Precision Cabinets & Trim Cabinet Quote

Okay here is the third and final kitchen cabinet quote.

Precision Cabinets
First some pretty pictures.

Here is the overview.

Looks like they got the layout right. But, they didn't do anything in the pantry nor did they recess the
fridge like we asked.

Fridge or South Wall

One thing that's different here than KraftMaid is that they can make the upper cabinets as tall as we want. Here they are 51" tall which is pretty much as exactly as tall as they could be with a 8' ceiling.

Breakfast Bar or West Wall

Sink or North Wall

Tall cabinets, decorative panels on the end looks good.

Stove or East Wall

Looks like they used the actual models for our stove/hood.
Another thing here that's different than the KraftMaid order is that they could put a cabinet over the hood where KraftMaid could not. Now, with a 10" duct running through the upper cabinet there won't be a huge amount of room but hey, its more useful than a blanked panel isn't it?

What's Their Quality Like?
Hard to tell. My questions in blue and their answers in black underline.

I need to know the exact construction details of your cabinets.

How thick is the face frame and what joinery technique is used? Face Frames are 3/4” solid wood, and Glued & pocket screwed together. This is basically the same as kraftmaid.

What are the materials and thickness of wood used in the drawer boxes? Our Wood Boxes are 1/2”, your bid is Dovetail, which is 5/8” Same as KraftMaid.

What is the joinery technique for drawer sides? Wood are Nailed & Glued Butt Joints with Groove bottom.

How thick is the drawer bottom and how is it attached to the drawers. 1/4” and sits in groove. How does this get strong enough to support heavy pots?

What is the grade and thickness of the plywood used for the cabinet carcasses? 3/4” thick Combi Core Imported Plywood, any Veneers are “A” grade on particle board core.

What is the joinery technique used for the carcasses? Nailed Butt joints with applied back. This
is not a quality long term construction method.

Finally, where do you source your wood from? We use two primary local distributors, Aura Hardwoods in San Jose, and Hardwoods in Livermore.  They get it from the mills (Washington, Oregon) etc…

Is it sustainably sourced? Yes

What's It Going To Cost?
Not as much as I thought!
$14162 including delivery and installation!?!?!?!? Dang that seems pretty good doesn't it!
A couple of things were left out of the original quote and I'm expecting them to add ~$500 to the cost.

Next Up
How do I compare all three, in a meaningful way, to pick a winner?
There are definite quality differences and DEFINITE price differences....what makes sense?
Anyone?....Anyone..??? Beullar?.....Beullar???

Stupid Freaking Kitchen Cabinets.....

Holy Fricken Moly....

Wow, if you REALLY want to screw with the next owner of your house take the door off the kitchen sink cabinet, the one with the cabinet info, with you when you leave...

Turns out it is NEARLY im-freaking-possible to find out where your cabinets came from.

No Identifying Marks

I've been over every inch of the cabinets looking for a manufacturers mark. I've looked inside all the cabinets, the drawers, the tops of the cabinets...nothing...Arrrrrrrrrrrgh!

The Search For Matching Cabinets

As a commenter suggested I also thought that the cabinets MUST be from one of the local Chinese cabinet shops.

I set out one morning recently (carrying one of the cabinet doors with me) heading to the biggest and well known cabinet shop Sincere Plumbing. This is probably the biggest and nicest shop in the area. I was sure that this is where the PO got the cabinets, this was going to be a quick trip where I could get the replacement cabinets I needed no muss, no fuss.... No joy, they have a ton of cabinets but no one there could remember then ever carrying a style or color exactly like what I have.

Craaaaaaap!

Next I headed out to Granite Expo, a place similar to Sincere in style. There they did not have the cabinet style or color...dang...

That exhausted my knowledge of 'nice' Chinese cabinet shops...

Since they are across the street from each other I stopped into the Home Despot to see if I could find a match...Checked out the in stock cabinets...no joy. I actually got a kitchen cabinet specialist to help me. Schockingly enough she was helpful and knowledgeable. Home Despot did not carry the exact door design in any of their lines nor did they have a color that was a match. Kraftmaid cabinets has a color called cranberry that was close...

Right down the street from Home Despot is a cabinet place (I think its called AAA Cabinet or something like that that works out of a warehouse with a hand lettered sign they set out...what the heck, might as well try them.... No joy, no color that was close and no door style that matched exactly.

I headed off to a place in East Oakland next. This place only had a couple of different styles and again no joy...

I stopped at two other places in East Oakland that appeared to be selling cabinets...no sign, nothing written in English, stores in weird back alleys....shady....no joy...

