Almost?

So...our designer emailed us today to ask to meet next week AND she wrote "We will be getting a permit in the next week or so." :)

Hopefully we'll get this project underway before the end of the year!

Permits and Basement Update

So we've ceased meeting weekly with our designer because now we're just waiting for the city to grant building permits. Today, we met for the first time in a long time with our contractor and designer to discuss the basement layout. The city had given us feedback that the basement did not have enough ventilation. grrr...so now we are adding a sliding door that opens up to a small patio from the basement. This means, of course, that our construction costs are increasing before we've even started. ;|

So why has it taken SO long for the city to issue permits?
Whenever we resubmit the plans to the city planning department, the plans go to a different person who evaluates the project and then either approves of it or comes back with a list of to-do's. Of course, each person is going to find something wrong with our plans. And no matter how minor the change, we have to resubmit everything again if they didn't give us an approval. Also, since the city has 30 days from the day of submission to return with a verdict, they've been getting back to us on the 28/29th day, barely within the deadline. I feel very bad for our designer who actually has to deal with all of this.

Precision Cabinets

Our designer drove us up to Brentwood today to take a look at ALL our options for kitchen and bathroom cabinetry. And we did make a lot of decisions so the trip was well worth it!

One of the showcase kitchens had exactly the type of wood and stain and cabinet door we were considering. It was valuable to see all of it working together. :) We looked at the other stains but we ultimately decided on the original stain we were considering.

Although there are many many options out there for cabinets, I'm only putting down the information that I learned from our trip.

Wood

• Cherry: hard wood and stains beautifully, also becomes richer in color over time
• Alder: soft wood and stains like cherry
• Maple: hard wood
• Oak: very "grainy" (a little too rustic for my taste)

Stained wood doors are cheaper than painted wood doors! Apparently the labor associated with painting (like painting all the layers) is more expensive.

Framing

• Inset: drawers and doors are flush with the frame.
• Face-frame: traditional look where there is a frame around the doors and drawers.
• Frameless: European look where there are very thin seams between doors and drawers.

Cabinet Interior

• Stained wood
• White laminate: cheaper and brightens the interior

Drawers

• Drawers that open 3/4 of the way
• Drawers that open all the way with side mounted drawer glides
• Soft closing drawers that open all the way with bottom mounted drawer glides

For the kitchen:
* Cherry doors in an amber cherry stain
* Raised door panels with an arch along the top
* Full circle lazy susan in the bottom corner cabinet
* White laminate interior
* Soft closing drawers
* Face-frame construction
Kitchen: using this wood and color but not the style

For the upstairs bathroom:
* Maple doors
* White laminate interior
* Drawers open all the way but not soft closing
Upstairs bathroom: using the wood and color of the top cabinet door and the style of the bottom cabinet

For the master bathroom:
* Cherry doors with clear stain
* White laminate interior
* Soft closing drawers

 
Master bathroom: cherry cabinets with clear stain aged 1 year(left) and
cherry cabinets with clear stain aged 6 years (right)

Approval!

When we came back from our trip to New Orleans, we found the city's approval letter in our mailbox! :) :) YAY!!!

It was approved on June 20. It's a conditional approval which means that we have to wait 14 days for any adjacent neighbors to complain or object to our remodel plans. THEN we will finally have the OK from the city planning department.

The next steps are to get building permits after the city reviews the structural plans and to get an approval for a construction loan.

Funny thing about the construction loan is that before the whole mortgage crisis, it was a lot easier to get one because most of the big banks had them. But since a lot of the same big banks lost a load of money in their mortgage departments, they have stopped giving out construction loans. I don't know if it's permanent but hopefully it's just a temporary over-reaction to the housing mess.

Meeting with cabinet rep

In light of the last rejection and the fact that the designer, contractor, and us would like to see this project break ground, our designer resubmitted the plans with the recommended changes.

We met up with a salesperson from the cabinet company that we'll be working with - Precision Cabinets in Brentwood (No, not the city near LA. It's the one near Walnut Creek.) He invited us to come up to the factory to see all our options. He also brought over a sample cabinet door in cherry which will be handy when we select our granite.

