Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Well, we are entering the phase of the project that involves all sorts of decisions! Appliances, finishes, cabinets, floors, tiles, etc. etc. Bill and I were talking about how it is a good thing that I have to make decisions all the time for my job.... makes me less paralyzed! But I have to say that I would rather not screw this up!

I spent several hours yesterday at University Electric looking at appliances for the kitchen. Today, I brought Bill out shopping so we could pick the refrigerator (we are going with a Samsung:
Link to Refrigerator

Although, I thought for sure that Bill was going to go for the Samsung refrigerator that has the android powered computer screen on the front panel that is connected to the internet.LOL... Have you seen these?!

Unbelievable!

Anyway, we picked out our refrigerator and then headed over to the house. We were pleased to see that they had completed installing the big slider (it is a ten foot door with a 6 foot opening in the middle).

They also started the electrical work. We will have 100% new electrical! WOOT, WOOT!

and they made more progress on fixing the issue with the waste line from the kitchen sink. I think I mentioned in my last blog there was a hole in the line. They dug through the slab to find the leak and removed a rusty old pipe and replaced with new. We truly are going to literally have a new house!

OLD PIPE:

NEW PIPE LAID:

They also started cutting the holes for the can lights as well!

Lots of progress..... and lots of research online this afternoon; thank goodness for a few days off. I think I have most of the appliance decisions made...

Happy New Year everyone!

More photos here: More Pictures Here

Windows and Doors

Check out our cool new front door!

Windows and most of the doors have been installed. The house is starting to look like a house again!

We had one problem with the sliding glass door in the dining area. The opening is on the wrong side. This is a problem due to the placement of the dining table and so we need to order a new door. Our contractor has been so awesome so far and he is handling the issue with the door and going to cover it even though I'm sure I contributed to the misunderstanding. So far, we have been lucky with the number of issues that we have had (knock on wood), I hope that doesn't mean we will get more on the back end of the process.

The house has been fully papered and is now ready and waiting for the roof, gutters and stucco to go on. We need another inspection before we can start and the City is on vacation this week; so we have to wait until the new year.

Happy New Year!!

More photos here: http://crookeremodel.shutterfly.com/pictures/244

More Framing and Plumbing

Its now December and the framing is getting wrapped up. In fact; we pass city inspection for the framing in December. The plumber is now working on the rough pluming and gas lines.

We ran into first trouble with the waste line from the sink. Rather than run a new line out to the street, our contractor figured out that he would be able to hook into the existing line. The only problem was that we discovered there was a leak in the existing line. They have had to dig through a large part of the slab to find the problem and ended up removing a big chunk of pipe.

The roof is now covered and we are now having to make some decisions regarding the roof color and gutter color. We are also now working on selecting cabinets so that our cabinet maker can begin the work.

One of the cool things we are doing to create more closet and storage space is to move the furnace and hot water heater up into the attic. By doing this, we will have two new closets. One will be an extra linen closet.... the other is going to be our wine closet! :-)

More pictures here: http://crookeremodel.shutterfly.com/pictures/232

Things are mostly moving on track. We have been so lucky that the rains have held off this year. Normally by now, we would have experienced more rain. And while we need the rain to avoid draught, we are happy that it has not yet started.

Next up.... windows and doors are delivered.

Framing

Its now November and the foundation has been poured and the footings are in place. The next step is to frame the roof. Some framing work on the inside has already been completed. New walls have gone up in a few places. Older damaged 2x4s have been replaced where needed and walls have been removed in certain spots.

Our old roof was flat tar and gravel. They took off the old roof and the new roof is going to be framed on the existing base.

We are going to have one large great room which will consist of the kitchen and dining area plus family room. The roof will be peaked over the family room area and extend out beyond a 10 foot sliding glass door into a covered patio area.

We will actually have an attic space for storage!!! What a concept!

More pictures here: http://crookeremodel.shutterfly.com/pictures/217

Foundation Work

September was the month of demolition. October was the month of the foundation. Because we entirely demolished the garage and we are adding an additional room (we call it the "bonus room"), lots of work was required to pour new foundation and properly secure it to the existing slab. They also continued the work of digging/pouring footings.