To the InterWebs! After doing a search it looked like Lowe's in stock cabinets in a color called Merlot might be an exact match! Either that it looked like one of the lines they carried (that home despot doesn't might be a match) I was stoked, it made sense that the PO would of used an in stock cabinet. The PO seemed to of bought just about everything in the house from Home Despot...

Combining a run out to Harbor Fright I stopped at a Lowe's....no joy on the in stock cabinet..not raised panels and the color was not exactly right.

After MUCH waiting I got a Lowe's kitchen specialist to take a look a the door I'd been carrying around. No joy either! They had a finish in their Diamond Reflections line that was close but not exactly correct... But they had no matching door style. Online it looked like the Halston door in their Burgundy finish was a complete match... No joy.

Arrrrrgh! I think I've blown through all my easy options...I would of sworn the PO would not of paid real money to have a real cabinet shop make him cabinets...but what other choice is there?

What I Learned About Chinese Cabinet Shops

They all seem to carry the same stuff pretty much. Like there is one or two factories churning out the stuff.

Unless you speak fluent Chinese and love to haggle stick to the two bigger shops that actually have the prices for cabinets listed.

Everyone tells you that the doors are made out of Maple!

The hinges are bad copies of quality units...the hinges look like they won't last very long.

Cabinet quality was somewhere between in stock at one of the big box stores and semi-custom cabinets ordered from the same big box store.

They don't make right angle corner wall cabinets!! None of em! They just make the angled corner cabinet.
They only come in 36" high versions.

If I could be convinced that they wouldn't sell destruct they are probably a good value.

LIMITED choice of options in cabinet types.

Help Me Find My Cabinets!

I think what I'm left to do now is to go around to every single cabinet shop in the area and show them the door and say, 'does this look like something you make?'

There's got to be a better way! Somebody help me figure this out please! A super fabulous Chez Neumansky 3.0 themed prize to the person who comes through.

Look at this shot. The Chinese place don't seem to have options like the glass doors our the open shelves shown here.

 One thing that was throwing people off was the quality of the hinges used in the cabinets. The hinges are Ferrari Brand (made in Italy). Which is apparently much nicer than any of the hinges you'd get at one of the Chinese cabinet shops.

 But seriously, if these are semi-custom cabinets why in gods name would the PO of used these dead end cabinets?

 The color is another thing throwing people off. Its really, uh, wine colored..like the end of a cork after you pull it out of a bottle of Merlot or something.

Here is a close up of the door.

The doors are also heavier-denser than the doors of similar size that the Chinese cabinet shop folks kept saying was Maple.

Here's a close up of the door edge profile.

What seems to be throwing the most people is the edge profile of the door. Its got like a tapered edge that I have literally not seen ANYWHERE else so far....

If we can't figure this out then I don't know what else to do. We really want to put in the 6" wider stove...but we can't do that without replacing the base cabinet to the right and the two upper cabinets above the stove...

Dang, its not like we have to money to redo the kitchen now anyways....

Arrrrgh!

I'd really love any suggestions as to how to solve this mystery.

UPDATE:
One, I forgot to say that the cabinets are 42" tall...which means none of the big box in store cabinets or the Chinese cabinet shops will have a matching cabinet. They all top out at 36"

Two, I think Tish may be onto something.
Costco sells a brand of cabinets called 'All Wood Cabinetry' that is looking promising.
They sell them in 42" heights they have a style that looks like its the same.
But not a color....maybe I have a discontinued color?
I sent them an email with a link to this post begging them to take a look...hopefully they will and I will get some good news!

UPDATE 8-16-11:
Daaaaang, just heard back from the costco cabinets people and they say nope, cabinets aren't ours!

Remodeling Renderings.

All the posts lately have been pretty word-tastic so I thought I'd do post with lots of pictures!
These are pictures I dug up from the cd-rom Winans Construction gave us. For some idiotic reason they were saved as .bmp files? Who the heck uses that file format for digital images anymore? I had to convert them all to a more sensible and much smaller .jpg.

The Outside of the House

Here's a back view or the south view of the house. Dig those two tiny looking windows way up high. I really like the stained glass transom over our little french doors to our new deck! I like how they even pulled off a reasonable facsimile of our sunken patio. You can just see the new dormer on the upper left corner.

South view from a slightly different angle. You can see the new stairs coming down. One thing I'm not convinced about is the placement of these new stairs. They start way farther in than our current stairs and take up a large chunk of our new deck.

Top view of the house. You can see both new dormers and the skylights on the far side. you can also see how much of our deck the stairs take up. That deck space there next to the stairs is like 4' deep. I guess that's big enough to be useful for something? I like how the new windows in the kitchen line up with the existing windows on the bottom floor and how the windows in the closets line up with those.

This 3/4 front view shows that the new windows and dormer on the back of the house are not so intrusive right? They look like they've always been there right?

