Progress report --- Week 15

Progress accomplished this week:

--New high-efficiency gas furnace installed in addition
--Drywall work completed in addition
--Trims and casings for garage and addition selected; trim work begun in garage
--Kitchen repainted
--Protective paper and plastic shielding removed from kitchen; kitchen is now officially COMPLETED, just in time for Christmas dinner, hallelujah!
--Exterior masonry work continued
--Concrete board installed in addition, as prep for laying tile
--Access panels for various electrical and mechanical units installed in addition
--Tile for bathroom ordered. Wagner is a master negotiator and got them to come down on their prices quite a bit.
--Sliding doors for (soon to be former) laundry closet area purchased. We were looking at interior doors for the bedroom when Wagner spotted a section full of clearance items. There stood a set of sliding doors that would fit our laundry area perfectly, and which we needed as we wanted to get rid of the bifold doors that had caused us so much grief by constantly bumping into the door to the addition. The doors were priced at $110, marked down from the original price of $277, which I thought was a spectacular deal. But by the time Wagner was through negotiating with the department manager, he got the whole set, including track work, for $50. I told you he was a master negotiator. ;-)
--Door for bedroom selected and ordered. We're getting a fancy door with a beveled/frosted glass inset. Very attractive, and will help let in natural light from the bedroom to the foyer area.

Obstacles encountered this week:

--Bitter cold temperatures, snowstorm halted all work one day; masonry work has been much delayed
--A light test of some sort revealed that the whirlpool tub did not arrive with an adequate seal or lining or something in two spots. I didn't quite understand what the problem was, but Wagner assured me that it would be taken care of adequately, or we would need to get a replacement tub under warranty.

Progress report --- Week 14

All I can say is: Wow!! Just wow! Wagner warned me that "things will start happening fast now," but I can't get over the transformation. The addition now looks like part of the house (albeit an unpainted, unfurnished part of the house). I'll post a bunch of photos, but I really need a wide-angle lens to show everything off in its glory.

Here's a shot looking into the new shower. You can see the two arched doorways, the first leading into the drying off area, and the second to the shower area. No more squeegee, WOOT!

This is a shot taken from the bedroom looking into the new master bath. The first opening to the left will be the vanity area; the second is where the toilet will be. Shower and whirlpool will be on the right. At the far end is my closet. Note there is a window there... that was the pre-existing window from when this space was our garage, and we decided just to leave it there, in spite of my aversion to windows in closets. ;-) (FYI, the space-age looking yellow thing is a nifty work light Wagner uses... puts off something like 1000 watts of light.)

This is the interior of the bedroom, with the door to Jon's closet at the left and the main door to the bedroom on the right.

Here's a higher shot, attempting to show the vaulted ceilings, but not very effectively. I need that wide-angle lens:

A shot standing from the door to the bedroom looking toward the opposite corner:

Progress accomplished this week:

--Drywall installed in addition
--Brickwork just about finished
--Glass brick windows in master bath installed
--Gutters installed on addition area. Several months before starting the renovation we had put up, at considerable expense, new EverClean gutters that allegedly never, ever need cleaning out. (It probably goes with out saying that Jonathan's and my gutter-cleaning habits are every bit as unreliable as our granite-sealing efforts.) Wagner was able to carefully remove them from the garage and re-use them for the addition.
--First skylight in kitchen removed; new skylight installed. It does a MUCH better job of letting in the light, so I'm glad we went to the effort and expense of swapping it out. We ended up locating it slightly off center so as to necessitate cutting only one room beam instead of four. It looks fine, though:


--Approaching closure/final decisions on tile. Wagner found a new tile store that had a huge number of sample displays up and great selection of trim. I found a new trim piece there that is considerably cheaper than the border I had picked out at Louisville Tile ($8.99 per linear foot compared to $30-something) and looks nearly as nice, so I think I will go with that, and then get the rest of the tile as originally selected.

Obstacles encountered this week:

--Massive indecision on my part regarding humidifier selection. At this point, we're going with the True STEAM, but we're waiting for a callback from the HVAC guys to make sure it will fit okay in the furnace room.

Moisture on the brain

So I have spent WAY too much time the past two days researching humidifiers. The HVAC guys Wagner got estimates from recommended two possible units: a Honeywell True STEAM humidifier, or a Trane evaporative unit. Thanks to my time on the Piano Forum, I knew a little about basic types of humidifiers (pianos need very precise humidity control for a number of reasons), and I had a dim memory of some brands receiving greater praise than others. So I told Wagner I wanted to study the choices before making a decision.

Talk about a headache. While there are plenty of reviews of small portable humdifiers, there are very few objective reviews comparing different whole-house humidifiers. There are plenty of websites discussing individual brands, but they're all biased (published by the company selling the brand), and they all make their own particular brand sound like the be-all and end-all of humidifiers. Rather more troubling was the fact that I could find next to nothing about Trane humidifiers.

On the other hand, the True STEAM was getting rave reviews from a number of corners, including various HVAC and do-it-yourself forums. Apparently it is very effective because it heats water directly into steam, and thus converts essentially 100% of the water that flows through into humidity, as opposed to the evaporative type of humidifiers, which run water through a pad and thus as much as 2/3 of the water just goes straight down the drain. (This type in turn is infinitely better than the old-fashioned drum type of humidifier, which rotates a spinning pad on a drum through a standing pool of water and is thus prone to all sorts of bacteria and mold problems. Whatever you do, don't buy one of those types.)

The snag is that the True STEAM is a fairly new unit, introduced only in the past year or so, and thus with not much of a track record for longevity or reliability, and it also cost twice as much as the Trane. I also could find only one post talking about the cost of running the unit, and it mentioned that it raised their electricity bill by about $40 a month. That adds up to a lot over time.

But with the internet remaining scarily mute on the Trane, I didn't know if I wanted to spring for it. On the other hand, the Piano Forum (and other places which presumably knew more about humidifiers) also raved about the Aprilaire or Desert Spring units (both evaporative types). Of course neither of those were offered by the HVAC people we were having doing the furnace.

Then I noticed buried in some forum a post which asserted that Trane was the same as Aprilaire. Huh. I called the Aprilaire people and spoke to a VERY nice and helpful young man who was reluctant to confirm that they were identical but did confirm that Aprilaire's parent company also manufactures the Trane unit. I pressed him a bit on the issue, and he said that the main units were probably the same and that the main difference would be in how they were packaged (e.g., the humidistat supplied with it, etc.)

At that point I was leaning toward the Trane/Aprilaire, when I mentioned we were getting a high efficiency gas furnace for the addition. In that case, he said, we strongly recommend that you connect the humidifier to a hot water line. Because the furnace is so efficient, it doesn't run as much, and therefore the humidifier isn't operating enough. Using the hot water line would help it humidify better during the shorter time it was running. This, I knew, could be a big snag, because Wagner had only (thus far) run a cold water line over to the furnace room.

Uh-oh.

So then I called the HVAC people and asked them about it. I spoke with the technician who is installing our furnace, and I spoke with the owner of the company himself. They both said that while both humidifiers were nice, they preferred the True STEAM. I mentioned the operating cost issue, and the owner said that he had installed three of the units in his own house and did not notice a big change in his electric bill. I didn't know what to make of that. He wouldn't lie to me (would he?), but he definitely had a vested interest in selling me the more expensive unit.

