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We officially have ourselves a contractor. We met with Wayne for about two hours yesterday afternoon. We explained the project in detail. We divvied up what was his responsibility and what is ours.
It all seems like a straight forward routine for him-- which I take as a good thing. The notion is he will have us permitted and ready to go within 35 days. Then, when we return from vacation in April, he's gonna come tear the roof off the sucker.
no time for a long post. just wanted to share refinement on design. again. attic has really come together since last design was shared. now an intersection of two volumes: prism meets cube. (does a cube have to be made of squares?)
i'm also coming around to the fact that window boxes will most likely cost more money than they're worth; hence the alternate exterior design. toby wants super huge trim. basically, just big boards. we saw it on a house in the neighborhood and both thought it looked good.
and as you can see from all the closet layouts, this area has also undergone modification. as has the main bathroom. no more tub. who takes baths anyway?
You'll remember a few posts back I talked about either going with the contractor to get us to permit or piecing it together ourselves. For a number of reasons we have decided to go the route of the contractor. I eluded to this in the last post but I never said out right we had chosen. We are meeting him at 1:00 on Saturday. I'm hoping our project plans and intricate designs are helpful.
In the end having someone "in the business" to drive the process tipped the balance toward the contractor. This week we have been tweaking plans galore. I'm hoping that Michael posts the most recent revision soon. It's amazing, left to our own devices, how much the plans have matured. I'm really (dare I say) proud of all the work Michael has relentlessly put into it.
The funny part is-- occasionally-- I push back on his designs. I realized at some point last night that I think what motivates me is not so much I don't like the direction but simply I fear the budgetary implications. I think we have come to an agreement. We talk budget when we talk budget and the same holds true for designs. Granted the two come together at some point. But, with each of us coming at it from a different mindset, it was bound to be a hotbed for miscommunication.
I spent a good deal of time this weekend working on a project plan. Yes, an MS-Project "project plan". As many of you know, by trade, I am a professional project manager-- albeit in another field than home renovation.
Basically I was trying to do some sort of work break-down to understand who does what. It looks like we will be meeting with the contractor any day now and I really wanted to understand the tasks at hand so that i could begin to understand what he would be estimating (meaing: what does it cost?).
For those not familiar; a project plan allows you to make resource assignments, task durations, sequencing (including determining the critical path), view the plan visually via gantt charts, and even include material costs. I haven't assigned any durations, and I haven't yet gone overboard -- or have I?
Can you imagine being the contractor who has to deal with some self professed efficiency expert on a project? Especially one who is planning home renovations, WELL outside his field of expertise? Occasionally, to humor myself, I simply remember "I know how this is done because of my vast construction experience growing up". Which would be true-- If I were building a barn in Florida. Then, I would be good to go. Sadly, I am renovating a frame house in Brooklyn.
If nothing else it is helping me understand the task at hand. I'm still deciding if I pull out the project plan when I meet the contractor. I would rather reel him in at this point than drive him away with my half baked notions of "what works best".
We beat it! Last night was the official test of how well we insulated the water main running in from the street. The conditions were perfect; high wind, and temperatures well into the teens. We had installed a dense fiberglass insulating sleeve on the pipe and then put pink panther wall insulation above and below.
The amount of wind that was whistling through the cellar was drastically reduced. But mostly, when we got up this morning the pipes were totally fine. It's an odd feeling of accomplish to beat the elements, but I kinda like it.
Lost this post twice now. Losing all patience. Here's the reader's digest:
Process of answering lingering questions has led to design refinements. I sincerely feel ready to hand this off just as soon as we figure out whose hands we're putting this in.
Highlights: box bay instead of peaked (presumably easier/cheaper to construct), casement windows in front dormer and small circle window on 2nd centered above front door, narrow French doors in rear dormer with flanking fixed panels all centered on interior wall cuz Toby had brilliant idea for stairwell wall (will save this for future posts), move kitchen window under existing sink location instead of vice versa (duh!).
Gotta say I'm really happy with the front and back exteriors. Seemingly random location of most elements in existing structure have been a constant sore spot. Balance and linear reference now abound. Does anyone else see the interesting zig-zag up back of house that's kept in check with central vertical alignment?
A week or so ago I think I may have mentioned something about finding the
mason's debris in the wall that we had to deconstruct to insulate the
pipes. At first I thought of it as lazy craftsmanship but then I got to
thinking about it. In New York city, where carting debris is nothing if
not exceedingly complicated, it must be a time honored tradition.