Other side of the house 3/4 view. All the windows here are original in this weird mish-mash pattern. The two small windows on the top floor are new and in Tasha's bathroom. They certainly don't throw off the symmetry of this side of the house. Man this side of the house is ugly. Guess I'm glad that in real life this view is impossible as its blocked by fences, and garages.

The Master Bedroom

Here's a shot of the master bedroom. The doors on either side of the bed are pocket doors leading into the his and hers closets which are housed inside one of the new dormers.

The other side of the master bedroom in the new dormer. This shows our super cool built for two window bench seat with storage and storage cabinets on either side. In the afternoons sun will flood this area and it'll be a great place to while away a few minutes reading with the family. The door on the left that you can just barely see is the door to the master bath.

The Master Bath

This is a weird shot of what it would look like if you were standing in the shower looking out at the rest of the bathroom. You can see the tiny windows with the big trim which I think is super silly, and Irene's claw foot tub.

This is the view from the tub looking back at the bathroom. In this final version the steam shower is a bit smaller but the toilet is moved over behind it so its out of the way.

Laundry Area

This is a shot of the landing-laundry room at the top of the stairs. This shows the two new skylights we want to add to this area plus the washer and dryer. Right now theres a door at the top of the stairs and a wall about where the back of the washer is. Its very closed off and we hope that by opening this up we will be able to get bigger furniture up the stairs.

The Kitchen

Ahh, our lovely, lovely, kitchen....man did we pour our heart and souls into making this the super best-est kitchen ever...

This is the view from the french doors looking back at the dining nook. Look how high the windows are...I wonder if they're even be room to put them that High in reality...they're gonna need headers under them. I hope the designer took that into account... love the tin ceiling and the crown.

View from the dining nook looking back at the kitchen. That's a lot of cabinets. We just dug-up an old estimate for a cabinet place we found to make and install all the cabinets you see here plus a couple you can't see....guess how much it was? $28,000!! Actually a darn good price as it includes the custom dining area storage benches.

View from the prep sink looking back. Like all those windows along the south wall and the stained glass transom over the french doors. Also like how all the windows line up. Not sure about using the tin ceiling as a back-splash behind the stove..might be a royal pita to clean.

View from the doorway looking in. Look at all those windows! We're not going to need any lighting in the mornings. We also better make sure that there's something interesting to look at. Look how the back of the bench seat becomes the back-splash for the sink!

Tasha's Room

Here's a view from the bed looking back at the room. The doors on the left are (from the left) closet, room, bathroom. You can also see her desk-study area at the window and her built-in bookcases. Love the funky roof lines don't you?

Another view showing Tasha's bed and her built-in dresser.

Love this view as it shows Tasha's own person reading nook. Love how the designer couldn't get the wainscoting to follow the correct path.

Tasha's Bathroom

Not very exciting but the bath does fit everything our daughter will need. Though I think that the shower-tub controls are going to have to be swapped to the other side as the pocket door is supposed to slide into that wall...kinda hard to do when the wall is full of plumbing? Or I guess we could make that wall super thick?

View from the shower. Not a lot of space here but it meets code requirements.

That's it for now. We're still trying to get Winans Construction to uphold the contract we signed with them....but it's not looking good.

We're still trying to decide between two different contractors to actually do this build.

Trying to decide where the money is going to come from... ;)

General Contractor Run-Down

And I don't mean, as in run em down with my car cause I'm so damn annoyed with em!

Over the past couple of weeks I've been emailing general contractors in the area that I have positive reviews on the Berkeley Parents Network.

I basically sent them all the same letter with a PDF copy of the plan set attached. The letter is copied below.

Hello,
Got your contact info from the Berkeley Parents Network.
We have just finished the design phase of a house remodel consisting of remodeling the top floor of our Victorian into a master suite, laundry room, and guest bedroom with bath, and a kitchen remodel.

I’ve included a PDF version of the permit docs for your perusal. I’d appreciate it if you could take a look at them and then let me know if this would be the kind of project you are interested in doing.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,
Daniel Neumansky

I sent that letter out to 10 different GC's three of which I knew from the first go-round where we decided on Winans Construction (much to our now dismay).

Here's a summary of the interactions I've had with these GC's who are attempting to get my business.

1. Fancy-pants green build firm #1: Actually I feel kinda bad about these guys as they are nice peeps and I sorta forgot how super high-end they are with high-end overhead... They actually printed out the plan set and thought about it and came over to the house to talk to me where-in within 5 minutes it was obvious to all of us that we couldn't afford them.