Grapple grapple. So then I decided to go to the horse's mouth and call Honeywell directly and ask them how much their units cost to run. And here is where I get all irritated. Any Honeywell execs reading this, you should know this: Your customer service sucks. First, your website is hard to navigate, with some pages slow to load or resulting in the dreaded Error 404 (page not found) message. Worse, there is no customer service phone number posted under your contact information. There's just an email form where you can submit a question, but when I tried to do that and clicked "send," nothing happened.

Finally, I found a pdf brochure for the True STEAM linked through the site, and way at the bottom of the brochure in tiny 4 pt. font was a customer phone number. Heh heh. I dialed it, rubbing my hands and cackling evilly. But first I had to navigate three separate menus before I even got to the recorded voice that told me that my wait time "might exceed ten minutes." Then I was treated to a scratchy, poor quality audio recording of an instrumental version of "You Light Up My Life." I'm sorry, but the Honeywell person who designed that hold tape should be the first casualty of the economic downturn.

Finally, finally, I talk to a real person... who, judging by his accent, was sitting in a large call center in India. Before I can even start my question, he asks me for my telephone number, name, zip code, and shoe size. Just joking about that last one, but I finally got all snitty and asked "Why do you need to know all that?" "We want to ensure our call quality," was his reply.

Finally I got to ask my question: What is the typical operating cost of the True STEAM system? "Oh, I'm sorry, ma'am," he replied, "I can't discuss that. I can only talk about the various features of our products." This stumped me momentarily until I came up with a clever rejoinder: "Hmmm.... well, it occurs to me that the typical operating cost of your unit IS in fact a feature of your product."

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but it is impossible to predict how much it will cost to run. Say that I am in Texas. ['fat chance of that,' I think to myself] The cost of electricity and the weather conditions will make the operating cost of the True STEAM unit very different than what you might pay."

I begged him to just give me a ballpark range... was it a dollar or two a month? Forty dollars like the sole mention of it that I found? Or 100 dollars a month? He stubbornly refused to budge, and I ended the call much disgruntled.

So, at this point I'm leaning toward the True STEAM unit, simply because I do find the literature compelling and believe the people who say that it is more effective. I was finally swayed by something the HVAC company guy said, which is that moist air will migrate toward dry air, so the new humidifier unit should also help out with the rest of the house... and our current humidifiers do not do a great job of keeping the humidity high enough in the winter. The final straw was when he casually asked, "Say, didn't Mr. Wagner say you have a piano you were concerned about? This True STEAM would be better protection for it."

I am fiercely protective about my piano, so even if it costs more to install and run, I guess I'll go for the better unit. Perhaps growing weary of my changing my mind every couple of hours, Wagner told me to "think it over tonight" and let him know for sure tomorrow morning.

Progress report -- Week 13

Progress accomplished this week:

--Most of the interior framing/carpentry work for addition finished
--Insulation installed in garage
--Installation of insulation in addition started
--Electrical panel relocated
--HVAC inspection passed
--Brick work continues (slowly)
--Tile layout for bathroom finalized
--Drywall in furnace room put up
--Whirlpool tub installed

Obstacles encountered this week:

--Bitter cold weather has made it impossible most days to lay brick
--Frame for whirlpool tub initially made too wide. We had decided not to have steps leading up to the tub, because it was only 21" off the ground and we thought we could just step into it easily. But the first frame built for it was too wide, and Wagner feared the building inspector wouldn't approve it without a step. So we got the carpenter back in today and he will cut it back.

This should be an exciting week, as most if not all of the drywall in the addition will be put up and then it will start looking like part of a house rather than a construction site. We're supposed to get an inch of rain today, though, so Wagner wants to wait until the rain is done, just to make sure there are no leaks in the addition before putting up drywall.

Back to earth

I had talked in an earlier post about selecting the tile for the master bath and how I had selected a beautiful layout, complete with 40" x 40" mosaic medallion to install on the floor and elaborate decorative trim to go in the interior of the shower, around both arched shower doorways, and around the whirlpool tub area.

We are now getting to the point in the renovation where the drywall is ready to go up, and seeing as we had a more definite idea about interior layouts and measurements, Wagner thought it would be a good idea to go revisit Louisville Tile and get the order processed.

Well, that was an exercise in reality-testing. During my first visit, when I had made all the selections, there was one teeny-tiny little detail I had forgotten to ask about, namely, how much all of this stuff cost.

Uh-oh.

Turns out that it costs a lot. A whole lot. Take the decorative border. I had planned on a top border with a little leaf motif, about 2.5" wide, then a 3" decorative trim that matches the mosaic medallion for the tile, and then a half-inch bullnose trim below that. Taken together, those three little trims cost something like $70 a linear foot. Yes, per foot. And the big floor medallion was hideously expensive. Yikes.

It was time to rethink. I thought, briefly, about skipping the floor mosaic. But I had really, really fallen in love with it, and I rationalized it to myself by saying that in the broad scheme of what we were paying for the renovation, the floor mosaic was a mere fraction.

So we're keeping it.

The decorative trim was another matter. I knew I wanted the trim, but maybe I didn't need to have it go all the way around the whirlpool area and I could just keep it in the shower. And maybe I didn't need to use the expensive 3" trim that matched the floor mosaic. So I looked around and found a plainer trim with a leaf design that could work, and I found a cheaper bullnose. (It disturbed me greatly that the half-inch bullnose trim was within a couple of dollars as expensive as the much fancier, wider top decorative border I had picked out.) But the more I thought about this alternative version, the less I liked it. Kathy had noted that the new trim was all the same bland color and thus wouldn't represent as nice a decoration as would the original trim, which was multi-colored (and designed specifically for the tile we had chosen).

So then I went to Plan C. I decided we only needed trim on the exterior of the first shower arched doorway, and we would leave the interior arch (the one that separates the drying off area from the shower proper) plain. And then I realized that I didn't really need that bottom half-inch bullnose border, either; I think it will look good just to have the top border and the matching 3" decorative trim, and then go straight to tile. That will save us about 1/3 on the trim costs.

And then I resorted to Plan D, which was to ask Jonathan across the dinner table, "Don't you agree that we should make the bathroom look really nice and the way we want it to, even if it means we go over budget and have to pay a little more?" My wonderful hubby just laughed resignedly and said "yes."

Gosh, I love that man. :)

Throwing the switch

So today is a big day for the renovation. It is the day where we relocate the main box thingy where all our electricity comes into the house. It had previously been located right outside the (former) garage, which is now inside the (new) bedroom closet for Jonathan. Kentucky Utilities, however, is rather picky about where the electrical box goes, so we have to install a new box that will be located outside the addition.

If all goes well, the transition will not be a big deal and we will be without power for only about an hour. I wasn't nervous about it until I became aware that Wagner was feeling a little nervous about it, because he kept assuring me that he would "be there the whole time the transition takes place," and that he wouldn't "leave until you got power restored, no matter how long that takes." And then he casually mentioned that it might be a "good idea" to turn the thermostat way up a few hours before the work starts so that the house will stay warm "as long as possible."

Gulp.