It was in October that I got a call from Jack, asking what the shape of the patio needed to be as they were going to handle digging it and pouring the concrete for it at the same time. What? I had not been thinking that I would need to address any of the "outside stuff" until later in the process, so I was not prepared. I told Jack I was planning on hiring someone to help with the design of the yard and he recommended Marit Hansen. We met and I really liked the samples of her work and so we hired her to do all the design of landscaping/hardscaping.

Marit drew up several designs for the back patio and we selected one that will incorporate a water feature as well as a fire pit. But as a result; we had to remove a tree that was in the yard (that was not in the budget) because the roots would be in the way of the patio.


Before the concrete could be poured, the city had to inspect the framing. When they did; they had concerns that the front right corner of the garage was in the setback. Because we demolished the existing structure; we now had to comply with new set back rules. The city wanted to see a report from the surveyor certifying that we were complying with the setback rules. Our guy was on vacation and so we had to engage a new guy. Turns out, the one wall needed to be moved several inches. What a hassle!! Our lot is a bit complex because it is a pie shape and the front of the lot is on a curved street. This added over a week to our schedule and we were concerned about getting the house sealed up before the rains started.

We had some rain while they were pouring the concrete, but nothing too bad; so it all worked out..... Next on to the framing!


More Photos Here: http://crookeremodel.shutterfly.com/pictures/204

Time Flies!

Wow.... just cannot believe that I have not posted to the blog since September. We have been so busy and I have just not made the time. I guess blogging is a habit like anything else and is just not something I am used to doing. We have been taking lots of photos as we go along and so I will bring this blog up to date based on the photos that we do have.

Things have been moving along. The demo was completed by the end of October and this included entirely removing the garage and carport. Because we are adding on a new pitched roof with an attic there was quite a bit of structural work required to ensure that the house could hold the increased weight of the new roof. This required digging through the slab so that additional footings could be poured.

You can also see from the photo that we pretty much brought the house down to the slab and the studs. We will be installing all new wiring, dry wall, etc.

More photos from the month of September are here:
http://crookeremodel.shutterfly.com/pictures/198

Cool Panoramic Shots

We went over to the house yesterday to check things out. Bill brought the camera and created some really cool panoramic shots. He kept the camera shutter speed and all settings the same for each shot and placed the camera on a tripod. He was able to stitch the photos together using a program called Hugin. Pretty cool!

BIG DEMO DAY!

It's 9/2, a Friday morning..... I workout with Carrie and she does not have an appointment immediately after me so we decide to head over to 10336 and check out the progress.

HOLY COW! We arrive and there is a big truck delivering a huge dumpster. There is this very capable guy who is obviously in charge. He runs a company that just does demolition work and he has 10 guys on our job because he needs to get it done fast. Apparently he has a big job starting next week and needs our job finished ASAP which is music to my ears!

There are a bunch of guys up on the roof scrapping off the tar and gravel (that is nasty).

Guys with sledge hammers and crow bars taking down kitchen cabinets, dry wall, etc. Carrie and I actually think it would be fun to take out a few items with a sledge hammer.... :-)

The racket and sound of stuff coming apart is just loud and it feels like we are destroying the house (which we are). I get that feeling in my stomach again as the day before and so does Carrie..... and it is not her house. So I don't feel so bad.

The demo guy says they should be done with most of it by end of day and so I should come back and check it out. The garage which is going to be entirely demolished is going to meet its maker on Tuesday and they will pull it down with a cat.

So...... I head home, shower, go to a client and then stop by again on the way home and take some more photos... it is really amazing what the crew did within one day.

Now that most of the drywall is down; I can really begin to visualize the space and how it will emerge and it is very exciting.

One of the things that did worry me as we were planning this remodel was extent of termite damage we might find when the drywall comes down and whether we are going to have incremental structural work to repair termite damage..... as the saying goes:

"there are only two kinds of houses in California... ones with termite damage and ones that will have termite damage."

There are a few spots where we saw damage that could require extra work; but it was certainly better than my worst fears. We will see what Jack says about it once the demo is complete.

I've included a few photos, but you can check out all the remodel photos here:


http://crookeremodel.shutterfly.com

There is no going back now!

It is now the week of August 28th and we have handed everything over to Jack. The new panel passed inspection early in the week and the demolition team arrived mid-week.