Our designer had asked for quotes from different cabinet companies and this was the one with the best pricing with high quality work.

Rejection #2

So sad...no approval even after adding architectural details to break up the mass of the second story's front facade. However, this time around, the city included a picture of what they would like:
- add corbels (an example) to the right and left upper story windows such that the roofs slope downwards there. We had gables there before.
- lower the gable of the middle upper story window
- add a gable over the front door
- remove the gable above the garage

Every change they propose is to draw the eyes downward so that the house won't look too large in the neighborhood. The only thing I can be grateful for is that they didn't ask us to change the interior floorplan. =/

Kitchen cabinets: layout

We discussed the layout for our kitchen cabinet:
- placement of the microwave, oven, warming drawer, and island sink
- sizes of the doors and drawers, approximately
- in the island, which ways the doors open
- special cabinet features such as lazy susans, spice racks, pullout shelves, etc.

The kitchen island will be 3' x 6' with a 1' overhang so people can sit at the island. The layout of the kitchen island cabinets is shown below. The arrows show which way the cabinet doors open.

Kitchen countertop and backsplash

We went to Integrated Resources today to look at granite. They have a warehouse in Brisbane where you can walk around and look at huge slabs of stones: granite, travertine, limestone, marble, etc. We found two that we particularly liked.
Artic Rainbow and Volga Blue

You can't see from the pictures but they both have glints of blue.

There was a beautiful backsplash we saw in The Countertop Store in San Carlos so we drove there to get the info on it. The backslash consists of 2"x2" brown/beige porcelain tiles between 12"x12" tumbled limestone tiles in a soft beige. The porcelain tiles were gorgeous but unfortunately the lady who made them stopped making them. (She had way too many orders and couldn't crank out the handmade custom tiles so she got out of the business.) We might go with a dark blue glass tile instead of the porcelain tile.

Here's a similar backsplash, except it uses smaller limestone tiles.

Feedback & resubmission

We received a letter last week from the city regarding our remodel proposal. The one criteria we failed to pass is the "mass" of the home. Our home looked too massive from the exterior. So our designer added some architectural details to the front of the home to break up the mass and resubmitted our plans.

Hopefully it won't take too long to hear back again...

Windows - finalizing

We met to finalize the type of windows we needed to order for our remodel job. The great thing is that we didn't spend any time picking out a window "look" since we were reusing our existing windows which dictates the style of new windows. Our existing windows look like this:

web page

Since wood windows are pricey, we'll be using vinyl windows with wood on the exterior to match the existing look. Basically, you would choose windows if a) you have that kind of money to blow or b) you want historic style windows.

Vinyl Windows
Cost: inexpensive
Look: cannot imitate historic looks (for older homes)
      cannot be painted or trimmed
Maintenance: none
Reaction to climate: in extreme weather, vinyl can expand and contract

Wood Windows
Cost: expensive
Look: traditional
      can be painted and trimmed
Maintenance: wood frames can crack, split, and the paint can chip
Reaction to climate: susceptible to environmental damage

Feedback - finally!

We got a letter in the mail from the city about our plan submission...finally!

As we had been warned earlier, the plans were not approved. Apparently they never approve the first submission. They needed the resubmission to show
a. a breakdown of square footage by floor,
b. an illustration of guardrails around our basement light wells, (these guardrails have to be "architecturally compatible with the residence")
c. a filled-out "green" checklist show the city which proposed green codes we would be following - thankfully we're doing this remodel before the city has finalized their green building codes!
d. a tree disclosure statement - no idea what this is

Hopefully our second submission will pass and we can get moving with construction. Fingers crossed!

Home, Garden, & Patio Show

We decided to check out this show since we got a free ticket in the mail. We wanted to get ideas and check out a couple of the scheduled seminars. The first seminar was by Doug Fernandez, a Contractor of the Year, who gave a talk about kitchen and bath remodels. He convinced me that we should go with clear shower doors. I wanted either patterned or frosted glass shower doors because I didn't like the maintenance involved with clear doors - squeegee-ing after each use to prevent watermarks. He said that you can get a car glass defogger that'll take care of the high maintenance problem of clear glass doors. And the whole point of the clear glass is to make the bathroom seem larger and you end up cutting out at least 30% of the perceived space with non-clear shower doors.