The good news is that the worst case scenario is not all that bad. Even if there is a problem, we can simply camp out at Jonathan's office for a night. Or more. Athena is more worried about her pet rats than anything else, so I promised her I'd hang around the house all day as well and be prepared to swoop them (and the cat) off to heat and safety should there be any delays in getting our power back on. The guppies will have to fend for themselves.

...But now it's time to power down the computer so it doesn't get fried during the switchover.

Floored by options

As much as I wanted to, I couldn't rest on my laurels of choosing the master bath and laundry room tile. We have several other important surfaces that needed decisions, and Wagner kept dropping little hints like "You need to start thinking about what you want on the garage study floor," and "You need to begin thinking about the bedroom floor," with the hints gradually increasing in urgency to "I really need you to decide what you're going to use for flooring." Gulp.

The problem is that there really are so many different choices, and they range in price from expensive to scarily expensive. I initially thought the garage study would be easy. Again I'm not anticipating the room will get heavy use, so I thought it best to go with something economical (= dirt cheap) and easy to maintain. If ever a space was designed for vinyl or linoleum flooring, this was it, I thought. Well, guess again. First, Wagner got that disconcerted look on his face again and said "Of course, you should get whatever you want, but if you're going to all this expense you may want to consider something that will hold up better." Then when I looked at vinyl samples at places like Home Depot and Lowe's, the staff there all kind of sniffed and said "Vinyl really isn't being used much at all these days." Not to mention that it wasn't as cheap as I had thought it would be. I was interested most in the vinyl that looked like fake hardwood or fake stone tile. These still cost anywhere between $2.00 and $4.00 per square foot. That made the 99 cent per sq. ft. tile we ordered for the laundry room look very, very attractive indeed, and I gnashed my teeth thinking we should've ordered a whole bunch more of it for the garage study. But it was a close-out with limited quantities so that wasn't an option.

Then Jonathan suggested carpet for the garage. I was less than enthusiastic about this, for several reasons. First, as expensive as tile and vinyl was, carpet was even more expensive. More important, though, was the cleaning factor. Here I must confess that we do not own a vacuum cleaner. We used to have one, but we loaned it to step-daughter Larissa when she moved to town a few years ago. We have a cleaning service come in every week to the house, and that's proven to be sufficient in terms of keeping our upstairs carpet nice and tidy. But I wasn't planning on having them clean the garage study, given the extra expense and minimal amount of use I anticipate it will receive. Even if we bought a new vacuum, I wasn't wild about the idea of lugging it back and forth to the garage. So I nixed the carpet idea.

That left us back with the fake wood vinyl flooring I saw at Home Depot, which cost $1.97 a square foot and would entail suffering the snide looks of the Home Depot employees if we ordered it. ("Hey, look, here comes that lady with absolutely no taste in interior decorating again!") So I was brooding over the options when I ran across an ad in the local newspaper placed by a firm called "Lumber Liquidators" and advertising genuine oak laminate flooring for 78 cents a square foot. This seemed too good to be true (I had seen that laminate flooring at Home Depot costing five or six times as much), but I had to check them out. Sure enough, they had two kinds of 6 mm thick oak laminate flooring for a mere 78 cents a square foot. This is the stuff that come in long planks that you just click together sort of like a jigsaw puzzle. It looks like a hardwood floor but is a lot cheaper, because it's so thin. But it looks a hell of a lot better than the fake wood vinyl. And it was cheaper. Talk about a win-win situation.



It didn't end up as cheap as I had originally dreamed, however, because it turns out that you can't just plop the planks down on the floor; you have to purchase a pad with a water barrier to go under it. When I asked the employees "Do I really need that pad or can I just plop the planks down?" they gave me that awkward look I've been getting a lot during this renovation from various stores ("Man, I can't believe this lady's lack of basic home construction knowledge") and assured me that a pad was essential to avoid moisture problems and keep the planks from popping up. They also said that failure to use a pad would void the 10-year warranty. Okay, so that convinced me. The pad they recommended cost another 50 cents a square foot, which brings the total to $1.28 a square foot for the laminate, which *still* represents a hefty savings over the fake wood vinyl while looking infinitely better. So that's what we're going to go with.

Oh, and there's also the expense of the trim. We can order a primed white quarter round for something like 45 cents a linear foot, which can be painted to match the walls. Or we could order oak quarter rounds matching the stain of the floor for a whole lot more, $22 per 7.5 foot length. The white cheapie seems okay to me, so we'll probably go with that.

Now that just leaves choosing the flooring for the garage bathroom, the entry foyer to the addition, and the master bedroom itself. Yikes.

Progress report --- Week 12

Progress accomplished this week:

--Electrical inspection of new garage/study passed
--Half of electrical wiring for addition part accomplished (photo above shows one of the recessed can lights that will be in the bedroom)
--Framing work continued in addition for interior walls
--Bricklaying continued; nearly finished with exterior
--Tile workers came in and measured so that tile can be ordered


--Door from Jonathan's computer room to new closet in addition put in. I haven't talked about this part of the renovation before. The garage was originally on the other side of our small study that Jon uses as his computer room, where he hangs out and plays video games. We could use more storage room for that area (his video game collection is quite impressive), so in planning the addition we decided to put in a door that would lead to a walk-in closet area where we could put bookcases, a table with room for a printer/fax/scanner machine, etc. We had quite the animated discussion as to whether to have a door installed or just leave the opening to the closet area open. Wagner and I were advocating heavily for the door option; Jon was arguing just as strenuously to leave it open. Wagner ended up putting a door on "just for the time being" to insulate the house from the rest of the addition area (which is still very cold all the time due to not having all the windows installed yet or furnace in place). We are both hoping that Jon will get used to the door and not object to it staying there. ;-)


Obstacles encountered this week:

--Well, it's hard to call Thanksgiving an "obstacle," but it did slow down work.

Flush with options

Of all the decisions we had to make for the addition, the one I took most seriously was: Choosing the toilet. Yes, the toilet. I spend a lot of time on mine, as I have a bladder the size of a walnut. (That's probably more information about me than you want to know, but it's important for establishing the background.)

I also realized that this was not going to be an easy choice. You are probably aware that in 1992 the U.S. government passed the National Energy Policy Act mandating that all new toilets use no more than 1.6 gallons per flush, as a step toward water conservation.

The snag is that the early 1.6 gpf toilets were horrendous. People were having to flush 2 or 3 times just to get the, er, stuff down, and that kind of defeats the whole purpose of trying to conserve water. It got so bad that a black market of the older 5-7 gpf toilets sprang up across the nation. I had a dim memory of reading some article about the situation, with the author concluding that some of the new toilets were definitely better than the others.

Since we like to be environmentally conscientious when possible, I didn't want to use a black-market toilet, but I also definitely did not want a toilet that wouldn't flush. So I turned to the internet and delved into the wild and woolly world of toilet research.

(Incidentally, do you know what some companies use for testing toilets? Tofu turds. I'm not joking. They take tofu of varying consistencies and mash it into little sausage shaped turd substitutes.)

A couple of sources kept referring to one particular website as the mecca of toilet lore, a site run by a plumber named Terry Love, www.terrylove.com. If you want to spend an entertaining evening, I highly recommend this site. He offers a detailed report on what he considers the best low-flow toilets out there, complete with links to a toilet forum that he also runs from his website.

