Week 3 - Taking Shape

Week 3 was "MEP" on the schedule, plus continued framing. What's MEP? Turns out it is Mechanical (HVAC), Electrical, and Plumbing.

Most of W3's accomplishments involved the infrastructure of the house - for plumbing, that meant running all new water lines in the attic and walls, new water supply line between the meter and the house, new plumbing ventilation stacks, new drains and P-traps where required by our building plan or current building code.

We are utilizing a PEX manifold only for the cold water distribution in the house, because we wanted to have a more sensible hot water solution than running water down the drain waiting for it to get hot. For the hot water distribution, we specified what is called "structured plumbing system", wherein a hot water line runs in a loop through the attic, and smaller lines drop down from the loop to supply each fixture. An "on-demand water circulation pump" is installed near the water heater to circulate water through the loop, and it is activated by a simple doorbell-wired button installed at each hot water location.

The pump we chose, after much research, was the Chilipepper CP2011. We are very excited about the potential savings not only in water down the drain, but of time spent waiting for the water to get hot in the master shower, which is as far away in the house as you can get from the water heater! (This water pump was originally designed as a minimally-invasive water conservation solution for older homes. Read up on it if you are interested.)

We did pretty well in our plumbing design, requiring only the master shower drain to be relocated, which did require busting through the foundation. The master toilet, although not moving, had an issue with drain route (or something), which required them to bust through the perimeter of the foundation (another thing altogether, and they figured out how to minimize that impact--if you have to cut through the rebar reinforcing the concrete foundation perimeter, that is apparently a Bad Thing, and they were able to narrowly avoid having to do so). All other plumbing rearrangements were able to utilize existing drain lines (and therefore, roof penetrations,)!

Because we are installing real hardwood floors, the floor "height" will increase by 1.5 inches. What does that mean? Every doorway in the house must be raised 1.5 inches, even those doors whose position/type did not change. For all of the new doors/doorways, they simply framed the opening 1.5 inches higher. For the rest of the doors, they have to raise the existing door framing. This includes all of the exterior doors, so although we saw the new doors in the laundry room and front entry briefly last week, those came down so the openings could be reframed. Since we reversed the hinge side of the entry door, they have to use the new door, but it is now securely encased in sheathing to protect it from damage til it needs to be painted. The laundry room door is back to being the old steel door.

The one nod to the "current style" common in the remodeled houses in our area is the arched doorway. We changed the square opening between the front entry and the living room to be a cased arched opening. We think it looks nice already and defines the space with more panache.

Also notable in the living room is the specialty electrical box we purchased for the TV wall. It handles electrical and cabling (coaxial, cat6, and whatever audio wire you want) in a recess, which allows a flat panel TV to be installed flat against the wall. Although we don't own a TV, we figure there's a pretty good chance the next owners will. :)We also decided to install a similar box, but without the space for audio cables, in the master bedroom.

OH construction well underway (Weeks 1 & 2)

We are nearing the end of Week 3 of the remodel of the old house and it has been going along pretty well. We tour the day's work each night with our headlamps (one of the best purchases ever!) and sometimes marvel at the changes and other times, panic, though at this point, we have moved beyond panicking now that we have had reassurances from the contractor that all will be okay, that his word is good, and anything we might find done in conflict with our understanding will be fixed and not at our expense. They have been a great contractor to work with so far.

Weeks 1 & 2 were demolition of various kinds - what few fixtures we had left, kitchen cabinetry, master bathroom cabinetry, flooring, sheetrock, insulation, HVAC ducting, etc. A few things disappeared that we didn't expect - the hallway return air chase (because it was made out of sheetrock) plus the linen cabinet above it, and also the oak and birch wood linen cabinet in the hall bathroom (because we hadn't explicitly labeled it "not trash/keep", we guess).

This is the remains of our master bedroom, bathroom, and closet by Day 4. They waited until all of the walls were out to pull down the ceilings and the nasty 57 year old insulation and various droppings (we'll just leave that description at "disgusting"). 

But here is one surprise we saw in the walls, near the back patio light switches (yeah, it's probably what you think it is):

 We figure it was some kind of rodent. Perfectly preserved skeleton. Gross and cool at the same time.

