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. ]