Yes, I said toilet forum. Given that I spend way too many hours on the Piano World forum, I should be more sympathetic to the notion of a toilet forum, but I have to tell you that this forum cracks me up. It is full of people talking about their toilet purchases, toilet experiences (shudder), and photos of their toilets that they have felt compelled to share with the 6 billion people on the planet.

But it's the comments that are the most hilarious. My favorite was this gem by JH, who reported on his purchase of a Toto Ultramax toilet: "These toilets are deadly with solid waste, no 'victory lap' around the bowl. You simply say 'brown buddy, you're going down,' and that's that."

That recommendation clinched it for me, so I initially decided I had to have an Ultramax toilet for myself. So I went to the Toto toilet website and searched for the nearest distributor. There weren't any in Lexington, but there was a dealer in Nicholasville, not too far away. I called up and asked if they had any Ultramaxes in their showroom, and the woman said, "Yes, in fact, we have one installed in our women's room."

WOOT. I couldn't resist the chance to try one out in action, so the next day I sped off to the showroom, where Gina showed me the toilet and was very gracious when I asked if she could excuse me so I could try it out.

I will say this: The flush and refill action on these toilets are awesome. The whole thing took literally no more than 8 seconds from start to finish. I was in toilet love. I absolutely hate getting up in middle of the night, doing my thing, then laying in bed for what seems like hours waiting for the %@$%!& toilet to shut off so I don't have to worry about getting back up and jiggling the %$@#(! handle.

The only thing I didn't like about the Ultramax was the appearance (it was a one-piece unit, very contemporary, which looked nice on the company website but in person seemed a little too edgy to me) and the price (very expensive, around $750). So I asked Gina what other options I should consider. She said that the Toto Drake model was their best seller, and it had the same flushing mechanism as the Ultramax but was a two-piece unit in a more traditional style. She then walked me over to the men's room where they had it installed. I asked her to excuse me once again (I told y'all I had a small bladder...), where I tried it out and verified that it was every bit as satisfying to flush as the Ultramax. Better yet, it was a lot cheaper: With a slow-close seat, it came to something like $425. ("What's a slow-close seat" you ask? It's a seat with a special hinge so that all you have to do is drop it down and it lowers itself carefully and quietly to the resting position. No more unpleasant WHAM! when you accidentally drop a lid or seat down.)

We chose the ADA-compliant "comfort" height model of the Drake, one where the bowl is 16.5" off the ground, which is slightly higher than a traditional toilet. This is one aspect of our desire for following a unversal design strategy in building the addition that I will use and appreciate right away, as decades of running and overtraining have made my middle-aged knees sore much of the time. The comfort height toilets are a lot easier for me to sit down on and get off of, and have I mentioned that I have a small bladder and go to the bathroom a lot? ;-)

The photo above shows what the Drake looks like in white. It also comes in a color (Sedona Beige) that is identical to the biscuit tub and sinks we had ordered, so we are all set to sit.

Progress report -- Week 11

Laundry room plumbing:


Main showerhead plumbing, accompanied by Isaac:


Insulation in garage:


I've been out of town, and then when I returned the whole family came down with one of those very nasty norovirus stomach bugs (trust me, you don't want the details), so I haven't been able to post lately. I'm probably also leaving some things out.

Progress accomplished this week:

--Plumbing has been routed through walls and pipes in their final locations in the addition
--Plumbing finished in the garage/study, and building inspector approved
--Electrical wiring finished in the garage/study, and building inspector approved
--Insulation added to garage
--Furnace and ductwork installed in the garage. Wagner convinced Jonathan that it would be best to leave the furnace up in the attic area, but he rearranged the ducts so that the warm air would be coming out at the floor level of the study. That was a more feasible compromise than exchanging the furnace.
--More framing/carpentry work done in addition. Archways for shower built.
--New wider skylight ordered, will be installed after Thanksgiving.
--Lighting fixtures for addition selected and ordered, will be installed this week.
--Blocking for grab bars, towel racks, etc. laid out in master bath. Wagner thinks we should go ahead and install the grab bars for the bath, tub, and toilet, again with an eye to having everything accessible for the future. I'm not quite as convinced, as those grab bars are awfully big and clunky looking. I asked Wagner, "how long does a typical tile job last in a shower?" and suggested that we could always add the grab bars the next time we retile. He replied that it could last as long as 15-20 years, and then he asked, "How old is Jonathan?" (56). Point taken. We may compromise and just put one bar at each location and block for the others to be installed later as needed.

Obstacles encountered this week:

--I realized that I forgot to tell Wagner we wanted a humidifier installed with the new furnace in the addition area. Oops. So now he has to route a water line to the furnace room.
--Horrible weather here... rain, bitter cold, snow flurries. This has slowed brickwork.

Progress report --- Week 10

View of where Jonathan's closet in the new bedroom will be, complete with newly installed window (the one on the left). The holes where the other two windows were (facing us) will be walled over.



View of the new bedroom, with beautiful picture window installed. You can see a little of the vaulted ceilings here.


Progress accomplished this week:

--Picture window installed in bedroom
--Skylight in kitchen installed, dry-wall repaired
--Framing done for interior of master bedroom/bathroom suite
--Stairs built in garage
--Shower unit moved to garage study
--Kitchen cabinet installed in garage study. We're re-using the old one from our kitchen renovation, although we will need to buy a new sink to satisfy the building inspector. Wagner says he can trim some of our leftover Corian countertop to fit it.
--Brickwork done on most of garage
--Foundation at front of house dug out. Turns out that we do have a footer for part of the front stretch, so we're only going to have to pay $2000 for two support piers. Phew.
--Cabinets for master bathroom selected and ordered. We're ordering AristoKraft cabinets, Landen door style, Maple wood in a saddle stain. The photo on the bottom shows the cabinet style but in a different color; the one on the top is the stain color we're going with.





Obstacles encountered this week:

--Jonathan and I changed our minds about the skylight and the furnace location. See previous post.
--Cold rain for a couple of days. This slowed/halted brickwork.
--Bathtub deemed too small and swapped out. See earlier post.

More photos, this time of the garage study:

Why Wagner has every right to gnash his teeth

Yesterday Wagner came over and spent two hours walking through the addition with Jonathan and me, pointing out what had been done so far and what was planned for the future. He may very well end up regretting having done so, as Jonathan and I managed to complicate his life greatly.

First there was me and the skylight. I was hoping the skylight would replace all the natural light we had lost when the kitchen window was blocked over. And the skylight in our bathroom had done a terrific job of lightening up that space. But when the skylight was put in the kitchen, the total effect was rather underwhelming. Even though it was probably the same size as the bathroom skylight in total area, it was skinny and rectangular in shape, and it was sitting on top of a much deeper, narrower trench, as there was more roof/ceiling area it had to go through.



The end result is that it just didn't let in as much light as I was hoping for. So... even though this skylight was already installed, with the drywall work all completed, and everything was ready for the kitchen to be repainted, when Wagner bravely volunteered "I can make it wider if you want," Jonathan and I thought it over and decided to go ahead and redo it and put in a wider skylight. As much as I hate to inconvenience Wagner and make his men come out and redo the whole thing, we figured it would be better to go ahead and make it the way we want it now, while everything is in an uproar anyhow, and before the kitchen got painted.

