Stone's a Starting

I could have posted this info a couple weeks back, but since nothing has changed since then with respect to the stone, now's as good of time as any. So, let's talk about the great looking stone that's going up and the pain in the butt process in getting there.

I posted last month about our selection of a new stone once we found out our original selection was out of stock and no longer being manufactured. You'd think that would be the end of the difficulties, but as we're finding out, simple equates to a single headache. I'll save my migraine worthy A/V update for another post, but the stone story didn't end with the re-selection. Pop an Advil and read on.

Once we made our selection, we new that we'd have to pay extra. The mason gave us the new upcharge, which was roughly $2500 due to the type of stone (real vs man-made for one) and a higher labor cost since this stone was more fragile. After much deliberation, we just felt like for such a permanent and visible aspect of the home, we had to go with the superior look. So, we said, go for it.

Everything was good. The mason started putting it up on the exterior chimney and wow, it looked great. (pics later...after I make you feel my pain) We had no regrets.

Let's say that was a Monday. The next day (after the mason has started the job), we get an email (yes, an email) telling us that something went wrong and the actual upcharge was roughly $5000 (actually, the amount they told us was more than that, but so as not to confuse anyone, the extra amount was for some extra stone we were thinking about applying in the kitchen). Anyway.... I'm pretty sure the reaction was something along the lines of "Whaaaaaa!" followed by silent cursing and steam coming out the ears.

After stepping back and considering an appropriate next step (throwing and cursing just didn't seem like it was going to do much more than momentarily make us feel better), we gave a call to MOC and said, explain, please. Mike assured us the dollar amount was right, but he didn't know all the facts yet. We agreed to wait.

Well, after waiting (think Friday by this point), we find out that the mason assumed he was getting a discount from the stoneyard (and actually wasn't) and the stoneyard mislead the mason with pricing on "corner" pieces (twice as much as the mason thought). And to top everything off (if you hadn't grasped this already), the mason started to install the stone before the change order pricing actually got to us. Oops!

In that conversation I had with Mike before learning all this for certain, he understood his mistake on the timing of installation before communicating the true price difference (what, was the mason going to start taking the stone down?!) and had also said that the best solution was probably a compromise. I agreed, but only to an extent.

In the end, we ended up paying $3000 vs the $2500 originally quoted. The mason and MOC basically took a hit to the point of earning nothing on that part of the job. The stoneyard also supposedly took a hit, but I'm suspicious as to what. If I would have dug my heals in, I'm sure I could have stayed at $2500, but in the grand scheme of things, it just didn't seem worth the fight.

What really gets me though is that the stoneyard gave Ann and I pricing that showed the corner pieces at the price the mason thought. Shouldn't the stoneyard totally eat it on that? (Wow, I felt 17 again for a moment there). And because of my quest to understand all, I had called the stoneyard during our selection process to understand their pricing and they told me they didn't give anyone discounts!!!!! Unbelievable. Grrr, the whole episode still chaps my hide. But maybe that's because we just found out we've got a similar situation with our appliances. I'm not giving in this time!!! HA!

OK, sorry, you wanted to see how great the stone looks. It's just the chimney, but it gives you a feel for where things are going. You can imagine the stone on the corners of the house and by the front door.

Class is in session

With the house starting to really look like a house, we can't forget about the landscaping.

While we talked to a couple professional landscape architects recommended by our architect and contractor, their costs were just a little more than we were prepared to swallow right now especially after the sewer "surprise" and another unpleasant surprise on the cost of the stone veneer we selected (don't get me started on that one).

So, what have we done? Stalled. Well, not quite stalled. Gotten creative is more like it.

At the referral of Anne Farniok (who's been helping with LEED certification through our contractor), we have hooked up with Matt Brooks, a landscaping professor at Dakota County Technical College who is using our house as a class project for his second year landscaping course. It's a pretty cool arrangement. The students use our house as the subject for their class projects. At the end of the semester, we get ~20 different landscape design plans. All at no cost to us.

What's the catch? These are students, and we may not like any of the designs and be back at square one again.

For us, that's an acceptable risk. We figure that at a minimum, we'll get a few good ideas (or pieces of ideas) that we can pull into a plan this spring...either on our own or with the help of a professional.