The second seminar we attended was given by Lee Snijders, host of HGTV's Design on a Dime. We've never seen his show but inexpensive decorating ideas are very appealing! He talked about creating illusions because that's what decorating really is, usually creating the illusion that a space is bigger than it really is. Since he had worked as a Disney Imagineer before, he shared cool Disney facts. :)

Both speakers were excellent which made the trip to this show worthwhile. Between and after the seminars, we browsed the exhibitors. There are some innovative home devices out there such as gutter guards and synthetic lawns. Lots of landscaping and kitchen remodel companies too.

Plan submission

In the last week of March, our designer submitted our remodel plans to the city. A few days later, the city sent out notices to our neighbors (and us) that we were planning a remodel and asked for any comments (i.e., complaints) by April 14. Also, our contractor had to put up a huge sign on our front lawn with drawings of the remodel. This way there's no way our neighbors will miss the fact that we are planning to remodel.

The big hope now is that no one will give the city any feedback. :p

Quick meeting

Flooring:
For flooring, we debated using bamboo over traditional hardwood. We had seen some new homes with bamboo and it looked fine. However, I did read somewhere that the bamboo comes from Asia so the fuel cost itself doesn't really offset the "green-ness" of the material. Also, we don't know how well bamboo will wear over time as it is a relatively new flooring material. So we decided to go with hardwood.
- Tentatively going with red oak in 4" or 3 1/4" planks
- Oak wears well for flooring.

Carpet:
- Going with something neutral, not sure about patterned carpets yet

Roof:
- Letting our designer choose the color of our roof - she's picking a dark color.
- 40 year composite roof

Drywall:
- Old world texture #1 which is pretty smooth with a little bit of pattern in it.
- Baby bullnose corners so we'll have slightly rounded corners versus hard edges

Marbled Elegance

I had asked my mother where she got all her material for bathroom countertops and shower stalls since they were seamless slabs of some unknown material. She referred me to Marbled Elegance.

So we went on an information gathering trip. The material is cultured marble which is made from crushed stones and other stuff but it looks like natural stone. There are collections of looks that range from two colors to many colors (more colors = more $$). The mid-tier to higher tier collections look a lot more natural than the lower tier collections. One of the best things about it is that they can make large slabs of it (largest is 8' x 10') so you can get rid of grout lines in the showers. Usually people use tiles in their showers which are just a pain to clean -- too many grout lines. They can do seamless countertops such that the sinks bowls are integrated (example). You have to use their sink bowls to do that though. However, I think they have enough variety to accommodate most people.

Cost-wise, it comes to be about the same as putting up tile. For tiles, installation is the big expense ($20-30 per sq ft) while the tile itself is $4-sky per sq ft. With Marbled Elegance, the installation is $7.25 per sq ft while the material runs from $20-? (I forgot the cap) per sq ft depending on the collection you choose.

We're almost definitely going with Marbled Elegance unless there's some unknown advantage tile has that we don't know about yet.

Big Home Day

University Electric
Since the first store we wanted to go to was closed due to city maintenance, thankfully the appliance store was on the same street. So this turned out to be our first stop.

Narrowed down the cooktop: 36" GE Monogram gas cooktop
We were also considering a 36" DCS coooktop. We picked the GE Monogram over the DCS because

• a. largest burner is 18,000 BTUs versus 17,500 BTUs - great for stir frying
• b. knobs are located in the center of the cooktop versus knobs on the side which cuts into the width of the cooktop - more width will make it easier to use multiple pots

Other cool features include

• a. All burners have a low-simmer capability - not available with all cooktops
• b. The grates lock together to provide a stable surface - some of the floor models of other cooktops had wobbly grates
• c. Auto reignition - flame automatically reignites if it goes out

We looked at a variety of wall ovens but very few of them actually have dial controls. Most of them have touchscreen digital controls. Because of all the functionalities available on ovens these days, some of the controls were not very intuitive. booo. We're heavily considering the GE Monogram single wall oven because it has the dial controls.