The only snag is that there are some roof joists in the way. (That's why Wagner put in the narrow one in the first place.) He can put in a header and cut out one of the joists, if we don't mind an off-center skylight. But if we want it centered, there are two joists that would be affected, and he didn't want to cut out both, for structural reasons. So if we go the centered route, we'll have to leave the joists in, where they'll be exposed (though we can paint them) and it might look a little weird.

Then we toured the new garage. The carpenter got stairs built to the upstairs study, so it was the first time we had seen that area. It's going to be HUGE, and very nice. We're going to have built-in bookcases along one edge, with the kitchen area on the other side. Wagner then pointed out the pull-down staircase where there would be access to the garage attic area, where he intended to put the furnace. You may remember from an earlier post that he had decided to move the furnace up to the attic to make room for a workbench area and our cars on the main floor of the garage. I could've sworn I had briefed Jonathan on that change, and maybe I did but all the ramifications hadn't been obvious at the time.

Anyway, when Jon looked up to see the space where the furnace was going to be, he realized that the hot air would be coming down from the ceiling, which bothered him. Hot air rises, so it seemed more efficient to Jon to have the ductwork and heat coming in at the floor. Jonathan also has this thing about sitting or lying down near heater vents in cold weather and enjoying the blast of hot air right next to him. It's just one of his lovable little quirks. ;-) So Jon told Wagner that he didn't want the furnace in the attic space. Wagner got his "uh-oh this complicates things a whole lot" look on his face and said, again bravely, that if we were going to make that change we needed to decide right then and there because the furnace was already ordered and the duct work was going to start next week.

We spent half an hour or so going over various options, and we ended up deciding to put the furnace back on the ground floor of the garage, where we had originally planned to put it, in the space under the stairs. That was where Wagner currently intended to put the hot water heater, which meant that we had to move THAT back upstairs. We're going to add a little closet space next to the bathroom where we can stick the hot water heater.

Jonathan realizes it will cost extra, because we're probably going to have to exchange the furnace for a new one (Wagner had ordered one designed for attic spaces), with a resulting restocking fee, and there will be extra drywall and carpentry work for the water heater closet. Not to mention essentially having to redo the skylight. And then there's the little matter of my tile and vanity cabinet choices going well over budget.

Oh well. If anybody would like to buy a narrow skylight, cheap, let me know. I happen to know where there will be a lightly used one available soon. ;-)

Rub-a-dub-dub

So we had a little crisis with the whirlpool tub. It was delivered this week, but when it arrived, Wagner took one look at it and thought it was too small. I had picked it out of a catalog with the help of Tarla at Ferguson's, but they didn't have a sample on their showroom floor, so all I had to go on in picking it out was a small photo on the cut sheet. And y'all know what my spatial and visualization skills are like (i.e., very poor).

The original tub was 56" long, which seemed at the time like it ought to be long enough. But when the carpenter drew out a stencil and laid it out where it would go, it looked like a tea cup. Not to mention that somehow we had picked up an extra 6 inches in the general bathtub area, so we had more space than we had originally planned.

So even though it would mean a restocking fee, we thought it would look better, not to mention being more comfortable, if we traded it in for a bigger tub. So we went down to Ferguson's and looked at our options. One choice would be a larger oval tub, one that would be 63" long, or possibly we could go with a triangular shaped tub to fit in the corner area. The bigger oval had a nice sloping back rest and more leg room for stretching out, and I sort of liked the simple look of it, so that's what I went with.

We scampered back to the house with the new cut sheet and drew out another stencil, because I *really* wanted to avoid the situation of having to send back a second tub. Once we were sure the new tub would fit and look good, we confirmed the swap. The good news is that they'll get the new tub delivered tomorrow, pick up the first tub, and it will only cost another $200 total.

This is *not* a garage apartment

The building inspector came out yesterday on one of his regular visits, and he told Wagner that he wanted to make one thing clear: He would not approve an apartment on top of the garage. (Remember the zoning laws in our neighborhood that allows only one appliance in a garage apartment, er, study.) Wagner assured him that the space on the top floor of the garage was definitely not an apartment. The inspector then asked him "well, then, what's this plumbing doing right here where it looks like you're going to install a sink?" Wagner said "It's going to be a break room, and they want a sink for making coffee."

The building inspector then fixed Wagner with a long and steely stare and finally said, "I don't know what's going to happen to this space after I certify it for occupancy. But I'm not going to approve it with a full-size sink."

So, it looks like our plans to re-use our old kitchen counter and sink won't work. We can use the base cabinets, but we'll have to find a new countertop with one of those little bar sinks. And that's fine by me, as I seriously doubt we'll have anybody actually living out there, unless maybe it's Isaac when he's in college. And I'm sure that if we're just using it as guest room space, a small bar sink will be more than adequate.

I was in fact worried that we were going to all this expense to build an enormous garage with a room that nobody would use at all. But it sounds like that won't be the case. Instead, we're all squabbling over who gets to use it. Hubby Jonathan wants it as a second home office/library for his coin books. Athena wants to use it for slumber parties, or as a gigantic free-range area for all the pets she plans to get to put in it. (Fat chance, that scheme!) It would make an excellent place for Isaac to practice his violin. Or drums. And I kinda have my eye on the space for myself, as a quiet place where I could choose to work/write at home if I wanted.

But whatever we use it for, it won't be an apartment. ;-)

Progress report --- Week 9

Progress made this week:

--Bricks put on about 75% of the garage
--Walls on addition portion finished, with openings cut out for windows
--Roof on addition portion put on
--New double window hung in kitchen
--One of the old kitchen windows removed and opening drywalled over
--Cut-out of addition roof made to accommodate upstairs dormer
--I spent a morning at a cabinet store making choices about the bathroom vanity cabinets and countertop.
--A structural engineer came out and investigated the big crack we found earlier running down the front of the house. He and Wagner were both flummoxed to discover that the foundation of the front of the house lacked a footer. What this means is that they will have to dig out a trench and install anywhere between 2 and 5 support piers (depending on just how long of a stretch there is without a footer) to prevent further sagging of the house. This will cost an additional $1000 a pier. Yikes. Apparently this was all caused by the bad droughts we've been having the past couple of years, where the soil has dried up and caused the sagging, which caused the cracks.


Obstacles encountered this week:

--Rain one day, slowing down work.
--While I liked the vanity cabinets I decided on, I'm not thrilled with the tank topper that goes with that style. (A tank topper is a cabinet that hangs on the wall above the toilet.) I really like the one we have now, which came with the house, and I'd love to be able to find one that matches whatever cabinets we choose to put in. I think I may have to go out and look at some other cabinet stores.

In sum, I think this week has seen the most visible and remarkable progress. Yeah, I know the early stages where all the underground pipe and duct work is going on is incredibly important and impressive in its own way, but it's hard to get overly excited about a hole in the ground with some pipes sticking out. There's just something really gratifying and amazing when you have walls going up and roofs put on. Jon and I have a much better idea now what it's going to look like, and I think it's going to be beautiful.

The end of "minimally disruptive"

Back when we were still debating whether or not to go forward with the renovation, Wagner looked us in the eye and swore that, most of the time, the renovation would be "minimally disruptive" to our lifestyle--much less intrusive, in fact, than the kitchen renovation over the summer. I had a bit of a hard time believing him on that, given the scale of the work to be done. But for the most part, he's been correct. The work to date has all taken place outside, so apart from losing our garage and having to park our cars in the front, it really hasn't affected our day to day activities.