So last Thursday morning the house was buzzing with a class of landscaping students poking around, taking measurements, asking questions. For Stu and I, it felt oddly like what I remember of "career day" back in elementary school. Standing in front of a group of "fresh and eager faces" answering questions when they raised their hands. Most interesting to me was how differently each student approached the opportunity to talk with us. Some were very eager, following us around, asking probing questions. Others didn't make a sound and didn't get within 20 feet of either one of us. Made me wonder if we scared them.

Anyway, just another adventure in this wild ride of home remodeling.

A/V Nightmares

I've known for quite some time what I wanted to do for the entertainment system in the living room. I knew where I wanted the TV and the speakers, where the Receiver, etc would go and the cabling that would need to happen to accomplish this. I even knew that I wanted to expand beyond what I had now to get some music in other areas of the house.

Knowing is one thing. Doing is another. For whatever reason, I've waited and waited and waited. Why? I don't know. Maybe I just wasn't totally sure of my plan.

Well, it finally came time. The drywall was on it's way and once that's in place, I'd be sealed off. So, I thought out what I needed, consulted some online opinions and from others.

Conduit was step one. Conduit is a pretty fancy word in this case, since what I'm using it 1 1/2" PVC pipe. As I sit here recalling what I went through, it's starting to run together. I'm pretty sure I made several trips to Mendards and Ace collecting the pipe, the fittings, the cement, etc. Oh and the drill bits. I then made a trip to Best Buy for some speaker wire and then again to Ace for more PVC fittings, junction boxes and a flashlight. Over the course of a week and a half, I made several trips to the house. I started by measuring, then I started to run the pipe. I'd run out of something and then have to come back. Finally, I got all the conduit run. Just in time too, since the day after my last conduit run, the last of the drywall went up.

But, then I was threatened with attic insulation. That shouldn't have meant much since I had my conduit run, but I wanted to get some of that wire through while I had access to the attic just in case. Good thing. I was smart enough to run a string through my conduit to I could pull the wire through afterward. I wasn't smart enough to tie one end down...so when I showed up Thursday night to start my wiring, where was my string pull? Laying on the floor in the basement in a pile. Not a good start. What to do now? The stores where I could get a proper fishing wiring were closed. So, I sat in the attic thinking, when I notice a long run of stiff electrical wire sitting there. Why it was there? I have no idea. But, it seemed stiff enough, so why not try pushing that through. I took me a while. I took me taking my conduit apart where I hadn't cemented it. I took cutting my conduit in half at one point, but.... I did it. Several bumps and bruises and nasty words later, I did it. So, I had the stiff electrical wire pushed through (with one run of speaker wire taped to it, btw).

But, that was only step one. Then I had to place my junction boxes for where my yet to be purchased speakers would go in the kitchen and the back of the living area. That wasn't too bad, but still took time. Then I had to run the next set of speaker wires. I had a string to pull these through (I taped that to the stiff electrical wire too). Again, it took time...running (or rather cat walking) from the attic to the basement several times trying to get my wires positioned right.

By 1am, I was done. Now, I only mention this next part because it's par for the course. Ann shows up the next day and finds out what? The insulation didn't happen. I could have had Friday and the entire weekend to finish it. !#@$ !@#$! !#@$!%@%#!# !#$!@#$^ ^@$%!$# !#$!@ %$#!@$#!

Siding and Lighting

Hello readers... I've had a little break from the blog, but I'm back. Ann and I were back over at the house on Friday afternoon to do a electrical walkthrough. Which is basically checking to make sure the electrician did his job right. Twenty items later, it was apparent that he didn't.



While we were there, I got my first chance to see the siding going up. The crew is putting up the Hardie fiber cement board and by the end of Saturday, they had wrapped over half the lower level of the house. It's pretty cool to see something that's pretty close to a finished look appear on the house. The siding will need to be painted, but you get the feel.



Because of the movement on the siding, we've had to get a move on and clean up the redwood siding we pulled off the house. Easier said then done. First, we don't really have water in the house. Well, we do, but only from the entry point in the basement. After multiple trips to Ace, I thought I had found some connectors to get from entry valve to a hose, but frustratingly, we just couldn't get a tight seal and had water flying out. So, that meant knocking on the neighbor's door and borrowing their hose. Thank goodness for nice neighbors. Once we had that done, it was a tag team for the same. One of us washed the siding, the other was with the kids. By end of day, I think we got about 75% done. Now watch, the crew won't touch it for another week.