2. No-so-fancy-pants design build firm #2. This place advertises itself as a green-design-build firm. But.....after talking to them the only green building experience they have is sorting their dumpsters for recycling!!! Ha! Oh, and the design part of it....not so much, they have an architect they like to work with and recommend. I don't really see this as a design-build firm ya know? So, after two miss-leading marketing ploys I was not getting a good feeling about these people. Then, after they said they'd do up an estimate from the plans they emailed me back and said, 'Well no, we want $500 to do a detailed estimate!!!' WOW! business must be booming for these guys no? For the weasely marketing they get a big NO from us.

3. Slightly less fancy builder: This is the last person from the first go-round. I hit it off with this guy pretty well when he came to look at the house originally and we've been emailing since about radiant heating stuff. I sent him the plans 3 weeks ago and have not heard anything back... not encouraging.

These new guys below are from the pool of, 'We're a small shop where we do 90% of the work ourselves and have much smaller overhead.'

4. The Russian with the Gold Card: This guy showed up with-out printing out the set of plans for himself so I gave him a set from my own stash... He really didn't want to talk much kinda quickly ran through the house and was gone....he has a ton of good reviews so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Got his bid back in a couple of weeks and he was the lowest of the bunch ~$150,000!!!

Hurray!!!! I thought, we can afford to redo the house!!! But then I looked at his bid and noticed that he didn't include a lot of stuff and the stuff he did include was super cheap home-despot type of junk like 4" MDF baseboard!! Like that garbage would ever cross our threshold. If I was playing devils-advocate I could say that he was trying to artificially lower his bid to get the sale then screw me later on with change orders...this guy gets a big fat NO also.

5. Mr. Friendly: His sister lives down the street from us and he's done several remodels in Alameda already. He was nice and affable on the phone and listened to all the stuff I said during our walk through. He did bitch a little bit too much about how much he paid to get the plans printed out. He got screwed over by printing out the plans at kinko's (never ever go to kinko's to print out architectural drawings go to a real print shop it'll be like 1/4 the cost literally) and was hoping to pass the screw-ing off to me...

Mr. Friendly got back to me with a b.s. per square foot quote (which I told him I was not going to except no way no how) of $350,000....still better than the $550,000 Winans Construction was going to charge me. Cheaper is better for us of course but I had absolutely no confidence in his # because he barely spent any time coming up with it... for not listening to me and trying to pass off a b.s. bid as a real one this guy gets a big fat hells-NO.

6. The Pretty Boy: This guy had lots of positive recommendations and has done several remodels very similar to ours. He has a small crew where they do almost all the work themselves and they love to do cabinet work in house. He said that they could do all the cabinet work themselves instead of bringing in a cabinet sub. I like this idea as then he will be responsible for the whole she-bang. He printed out the plans himself, came over on time and listened to everything I had to say. We got along pretty well, I like his body of work. One thing that was kinda cheesy was that he tried to impress me about how he used to work on an HGTV show as 'the carpenter'. Which of course us being the veterans of two reality shows about us and our friends I was not super impressed... He got back to me relatively quickly with a reasonably detailed (but not enough) bid included all the cabinet work that he could understand from the plans (I've since found the cabinet schedule and sent it to him) of ~$279,000!!!

Okay, now we're talking! Looks like he took the time to do a 'real' bid and I have a much higher confidence in his number...but really, we were hoping that it would come in closer to $200,000. One really strange thing, is that his number is almost exactly what the remodeling cost vs value report says the average price for our job should be!?!?!?!? Weird huh? I never told him about the blog. Wonder if he found it and saw that number and made it work??? Hmmmmm....

7. The Tattooed Man: This guy if from a very young firm where they've never done anything as big as our job. They've done all the individual pieces of our job but never one-big-all-in-one thing like what we've got going on here. He does have plenty of experience doing jobs bigger than ours when he was working under another GC so he's got the experience. I have to admit this lack of experience is an issue for me...

He came over on time, took his shoes off, and had the plans printed out and marked up already with questions. I liked that he had actually spent time looking at the plans beforehand. We hit it off pretty well and I like the way he is thinking about doing it. It obvious to me that he is really thinking about the most intelligent way to do things.

He got back to me with a reasonably detailed quote of ~$297,000...higher than pretty boy's but within the same range.

Conclusion: We've decided that we've narrowed it down to Pretty Boy and The Tattooed Man. We like them both and think we could work with them both.

Our plan now is to check their references more thoroughly and go see their work for ourselves so we can see just how good they really are.

If they both check-out in that respect we plan to offer to pay them to write-up a super detailed broken out scope of work type bid so that we can compare apples to apples on their bids.

Right now Tattooed Man is higher but I can't be sure that he's not including more in his bid that Pretty Boy. My suspicion is that Tattooed Man might be including more roof framing in his bid.

So, that's where we're at, looks like we can get the house redone for slightly less than $300,000.