Home Depot Expo
We didn't realize the extent of this store. We spent a whole afternoon here and still hadn't gone through it all. They have so many kitchen and bathroom setup examples. Since they have so many products on display, we were able to see some of the fixtures that we picked out from a catalog. They had many many Kohler products displayed - including the ones we selected, the Memoirs pedestal sink and matching toilet, and the Tea-For-Two tub. When we asked an employee about their selection of Grohe faucets, he told that they didn't display many of their products but there was a small section. He commented that Grohe's the best. (yay, made us feel good about our selections)

In their lighting department, I spotted a pendant light that I had admired online - Mini-Veneto by LBL. Too bad the price tag is $300 each light!!! With three in the kitchen, we might as well buy a nice chandelier instead. :p Yeah, we're going have to consider other pendant lights. Those babies are so expensive!

We made a quick stop at Sears appliance area but I think we were so pooped from the previous stores that we didn't want to make any decisions here. So we still need to go check out the Sears appliances since they were rated highly in Consumer Reports.

Tips from Parents

Since my parents had gone through remodeling before, they always sprinkle our get-togethers with bits of advice and words of caution. Here's a quick compile of this week's:
* Protect any part of your current landscaping you want to keep before they do anything. Otherwise, they'll assume you don't want any of it. My parents lost a fruit tree before they realized this.
* If they are of good quality, current kitchen cabinets can be removed and installed in the garage for storage.
* For lighting, instead of a pendant or center light for their casual eating area in their family room/kitchen, put two sets of lights on either side. This way if you move the table, you are not dependent on the location of light.

Doors

Our designer took us to look for interior doors and door handles. There are SO MANY choices in styles! The guy at the store said that he had a customer who tried to put four different doors in one room. The customer figured it out later that it wasn't such a good idea. But I totally understand how that customer felt. There are so many choices that you just want to use a whole bunch of styles in your home.

Once we got over it, we decided on a simple two-panel door for our interior doors and a lever handle with privacy lock.

We're keeping our current front door. (yay, saving money!)

Meeting VII, VIII: floor plans and plumbing fixtures

We met on Monday of this week to go over details of the floor plans because our designer is getting them ready for city approval. eek! We had to make minor adjustments to the second story because of something called the Daylight Plane. It's to prevent our second story from being too massive and possibly encroaching on our neighbors. Also, the land surveyor came out too. He was scheduled for last Friday but it rained that day, therefore postponing the appointment.

Today, we went over plumbing fixtures with Jim from Classic Plumbing. He came to our home with a cart of large catalogs. Lots to choose from but here are some that we picked out (but might not necessarily stick with, depending on cost/design change).

Powder Room
* Kohler Memoirs pedestal sink, Stately design
* Kohler Memoirs matching toilet, Stately design
* Grohe Seabury faucet and lever handles in brushed nickel

Kitchen
* Franke Beach Sink in the island
* Undermount double basin for the kitchen sink, possible like this
* Faucet with detachable spray

Upstairs bathroom
* Kohler Caxton undermount sink
* acrylic bathtub
* Grohe Eurodisc II faucet in chrome
* Matching Grohe Eurodisc II shower fixtures in chrome
* Toto dual-flush toilet

Master bathroom
* Kohler Caxton undermount sink
* Grohe Chiara Neu facuet in chrome
* Grohe Rainshower shower head on a ceiling arm
* handspray in the shower
* Kohler Tea-for-Two bathtub
* wall-mounted faucet for the tub
* Toto dual-flush toilet

Notes:
- Acrylic tubs have smooth finishes and cast iron tubs have grooved finishes to prevent slipping.
- Whirlpool tub costs $6000 and a soaking tub costs $2400.

Meeting VI: tiles

The soils and structural engineers came by this morning with our GC. They stood outside in the yard discussing. No discussions with us. Hopefully our plans will not be thwarted by some fluke, like an underground stream running under our property. (Apparently, our northern neighbors might have this problem.)