Essentially, our remodel consists of taking off the flat old tar and gravel roof and replacing it with a new pitched roof with attic, replacing all the floors, re-wiring entire house and replacing the dry wall, not to mention moving a few walls, the kitchen and reconfiguring two bathrooms, a laundry room and the master bedroom. We are also adding a new living room and two car garage. Essentially, it will be a "new house". As such, Jack has to pretty much gut the existing house.

On Thursday afternoon, I went to Viking Windows and Doors to look at windows and doors for the remodel. At this point, we think we are going to go with a Milgard line, but still need to do some research. After my meeting at Viking, I stopped by the house to check out the progress of the demo and I guess I was not mentally prepared to see the demo of the house we have lived in for 12 years. While I was intellectually on board with what we were doing, it sorta freaked me out a little bit to see the fireplace bricks in a pile on the living room floor.

And piles of drywall everywhere!

There is something a bit strange and in congruent about destroying something you value and for which you still owe a bunch of money. As I surveyed the surroundings, all I could think was.... "well we are in this thing now. No turning back." At the same time it was all very exciting and exhilarating! We have been talking about and planning this thing for years and years.... and to finally see some action on it is very satisfying.

Time to move!

Wow.... nearly month has flown by since my last post. I have had all good intentions of posting regularly, but with client load and all the business of packing and moving; I never seem to get to it. It is like trying to keep track of my hours by client at the end of each day. Oh well....

After all the packing which seemed to take forever; we spent two weekends moving what we needed into our rental home in San Jose. Between rental of a uhaul truck and using Martha's mini-van we got the job done with only slight injuries sustained... but I do fear that Bill will lose his big toenail after running over it with a hand truck. It was exhausting and needless to say, we are hiring movers for the move back into 10336! God only knows what we were thinking!

On August 16th professional movers arrived and it took them a full day to wrap and load all of our furniture and our boxes which were planned for storage. During the course of the day; Jack (the mover) informed me that there was NO WAY all our stuff was going to fit into the storage unit I had rented. I called Public Storage and other units were available, but of course that was going to blow my budget. Hansen's, our moving company also provides storage, but it is no access storage during the term, but he was going to charge me less than Public Storage was charging me for the initial unit, so I bit. Hansen's has our stuff; normally they tag and label every item they take for storage so they have a complete inventory before it goes to their warehouse. This did not happen because the truck was two thirds loaded when I decided.... so hopefully we get all our stuff back! This is a good exercise for me to "just let it go..." I am usually such a control freak!

At that point, we let Jack (our contractor) know he could have access. On August 22, he came to the house and installed a new electrical panel.... check it out compared to the old one! We need more POWER!!

The only thing left for us was to finish clearing out the garage and the area behind the garage which involved moving a garden shed. We did that the following weekend (August 27th). It seemed like our project was on track to start on September 1 which is hopefully enough time for them to complete the foundation work and get the roof on before the rains come. Next step... DEMO!!

Permit Approved!!! :-)

Awesome news today! I went down to the building department to pay one final fee for public works and they told me the permit was ready to be issued. I wrote a check for the permit fee and now we just need our contractor to go to the building department and pull the permit.... YEAH! We are hoping the work can start next week.

In the mean time, the cats have been having fun playing with packing materials.

They love all the boxes, paper and bubble wrap. While all this wrapping material is great fun, we are not sure how much they are going to enjoy moving to a new temporary home!

In our spare time between work and everything else, we have been packing and making trips to the storage unit as well as the rental house to try to get everything moved out so Jack can start the work. Now that we know the permit is being issued, we are cranking it up a notch and have rented a Uhaul truck for the weekend. The goal is to get all the stuff we need for our temporary situation moved into the rental house so we can start living there and then get as much as we can moved to storage.... I'm sure there will be spillage into next week. Well, it is now official..... we are moving into the next big scary phase!

STUFF...... what is it good for? a.k.a Why do we have 20 plastic water bottles? And why am I keeping 9 of them?

Wow...... I do not consider us to be big time consumers, at least relative to the average US consumer... we have not bought any new furniture since we have been married...... we have no basement and no attic to store stuff and we have had several garage sales over the past few years, but we still seem to have accumulated so much STUFF!!!!  Where does it all come from?  I swear, it reproduces!!!

