Progress report --- Week 5

Progress completed this week:

--Framing of garage (first floor) completed
--Plywood walls put up on garage
--HVAC ductwork installed in addition
--HVAC exhaust vents drilled/installed
--Plumbing pipes laid down for addition
--HVAC inspection carried out
--Termite spot treatment conducted in garage
--Floor joists put down in garage and addition part
--Holes drilled through concrete wall in our basement where freon pipes will have to run through
--And probably a lot more other stuff I can't tell what it is from the various pipes etc. lying around
--Had fence people come over to give us an estimate on moving/rebuilding the fence

On the whole, it seems to me that a lot has been done, and the area certainly looks quite different. Wagner, though, said grimly, "I consider myself to be a week behind schedule."

Obstacles encountered this week:

--Wagner's having second thoughts about the depth of the new garage. He's measured our cars and uttered dire warnings that we'll "never get a big truck in there." Our reassurances that we have no current or future plans to buy a big truck do not quell his concerns. We do, however, want to be able to fit our bicycles and lawn mower around the cars. He fiddles with the floor plans, decides to make the stairway skinnier (from 40" wide to 36" wide); shift the stairway over 2 feet; and move the furnace up into the garage attic space to free up some shelf/workbench space in the back of the garage. He also decides to add 8" to the depth. I was initially reluctant because I thought it would mean repouring one wall of the foundation, but it turns out the foundation was deliberately made bigger to begin with so it won't be any problem to make the garage deeper.

Pipe dreams

One thing this renovation has made crystal clear to me is how little I actually know about construction and how houses are built. My respect for architects, building engineers, and contractors has skyrocketed now that I have seen just what is involved in putting up a building, even something as relatively minor as our project. It's not just a matter of nailing some 2 x 4's together and slapping on drywall.

A good example of my naivete is the water pipe issue. Wagner was going over the day's progress with me one evening when he casually mentioned that they had put in the water pipe for the garage apartment. Prior to this renovation, when I heard the words "water pipe" I had a mental image of one of those big concrete culverts you sometimes see sitting at the edge of highways, or at the very least a heavy duty cast iron pipe a foot in diameter. So I peered into the foundation area of the garage and, not seeing anything that looked remotely what I thought a water pipe should look like, asked Wagner "where's the pipe?" I was gobsmacked when he pointed to a teeny tiny blue hose poking up out of the ground. I told him it was too tiny and flexible to be a water pipe, and he laughed and said it was 3/4" diameter. Who'dve ever thunk all the water coming into your house would be going through something so tiny.

The saga of the neighbor's shed: The end, maybe

In my last report on the conflict with our Neighbor From Hell behind us, the one who refused to let us move his shed off our property so that we could reclaim our 46" strip of land, I announced that we were having our lawyer draft a letter announcing our intent to file suit if he did not move his shed.

When we finally saw a draft of the letter, we were not happy with it, for a couple of reasons: First, it gave the neighbor until December 1 to move the shed. We didn't see any point in giving him that long, as he was either going to let us move it or not. If we didn't file suit until December 1, who knows how long the whole case would take to be resolved. Second, there was the teeny-tiny problem that the lawyer's draft was addressed to MY name at the NEIGHBOR FROM HELL'S address. Yikes!! Lucky for us, our mailman caught the mistake and delivered it to us at our address. Otherwise it could've been a bit embarrassing. Or--who knows?--maybe a shrewd tactical move. But I'm glad I didn't have to find out if it backfired.

So Jonathan was none too pleased with our lawyer (sending drafts of documents in a lawsuit mistakenly to the defendant doesn't seem like a smart strategy). He spoke with him the next day and told him that we wanted to change the letter to give the neighbor a much shorter deadline. Jon then asked, innocently, "what if we just go ahead and move the shed right now and wait for HIM to sue US?" This caused no small amount of agitation on our lawyer's part. He is normally the perfect stereotype of a proper, staid, and subdued lawyer. But at Jonathan's question he started sputtering and squawking and told us under no uncertain terms that such a stunt would be A Very Stupid Thing to Do, as there would be an excellent chance that the Neighbor From Hell could claim we had caused all sorts of damage to his property and win significant monetary damages. (We didn't even tell our lawyer that our Plan B was the excellent suggestion made by one of my Piano World buddies, who wrote me an email that said simply, "Two words: Shed fire." Good thing, too; I think it would've given him a stroke.) Our lawyer then begged us to come in for a meeting with him and the real estate law expert from the firm.

At this point, Jonathan lost what limited patience he has for the legal profession. He could see the future, and it was one long grim year--or more--of meetings with lawyers billed at $250 an hour and endless legal wrangling. And he just didn't have the stomach for it.

So then, on his own initiative, Jonathan called the Neighbor From Hell up, told him point blank that if we sued, we would win, but that we wanted to avoid the time and hassle of a long legal fight. He also said that we would much prefer not to have an adversarial relationship with our neighbors.

Then he offered the N.F.H. $1000 if he let us move his shed and relocate his hydrangea bushes for him, as compensation for the inconvenience.