We have no idea how many dumpsters-full they have hauled away. Several, we're pretty sure (we know of two for certain). This was at the end of Week 1.

At the end of Week 2, we had our second and third blips on the radar on the same day, this time when we walked through the house on Friday morning and discovered them ripping the electrical out without our go-ahead (we were discussing it with them in e-mail and had not approved as we thought that there were some perfectly fine new circuits installed in 2000 for dedicated purposes that shouldn't be touched), then we walked again Friday night and discovered re-wiring had commenced, and not to either the as-built electrical plan nor the new electrical plan! They had also cut the installed-in-2000, dedicated wiring to our porch downlights and Christmas light timers, which we had explicitly and repeatedly said "no, do not touch that".

They also ripped apart the HVAC system that day, and relocated the return air without asking and installed HVAC registers in the wrong places, basically completely freaking us out. We had already set up a meeting with Dan to go over the electrical and HVAC in the entire house on Monday, so we were confused. And really worried, as they work on the house 6 days a week (Mon-Sat) and we could only imagine how many more things would be wrong by the time Monday morning rolled around!

Dan actually checked his e-mail late that night and e-mailed us reassurances that we were still planning to have the walk-through on Monday morning and that things would be as we wanted and expected them. He canceled their work on Saturday, which was very reassuring.

I had the walk-through Monday with Dan and James from LCI, as well as our architect and his sidekick. Dan again reiterated that his word goes, that the electricians jumped the gun and what they did was on them, not on us and not on LCI. We then proceeded to walk every outlet, every switch, and every HVAC in the entire house. Roy & I had walked the same things Sunday night, so I had annotated plans (would you really have expected anything less?), so the walk-through on Monday went off pretty well, though it did take 3-1/2 hours by the time I was finished answering questions from all of the trades and Dan.

The former hallway HVAC return air chase will be converted into a full height linen cabinet in the hallway (instead of the half-height it was) and they will build  a small built-in dresser unit in the middle bedroom (by borrowing an odd section of closet from that walk-in closet to both square off the closet and enable us to install Elfa shelving on that side plus it will create a usable space in the bedroom when combined with the former air chase space).

Next post (no promises when, but maybe in the next day or so when the weather is so horrid here in Houston) will cover the new stuff going on in Week 3. It's pretty exciting to see the house take on its new interior scape with the new walls and doorway placements, etc. They installed the new laundry room door (with operable window!) and new front entry door in the past couple of days. We like them.

D-day is set for January 6

We have retained a family-owned construction firm based in the Heights for the remodel of the Old House. We first met with the owner back in September, but their schedule wasn't going to be open until November at the earliest, so we waited. (And waited.) We accepted their bid mid-October, with an uncertain start date (holidays, current project delays, etc.). Our interior demolition (to the stud walls, throughout the house) is now set for January 6.

Last Friday, Dec 13, the owner, Billy, his two construction supervisors- Stephen (a brother) and James, his "money man"- Danny (another brother), and the reps from his sub-contractors (Edgar-electrical, Arturo-plumbing, and neither one of us remembers the HVAC guy's name) all met at the house for a "get familiar with the project" walk-through.

After the initial walk-through, we looked over some of the plan pages, then their questions began. They were all good questions about either things on the drawings, things in the project specification, things they had thought of, etc. Lots of zinging around among topics. Fortunately, I think we had immediate answers for all of their questions so far and we'll handle any other questions as they arise.

When it gets time for the electrical, we will do a separate walk-through since the architect's drawings are somewhat confusing (which we understood when presented from the electrician's point of view). But since I know the existing electrical pretty well (we mapped the electrical panel, after all, and designed the big panel expansion project in 2000), it shouldn't be a problem. We don't want them removing our porch and patio's down lights in the soffits, for example, thinking that is what they are supposed to do (courtesy of the confusing drawings).

They all seem like people who know their stuff - and aren't afraid of homeowners who know theirs! They had some nice comments about how prepared we are (almost 100% of the product specifications have been ready since September and have been given to the contractor in spreadsheet form - there are only a handful of things that we have yet to pick for which they are responsible for procuring).

Saturday, we met with a couple from Baytown who looked at our former dining room table and chairs. They were originally primarily interested in the chairs (but would take the table off our hands, too) as he had recently purchased wood to make a dining room table. But they decided they liked the table pretty well, too. I sold her on why we had purchased it all those years ago, all reasons why it will make their family a great table for years to come. (Here is its very sturdy double-pedestal base, sans top.)