Since we are hoping to start construction in August, we have started cleaning out closets, drawers, cabinets and are ruthlessly (define ruthless) using this as an opportunity to simplify our lives and get rid of clutter and junk/stuff that we never use; even if it is sentimental or pretty.

I must say it is a challenge... I guess we do get emotionally tied to things; or become afraid to get rid of something that we might need in the future.   I think I inherited this attribute from my mom!  For example, I have years worth of Cooks Illustrated subscriptions... I have them all organized and they take up shelf space.  I cannot tell you the last time I looked up a recipe in these paper copies.... I now have an electronic subscription which I use to search and save those recipes that I want; yet for some weird reason I do not want to throw all those paper copies in the recycle pile.... What is up with that?!  Perhaps it is all those food stains on the pages of the recipes I have made, or the idea of disposing of something which I paid for and still value?  I do think we lose something in the translation to technology....even though the gains obviously outweigh the paper versions!

Wish us luck... we have lots more work to go.... but I am committed to doing this cleaning out.... it is a huge opportunity to simplify and part of the attraction of doing such a big project!!

Permits and Packing!

Well, last week the drawings incorporating all the changes required by the city and our design adjustments were finalized last week and we submitted to the city.  We expect to hear back in 5 - 10 days and hope that our permit will then be ready to pull.

Finding temporary housing was the next item on our list and boy did we get lucky!  Our friends Janine and Tony's friend Carole has a 3 bedroom house that she will sell in the near future.  In the meantime it is sitting empty and so we are able to stay there.  It works out great for both of us.  She has someone she trusts staying there watching it and paying rent, and we have a place to stay without having to sign a lease.  Plus it is a house not an apartment... we just could not imagine going back to an apartment!  So, the place is available August 1 and hopefully so will we!

We will have to empty out the house completely!  So let the packing begin!  I realized today how much work this move is going to be.  Today, I spent a bunch of time packing up china, crystal, glass objects of art and it took several hours and that is not even a dent in what we have yet to do....  We are going to work on packing up one box a day over the next few weeks.... we will see how long it takes and how much junk we can get rid of!  This is our time to lighten the load and rid ourselves of all the material things that weigh you down!

Turns out, the City knows.....

So, over last weekend as Bill and I pondered the newest version of the plans and played with a tape measure; we racked our brains on how to overcome the problems created by moving the garage two feet. We thought we had found a partial solution by adjusting the size of the garage and moving it back a bit and feeling better about that sent our input to Walter.

On Monday, we learned that our idea was not going to solve the problem because Cupertino City Ordinance 1737 dictates that for every residential home, there must be room allocated for 4 off street parking spaces, 2 enclosed and 2 open and each space must be a minimum of 20 x 10. Thus we would not be making any changes to the size of the garage. Do not even get me started on the number of ordinances out there! Who can keep up with all these rules and regulations; no wonder it all costs so much!

We met with Walter, our designer on Tuesday afternoon and in real time, discussed the plans and the issues caused as a result of the garage moving by two feet. As always, he got out his ruler and his tissue paper and drew out some creative ideas on the fly which has pretty much been how all the designs have evolved and we have enjoyed participating in the process at such a level. At the end of the day we got the problem solved and I think created a unique design solution, which involves, moving the front door over one foot, removing the front porch and creating a covered courtyard area in front of the door which will have a skylight to let in light and protect visitors from rain. I think we will also incorporate some type of water feature in that area.

So... assuming structural engineer is happy with the changes, we will make these changes and submit new plans next week.

Its funny, just like in life often times the setbacks and challenges you encounter while frustrating and irritating while you are living through them, often result in a better final result which is what I think happened to us in this situation.

Next up...... finding a temporary place to live.

Fence does not equal property line.... SIGH

YEAH!!!! we made it through soil test....

Survey results were great as well, turns out the FEMA flood levels for 100+ flood are located within the creekbed! :-)

Thinking we are canceling the flood insurance we have been carrying since we bought the property and were concerned about being on two creeks.

Only one problem.......we have a water district easement on one side of the property. We knew this. It is a 5 foot underground easement. Our designer included the easement in the setback calculations which the city says we cannot do. Suddenly, the side where we thought we met the 10 foot requirement is not so. The other side where we thought we only needed 5 feet clearance now needs to be 10 feet. WOW..... looks like we now need to move garage, etc. two feet over which totally screws with the aesthetics of the front of the house so we are now dealing with that.