A little overwhelmed

While last week felt a little quiet on the home-building front, this week it feels like an avalanche. We're under time pressure to pick a front door (harder than you might think), wash down all the redwood siding we pulled off the house and want to reuse (which is tough when we don't have water hooked up yet) and confirming that we have enough light in the right places before drywall goes up next week...all before Monday.

This all seems like it would be a heck of a lot easier if we weren't both trying to work full-time, raise two kids (one of whom is now sick), stay married and train for a triathlon (OK, only one of us is training, but I'm practicing my cheering skills.) Unfortunately, our reality is just that complicated.

So, what to do? For now I'm just trying to break it all down into little steps, little decisions instead of just big ones (e.g., instead of "what kind of door do we want?" asking ourselves "do we want a solid or glass door?").

While I know it will all get done and this feeling will eventually go away, it wouldn't hurt if everyone sent some good "ju-ju" our way.

And then there was light

So the latest decision sucking up our time is how to light this great new house.

Our architect started with a plan using a lot of recessed lights with MR-16 bulbs. Then, after our initial plans came in over budget, we revised the lighting plan to use flushmounted track lighting that gave us more flexibility in the placement of lights along with the hope of some cost savings.

Well, we had our walk-through with the electrician on Wednesday to confirm placement for the lights, switches, outlets, etc. We posed a couple questions to him:

- Are we really saving money with the track lighting?
- Do each of the rooms have the right amount of light?
- And, where do we have opportunities to contribute to our LEED certification with either Energy Star fixtures, fluorescent or LED lights?

It's our understanding that we need 4 Energy Star, fluorescent or LED lights in "high traffic" areas of the house (e.g., hallways, kitchen, family room).

After that conversation, Stu and I sat down to revisit the electrical plan with a real sense of urgency since the electrician was starting wiring that afternoon. Nothing like a little pressure to accelerate the decision-making process.

Our salvation came in the form of a recommendation from our contractor to Linda Jacobson at Muska Lighting in St. Paul. We sat down with Linda for a couple hours walking through all the iterations of the lighting plans. We were able to confirm that we had the lighting "right" in a lot of areas (whew!) but also had opportunities to cut down costs by either reducing the number or type of lights we were using (yeah!). She also had some really "neat" suggestions for lighting (e.g., install flood lights on dimmer in the backyard to give the feeling of a full moon).

We are also able to identify a number of places in the house to use lighting that qualifies for LEED certification. For example, we talked about using fluorescent blubs in the candeliers over the dining room table and in the front hall, low-voltage LED's or fluorescent bulbs over the penisula in the kitchen, and a combination of line-voltage MR-16 cans and low-voltage LEDs in the main hallway. Still need to confirm the details, but definitely feeling better about things.

We definitely walked out of our meeting feeling more comfortable with our lighting plan. Now, we just need to get the "tweaks" to the electrician ASAP on Monday since he's already started work. Again, no pressure!

Many more decisions await us, but at least I walked away from our meeting with Linda with more peace of mind than I have had in quite awhile. Next big set of decisions...cabinets.

Windows Are Going Up

The past week seems to have been one of those "slow" weeks. A week and a half ago we showed up for our Tuesday meeting and were suprised by all the plumbing and HVAC activity. Since then, there hasn't been much progress in either area. The plumbing seems to have stopped with drainage...maybe the sewer problem scared them off. The HVAC seems to have stopped with only half the vents run.

What has happened...well, windows! We stopped by today (Labor Day) and I'd say about 2/3 of the windows are in, plus one of the doors in the living/family/dining area.



You can see there are a few holes left, but piece by piece, things are coming together. Here's a couple from the inside. The first is the upstairs "loft" area which overlooks the back yard and west side of the house. The second is the living/family area looking in the same direction.



We've still got to make a front door selection, so that's still an open item. The proposal is a Fiberglass door from Therma Tru, but since we've had a thick wood door for the past 10 years, it's somewhat hard to go away from that. But, we'll give it a look...