Sunday afternoon, the man brought his three sons, two trucks and a long trailer to load everything up. It was bittersweet to see it all go, but it doesn't fit in the new house and we needed to sell it. With their growing family (one son is already married), the matriarch was happy to have a table to seat all of the current family members with room to grow. With this change of ownership, the table has moved on to its next life stage.

We have the Elfa shelving pieces to finish packing up and moving out of the old house along with miscellaneous other small stuff. We should be able to get that done between now and Jan 6, even with our trip to the Liberty Bowl to watch Rice play (haven't missed a bowl in our lifetimes and don't plan to start now!).

The Old House remodel is scheduled to take approximately 16 weeks from commencement.

The last viewing of the old house as originally built

We are finally, at long, long last, looking forward to getting the first remodel (at the old house) underway!

If any of you want to just walk through the house to see what it's like before the remodel, we are going to have it open this Sunday, 10/20, from 4-5 pm. Send us a message if you need the address.

We'll have the new floor plans and tile selections on hand.

Of course, we'll have a bigger (and real, with food!) open house after  the remodel is done and we have (temporarily) moved back in there. This "open house" is for the folks who haven't seen how it is currently laid out inside and want to have the "before" visual.

House Specific Updates

Old house: We are set to go with a builder that has worked primarily in the Houston Heights for the past 20 years. The references have been great and we have appreciated the interactions we've had with one of the principals. It is a family outfit of 3 brothers and approximately 35 full-time employees (trades are subbed out to their regular subs). We anticipate a great result based on everything we have heard.  (We discovered them on Angie's List.)

New house: The design competition on Arcbazar continues to attract more interest. We are now up to 22 designers from around the world. We have had just a few questions from a designer so far, but we put up a very detailed spec. Some designers may feel they have everything they need to know to create a design for us. Also, there are still 4.5 weeks left in the competition, and many will likely be working on the project more as the deadline approaches and questions may fly then.

We continue to be impressed at the submitted designs for other competitions, and we often have a "wow! that design is so perfect!" reaction to the winning design (just like the client). We wish we had known about Arcbazar for the old house simply because we are curious what they'd have dreamt up as solutions. As it is, we are pretty happy with the design we created, and we're anxious to see it built out.

Finally, forward motion is on the horizon!

A whole new way of looking at design

Site: New House

After our horrid experiences with first a Design-Build firm in 2010 and now an Architect in 2013, we had no idea where to go for the design of the expansion (master suite and Endless Pool) at our new house. Expending effort only to find a new architect who would also back-burner our non-million-dollar project at every opportunity was a non-starter. We had to get moving forward. But how?

I decided to log in to Angie's List and poke around for architect-types. Hmm. There's a highly rated firm with a ton of reviews and it's in downtown Houston? Really? Where?

Reading the review, I realize they are not in downtown Houston, but offer design services over the web. Hmm. I read the reviews.

Some people are unhappy with the business model, which is crowd-sourced architecture/design set up as a competition. You, the client, put up a monetary reward with your design requirements and you set a due date. At that due date, you judge (rank) the designs you receive based on how well they meet your requirements and how well you like them. 1st place is awarded 60% of the award money, 2nd gets 30%, and 3rd gets 10%. Then the results become public on the member's side of the website and everyone can see them. It's like hiring multiple designers to offer you solutions to the same issue because that is exactly what you are doing.

The satisfied customers give absolutely glowing reviews and explain that it requires substantial effort on your part, but you get out of it what you put into it. These designers are from across the globe and rely on you to answer questions about site measurements, things you might like, etc. We have no problem with that.

I visit ArcBazar's website. There are some very interesting projects on there, with some very creative design solutions. I'm intrigued. I start visiting ArcBazar periodically, really going through some of the projects to read over the design req from the client, read the exchanges between the client and the designers, and review the winning designs (as well as those that didn't rank).