How big does a 2 car garage need to be? We are expanding from a one car garage/car port combo to two car garage.... probably will end up being 20x20...... any thoughts on this?

Ready for the next chapter please!!!!

Permit approval..... we hope!

Soil Test...... now that is high tech!

OK.... so now we are required to have this soil test done..... going to cost $5K, I'm thinking this better be fancy.

Our designer recommended that we go with Murray ( http://www.murrayengineers.com/) so we did.

They needed to determine the quality of the soil as well as the risk of liquefaction in the event of an earthquake.

They showed up with a big ole 6625 CPT track-mounted rig equipped with a pneumatic hammer and a dual-tube soil sampling system!!! I know what you are all thinking.... WOW!!! In case you care, details here: http://www.cptinc.com/index.php

These guys were very cool, they explained the whole thing and I got to watch the progress on the computer screen as the probe went through our driveway, 30 feet into the earth..... WOW!

We got the report, and the bottom line is that there is nothing special we need to address and we are not in a liquefaction zone (which I could have told you based on my gardening attempts in solid CLAY!)

Soil report cleared.... good to go RIGHT?........

Getting a Permit --- whoa, wait just a minute there.

On May 9, 2011, Walter went to the city to file for our permit. We assumed it would take about a month to hear back regarding our plans. We do hear back from the city by the end of the month. 25 pages of comments with nothing too bad regarding the general plans, EXCEPT...... for the additional public works requirements because the back of our property abuts along two creeks.

Our two creeks, which we love...... we love the privacy (no one is going to build back there), we love the sound of the running water which is only during the rainy season. They are totally dry in the summer, and then finally the sound of the frogs in the spring/early summer. The frogs literally sing us to sleep. All these reasons and more are why we find ourselves doing a "remodel" instead of just selling and buying something new.

OK... back to the creeks, Regnart is the smaller creek which runs along our back yard and flows into the Calabasas creek which is a decent size creek, but only covers a small portion of our yard.

It turns out that the city is going to require us to have a surveror provide a report which shows the flood plane levels in accordance with FEMA calculations. Even though we are in a greater than 100 year flood zone and have never been required to buy flood insurance.

The second thing we are required to do is to have a soil study done to determine the density of the soil for purposes of the addition of square footage we are doing as well as a determination of the risk of liquefaction in the event of earthquake, which seems crazy to us, but what can you do? When the city says you need to do something; you gotta do it. It added 6 weeks to the time line of our project as well as $7K in incremental cost..... for what? That is my question. The bureaucratic BS is only just beginning and I figure I just better get used to it.

We will see what it all leads to.

Honey, lets do a remodel!

Wow.... seems like we had been talking about doing a remodel of the house forever... we have lived here since 1998 and have never really made any improvements because some day we would do it in the remodel. Two years ago, we decided that we would need a new roof and so we got serious about the project.

After running numbers and talking about our location, etc. we decided that we did want to do a remodel versus move. We got a referral for a contractor that did design and construction from a friend and started talking with them... a husband and wife team. Well, to make a long story short; the project aborted when they decided to get a divorce and he moved out of the area. It really was a blessing, because after now working with our current designer, we see that the first team really did not "have what it takes" to get us through such a big project.

6 months go by, it is now early summer of 2010 and we get a referral for a designer named Walter Chapman from our friend David who has done several remodels. http://www.chapmandesignassociates.com. We meet with Walter and decide to proceed with designs. We signed the contract with Walter on July 1, 2010.

The process with Walter worked pretty smoothly and he came up with some really wonderful ideas for our home. Our main design goals were to utilize the space we have which is approximately 1700 square feet and to open up our home utilizing a great room concept. We also wanted to create more storage space and reconfigure our master suite. The other big change is removing the flat tar and gravel roof and putting on a pitched roof with attic.

During the summer and fall of 2010, we interviewed several contractors, but were not really excited about any of them. But one thing we were able to do through the process is get an idea of our budget which turned out to be about $100K higher than we had hoped. Then at the end of September one of my clients was raving about a contractor. Jack Cannon, we met with Jack and immediately liked him. After checking references and discussing the budget; we chose Jack to do the work. http://www.lynstar.net/

Now all we had to do was to finish the plans and go for our permit.......