Our designer brought over catalogs for kitchen cabinets and magazines related to kitchens. This will make life a lot easier than me going to the library to look for these types of books or magazines.

We asked our designer to go to the local tile store with us since we had stepped in earlier in the week and were boggled by the choices. The guy inside the shop really helped us out, pretty much giving a complete tour of their store. He definitely leans towards porcelain tile as opposed to real stone. The technology for making tiles have advanced such that they can make very realistic looking "stone" tiles. Plus, they're cheaper and non-porous. According to him, match the backsplash to the floors and the countertop to the cabinets. I'm hoping we can do an interesting yet low maintenance backsplash for the kitchen.

The only thing we know is that for the kids' bathroom, we'll lay out white subway tile with some sort of design around the shower area.

Soils engineer

The soils engineer came out to our home today. Since we're building a basement, we need to get the soil tested. Unfortunately he found water collecting beneath our home from the recent rains. boooo. This means that our French drains aren't doing their jobs. Well, hopefully with this remodel, we can correct the problem.

We also got to meet the supervisor of our project. He's the owner's son. A nice family business. :)

Meeting V

Today we went to visit the windows and door lady, Betty. We had previously decided to keep our existing front door as well as the existing double hung windows. She came over to our house to measure our existing windows to make sure we could reuse them in the bedrooms. There's a new regulation now regarding egress windows in bedrooms - they have to be a minimum dimension to allow to fully-geared firefighters to enter the home through the windows.

One of our windows was in our storage shed, left by the previous owner. (It was supposed to replace our current kitchen window.) Thankfully, the manufacturing information was still on it so Betty was able to get the model number and appropriate stats.

She saw our stuck door in the living room and said that we could reuse it in the garage. And apparently the door, along with the doors, is from a good brand so we would save ~$1000 by keeping it!

We also did a minor tweak of the floor plan to accommodate a wall oven in the kitchen. Also, we moved the entry closet across the hall, using up some office space. It's still a separate closet that's accessible outside the office.

Our homework for next meeting:
- Look at different hardware and finishes for exterior doors, interior doors, and pocket doors.
- Look at different tile for the bathrooms.

Day of Appliances

Today we tackled two suggested appliance stores.

University Electric in Santa Clara
To be helped by a salesperson, you have to sign in. Otherwise, they'll let you browse at your own leisure. The salesperson who helped us stayed with us for almost 2 hours since we had so many questions to ask. We looked at everything: cooktops, wall ovens, refrigerators, warming drawers, ranges, dishwashers, and washer/dryers. They had someone cooking in one of the display rooms so you can grab a snack while going through all their rooms. Cool thing is they don't work on commission in this store so they're not in a hurry to sell to you.

Standards of Excellence in San Jose
Very organized and spacious showroom. They also have a cooking area where they hold monthly cooking events so you can learn more about certain brands. You can also bring in your pots and pans to try cooking with induction. Since we had exhausted the previous salesperson at University Electric, we didn't have as many questions to as the salesperson here. Still, he was very informative.

From almost 4 hours of checking out appliances, here's what we've decided:

Cooktop versus range: Cooktops tend to be more powerful than ranges so we're definitely going with a separate cooktop and wall oven. The advantage of ranges is that they're less expensive than buying separate, and some ranges come with a warming drawer. With a separate wall oven, people tend to place them at a higher elevation than the ones in the range such that you don't have to bend down to check out the oven. Since we're still young, we don't have that issue but later on it's something we'll have to take into more serious consideration.

Induction: It's really cool to watch water boil in 2 minutes. It's 90+% efficient versus gas which is only about 50% efficient (lots of wasted heat). But you can only use stainless steel or cast iron pots and pans. You can test this at home with a magnet. If the magnet sticks to the bottom of your pan, you can use it for induction cooking. The two main pans we use for stir fry didn't cut it. Even though we have some other lesser used pans that will work, I think we're still going with gas.
Nice pros and cons of induction

Wall oven: Since we don't do much cooking in the oven, we don't need to go with top-of-the-line here. :)

Warming drawer: Great idea if you entertain frequently or have a need to keep cooked food warm (e.g., spouse comes home late for dinner often). We hope to do more entertaining in the future so we're definitely getting one of these puppies. Don't know any details though.

