My How Time Flies!

I have been bad. I have been VERY VERY bad. . .about posting and about choosing things and really we only have a week left until the final inspection (or so). I think I am all organized and then when it comes down to it, I cannot even commit to hardware.

Anyway, this week is a 'lost week' as the hardwoods are sanded, stained and sealed. Appliances go in next week and the final little things start hitting a 'to do; list! Here are pictures from the cabinetry install and wow I cannot believe I haven't posted the counters yet. . .September has just been too too busy. I will follow up with a mid-September Status report, but it's hard to believe that we are already close to the finish. We will probably not be 100% until the backsplash and the electric above gets finalized, but that may just have to be after the final appraisal for time's sake. Here are some pre-Labro Day Weekend pictures. . .

Family Room Built-Ins and Fireplace
Washer/Dryer area(and built-ins)

Cubbies and panelling(and entry to garage)

Our poweder room 'Shower/Tub'

Poweder Room Wainscotting (sink area)

Bathroom/Shower Area

View of Cabinetry for Double Oven and Sink area

View of the Island and built-in area

Walk-in Pantry

Island Bench (with drawers)

View of Island

View of the 'Bar Area' and Island

View of the Family Room Bay Window

View of the 'Great Room'

View from the Kitchen entrance to the Island and then Family Room area

View from the corner to the doors out

Moving at Light Speed!

We've actually moved faster than I can keep up with where we are! Here are the pictures I took the evening before the cabinets were to go in(August 19). The room is starting to come together, but it's really interesting to visualize where the room is going without the cabinetry in yet!

View of the Kitchen into the 'bar' area (the cubbie on the right); Island will be in the center of this room- pipe is for the rangetop

View of the family room from the mudroom entrance and sliding glass doors to the family room (Kitchen starts on the other side of the half wall)

View from the kitchen entrance from the house (island will go from the half wall to just pas the pipe).

View of Family Room/Kitchen from the Mudroom entrance

Water, Water Everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink!

So this week in the lives of the Kirkebabies means rain coming through 2 stories of your house, always at night and always when Daddy Kirkeby is working late! So Mama Kirkeby gets to deal with all of the mess herself.

Just after our last post on July 1, the rain started and as I was getting ready to head to bed, I hear and see water everywhere in the foyer of the house. We had Niagara Falls sprinkling on our steps and around our molding and in the paint. Thankfully it required mostly just me over-moping the floors with towels and then finding a place to hang these now wet towels once it stopped raining. Now any of you who know the foyer, know that it is on the first story of 2 stories. So you, ask, 'How does water make it through 2 stories?'

I asked myself the same thing, in an attempt to find where the water was coming from. Once I got upstairs to our *new* officespace (e.g. converted attic 18 months ago), I witness water coming in between the cracks of the draywall, pockets of water in the paint, drips coming through the hardwood floors and the lovely sound of what i thought was a hose between the walls of my house. So I totally freaked, attempting, like a cartoon holding a balloon with more leaks than fingers, to contain each of the many leaks and water entering my house and wondering 'when will the rain stop?'! So what seemed like an eternity was a storm that was less than a hour and damage that required these enormous fans plugged into our walls to attempt to remediate/alleviate the amount of moisture plaster attracts.

Good news: the upstairs dried itself out, so all we have are plaster, drywall and wood molding to replace, along with some new trim or fixed trim, depending on whether it dries itself out. Bad News, on top of not having a *real* kitchen, and living in our makeshift kitchen in the dining room, we now have the added pleasure of having them demo the plaster ceiling in the foyer of the house to get the wet plaster out. Why does this bother me? Because they are basically demo-ing wet, 60 year olf plaster with what is probably lead paint and I have 2 children under 4 and they eat about 20 feet from the demo.
Good news: they pay for just about everything inside the house to repair (less our, thank god we kept it low deductible).
Bad news: If it rains agian, it will come back in the house.
Bad news: I can't get a roofer to do this repair for at least a week and we are forecasted thunderstorms Thursday through the weekend.
Good news: They are making progress on the remodel while we live in what seems like eternal hell....