Yeah, I know. It sticks in my craw, too, to reinforce jerkish behavior. But after getting over my strong initial revulsion at the prospect of paying the N.F.H. off, I have to concede that I think my hubby is an extremely wise person. Assuming the N.F.H. does not weasel out of this bargain, this is probably the quickest, least expensive, and best all-around solution we could've hoped for given his initial refusal to do the right thing. Yes, we would've won a lawsuit. But it would be a long, drawn-out process that would end up costing a heckuva lot more than $1000 (and our lawyer was not at all optimistic that we would be awarded legal fees if we won). And I really wasn't relishing the idea of living right next to a guy whom we had to sue and would no doubt henceforth hate our guts and become bent on revenge. Peaceful relations with one's neighbors is worth holding one's nose and making the best of a bad situation, I think.

But when Jonathan told me that he was thinking about simply removing the fence and moving the shed, but NOT putting up a new fence--maybe planting tall grasses as border instead--I drew a line in the sand and said No Frigging Way. If we're going to all this trouble, by God we're going to move the fence, and we're going to put it half an inch away from our property line.

Return of our six-legged little friends

Recall that a week or so ago, when the crew removed the drywall from the garage, we discovered signs of an old termite infestation. We knew the house had been treated before we bought it for termites, so we weren't particularly worried about it. We also had a termite person come out and look the garage over. She said it looked like old damage but recommended treating the entire house "just to be sure." We didn't see any reason to treat based on the evidence so just filed the estimate away.

Then today the crew was back in the garage removing some more stuff, and this time they found not just signs of more termite damage but a few of the little critters themselves, wiggling and squirming away.

Uh-oh.

So now we'll need to bring the pest control company back out again and retreat the entire house. There's also a couple of spots where the wood will need to be replaced and/or patched up somehow. Wagner took me out to the garage to show me the damaged areas. He must have seen the look of horror on my face when I saw the temporary wooden supports they had set up, because he quickly assured me that our bedroom (which is currently above the garage) was in no imminent danger of falling through the ceiling of the garage.

But I have to say it makes me wonder what OTHER damage could be lurking in other places of the house that we don't see right now because it's covered up with drywall. Then again, maybe I don't want to know. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Progress report -- Week 4

Progress made this week:

--Concrete blocks put in for foundation of addition and garage
--Old bricks removed from exterior of garage and side of kitchen
--Garage doors removed
--Conduits for plumbing/utilities to be rerouted put in place
--Termite pretreatment of addition and garage
--Lots of decisions made. In addition to the critical fake tiny window panes style, I also chose:
(a) the style of brick to use on the addition and garage. We could not find an exact match to the existing brick, as the house was built over 30 years ago, but we found a set that comes pretty darned close. Wagner also managed to save a fair number of bricks from the portion that had to be removed, so he can mingle the old brick with the new to make it blend better;
(b) the whirlpool tub for the master bath;
(c) faucets for the tub and bathroom vanities; I chose the Lahara line from Delta, which I like for the sleek modern look and ease of cleaning/repairs:


(d) undermount sinks for the vanity; and
(e) shower head, faucet, and diverter for the master bath shower. I stayed with the Lahara line for this, too:



(f) hand-held shower on bar for master bath shower. I didn't care for the look of the Lahara hand-held shower, so I chose another more contemporary Delta version:


(g) finish for all faucets. I knew I didn't want polished brass or chrome, but it was harder to pick from all the other remaining choices. After 15 minutes of wandering around Ferguson's (the plumbing supply company we're ordering from), holding up various faucets against whirlpool tubs in biscuit (the color I had chosen to go with for our sinks/toilet/tub), I narrowed it down to "aged pewter" or "brilliance stainless" (which is what Delta calls a finish that other people call "brushed nickel") and finally decided on "brilliance stainless" for everything.

Obstacles encountered this week:

--When looking at front windows during the window pane decision process, we noticed a large crack running diagonally from the gutter. Wagner said, "that doesn't look good," and checked it out the next day, whereupon he discovered that whoever had replaced the roof last (this occurred before we bought the house five years ago) had not installed flashing properly at one point, and water had gotten in and damaged the wood. I'm a bit disgruntled, as it seems to me that the home inspector we hired before we bought the house should've noticed that, as well as the gutter company we had hired a year before to install fancy new "ever clean" gutters. Wagner says it is not a major problem, but we will have to replace the damaged wood and flashing and fix the crack.

Darkness descends

One of the downsides of the renovation plans is that it meant losing two of our kitchen windows. The current layout of the house has the kitchen and family room extending out in the back, so that the kitchen has windows on two sides and is nice and airy with lots of natural light. The renovation would basically extend the garage area and line up with the edge of the kitchen/family room, making the footprint of the house a perfect rectangle. So that meant one of the (current) exterior walls of the kitchen, which has two windows (one over the sink, one over in the eat-in kitchen area) would become the bedroom wall, with the windows taken out and dry-walled over.