Refrigerator: Definitely a bottom freezer. And most likely French doors for the refrigerator part. Not sure of the brand - we'll have to look at our Consumer Reports for energy efficiency and usable space stats.

Dishwasher: Fisher & Paykel has a cool dishwasher with double drawers. The two drawers combined is the same size as a regular dishwasher. This way you can use one drawer if there aren't that many dirty dishes. Only downside is that you can't put chopsticks in, like most dishwashers. KitchenAid actually has a utensil rack where you can place chopsticks that we're also considering. On the green side of things, Miele is mainly made of metal so they're the most recyclable dishwasher on top of its energy efficiency.

Washer & Dryer: We'll probably go with a front-loading washer because they're more earth-friendly - uses less water. Purchasing the extra stands so we don't have to break our backs bending over to load and unload laundry.

Color: The main colors available for appliances are black, white, and stainless steel. Viking does offer other colors for their appliances. Neither of like white and the problem with black is that a black refrigerator is very oppressive in a regular kitchen. Black refrigerators are probably ok in gigantic kitchens. So to be safe, we're going with stainless steel. I was worried that stainless steel would become a dated color for kitchens but then I read on the web that professional kitchens are stainless steel - it'll never be out of style because it was never in style. yay! :)

Day of Lighting

We visited the three lighting stores our designer had suggested. The two located in our local area were tiny and did not have much on display. One of them was distinctly modern in its tastes so while it was amusing to browse that store, the lighting fixtures did not suite our tastes.

We went to one in RWC and it was more of what I thought a lighting store would be like - large, spacious, lights everywhere. They had a this gigantic round light made of small pieces of crystal or glass and relied on light dispersion to change colors. So it was a different color depending on where you stood in relation to it. Very cool. There was a salesman (Neil) there that clearly knew lighting and was very helpful since we are completely clueless about lighting. We took note of the lights that we liked so we could show our designer. We'll probably end up bringing her to the lighting store with us.

Meeting IV: doors and windows

Had our meeting today about windows and doors. We've decided to keep our original red front door since we really like it. Since our designer also likes it, it's a definite keeper.

We'll also be keeping most of our existing windows since they're high quality double-hung windows. We like the fact that we can open up both the top and bottom of the window simultaneously for air circulation. Since we have about 10 of these in the house in working order, our contractor said that we'd save about $10K by just keeping them! (sheesh! Windows are expensive!)

For our next meeting:
* Figure out general style of lighting fixtures
* Figure out appliances and finishes
* Maybe put a window in the mudroom??

Third meeting

In this meeting, Rich laid out the budget.

Just to give you an idea, in the area, a typical remodel starts at $250/sq ft. An unfinished basement costs $150-175/sq ft. So with our "grandiose" plans, we need to stretch for a bigger budget than originally anticipated. Since we are definitely going through with the basement, this means no more birthday or Christmas presents from us for the next few years. haha! j/k :p

[ The sad thing is according to a general contractor in Michigan, a high-end remodel costs $160/sq ft while a type remodel is more like $110/sq ft...in Michigan. ]

We continued our tweaking of the house plan, focusing more details rather than the general layout. So we updated the types of doors and how they swing out. We decided to get rid of the office/bedroom and just made it an office. (A bedroom requires a closet.) Since we removed the closet from the office, which is what we were going to double duty as a coat closet for guests, we changed the first floor full bath to a half bath and added a closet in the bathroom space we cleared up. We trimmed the closet length in the upstairs bedrooms - they were originally 10+ feet wide (yes, quite generous) and have now been scaled down to ~6 feet.

An interesting observation from Rich about doors: if the door swings out, you're more likely to close it since it'll be in the way. This is good for pantry doors where the doors should be closed most of the time anyway. (Our pantry swings out.)