But that all changed this week, as we are moving into the phase of the project that Wagner warned us would be disruptive, which is the part where we remove two of the kitchen windows, install a skylight, and replace the third kitchen window with a double-wide window.

In preparation for this work, the crew came in and put down butcher paper all over the hardwood floors and a carpet section near the door, to minimize the tracking of dirt and drywall dust and the like. Then they taped up big plastic sheeting to close off the eat-in section of the kitchen where most of the work will be done. (I had to move out the little table and chair set and the ficus we kept there.) One of the plastic sheets had a zipper built in so you could open it to walk through but otherwise leave it fairly airtight, a trick Wagner picked up from his work in hospitals where you have to be very careful about minimizing dust etc. for the patients.

The end result is that we are (so far) getting very little construction dust or dirt in the rest of the house, but the kitchen looks like something out of a Biosafety Level IV lab. ;-)

With any luck this phase won't last long. He's already hung the double window in place, and it looks terrific. (The photo shown above is from before the window was replaced; I'll be posting an "after" photo later.) The prep work has been done for removing the second kitchen window, and the light fixture where the skylight is going to go has been taken out. They're predicting rain in a day or two, so he's planning on waiting until next Monday to install the skylight, so that we're not in the position of having a big hole in the roof all weekend while it's raining.

A closet conundrum

Yesterday evening Wagner was showing my hubby, Jonathan, and I around the work site. We were looking at the part of the addition where one of the walk-in closets was going to be situated, and he asked "Oh, by the way, do you want a window in your closet? We could re-use one of the kitchen windows we're having to take out."

My immediate reaction was to look at Wagner in disbelief and think "are you kidding?" Why on earth would anyone want a window in their closet?!? After all, much of the time when you're going into a closet, you either have pajamas or a robe on or no clothes at all. The last thing I want when I am fumbling around for my clothes at 6:00 a.m. is to have to remember to close the drapes.

So all of that was going through my head as I shook my head confidently and said "No way." Unfortunately, at the exact same moment, Jonathan was saying thoughtfully, "Yeah, I'd like a window." Then it was my turn to look at him in disbelief. I went through all the logical arguments as to why a window in one's closet was unnecessary, nay, undesirable. I also pointed out how a window would simply take up valuable space one could use for hanging clothes.

"So what?" he replied. "We can just use that wall for putting our shoes on a rack underneath the window." Then he got a calculating gleam in his eye and said, "And anyway, isn't that going to be MY closet? Why do you care?"

He had me there. Our plans call for two walk-in closets: one off the bedroom itself, and the other at the rear of the bathroom. The one off the bedroom is the one that Wagner proposed adding a window to, and it's the larger of the two closets. But it's also the one we had earmarked for Jon. This is because I get up earlier than he does, to shower before waking the kids up and fixing them breakfast. So I thought it made more sense for me to take the closet off the bathroom. That way when I wake up, I can tiptoe into the bathroom, close the door, turn on the lights, shower, and get dressed without bothering Jonathan, who can remain content and undisturbed in blissful slumber until I bring him his first cup of coffee, which he drinks sitting up in bed in the darkness. I'm such a good wife. ;-)

So then I informed him that, because of my sacrifice in taking the smaller closet off the bathroom for the sole purpose of allowing him to remain content and undisturbed in blissful slumber, I had sort of been planning all along to put some of my clothes I don't use often (fancy party dresses and the like) in his closet, given that he is a male and therefore *ahem* obviously has less need for closet space. Putting a window in the closet would thus cut into the amount of space that I had intended to nab.

Jon then said, "Oh, you were, were you?"

At this point Wagner looked vaguely alarmed and said "Uh-oh. I shouldn't have asked about the window."

But, using the superior negotiating skills we have developed with great success throughout the 14 years of our marriage, we were able to arrive at a workable compromise, to wit: Jon got his way. I realized that the two new closets would be more than enough room for our clothes, even with a window, and because Jon has been exceedingly agreeable to every decision I've made so far (and there have been a ton of them), it only made sense to be agreeable on the rare occasions he voices an opinion. So, if it's a window in his closet he wants, a window he will get.

Besides, we'll still have that absolutely huge master closet in our current bedroom where I can leave stuff if I need more space. ;-)

Progress report --- Week 8

Progress completed this week:

--Cement floor of garage poured
--Eaves on garage roof installed
--Brickwork begun on garage
--Framing of addition section completed
--Trusses put up on addition. I'm much happier with the angle of the new truss. It blocks a bit of the upstairs dormer but not too much.
--Dragged the kids with me and spent two hours at Lowe's collecting yet more paint chips; holding tile sample against various countertop options; and browsing floor options for the garage studio.

Obstacles encountered this week:



--Wagner's not happy with the bricklaying work. Our brick pattern consists of bricks mostly of one color, with a few bricks of lighter and darker color interspersed throughout. The mason guy he has is not blending them adequately enough, in Wagner's opinion. He may end up getting somebody else to do it.
--I was too busy at work (getting my edited book manuscript finished and sent to the publisher by the deadline, which I made, barely). That meant I didn't have much time this past week to research and decide on toilets, paint chips, vanities, carpet, etc. That will be my mission for this upcoming week.

Reflections on kitchen renovation

It occurred to me that I might want to say something useful in this blog, instead of blathering on about my limitations as a homeowner and housekeeper. So, while this blog is concerned mainly with our first floor master suite addition and new garage, I thought I'd offer my musings about our recent kitchen renovation, now that it's been some months since it has been completed and I've had the chance to reflect on what worked well, and what not so well, in the project.

Features of the New Cabinets that I Really, Really Like

I chose American Woodmark cabinets, marketed through Home Depot, simply because it was easy and convenient to browse through samples there, and the Woodmark cabinets were solid, middle of the road cabinets. Not cheap and flimsy, but not overly expensive, either. I got a little carried away, though, when I saw the brochure on all the extra features you could special order. In case you're planning a kitchen renovation of your own, here's the features I'd recommend strongly:

1.) Pull-out trash drawer. This is probably my favorite aspect of the new cabinets. The pull-out drawer looks just like an ordinary cabinet door, but it contains a nice deep plastic trash bin, and a second shallow bin behind it that I use for storing the box of trash bags. In my old cabinets, we had installed a rickety pull-out trash bag holder on our own, but like most of our home maintenance attempts, this didn't really work well (it kept coming off the tracks), and food/trash kept getting all over the floor of the cabinet and making a royal mess.

2.) Tilt-out drawer at sink. I *almost* didn't even order this, but it has turned out to be my second favorite feature. Before I just stashed my scrub brushes, scouring pads, and sink plugs behind the faucet, which would make my sink area look cluttered and messy. Now they all fit easily in the tilt-out drawer, readily accessible yet leaving my sink uncluttered. I love it. If you order one, get the plastic little containers (so you can pop them in the dishwasher), and make sure the installer doesn't screw them in tightly so you can put them in and out easily.

3.) Cookie sheet tray divider. This is a pull-out unit with little dividers where you can store all your baking sheets, cookie sheets, muffin trays, pizza pans, etc. standing on edge, without them being mashed together in a pile where it's impossible to extricate just one.