I ran into my friend Charlie at the opening of the gates exhibit in Central Park. He confirmed that not only was it a tradition it was somewhat of an art form. Hiding debris in the walls, in the floors-- basically any empty nook that could be filled up was.
He went on to describe how it is also common for them to sign a newspaper and bury that as a way of leaving a tradesman's time capsule. It's kinda interesting to think about; in scads of buildings all over the greater metro there are fragments of their former selves encased in a new and improved skin just waiting for the process to repeat itself.
I alluded to it a bit in the "info that helped" section over the weekend. Yes, I know, I'm way ahead of myself... but, I've decided on a wine racking system! (ok, your eyes can roll back in your head so far right now they could get stuck) but, (I say again) it's really nifty. It's kinda like building some sort of honey comb or something. I like that it can grow organically to meet the needs (in as much as any consumer product can). Plus, it has a certain Lincoln Log appeal that really sends me back.
Right now there are 16 bottles in a test rack in the living room. Eventually I hope they move to the cellar (but for now, it is a rather Soviet display of вино). Of course that means that books and other packed up "stuff" will have to move out of the basement. Which means only one thing: renovation.
Now for those of you who have been playing along at home; I posted that lengthy fluff bit a while back on balancing different types of tasks. Maintenance, repair, renovation, recreation--this one-- I'm coming to a point I promise. If so, you may have noticed that since saying that most of what we have been doing is maintenance and repair, not a lot of what I would call renovation.
Alas! I think we are on the brink of a renovation schedule. There's still a lot of bits in play but let's just say we're honing in on two definitive approaches that, in the end, have reno work commencing. One has has us matched soup-to-nuts with a contractor (fixed fee) that takes the plans that we've posted here to a permit that let's the work begin. The other has us finishing with the new architect, working with a couple of expediters, that in the end delivers the permit to begin work. I guess it all comes down to cost at this point. Well, cost and hassle factor. With the contractor I'm hoping the "trades guy" hassle factor drops a bit as he controls the long term purse strings. But, that comes at a premium. Then there's the DIY piece-it-together-ourselves method. Basically meaning, all the cost we save is also more knowledge we gain. But that time line could but rather protracted [read: well into the summer before work begins].
Right now I am leaning on the advice that Kit gave. "There will always be lovely finish work for you to do, let 'um do as much as you can afford. It's worth it in the long run."
No, not the pipes -- in fact it's been so warm all week, especially this weekend, that much of the snow is now gone and all notion of frozen pipes a thing of the past. Almost. This is the staple gun I bought this morning while at the local hardware store getting a copy of the basement door key and looking for new staples to put in our old staple gun because the staples we bought yesterday at Lowe's didn't fit, but since I was unable to determine if the staples they carried would fit the old staple gun, I figured a better strength model would be good to have given the job of properly proofing the main against any future weather conditions with pipe and wall insulation; a task long ago added to our white board and one I'm happy to say is now done, along with a host of inter-related tasks both destructive (demolition of water closet, peeling back a section of the recently installed wall in order to get at the main, cleaning up a bunch of dirt and loose rock that was stashed behind said wall) and constructive (moving the recently delivered uber-deluxe tool chest into the basement and relocating plastic sheet that had been initially erected to super-heat the front of basement -- during what shall henceforth be called the Battle of the Ice Dam -- and proved doubly useful as a dust barrier so that when the mason does return to complete the job of cementing in the foundation around basement door and re-hanging the section of wall we had to open up the mess should be contained). Gotta say: love the basement.
consuming stuff
Well, I don't think we will ever go that far but I did want to take a second to point out the category links we created in the right column. Basically we have written enough over the past few months to have critical mass. We have begun tagging the posts so that you can now track the developments of different categories of things. In addition to that, I also added the "stuff that helped" list a while back. Using those two lists in combination what we are going to try and do moving forward is this:
1) Only put literature that helped us to make or do something int he "stuff that helped" links. (I don't think it's the area for keeping my wish list.)
2) Tag all post about things that would be nice to have as "wish list" in the categories section-- sooooo, if you really want to help push the project along you can go there to garner up some ideas.
The first thing I am adding to this category would be bamboo floors. We have decided that attic will have a somewhat japanese nautical feel. Think "The Last Samurai". To that end we want to install bamboo floors. We are leaning toward the vertical cut over the horizontal. Holly says that the vertical is a lot more resistant to marring. I just think it looks better. Not the most costly of finishes, I think it's a keeper.
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