New Plan

After recovering from the shock of being handed "a design for Edward and Victoria," as we have taken to calling the design abomination handed to us on Friday afternoon— it might be a fine design (might), but it's a design for someone else, most definitely not us— we decided to take matters into our own hands. We are now the proud new owners of Architectural Home Designer 9.0.

It took us about 5 hours, learning together how to use the program, to create a model of our existing house. Then we started turning it into the "new" house. First alteration: put in bi-fold glass doors to the "West Room", which, though used for storage at the moment, it is destined to become Roy's "Music Room". Voilà! We have natural light entering the core of the house from that room, something that we were told on Friday "just couldn't be done". We decided on this solution on Saturday when we visited my co-worker, LeeAnn, who has these gorgeous bi-fold glass doors from her entry into her formal dining room. It is a lovely effect.

So...Debbi helped us pack up most of our china and glassware on Sunday (packing progress: 2 closets last Sunday (also thanks to help from Debbi) and lots of breakables this Sunday), then after Debbi left, it was back to AHD. After fighting with the program (and design ideas) for a while, we decided that the plan of attack will be to build our spec-requested elements, then play Tangram with them til they all fit appropriately.

As of 11 AM Monday morning (it's a holiday), we have a washer, dryer, and our chest freezer in the utility room; a dining room set in the dining room (located where we wanted it in the remodeled house-item 13.1); and we have been assiduously finding/building the required kitchen elements that weren't included in Edward and Victoria's™ design: items 10.6 microwave oven tall cabinet and 10.22 secondary oven wall cabinet. We've learned how to build any kind of cabinet we want, using the Kraftmaid Spec website in one window and then modifying a cabinet in the design software to match Kraftmaid's spec. It's actually a pretty spiffy process that we have gotten pretty good at in a very short amount of time.

Oh, and our big picture window to the back yard, that looks out toward the pond? Yeah, we're not touching that (imagine that, we're not removing our custom-built 72"x48" window and replacing it with a 36"x36" window over a sink....imagine). In fact, we have put a "breakfast bar" right in front of that window, as per item 10.14 in our request spec. (Another thing that we were told "just didn't work".)



It's amazing what is possible, when you adhere to customer spec, and use a little unconventional thinking.

As for the contract with our design firm? We're planning to send them an e-mail Tuesday morning that informs them to not work on anything— anything at all— for us until we contact them again. Our desire is to create a design we like in the next week or two (we will have jobs to get back to on Tuesday, after all) and then we'll hand them our design to merge into their design software (their software can read our software's output, which is why we chose the software we did).

At that point, the ball will be in their court: they can either man up and create an appropriately-designed-to-our-spec home design without charging us $110/hr for the privilege, or we can go to another Design-Build firm. There are certainly plenty of them around.

Aghast

Appalled.

Horrified.

I can't think of a solitary spec in our "Need" category that was met by the design we were presented this afternoon, though I'm sure there must be a few. Someplace in the house. Surely?

I can think of numerous "we absolutely DO NOT WANT THIS" items that were in the design. More than I can keep track of, in fact.

WTF?

I am ready to cry.

"What would you say if I could get you a refrigerator for $1200 that matches everything else in the kitchen?"

Huh? We didn't even go down the path of the fact that the current, less than 2-yr-old fridge is black and matches the just-over 2-yr-old black dishwasher. I just said, still stunned and somewhat communicative at that point in time, "we have a $2000 refrigerator that is less than 2 years old. It's exactly what we want and it's staying."

But I should have known that things were only going to get worse.

Much, much, much worse.

Such as a pool that is only 5'11" wide on their floor plans, when we told them it would be 9' wide and need about 1-2' access. We gave them this measurement, in writing (e-mail), on May 21, the day after we met with them at our house. The fact that the owner got all huffy and said, "well, you need to get us the dimensions of the pool immediately" seemed like some sort of bad-- really, really bad-- joke.

Rush to judgment?

When, two days before the "great design unveiling", you receive an e-mail from your designer that reads:

I will have to say that I was not expecting the design to be too complicated while still maintaining and preserving your expectations. However, after numerous rearrangements exploring all reasonable options, I have manage[d to run] into a few snags that will need your attention and decision. With that being said, I have managed to get just about everything incorporated into your design with the exception of two layout items/circumstances that will impact the overall design.
...
At this point, the design is just about complete and our production department [is] working on items they can estimate for the rough estimate. Although the rough estimate will not be completed pending the directions we head, the guys have been putting numbers together this week to get a head start and stay on track. I think what would make the most sense to me when we meet is for us to nail down which direction we wish to proceed and then let production look at it and complete the Rough Estimate.

Uh...you've had 3.5 weeks to play with the design and can't make it all work together and you expect us to make a decision in 15 minutes which path to take, a path that will "impact the overall design"??

The Design Presentation and Rough Budget meeting is scheduled for Fri, 7/2, at 1pm. If it seems that a little jolt runs through the fabric of the universe sometime in the ensuing 3 hours, that might well be me. I guess we won't be getting a rough budget on Friday, because it is very doubtful that we're going to be willing to make a decision, with an audience, that will affect the entire outcome of the remodel.

Stay tuned.