We watch for a couple of months and decide that this is how we want to design the work to be done on our new house. Time to write up our requirements. Hoo-boy. I spent several weeks working on this in my spare time and then, last weekend, that is all either of us worked on.
We posted our competition Monday night, with a deadline of 8 weeks (we thought our project was too complicated to expect something sooner). As of Friday morning, we have 10 designers signed up from 4 continents. The site says that many designers won't sign up until near the very end of the project, when they know they will have something to submit (as they now get penalized in the points systems for signing up for a competition but not submitting a design). Our first entrant was from Albania. We now have 2 from Albania, 2 from US, and 1 each from Serbia & Herzegovenia, France, Mexico, Georgia (Republic of), Morocco and Nigeria. The general consensus is that 25-50% of the designers will actually submit plans.

Yeah, we're pretty excited about handling our design this way. The average number of designs you'll get is 9, though I've seen a few competitions lately with upwards of 2 dozen designers.

Our competition posting is available only to ArcBazar members, but signup to the site is free. If you are interested, you can create an account and see what we have requested. (If you do, let us know if you see anything that we missed!) It's a neat place to browse around, too.

To bring you up to date on the Old House

Site: Old House

Well. It’s been an… interesting… 3 months since the last update. In July, we hit a brick wall when the architectural firm we had hired went…completely unethical on us. The Architect had us working over July 4th holiday to get product selections together. Which we faithfully did, working ourselves hour after hour, missing holiday celebrations (and rest) to work on the house project and we got the selections in an Excel spreadsheet to The Architect on July 5th. Because, by golly, according to The Architect, we would be going to bid on July 8 or 9th at the latest and he needed this info for The Schedules. He had also invoiced us for The Drawings and we hand-delivered The Payment on July 5th to him along with our product selections. (Yeah, you can go ahead and say, “uh-oh” now.)

Then, there was this quiet, “oh, we need the structural engineer’s drawings yet” (The Architect’s responsibility, per The Contract, and we had informed him that we had received, signed, and paid the contract for the Structural Engineer on July 2) and we went home, still convinced we’d be contacting contractors on Monday (7/8) or Tuesday… or Friday at the latest to set up appointments to come see our project and then submit bids. By July 11, we had asked The Architect for the revised Electrical Drawings to review for the inevitable errors, and we found them. The page they sent us was still wrong. So we e-mailed our request for a full set of The Drawings to review. And we got…

Silence. We sent email. Left voice mail. Sent more email. Nothing. Nothing at all.

I ask Roy to call them near 5pm on 7/22, and The Assistant (who is not an Architect) answered and said that The Architect is out until 7/29, and had (ostensibly) said not to give us the plans. He didn’t know why.

Have I mentioned that we had confirmed that our check had been cashed on 7/11? By now, even Roy is disturbed by their behavior.

So, on Tuesday morning, 7/23, I called the Structural Engineer. The only set of drawings they have for our project is from 6/5. They don’t know if those are current, so can’t schedule a meeting with us, and they will call The Architect for a current set of The Drawings. So we wait.

On 7/29, we e-mail The Architect. Again. And state that the Structural Engineer still needs a current set of Drawings so that he can meet with us. The Assistant e-mails the drawings to the engineer and us. I don’t look at them until I get home at 7 that night. They are, of course, completely screwed up, with multiple layers on top of each other, which means doors conflicting with doors, opening opposite directions overlapping in the same opening, etc. Just a big, stinking pile of poo – you can’t tell what kind of opening it is or or how big it is or where it is located along the load-bearing walls for which the engineer will have to specify construction requirements to redistribute the load correctly. The kicker is that the Structural Engineer has an appointment with us for 8 AM The Following Morning.

I e-mail our displeasure and distress and dire need of accurate plans to The Architect and also leave a voice message. Nothing vulgar, not even any curse words, just obvious distress over the FUBAR’d plans and the impending arrival of the Structural Engineer the next morning, but of course it's evening, so we hear nothing. So we find the last version we have, from the end of June, and we use that copy during the on-site walk-through with the engineer and give that to him to work from.

Then we receive an offended e-mail from The Assistant telling us we need to act more professionally towards our design team…kid you not. They issue Drawings to a Structural Engineer that are so screwed up as to be unusable and we get taken to task for not being professional? (As a friend said to me, “I wasn’t aware there were professional homeowners.”) And, just in case you are wondering, no, we are given no apology for their screw-up.