So what I had intended to post last week, I will post now. Here are the pictures of our progress from around July 6. . . .

View of the boys outside the family room-soon-to-be-bay window

View from the family room to the kitchen

View of the patio area (where they cut the soon-to-be-9' patio door and the 2 window- one old and one newly cut on the corner)

My contruction workers helping 'fix their house'

View from the driveway of the 2 new openings for the kitchen bay window and then the family room bay window-'seat.'

Cabinets, Appliances and Counters, oh my! Cabinets, Appliances and Counters!

Our 'bar area' Icemaker/Undercounter Fridge

The Miele Optima II Dishwasher

The very indecisively decided Double Wall Ovens (Electrolux Icon Professional)

And one of the stars of the show: the Wolf rangetop 4 burner and griddle in the middle

And finally, the Subzero BI36 series with 'air scrubber' system to take the Ethelene out of the air

Enough to drive a girl insane. And I know I am not the only one as I 'troll' the gardenweb home site and try to make sure that I am doing the right thing. Just about everything fell into place with our appliances. . .that is except the double ovens. So I have spend the last week stressing over going 'one grade down' to the Electrolux Double Ovens from the Wolf L Series. I am sure in 3 months from now, I will not care and will probably be thankful to have saved the approximate $3600 (more than 1/2 price!) by not going with the Wolf. Then finding the floor model wolf about 120 miles from us and deciding that driving this 300 lb oven home is probably not a great idea, even to save $1500. I have been living an appliance roller coaster these past 3 months since finalizing and committing to this project. But we have to submit our final plans to the cabinet makers so we can have the cabinets in time to finish our project before our final inspection in September.

So I have the latest plans for our cabinetry (well the manual drawings our installer/dealer had done) and I think I am happy with all of my choices! And hopefully come late July we will have all of the cabinetry ready for installation. . .

Now I understand why Designers get paid well. . .

In some ways, I know I can do this myself. However, all of it takes time, and well, time is money. The deeper I get into the project, I see that the General Contractor has lots to do, and stuff I could give a crap about (like electrical and plumbing concerns; I mean I care, but the end result is really what I care about, not the surgery); but the Designer, if they do it correctly, will think of every little detail down to where you want to put lights and where you want the faucet to go. The GC thinks about these things, but more on the big picture. And it’s not like you can totally plan it out ahead of time, because as much as you want to control what your wall looks like inside and what the measurements are, you can’t. Things change, needs change and then all of a sudden your window takes up most of the wall where your shower is. Now, the GC is going to come to you with ideas, but his ideas aren’t always going to be driven by design or the final look. . .they could be driven by cost, they could be driven by ease or even by convenience, so no matter how nice, trustworthy or pleasing your GC is, it is his bottom line (and yours), but again, time is money.
So I am starting to appreciate that doing everything yourself is really tough. In 2007 when we did our bathrooms I learned that you have to trust your GC and that I am not the type of person to work well with a ‘cost plus’ contract, because I don’t want my GC to make more of a profit when things go over budget and over time. I also learned that while you could easily do the GC work yourself, the stress, relationships and timing is something that will end up making a 3 month project take 9 months, and a 30 year old look 40. Plus you may lose some jewelry along the way if you aren’t too careful.

So almost 2 years later (we have until September 25, 2009 to get our tax abatement final inspection completed!), I have come to appreciate being able to find a designer who can understand your thoughts, your vision and your ideas and put those to paper and maybe come up with a few ideas that can add to your project. Being a self-professed control freak, I would love to be able to do all of these things myself, but I am learning that if I want it done and done right, I probably need a little help and motivation to get my ideas out. I think sometimes the people who have no clue, admit to having no clue or not trusting their own taste are lucky- they can hire someone easily because they know anything will be better than what they come up with or wouldn’t want to take the time to even try. Mostly I just know what I don’t like and I won’t know usually until I see it. . .so I just need a little guidance from someone who can tell me that my instincts are correct (or in some cases, off!) So now, after dropping some major coin on this project, I’m pretty insistent on talking to my designer to help me bring it all together. . .and allowing someone else control was probably the hardest part.

