Winnow shopping

We've sporadically looked at various products over the past few months (even years), but have spent quality time for the past several weekends looking at lights and other things (plumbing fixtures, cabinet styles, granite, etc.) to try to narrow our choices down. Here are some of the things we liked.

We have potentially selected under-cabinet lighting for the kitchen that we saw at Lighting, Inc. We both liked the true-color rendering of the fluorescent fixture (Priori T2), which has a CRI of 90. Plus, it costs a lot less than the LED fixtures (whose color we don't like as well—though they are getting better). It's not dimmable, but we're not sure we need dimmable under-cabinet lighting.

Visiting Ferguson right across the street - oh, good Lord. Plumbing fixture overload. We did find a very interesting sink by Kohler (recently introduced) that we are considering for our master bath.

We ignored most of the kitchen portion of Ferguson as we have decided all of the appliances already (we're reusing everything we bought in 2008 pre- and post-Ike). But, they did have the prettiest pendant lighting over a bar there, almost exactly what I've been searching for. Now to see if I can squeeze a couple of those into the budget and hang them over our breakfast table!


Heading west to Re-Bath, we evaluated the color samples of all of the Onyx Collection colors in relation to some granite we'd like to use in our master bath. Actually, we have had to do this twice, since the granite we selected over a decade ago is no longer imported into the US (if we lived in Germany or the UK, we could get it!). The old granite was Blanco (Bianco) Iberico, from Spain. The new granite selection is Misty Pearl (origin unknown). It's as close as we could get, but definitely a different look.

Onyx Collection will be used for our tub surround (and caddies) in the hall bath and the entire shower (base, walls, shampoo caddies, etc.) in our master bath (we detest grout with a passion). We toured Onyx's manufacturing plant in 2008 , courtesy of our Onyx contact, Jim J., when we were in Kansas for a niece's wedding. Onyx Collection is an American-made solid-surface product similar to Corian, and to say that they have excellent customer service would be a gross understatement.

The Great Indoors has a rather impressive appliances section, including the Electrolux wall oven with its awesome racks that run on ball-bearings (this is one of my extravagances in the remodel).


We also looked at washers/dryers (ours are 16 yrs old, bought when we bought the house), and more plumbing fixtures-we like one of the Kohler sinks for the kitchen. And we're still pretty settled on a GROHE faucet for the kitchen sink.

We even looked at some flooring. Actually, rather a lot of flooring. And we have a lot more looking to do. Since we were in the area last weekend, we stopped by Arizona Tile on the Beltway near I-10 West, where we found a flooring tile that we might use in both the master bathroom and the pool area. Or might not. We looked at a lot of flooring on this side of town on Tuesday and brought home several other contenders (pictures not available yet!)

In the beginning...

The modeling of the As-Built house is complete! Will sent us the file so that we can get comfortable with the Chief Architect Viewer software. (He said no one has ever asked him for the As-Built before - we suspect that this is only the 2nd instance of many firsts for them in our relationship!) The image above is looking into our kitchen from the north wall-you see the den (and one of the two ceiling fans in the den) on the left-along with the door to the hallway and the front bedroom door (which is closed in this picture) , the entire kitchen in the middle, and on the right, you see part of the "breakfast room" with the door to garage. You may need to click on the image to see the whole scene if you're on the blog. (We'll see what happens with the e-mailed version!)

It is interesting. There is a fairly steep learning curve, even for two technically competent folks like us. It would probably help if we had a tutorial - you want to do this, choose this tool and this setting. But, overall, we were able to navigate through the house, although sometimes we walked through the walls instead of the doors, if the door wouldn't "open" for us - I think this might be a rendering issue, I'm not sure. We think it will be a big help to visualize the new spaces, which Will will have populated with our actual furniture measurements (dining room table 48x87, sofa 40x86, etc.) so that it's a real house with our possessions and not just four walls and a door for each room with maybe a few stock furniture pieces.