We'd greatly prefer to have that number be $200k but this looks like a fantasy we're going to have to let go of. Least its still not at $550k right?

One thing this process has really brought to the fore front is how bad the set of plans from Winans Construction are. They are so incomplete that there will be a fuzziness to the numbers until I get a real bid set of plans done....I'm feeling kinda bad about this as in a sense I've wasted these GC's time with plans that are less than ideal.

What Should Our Remodel Cost?

Remodeling magazine has a very famous report they do every year called 'Remodeling Magazines Cost vs. Value report' I am going to use the values from the report to get a ball park figure for our house remodel.

The report is pretty neat. They poll a ton of contractors, estimators, appraisers across the U.S. to get numbers for the costs of the 'standard' projects they track. To get the payback numbers they then poll a bunch of Realtors to arrive at a consensus view. To me it seems like the cost numbers are much more closely tied to reality vs the value numbers which seem more like a consensus of opinion.

Here's the main page of the interactive online report. You can click on your region and then if you're lucky you can click on a more specific region where you live to get numbers tied to your reality as closely as possible.

The San Francisco Bay area numbers can be found here. Its no surprise that the costs for our area are higher than the national average by a good amount.

The left most column is what the job costs and next is how much that job added to the resale value of the house. The third column is the most interesting in that its the % of cost recouped.

The SF Bay area info is most interesting and different from the national in that several jobs return more than they cost! The national average only shows that adding a steel front door returns more than it costs! San Francisco truly is a world onto its own.

The jobs that had a positive net return were (these are for the mid-range projects);

• 
  
  Attic Bedroom at 102.6%


• 
  
  Deck Addition at 104.2%


• 
  
  Window replacement (vinyl) 104.3%


• 
  
  Window replacement (wood) 104.5%


• 
  
  Minor Kitchen Remodel 112.2%


• 
  
  Entry door replacement 119.2%


• 
  
  Major Kitchen Remodel 100%

Hey that's looking really good for us as several of the above are projects that we plan on doing!

The only project that apparently will lose us money is the master suite addition which only returns 86.2%.

According to the descriptions the jobs that sync up most closely with our remodel plan are, Major kitchen remodel, attic bedroom, deck addition, master suite addition.

Attic bedroom: Cost = $65,829 Value= $67,531 Description: Convert unfinished attic space to a 15-by-15-foot bedroom and a 5-by-7-foot bathroom with shower. Include a 15-foot shed dormer, four new windows, and closet space under the eaves. Insulate and finish ceiling and walls. Carpet floor. Extend existing HVAC to new space; provide electrical wiring and lighting to code. Retain existing stairs, but add rail and baluster around stairwell.

Major Kitchen Remodel: Cost = $67,789 Value= $67,815 Description:Update an outmoded 200-square-foot kitchen with a functional layout of 30 linear feet of semi-custom wood cabinets, including a 3-by-5-foot island; laminate countertops; and standard double-tub stainless-steel sink with standard single-lever faucet. Include energy-efficient wall oven, cooktop, ventilation system, built-in microwave, dishwasher, garbage disposal, and custom lighting. Add new resilient flooring. Finish with painted walls, trim, and ceiling.

Deck Addition(wood): Cost= $13,642 Value=$14,196 Description: Add a 16-by-20-foot deck using pressure-treated joists supported by 4x4 posts anchored to concrete piers. Install pressure-treated deck boards in a simple linear pattern. Include a built-in bench and planter of the same decking material. Include stairs, assuming three steps to grade. Provide a complete railing system using pressure-treated wood posts, railings, and balusters.

Master Suite Addition: Cost= $132,443 Value= $114,104 Description: Add a 24-by-16-foot master bedroom suite over a crawlspace. Include walk-in closet/dressing area, whirlpool tub in ceramic tile platform, separate 3-by-4-foot ceramic tile shower, and double-bowl vanity with solid-surface countertop. Bedroom floor is carpet; bathroom floor is ceramic tile. Painted walls, ceiling, and trim. General and spot lighting, exhaust fan; electrical wiring to code.

The attic bedroom, major kitchen remodel, and deck addition are pretty much exactly what we are doing. The Master Suite addition is not as this entails building a new part of the house on its own foundation with its own new roof. We are just mostly using the space we already have but with the new dormers, and earthquake retro-fitting we have to do I feel its comparable.

Now for the total average costs of doing all these jobs here in the SF Bay area......drum roll please.....

Total Average Cost = $279703

Total Average Value = $263646

Net loss = $16,057

Not pocket change for sure but the above cost number is about half what we were quoted by Winans Construction. The above is an average and I used their mid-line numbers so there may be some wiggle room in that total but still...enough to double that number? I don't think so...

