knows what we'll end up selecting, but our "field trip" was definitely eye-opening.