If you are seriously considering using a 3-D design service and would like to play around with our house as-built and then the remodeled version, drop us an e-mail and we'll send you the files. For obvious reasons, we don't plan to post our floor plans to the web.

Modeling Our House

The modeling work began Friday morning. Scott, the modeler, was here pretty much all day. This model will serve as the starting point for the model of the new design. Once we send Will, our designer, pictures of the granite we want for the kitchen, the light fixtures we want for each room, etc., he will upload those into the software and they'll appear in the design. That is pretty darned sweet.

Scott began by getting exterior measurements to build the shell of the house. Then he measured each room's dimensions with a laser/ultrasonic measuring tape and entered these into the modeling system they use, called Chief Architect. After the room was built, he would go back and mark where the openings are (doors, windows, other openings), where any kind of outlet is (phone, electric plug, wall switch, cable), where HVAC items are (return airs, registers), and lights/fans, furr downs, etc. Kitchen cabinets, sinks, appliances, you name it. When he's finished, he has a nearly exact floor plan of the room in the computer. I'm sure I missed a lot of what he was doing.

Then, this is the really cool part: you're looking at the 2-D floor plan and you click the camera icon. Click a spot on the floor plan and then drag the cursor the direction you wish to look. Voilà! Suddenly, you are looking at the 3-D representation of the room. We were able to see our kitchen in 360, complete with black French-door fridge, wood-grain laminate countertops, sink and faucet, everything. It was awesome. Then we walked around the corner, out of the kitchen, into the den and looked right across the den, through the hallway door, and to the front bedroom window (a sight-line we are planning to change). It's all right there, in the computer!! Really amazing.

He also will model the exterior (roof-line, vent placement, etc.), so that they can show what the finished addition will look like, how it will blend into the existing structure, etc.

Since they are pretty much touching every part of the house in some way (except for the front porch), they are entering the entire house - every room, every closet, every everything, into the system. He ran out of time Friday and will come back Tuesday morning to finish up with the master bath and closet and the rear exterior.

Hopefully, we'll get a file to review on Tuesday, so we can "walk through" our virtual house and make sure it's just like our real one.

Yes, this is beginning to get real and very exciting!

Draining

Last week, I submitted our deposit for the Endless Pool. Submitting the deposit gets you the Sample Kit, with real pieces of the materials so that you can make an informed decision as to what you want. Cha-ching. There went the first real money on this project.

Then I spent Friday afternoon looking at more stuff (lights might be my least favorite thing to look at), then we spent Saturday repeating the process with more stores and more stuff with Roy in tow. Six hours of driving, looking, taking pictures and notes, driving, looking, looking some more, taking more pictures. (And there's a lot more of this to come yet.) Talk about draining!!!

We also spent a large part of the holiday weekend fighting with the shower drain in our master bath. As the only working bathroom in the house currently, it is imperative that it remain operational until the demolition in August. The arsenal included: snake (can't get past the first bend in the drain), plunger (1st line of attack and auxiliary force for every other attack-but only after running copious amounts of water down the drain after the chemicals failed), Drano's Foamer (2nd line of attack on Sunday), and ZEP's 10-minute hair/clog remover (3rd, 4th, and 5th lines of attack on Monday).

After two days of really fighting with the clog, late Monday afternoon the drain finally cleared and worked again. Woo-hoo!! (Note: having sewer clean-outs immediately outside the bathroom assisted in knowing when something was working - when you have sewer lines replaced, we highly recommend having cleanouts installed at every exit point from the house - makes plumbing so much easier down the road). We also recommend annual treatment with some product to keep your drain lines running free and clear. A smaller clog wouldn't have taken so long to break up!

Then on Wednesday evening, I delivered a signed Design Agreement to Wm. Shaw & Associates along with the check for Stage 1 (Design). Their modeler will be out Friday morning to measure our existing home and build a replica in their 3-D modeling system. Bill said the modeler will be here pretty much all day.

So, the remodel is officially underway! The draining of the $$$$$$ has just begun.