As a mostly DIY'er I can look at those cost & value numbers in a different way. If I can do those same jobs for significantly less than the value they add they should all pay back even more. If by doing some of the work ourselves we can get the master suite number below $100k we'll supposedly make money on all this when we sell the house! Ya right....

It is encouraging though to know that if you do the work yourself and do it decently well you can achieve a net payback when you sell...that is, if you believe these numbers...

Using the Upscale numbers where they exist (these projects really don't match ours if you read the descriptions as they are waaaay fancier than what we are doing) you get a total of...

Upscale Total = $507876

Still less than the cost we were quoted...for work that is fancier than what we've spec'd.

Looks like we are going to be shopping the plans out to some construction firms with less overhead than what we've been dealing with.

One Step Forward 2 Steps Back.

We haven't talked much lately about our dealings with the design-build firm we hired Winans Construction. That's because there really hasn't been that much to tell. They were supposed to deliver to us the final parts of our contract the week after Thanksgiving..... They showed up on our door the week after new years.... Anyone noticing a pattern here? They set this deadline and they blew right through it without as much as a 'by your leave.'

Irene and I had a chance to look over the plans they dropped off and we found numerous issues...here's a copy of the email I sent our project manager.

Hello xxx,
We’ve had time to look thru the plan set in detail and have some issues with what we are seeing and a couple of things that we don’t understand.

Plan Set Issues we have noticed so far.

1. Engineers plan is not what we decided on still shows new footing in radiant heated areas.

2.Concerned that showing the proposed deck at the back of the house will be an issue-confuse the planning and building dept people.

3.The plan shows the proposed rear deck starting 2’ in from the side of the house; we need it to start at the edge of the house and use the 2 existing columns.

4.Concerned Engineers drawings will be too light for city to accept. I have been chastised in the past for drawings where they thought the lines were too thin-too hard to read.

5.The engineer’s wet stamp is not included in price? How can his stamp not be included in the price? We do not understand this.

6.Your note says that we have 2 copies of the planning plan set and 3 copies of the building permit plan set. What I see is 5 copies of the building permit plan set. It is our understanding that the planning set should be different from the building permit plan set. I believe that the planning set needs to show such things as all exterior views before and after, and not show interior detail, the planning set might also require photographs of the exterior views of the house and the neighboring properties?

7.It looks to me like all the plans need to be ‘cleaned up’ there are spurious dimension lines, and dimensions, on the 2nd floor demo plan, the 1st floor construction plan, 2nd floor construction plan (G), and (H) is misnamed 2nd floor construction plan when it should be 2nd floor electrical plan. I mention this as I believe that these are the kinds of things that will get it kicked out of plan check in a hurry.

I’m sure that you are eager to bring this matter to a close, as are we, but these issues will need to be addressed to our satisfaction before we sign off on the project and send you the final check.

Respectfully,

I sent this Sunday night and have not yet heard back from anyone at Winnans. I think what chaps my hide the most is they are trying to get us to pay EXTRA for the engineers wet stamp. The plans are useless without it and there is no way that it shouldn't of been included in the original price.

What I'm afraid of is, Winnans uses the design services as a loss leader and then makes their margin on the construction side. They've realized by now that they are not going to get any construction money out of us and are trying to do as little additional work as possible to close out our contract...we of course will not pay until they complete their end of the agreement to our satisfaction. We've held back $2500 out of the $8500 total which I thought would be enough to get them hopping to finish this but apparently not...live and learn next time we'll hold back more.

They were also supposed to give us electronic versions of the files and Chief Architect X1 native versions of the files which they have done.

Our plan now is to shop out the permit ready plan set to several other builders to get quotes to see if the $500k+ figure we got from Winnans is waaay off the mark. If it turns out that all the quality builders we contact come in around the same price then we will move on to phase two.

We'll then have to act as GC's and shop out the 'shelling' of the house option to quality builders-framing crews. If the cost of this option is still way insane we will move onto phase three.

Phase three is paying Winnans Construction designer to adjust our plans for a much cheaper remodel where we don't alter the roof at all or the windows in the kitchen. Then we go back to the quality contractors we've already identified and get a consensus view on what it will cost to have them do the entire thing themselves versus us acting as GC's and doing some of the work ourselves.

Then we decide what its worth to us and which route we'll take. One thing I can safely say is that we will never take the $500k+ route...unless we hit the lottery big time that is.

Wow, no pictures!

Kitchen Design Ideas part 6 million

Okay so our post asking for design help ideas went over like a lead balloon
We wanted to share with y'all where we are with the kitchen remodel ideas.
We've talked to several designers, a design-builder and we've got several more in the chamber ready to be interviewed.