And the coolest- that they can draw up these sketches in minutes!

Progress, progress. . .

June 8, 2009 Pictures:

[1-2] View of Former Pantry; View of Kitchen to the Family Room

[3-4-5] Exterior Photos of the Mudroom Addition going up. . .

June 1, 2009 Pictures *as best I can describe. .

[1 and 2] Former Pantry Area (to-be 'bar' area);

[3] View of the 'family room' area

[4 nd 5]Exterior (where sliding glass door will be installed)

I was amazed and excited to come home last night to find the sides of our new addition UP! Well, maybe not all in the right place, but hey, it looks different than the day before.

Right now, I think the worst part of our makeshift kitchen is the fact that (1) I constantly trip the circuit breaker because we have a toaster oven, 2 fridges, burners and microwave all on the same circuit breaker and (2) if the circuit cuts off, then I have to go out the front door, walk around to the construction, unlock the door (which isn't easy to do) and then flip is back 'guessing' that I am finding the correct one. Yesterday, I employed Henry to help, saying 'Mommie needs a rescue man to come and help' (as he had little interest in helping me until it became a game) and asking him to come turn on the TV. Thankfully, the TV turned on after a few attempts at flips and my 'rescue man' could get back to his puzzles and I could then lock up and go back around. So after 3 trips (one to see the progress and 2 to deal with the circuit breakers), I am back in the kicthen, carefully choosing microwave on, toaster oven off; toaster oven on, microwave off. . .no 2 at the same time mind you! And I hear what sounds like a generator going off in the 'empty kitchen remodelling space.' So instead of going back in there, in the event there is some type of construction equipment going off that a ghost or an electrical power change created, I called our GC. I explained it sounded like the thing they use for the power nails into the framing (yes, I am getting a little more experienced at this whole remodel thingy) and he explained that it was probably still plugged in and going on and off. . .so ONE more trip to the space to unplug the equipment.

Anyway, I am excited to post pictures of the progress. . . .

And the waiting game begins. . .

In many ways I think being a GC is easy, but its times like now that I know that overhead is for a reason. . . because subcontractors are not showing up or being where they are supposed to be when they are supposed to be there.

Thursday both our GC and his sub missed the visit from the City Inspector, who elbowed his way into the house and the tore down our plastic (so that I wouldn't have debris coming into the house from the contruction zone). Why didn't he want to enter into the house from the outside. . .I have NO idea. (Especially when we have a door that is easy access- not like having to break down plywood). I thought that was especially kind of the Inspector to tear down the plastic only to 'fail' the inspection-- knowing full well that he couldn't inspect if they subcontractor wasn't there to show him what he needed to see! Go figure?

Anyway, so much has been done, it feels like a hurry up and wait. But now that the beam is in and the room is opened up, its ironic that it actually looks smaller than before. . .but I think that is a function of not seeing things in the room.

Where we were 2 years ago. . .

It's hard for me to believe it, but we moved into the Money Pit almst 2 years ago this weekend exactly. I went through our true 'before' pictures, before the hardwood floors were revealed beneath the vinyl tiles. Right after Karl's graduation, Daddy, Henry, Auntie Konita, Meema, Papa and a Pregnant-with-Jack Mommy all headed to the house to check it out and take out the hallway to see if we had hardwoods underneath. We pulled the stair carpeting and took out the

'chairlift' that hadn't been used in over 40 years (if it ever was). While it took 4 hours and 3 adults to move it. . .I can't see why someone didn't get rid of it years earlier. . .

Henry is about 17 months old in these pictures and its hard to believe Jack is now the same age and living through the new renovation of the vision we (probably more 'I') had 2 years ago.

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