4.) Fancy glass panel on one cabinet drawer. As I attended various open houses, I noticed that a lot of upscale homes had fancy glass doors in their cupboards, with collections of priceless crystal and fine china on visible display behind them. We had very little of that stuff, but we did have one set of nice china (from Jonathan's grandmother). So I ordered one glass cabinet door, with a pretty embossed fern design on it, and used it on the cupboard with the china in it. All of our other cabinets, containing the mismatched Scooby-Doo plates and plastic cups we actually use every day, keep their contents hidden from view behind solid doors.



5.) Long tubular modern cabinet pulls. Our old cabinets had the basic round knobs on them. Any way you cut it, round knobs are boring. I liked the modern look of the long tubular pulls, and that's what I went with for the kitchen renovation, even though I had the sneaking suspicion that the peak of popularity for them had passed. I really like the knobs, though. They're easy to grab onto, and easy to clean.

Features of the New Cabinets I'm Not so Crazy About or Would Skip if I were Doing it Over

1.) Pull-out trays in the cabinets. I was tired of leaning way over and rummaging through cabinets to find various pots and pans. So for the renovation, I ordered pull-out trays for all the cabinets. What I didn't realize is that the trays and sliding mechanism take up a fair amount of space on each side. What this means is that I could not fit as much in the cupboards as I had before. So even though the renovation added at least one new cupboard, I had less net space after the renovation than before. That's not ideal. If I were doing it over again, I'd buy pull-out trays for the hardest to reach cupboards but use regular shelves on the others.

2.) Our old cabinets were intalled under soffitts in the ceiling. For the renovation, I decided to keep the soffitts to minimize costs. (Tearing them out would have entailed "significant ceiling repair," Wagner told me.) In hindsight I wish we had taken the soffitts out. The new cabinets hang down lower than the old ones, which gives me less clearance under them. The coffeemaker doesn't fit, for example, nor does the canister with all my big spoons and whisk.

In sum, there's a learning curve associated with doing any kind of renovation. I think I could do a kitchen renovation now faster, easier, and with better outcomes. The implication that I am currently making all sorts of mistakes with the master suite addition is one I don't like to think about much. ;)

Digression: Wagner's Halloween decorations

Every year, Wagner decorates his house for Halloween. I don't mean the plastic skeleton on the door (which comprises MY sole Halloween decorating this year), or the fake tombstones in the yard, or the cobwebs on the bushes. I mean an all-out spectacular display. He kept urging us to bring the children by one evening. So Saturday night we went out to his house. We knew it was something special when we saw the dim glow of lights a block away, and crowds of people parking and walking up to the house.

Apparently we weren't the only ones who thought the decorations were pretty special, because somebody sent in a photo of Wagner's house to the Today Show's national contest for best Halloween decorations, and it was named one of the 3 finalists. If you stumble across this blog before Halloween, you can go to the website and vote:

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/27364818/

I wouldn't presume to tell people how to vote, but fyi, Wagner's house is House #1. ;-)

[UPDATE EDIT: I wrote last night that Wagner's house had lost by a hair, but it turns out that the web page I was looking at showing the vote tallies hadn't been updated. The show's producers called him last night and said that their house had won, and they announced it on the air Halloween morning. Wagner also said that the producers told him that the Today show didn't have a "big budget" and so the prize would be two "Today Show" coffee cups filled with candy. WOOT.]

The photo (copied above) doesn't really do the decorations justice. His yard was jam-packed full of skeletons in outlandish poses and costumes, both scary (emerging slowly out of coffin) and funny (a porta-potty opens to reveal a skeleton pulling up his boxers).

Wagner says he usually gets 450-500 children coming by for trick or treat. Now with all the publicity (once the local paper and news stations found out about the Today Show contest, they sent crews of their own to cover it, spying an opportunity to drum up good publicity for Lexington), he's worried he's going to have to go out and buy even more candy.

As for me, my plastic skeleton on the door is looking pretty lame. I think I'll go out and buy some cobwebs for the bushes.

Progress report --- Week 7

Progress accomplished this week:

--Framing of top story of detached garage completed
--Roof of garage put on
--Brick for addition and garage has arrived
--Telephone "grid box" (where telephone line enters house) relocated
--Tile for master bath and laundry room selected
--Estimate for new fence along back of property obtained
--Neighbor's shed relocated, neighbor's plants dug up and reburied, so we're all clear for moving our fence. Wagner and his men took a full day and a half accomplishing all that, including laying down new grass seed and straw, and adding supports to the shed underneath because the new location wasn't level. Wagner says the neighbor carefully supervised all the work and seemed happy with how it turned out. We're glad the whole thing's resolved, and once again I am convinced of my husband's brilliance in handling that situation.

Obstacles encountered this week:

--Another day of rain, which slowed outside work.
--Tree stump on property line discovered. We will either have to remove the stump, or (if we're lucky and the posts don't have to go down through it), just saw it off closer to the ground and put a section of the fence over it.
--Many paint chips collected from various stores. Massive disagreement among family members as to what color paint would (a) match the bathroom tile and (b) look good. This is complicated by the fact that paint chips lie through their teeth and don't look anything like they appear on the chip once the paint is up on the wall.

All in all, this week has seen the most dramatic visible progress. The detached garage is tall and HUGE. Maybe too huge. According to zoning requirements, garages cannot be taller than the house they accompany. Our new garage will be 8 inches shorter than our 1 1/2 story house. That's still pretty darned tall. Our neighbor, Jane (the poor woman who has had construction on all three sides of her house), remarked to our contractor that she now feels hemmed in. I guess I'm hoping that once it's built and all the construction equipment etc. is out of the way, it won't look so mammoth. I also hope that we end up using that room on the top often enough to make it worth it.

Warm tootsies, re-reconsidered

Luckily for us, Louisville Tile is an authorized distributor of the SunTouch mats we were thinking about for the shower/bathroom floor. While we were there I asked about them, and Kathy told us that they actually had a sample system installed and turned on in one of their hallways. So I immediately ran over there, took off my shoes, and walked across it.

I will say this: You can definitely feel the difference, and it feels great. :) Heated floors are without question a nice luxury touch. But as I thought more about it, I finally decided against installing the system, for a couple of reasons. First, it simply wasn't giving off the blasts of heat that I had in mind for the drying-off portion of the shower. Second, Kathy said the system was designed to be left on all the time (at least during cold weather), because it took a while for the floor to heat up, whereas I was looking for something that could be used on a short-term basis (while we were showering) and was therefore immediate-acting.

So while it sure felt nice on my feet, and I could envision how wonderful it would be to tip-toe my way to the toilet on a warm floor in middle of a brutally cold winter night, we ultimately decided against the system. I had already gone way over budget in my choice of tile and that fancy medallion for the floor. I'll just have to wear warm, fuzzy socks on those brutal winter nights. ;-)

Tiling away the hours

This morning, instead of working on a book chapter that is due October 31!!!!, I spent several hours choosing tile for the master bathroom. This was not time I minded spending, however, as the tile choices for the bathroom rank right up there in terms of being the most consequential and important. (To me, that is; I'm sure Wagner would regard the truss decision as being more important.)