It takes us ANOTHER MONTH to get Drawings that are correct and that we are satisfied with (The Architect isn’t in any hurry, as he has His Money from us). On the bright side, we did discover in the meantime a better hot water system, so we researched like crazy and changed that spec mid-August.

We were finally issued Construction Drawings on 8/27 (sans The Schedules, I might add - we wound up having to create every one of those ourselves). Then began the calling of contractors either we had used before or with whom friends or others had worked. None of them ever called us back. Too busy in the hot Houston market.

Over the Labor Day weekend, we went on Angie’s List and looked for contractors and found a highly reviewed one. It’s a family affair with 3 brothers and 35 full-time staff and they have used the same trade subs for 20 years. Right now, we are expecting a bid from him the first week of October and he would be able to begin work in November.

Since 8/27, we have heard nothing, NOTHING, from The Architect, who is supposed to be helping us locate contractors to get bids and help us evaluate those bids, etc. I personally put him out of my mind as he is a huge aggravation (and source of stress) to me. When I got home on 9/25, what should be at my place on the table but…An Invoice from The Architect wanting payment for “Completion of Bidding Phase”. Seriously. 

No, we are most certainly NOT paying for a Phase that has not been completed! A letter to that effect, that his invoice is premature, will be mailed on Friday.

Roy doesn’t want to terminate the contract with The Architect, so we’re continuing on, but Roy will be responsible for all interactions with the Architect. Period. I want nothing to do with either The Architect or especially The Assistant. Ever again.

Someday, when we no longer have an open contract with The Architect, I will write reviews every place I can find on-line to write reviews. I expect better treatment from a fellow Rice grad, especially one who teaches a course on Building Your Dream Home through Rice’s Continuing Studies. It has been an unbelievably bad experience for a significant sum of money. We never would have hired him if I had seen even one review that outlined his business practices and attitude (poor and poorer).

Tomorrow, happier news: The New House Design Phase has begun!

Drawings and more drawings

We just returned our annotations on the 2nd round of drawings to the architects on Thursday. We had thought this round of review should go very quickly, with few changes, but...not quite. Some requests had not made it into the plan (from the 1st round of comments) and we changed our minds on several things, too, as we worked out logistics. This review did go faster than the 1st round of drawing comments, though, which seemed like it took forever, as we were researching and specifying elements as we annotated.

For your viewing pleasure, you will want to go to the actual blog (clicking a picture works in my e-mail, at least) so that you can view the PNGs large. (Once the picture loads in your web browser, click it again, and that should make it as large at it can get.)

In the demolition plan, you can see the layout of the house as it is today and where we plan to remove walls (darkest gray) and other stuff (cabinets, etc.). (All of the doors are being replaced which is why they are dark gray.)

This is the proposed floor plan we received in round 2. (Ignore the dark elliptical shapes - those are notes where drywall floating & texturing is required where we removed the 50 year old closet rods and installed Elfa shelving.)

The craziest thing we had to do was completely specify electrical placement - outlets, switches, lights, fans, etc. It was daunting, to say the least. In order to actually make a real-life plan, we decided to choose our lighting fixtures in as many locations as we could (so that took some time). They took this mess:

and made this:

They did really well interpreting what we wanted from all of the notes, but we still had changes to make to the 2nd round of electrical plan drawings. (However, I don't have an electronic copy as the copier/scanner at work absolutely refused to cooperate).

Here is the kitchen to be (you can get the compass mapping on the proposed floor plan). It is almost 35 linear feet of cabinets, more if you count the upper cabinets above the range and the refrigerator. Yes, that is two dishwashers you see. My friend from Rice, Susie, put 2 dishwashers in her new home in Missouri City over a decade ago and has never regretted doing it. We can definitely see the value, so we're doing it, too.

East wall: Doorway on the left goes to the sitting area, doorway on the right goes to the dining room.

South and west walls:

Kitchen island and north wall, which looks out the big window to the pond and waterfall. To the left are the converging glass pocket doors to the study. This formerly dark kitchen should now be flooded with light!

We have all of the tile selected for the floors and bathrooms, and even most of the bathroom and lighting fixtures. There is still so much more to decide though! (And to think, once I'm finished with the old house, I still have to do this for the new house...although, we have been doing a lot of product selection for the two houses when we go out looking.)