This is probably the part of the design that I am least thrilled with, but there really wasn't any other option. So what we are doing to cope with losing the windows is increasing the natural light in other ways. We are going to enlarge the remaining window in the eat-in kitchen area, making it a double-width window rather than a single window. That should help quite a bit. Second, we are going to install a large skylight in the roof directly above the kitchen proper, which should make things quite a bit lighter, if the experience we had with our master bathroom is any guide. The skylight there helped immensely to brighten up that room.

Wagner warned us about a couple of things when I told him that we wanted the skylight. First, it would add noticeably to the expense of the project. More important, he said that installing the skylight would actually be the most disruptive and intrusive part of the entire renovation in terms of interfering with our lifestyle. There will be a period of about a week where kitchen activities will be disturbed, and we'll have a huge hole in our roof with plastic sheeting covering it. We'll have to repaint the kitchen ceiling, etc. But I kept remembering how I had concluded that the skylight in our master bath was a huge success and I was really glad we had gone for it... so I told Wagner that the hassle and expense were worth it and we wanted a kitchen skylight.

Now I am extremely happy we made that decision. The crew recently placed plywood boards over the two kitchen windows (to prevent glass breakage as they remove the brick from the exterior of that wall). Soon they will be covered over permanently. And so my nice bright pretty kitchen for now has now been transformed into a still pretty but dim kitchen. I'm looking forward to getting more sunlight back.

Window pains

One of the most humbling and at times overwhelming aspects of any renovation is all the decisions that have to be made, at all steps along the way. I went into our kitchen renovation, for example, naively thinking that all I had to do was pick out cabinets, countertop, the lighting fixture, and paint color. Ha! I could not believe how many little decisions went into each of those components, and how many more decisions had to be made in addition to the major ones. For example, what style of quarter rounds did we want? (Quarter rounds, I learned, are those skinny curved pieces of wood that make the junction between the wall and the floor look pretty.) In what stain? Did we want sliding drawers in the cabinets? In all cabinets or just a few, and if just a few, which ones? etc. etc. ad infinitum.

(Incidentally, one of the features of the cabinets that I have ended up liking the most is that I decided to spring for a tilt-out drawer at the sink. It is incredibly handy for stowing away scrub brushes and the like and is WELL worth the money.)

Having recently gone through a whole bunch of agonizing over countless aspects of the kitchen renovation, I felt prepared to face the even larger number of decisions that would surely confront us in this renovation. In fact, one of the reasons we decided to go ahead with the renovation at this point in time (besides feeling that it was better to sink our money into the house rather than leave it in the stock market, yikes!) is that I am on sabbatical from my university position. While I still need to work on my research, my time is completely flexible, and I am in a better position to consult with Wagner and go look at paint chips, tile, bathroom fixtures, lamps, etc.

It was also decided early on that I would be the point person for these decisions. Jonathan does not have the same kind of patience as I do for making fine discriminations among Eggshell, Sand Dollar, and Navajo White paint chips, and he is even less concerned about the ramifications of making the wrong decision. So when debating the pros and cons of renovating, Jonathan made me an offer I couldn't refuse: He'd write the checks if I would handle the day-to-day details of the project.

Which is why I spent 45 minutes today trying to decide between various styles of window panes that, at first blush, looked virtually identical. Our house is rather traditional in appearance, and most windows in Kentucky have the grids that make it look like there are tiny panes of glass in a larger window. What I didn't realize is that nowadays those are just *fake* tiny panes, and most windows instead merely have a gridwork superimposed on top of a larger sheet, or between two sheets, of glass to make it LOOK like there are separate tiny panes.

Okay, so I can deal with fake tiny panes. What I *couldn't* decide was how best to accomplish this fakery. One style (the "Simulated Divided Lines") puts fake grids on BOTH sides of the window, and I suppose it looks the most convincing. But it also costs 15% more, which we would have to pay for additionally because the more expensive option wasn't considered in the bid. The second style (the "Grilles Between the Glass" option) actually puts the fake gridwork in between the dual panes of glass in the window. Apparently this style is a bit easier to clean because it's just one smooth sheet of glass inside and out. The downside is that you have to pick from a limited number of colors, which you are then stuck with for all eternity because it will be embedded inside the window. The third style (the "Wood Interior Grilles") has the fake gridwork snapped on the interior of the window. It is slightly harder to clean (you have to remove the gridwork to get at the window pane efficiently), but it has the advantage of being able to paint the gridwork after the fact and change colors.

So I stared at the brochure and kept asking Wagner questions like "what's the downside of picking this style?" and "why does this style cost 15% more?", which he kept answering patiently. I was able to rule out the more expensive option quickly enough on the grounds that they all basically looked alike to me so I didn't see any sense in paying another 15% for it. Then I wavered between the other two and almost decided to boycott them entirely because of the pretentious spelling of "Grilles". Then it occurred to me that if we went with the Grilles between the Glass option, we would have to decide our bedroom paint color RIGHT NOW so that we could order the right color for the gridwork. There was no way I was capable of making THAT decision so hastily, so it's the "Wood Interior Grilles" for us.

Phew.