We called one tile store and said we'd like to stop by, and the lady who answered told us to come on down. [Warning: Mini-rant follows.] When we got there, though, we were met by a sales associate who immediately informed us that "we are very short-handed today" and "it is better if you schedule an appointment." Of course, I'm thinking that we had in fact called in advance and done exactly that. The saleslady waved a hand toward walls of tile samples and told us to look around while she made a few phone calls. Twenty minutes pass, and then she comes out, apologizes again for being so short-handed, and then assures us of all the personal attention she could give us if only we scheduled an appointment... the earliest of which she had available being a week from now. We made the appointment and left, disgruntled, or at least I was disgruntled. I don't mind being told that appointments are necessary. But I mind very much being told over the phone that it is okay to come right over, only to be sent on our way after dangling in the wind for half an hour. Harrumph. [/end mini-rant]

...But the laugh will be on them, because I will be cancelling that appointment and buying our tile from a different store. We drove straight to Louisville Tile (actually, their branch office located in Lexington), where we met for several hours with an extremely helpful woman named Kathy, with the end result being that I have identified all the tile and decorative border choices for the master bathroom and laundry room.

It is a minor miracle I arrived at these decisions so quickly, because there are few places more intimidating and perplexing than a tile store. Walls and display stands are jam-packed with hundreds, maybe thousands, of tile samples in all sorts of materials, textures, and colors. And that's just the basic tile. Also crammed in there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of options for borders (tile mosaics, premanufactured patterned strips, etc. etc.).

Fortunately, Kathy also immediately realized I was feeling way overwhelmed, so she asked a few questions to narrow down the options. Did I want a stone floor or porcelain tile? Or maybe marble? That was easy, actually. Marble was too expensive and too slick; I wanted a tile with a texture where we would be less inclined to slip and fall. Stone floors are dramatic and beautiful, but they require regular sealing, and y'all know my position on sealing: It ain't gonna happen in my household.

So porcelain tile it was. Kathy then guided me to one of the display stands with textured porcelain tiles and asked, without much hope in her heart, if I had any idea as to a basic color scheme. "Yes!" I triumphantly announced. I wanted something that would be compatible with the biscuit colored undermount sinks and whirlpool that we had already ordered. More important, I wanted something the color of soap scum.

You think I jest, but I am deathly serious. While I love the dark, slate-colored tiles that are popular these days, even I recognize that they would be a nightmare to keep clean of water spots and soap scum. And in doing research for this renovation, I came across more than one expert who warned against dark tiles, as they require "considerable maintenance" to maintain a "pristine appearance." So I wanted something in a pale beige-ish color, possibly with pinkish overtones. And, again, something textured, ideally with a mottled appearance to hide spots etc.

As I flipped through the display panels, I paused at one particular choice and said, "This one looks rather nice." Kathy then pointed out that they had a sample shower across the room in that precise tile pattern. Being able to see what it looked like over a large area in a naturalistic context was very helpful, and I liked it even more. It is the Cortesia line produced by American Orlean:


So that's the tile that we'll use for the shower walls and the bathroom floor. For the shower, we'll use 10" x 20" tiles, stacked vertically. That's what was in the shower mockup and it looked elegant, a little different than the ordinary square tile motif. For the floor we'll use 13" x 13" squares. (For the shower floor itself, we're using 2" x 2" squares of a matching color.)

So then Kathy asked "What about a border?" I really liked the looks of those tiny tile mosaics that have geometric patterns in them. But when I asked about it, she told me that all those little mosaics involve stone, which require regular sealing. "Nope!" I said. She then hesitatingly pointed out that it would only require sealing maybe every couple of years, and surely that wouldn't be too big of an effort for me? I assured her that it most definitely would.

At that point I noticed the brochure for the Cortesia line showed a decorative border that was designed for this particular tile. And it was a border that was pleasing, consisting of irregularly sized small rectangles and squares with a fossil motif:


Even better is that I saw that this particular line of tile had a 40" x 40" medallion that could be ordered. They had a sample one installed on the showroom floor, and it was gorgeous:

I fell in love with the idea of having that on the floor of our bathroom, and after a few anxious moments of fiddling with the scale on the floor plan, we determined that the medallion would fit easily in the large open space on the floor between the whirlpool, shower entry, and toilet. Wagner had planned that space there to have a five-foot turning radius to meet ADA accessibility standards. If all goes well, we'll never need to use that space for maneuvering a wheelchair, but I'm happy to have it if it lets me have my pretty mosaic in the floor.

At this point, I knew I had already gone well over budget, but I thought we needed some kind of narrow trim or molding to set off the decorative border in the shower. I spied a few examples that I liked, but Kathy explained that they were stone and steered me to the resin samples. There I picked a wider one for the top of the border that included a leaf design, and a simple, thinner half-round for the bottom of the trim.

By that point, I was tired and hungry and ready to go home. But then Kathy said "Now it's time to pick out the grout!" Turns out that grout comes in about 4,683 colors, most of which are shades of grey or beige. We held up a dozen of them against the tile, and they all looked perfectly fine, so I went with the one Kathy suggested.

It probably goes without saying that I picked the brand of grout that comes with a sealer already blended in. ;-)

Having lost all capacity for decision making at that time, I was ready to leave, when Wagner said "Don't forget you need to pick out a tile for the laundry room." Because I basically did not care what the laundry room floor looked like, he suggested we look at the close-out sale they were having, and I picked a porcelain tile that was going for 99 cents per square foot. It's sort of off-white with greyish streaks running through it. Cheap. And perfect. :)

How we chose our contractor

Of all the decisions we had to make for this renovation, the choice of contractor was the easiest and the quickest. Home building and remodeling books and websites will all say that this should not be the case and that one should interview several prospective contractors and research them thoroughly, check with the Better Business Bureau, call references, check with state licensing and bonding agencies, etc. etc. Then you should solicit multiple bids, bearing in mind that the lowest bid isn't necessarily the best choice.

We didn't do any of that for this renovation.

Instead, we chose the Wagner Company because we have used John Wagner for several construction/renovation projects, dating back to 1992, I think it was. When my husband bought a new building for his rare coin business, he hired Wagner on the recommendation of his banker. That job was fairly complicated, involving adding on a second story to the building where Jon put a small apartment, as well as adding on a large concrete-lined vault room in the back with a banker's vault door and extensive security features throughout. Jonathan's office turned out absolutely beautiful, and it has held up well over the years.

Then when we bought our last house out on the Kentucky River, it needed a lot of work. It was a rather unique building, a contemporary house built largely underground. We bought it as a bankruptcy foreclosure, and it had been vacant and neglected for some years. We had Wagner come in and fix everything that was broken, as well as add a fireplace to the bedroom and convert the sunroom to an all-season room with heat and AC.

And then, of course, there were the two renovations we did in the current house--the master bath a few years ago and the kitchen this summer.

The bottom line is that no matter how big or small the job was, we have never had anything but a positive and successful experience working with Wagner. Many people have horror stories of contractors who start jobs and then disappear for days, weeks, or (gulp) months at a time. That just doesn't happen with Wagner, and we have first-hand knowledge that the work he does is of excellent quality. Better yet, he is terrific on call-backs and follow-through.

So when we decided to pursue this renovation, we didn't even bother calling around any other contractors. There's probably people out there who would've done this job for less money. But we'd rather pay more to work with somebody reliable and whom we can trust to do a terrific job.