Here's the exact existing layout of the room which will be our kitchen.
Now with dimensions!!! The big giant windows are great for morning light but they are a pain to plan around! That and the window on the south wall is to dang close to the corner.

Here's our best attempt so far at a realistic remodel. The whole bump-out idea from earlier was kinda quashed by reality....We managed to get a little bit more space in the kitchen by squeezing down the chimney chase by 6" and removing half of it. Now its an AV cabinet and a small chase to run wires to the top floor. This also freed up enough space for us to put a corner china cabinet in the spot. Now we have somewhere to put our fancy wedding china and glasses...if we can find them Notice also that the wall between the bedroom and kitchen has been pushed into the bedroom 21". By moving the walls we gained 30 sq ft not fabulous but not horrible either. It makes the bedroom smaller but we think still quite livable with the 10' ceilings. We still plan on recessing the fridge into the wall so that its flush with the counters. Along the back wall we also moved the existing window away from the wall to allow for a corner wall cabinet. We did a mirror image window and cabinet on this same wall. Now the stove is flanked by windows with a view to the backyard.









Here's a shot looking into the room from standing in front of the stove. You can see the china hutch in the newly made corner. That weird pattern on the ceiling is my attempt to make it look like a tin ceiling with my cheap-o home design program. Lots of counter and cabinet space here.









Here's the view from the sink looking to the left. Not sure about the glass door into the sunporch its just a thought. It is a 'sunporch' and we might want to let light in from that direction. This also shows the new window we added to match the existing window on this wall.











Here's the view from the table looking at the fridge side of the room. In this version the fridge and pantry cabs run all the way to the ceiling while the rest are just standard cabinets. One odd thing about this layout is the door to the bedroom is more in the kitchen than it was before.









Here's the view looking towards the sink and stove. Notice we brought the window away from the wall 2' and lowered it so that we can see out of it more easily.






Well that's it for now. We hope to be able to find a capable designer to see if they can come up with a better solution. Some questions we still have are;

1. How much cabinet and counter space do we really need? Should all the wall cabinets go all the way to the ceiling to maximize storage?
2. What the best place for the main sink and can we fit a prep sink in there somewhere? Do we even need a prep sink?

Help! We need design help!

We are realizing that he have to step up our time table for remodeling-restoring our house. We can't afford to have it go on for-ever. The first step in having a project not go on forever is of course to have a well thought out overall plan......we don't have one of those yet really...so we could use a lot of help. Please see the illustrations and notes below.

If we use one of your ideas you will receive a super-fabulous Chez Neumansky themed prize!

Here's the first floor of our house. We have to call it 'unit A' cause the city considers the house a tri-plex with each level being a separate unit. So, the bottom floor is Unit A the middle floor is Unit B and the top floor is Unit C.

<- Here's the bottom floor. This is the floor we just reconfigured when we re-did the foundation. This floor is pretty set in stone at this point but we are open for ideas on how to get an interior stair up to the 2nd level. This pic shows a spiral stair in the laundry area but we are not married to that idea, that's just the best idea we could come up with...

<-Here's the middle floor of the house. Here we need major help in the kitchen area. We need to figure out how to fit everything in there. We need it to be an eat-in kitchen also and fit a 5'by3' table. We are not against moving-changing windows-walls-doors to make the kitchen work.

We also need to figure out how to get a stair down to the bottom level with out totally screwing up the flow and original character of the house. The kitchen and sun porch have already been stripped of any original details, those rooms can be changed the most. The Front two rooms and bedroom are original and we are loath to mess with them too much.

<- Here's the top floor of the house. Remember we gutted this floor in the de-stankification of the house. This shows our proposed idea for a bathroom but we are open to new ideas.

Basically, we want the top floor to function as our 'master bedroom retreat' (man I sound like I am trying to sell a house in Danville). To us that means a bedroom, an office-den, a bathroom and lots of storage.

Irene does not like the set-up shown above because when one person gets up way earlier than the other they have to walk over to the closet area, then walk back over across the bedroom to get to the bathroom. She thinks that it will be impossible to not piss off the person still trying to sleep....since that person is usually me she might be right....

So that's it we would appreciate any useful suggestions that y'all have. If you are really interested I have pdfs of the floors above also but I can't figure out how to put them on the blog for downloading? If you would like the pdf versions please send me an email and I'll mail 'em right out to ya.

Update on Kitchen Bump Out Idea

Just got back from the planning dept and running the kitchen bump-out idea past them. Surprise, surprise they didn't totally stomp all over it. They did say I could maximize my chances of getting it approved if I matched the outline of the existing bump-out (big shocker there). They also said that because its on a second floor that that will automatically trigger another major design review!!!! Yay!!!!! That means another ridiculous round of ridiculousness!!! And fee's!!!! Lots more fee's!! We are not planning on doing this anytime soon really I just wanted to get a feel from the city if I had an ice cubes chance in heck with the idea or not.