Homework: none! Since it was supposed to be electrical and we had already done it for this week's meeting. :)

Second meeting

During the weekend, we headed into the library and browsed decor magazines and a few references. Upon showing the examples to Margaret, she called our preferred style "traditional".

Margaret had added upon our original design but needed input from us regarding certain areas. We sat down with her on the computer and tweaked the layout of the house until we were all happy with the design result. This process took about 3 uninterrupted hours. But boy were we satisfied with what we came up with!

Homework: electrical layout

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Our current design:

Second story - two bedrooms, one full bath, master bedroom with a spacious walk-in closet and master bath, laundry closet, and linen closet
First story - living room, family room, dining room, kitchen, office/bedroom, and mudroom between the kitchen and garage
Basement - two bedrooms, full bath, and room for a pool table

First meeting

Our first meeting was with Rich and Margaret. Rich estimated that if everything goes off without a hitch (i.e., smooth sailing with permits and plan approvals), construction can begin in May. And hopefully, we can finish up in March 2009. [ My fingers are crossed since there's always some sort of glitch or issue that crops up during construction. ]

Homework: decide on a design style - look through books and magazines for ideas of the style we like

Some more background

Our ideal remodel includes adding a second story and reworking the existing first floor. Later, we added basement to our idea of the ideal remodel.

In late 2007, we tried our hand at putting together two different layouts - stairway on the side of the house and stairway in the middle of the house. We had gone to the city Planning office to ask questions about what we were allowed to add to the existing home. Since our neighbor has a second story that's set back (as opposed to starting flush with the first floor), our second story would have to be set back as well. Also, because of our lot size, the max square footage is 2550 sq ft including garage. While designing a layout, we really had to be aware of our size restriction. To save on upstairs hallway space, we definitely preferred the design with the stairway in the middle.

So before our first meeting, we handed our preliminary design to Margaret to see how she would be able to improve upon it or possibly completely redesign the layout.

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One of the books suggested to us by one of Steven's contractors (whose husband is a general contractor) which we found to be very informational in terms of house design: " The Not So Big House" by Sarah Susanka

Another book we found that had good technical information: "Build it Right!" by Myron Ferguson

Picking out a Firm

In the second half of 2007, we decided that 2008 was definitely the year to start a remodel considering that
  a) the house is a perfect size for us (no kids) but too small (2 bed, 1 bath) for a family, and
  b) our house is falling apart (cracks in the wall, stuck doors).

In late summer and throughout the fall, we went to open homes and visited model homes looking at layouts, decor, and finishings. This process is ongoing. When we went to the Wynn in December, we paid extra attention to the colors and materials they used. We would walk along the floor and point out "look, mosaic...expensive." :p

We decided to go with a design-build firm as opposed to hiring a separate architect and general contractor. We went with an all-inclusive firm to avoid the headaches associated with the other method of remodel. My parents did it the other way and they experienced running around town picking out and ordering their own supplies, acting as their own interior decorator, and keeping a sharp eye on the general contractor who would cut corners wherever he could. A firm would take care of that. I know that means we can't be lazy and just sit around waiting for our home to be built but going with a firm would take away a lot of the stress.

In November and December, we interviewed three design-build firms in the area. Since our city seems to be pretty strict on remodel regulations, we wanted people who were experienced with dealing with this city. We asked the same questions to each of the firms to see how they would respond. One of the firms was way out of our budget and couldn't accommodate. We had some communication issues with another firm.

We went with RJ Smith!
We had excellent communication with them, they were willing to accommodate a range of budget, they responded quickly, and we liked how they answered our questions. Plus, we checked up on their references and everyone had only good things to say. The references ranged from people who had just finished remodeling to people who have finished their remodel 5+ years ago. One lady was even nice enough to allow us to visit her home to see what RJ Smith had done for them.

We called Rich up the week before we left on vacation to let him know we picked his firm. :)

[ Another thing, our friend Margaret works as a designer in Rich's firm. We like her taste which we've seen in her own home, so she'll be working with us on this project. It makes us feel better that our designer shares our taste. ]