Here's the kicker, since our house is considered by the city to have significant historical value they are going to get the Alameda Architectural Preservation societies input into the project! That's going to suck....those guys are very, very particular about any changes being made to the Victorians of the island. I got the presidents name and number so I think I'll give him a call and see if I can sweet talk him into coming out to look at the house and giving me his input.

Another reason why I went down there was to put my contractors name on the permit as the GC. For some reason I thought it was required but the permit tech said it was not. I'm torn about this I don't want to be the GC as I believe that would make me responsible for everything that goes wrong. I'm paying Alameda Structural for that, I want them to be the GC and handle all this stuff. Is that crazy? Am I wrong about that?
Anywho, couldn't do it anyways as the contractor needs to be there to sign the forms.

Another Crazy Kitchen Idea

I want a bigger kitchen!!

Well, not a humongous ridiculous palace type thing but it would be nice to have just a little more space for the dining table than we have now...

Here's the crazy idea I came up with today. What if we do a little bump-out in the kitchen as a dining nook? Then the table is out of the way and we have some elbow room in there. I think its a great idea but who knows if I can swing it by the Alameda planning dept...The nook would have a dropped ceiling of 8' compared to the kitchens 10' ceilings. I would be reusing the original windows in basically their original spots just pushed out 4'. I also don't lose any cabinet space over the original plan.

Here's an idea of what the nook would look like from the inside. This 'shot' was taken from the doorway from the kitchen. I like the way the cabinets flank the opening making the nook seem deeper than it is.

Here's a straight on shot of the nook. In this version its 4' deep. That's 1' deeper than the existing bump out in the family room. I don't have much hope that they will agree to that but maybe they'll offer 3' as a compromise?

Here's a bad rendering of how it might look from the outside. I like the added windows in the short sides also. Should make for a lot of light in the kitchen.

Can't figure out how to do the seperate roof over the bump out stupid 30 buck program!

Does it look too weird being a rectangular bump out next to an angled wall bump out? I can't figure out how to do a roof over the bump out but the idea is that it would be a low slope roof with a bit of a swoop to it to match the roofs on the existing dormers.

Here's what the outside of the house looks like now. We should be okay on setback because we have 9' on this side with a 5' setback so if I went out 4' I would be just at the setback.

One thing that worries me is the door and windows right underneath the proposed bump out area. They really didn't do headers back then.

This is a shot of the framing and header in the bump out area. The joists are full 2by 10's with a 10' span and they sit fully on the 4by6 top plate-thats a lot of bearing. I'm hoping that I can just bolt-glue some new 2by10s to these existing to do the 4' cantelever... I'm told that's a huge amount of over hang but I was planning on having an engineer do the actual calcs anyways. Maybe I can get away with a 3' cantelever if I use lvl's or something....

Here's the short engineering plan. Since we are doing a dropped ceiling in the nook we can use a beam and posts to span the opening with the load carried right thru to the foundation. Then sister on 2by10 somethings to get the required stiffness at 4' cantelever. This idea is kinda cool cause Irene and I can do everything ourselves, sistering the joists, building the walls, installing the windows, building the mini-roof. See this plan does not entail messing with the foundation or the existing roof!

Check out this cool hawk that was sitting on top of the telephone pole out front!!! I think it must of figured out that my neighbor has about 10 billion little tiny tasty birdies in their backyard (they have a ton of feeders and go thru like 10 pounds of feed a month)

Maybe for shits and giggles I'll run this plan by the planning-zoning desk next week just to see what kind of reaction I get.

Big Red Done Stamp on the Master Bath Design!!!

If anybody reading this gets the reference in the title you are super cool!!!
Its not like we are going to be able to actually start on the master bath anytime soon but we've come to a decision on how we are going to do it at least. We are going to have lots of tile. A good friend of ours is working at a tile shop and we can get his discount which is getting the tiles at cost which is like half off retail!! Woo-hoo we can afford tumbled marble or some such extravagant thing...


Here's are neat little plan view of the bathroom with the dimensions.
We are going to get rid of the middle window and stick the vanity-mirror thing there.
I figured out how to do a kooky birdseye rendered view so you can get an idea how its going to look. I have no idea what the color scheme is actually going to be I'm just goofing around here.
Here's the view from the steam shower out. Yep the steam shower is going to be pretty big. Big enough for at least 3...yay party in the steam shower!!! The benches will be great for lying on and taking a steam.

Here's the view from the tub looking back into the room. yep lots of tile....

So that's our final draft of the master bath, please let us know what you think we do consider all opinions when we are designing this stuff.