So much dust!

Every time I go over to the house, there's more wall missing!  And that's a good thing!  They've now got the entire section of brick wall exposed and have started the laborious task of cleaning the wall.  Underneath the sheetrock is a layer of plaster, and under that is a layer of a tar-like substance.  The sheetrock comes right off, and the plaster chips off easily enough, but the tar is much more difficult.  They'll need to either sandblast it off, or one by one work on each brick.  Either way, it's not a simple task.  We were hoping that there wouldn't be any tar, because not all houses have it, but we weren't quite that lucky.  It's not unexpected, just makes the task a little bit tougher.

All of these things, though, create a ton of dust!  Construction normally makes dust anyway, but cleaning the brick wall exacerbates that.  Taking sheetrock down is a dusty task anyway, but then breaking off the plaster is even worse.  Opening the door this morning, the entire house was hazy, and there was dust on everything!  The workers have made efforts to minimize that, but there's only so much you can do.  They closed doors to rooms, but the dust still found it's way in and coated the floor, and everything just had this white layer on it.  And if we have to start sandblasting, that's gonna increase the dust levels tenfold!

In addition to exposing the brick wall, they've taken down the small wall between the kitchen and front rooms.  It wasn't a big change, but it makes a huge difference in the feel of the house.  Previously, there was a door from the front two rooms to the kitchen, but I never really see any reason to close off the kitchen, so I had the entire 5 ft wide wall removed to open things up a bit.  It just makes the whole house feel a little more open, which is great!

Now, without further ado, more pictures!

The dust was obvious before even walking in the front door!

Every glass surface in the house is coated in dust

The exposed brick wall going up the stairs.  It's going to look really nice when all cleaned up!

Looking into the front of the house from the kitchen, through the newly removed dividing wall!  Feels so much more open!

Every floor in the house is covered in dust, and there are footprints everywhere

The dust has a way of getting everywhere, even behind closed doors!

I think one of my contractors is an aspiring artist!  :-)

And what of all those cabinets from the kitchen?  Well there's now a room full of cabinets in the basement, because they're going to be reused for the bar downstairs after I move in!

Remembering fall

When I moved to Atlanta, I adamantly insisted that I would never acclimate to the weather.  I made sure to go home in the winter to remind myself what winter actually was, and overall, I did a pretty good job of never needing a winter coat the instant it dropped below 60!  But all that effort was focused on winter, and I'm realizing that I forgot all about fall...

See, Atlanta really has three seasons.  The year starts with "winter", in which the temperature varies between about 30 and 50 with the occasional brief flurry and usually one dip into the 20s and one real snow fall (which inevitably shuts down the city).  In late February, "winter" gives way to spring, when it warms up and everything turns green.  Spring in Atlanta is usually pretty beautiful, lots of mice warm weather and sun.  But by late May or early June, spring ends and summer arrives, bringing hotter weather and lots of thunderstorms.  I always enjoyed summer, but it did tend to get very hot and humid in July, August, and September.  Thankfully, by October, summer would start to wind down, and usually in the second half of October, the trees would change color from green to a dirty brown, and about a week later, a good rainfall would knock all the leaves off, leaving the trees looking fairly dead and announcing the return of "winter".  So really there's spring, summer, and "winter", with fall being either the last week or two of summer of the first week or two of winter.

But now, after moving to DC, I'm fondly remembering what the season of fall is like, and at the same time realizing just how much I'd forgotten it.  I was a little taken aback when, in mid September, the first cool week of fall caught me by surprise.  I had done a good job of remembering what winter really was, but didn't really think about the fact that it's not supposed to stay in the 70's until October...  So now, I'm remembering fall, and begrudgingly accepting that I needed to retire my flip flops several months earlier than I'm used!

But overall, I've thoroughly enjoyed the bright colors all over the area.  Atlanta's fairly proud of being a very green city, with lots of trees (going so far as to call itself the "City in a Forest"), but as far as urban greenery goes, DC has an amazing amount of plant life.  So in the fall, the streets are ablaze with oranges and reds.  It's honestly one of the reasons I used to love fall so much growing up, because everything is so bright and colorful, so it's refreshing to see that again.

Brick by brick!

So the builders have been at it for 3 days, and already the kitchen looks totally different!  The cabinets have been completely pulled out, the appliances have all been disconnected, and they've started pulling the sheetrock off the left wall to expose the brick!  It's a small step, but it's in the right direction.  And I was able to talk to the contractor, and we're working out solutions to the issues with the deck so we can get started on the outside work, too.  All-in-all, it feels like things are finally starting to get rolling, and I might have a house to live in before too long after all!

Cabinets, counters, appliances, sink, etc., all gone!

The kitchen portion of the exposed brick!

Close up of the newly exposed brick.  Needs a little cleaning!

It has begun!

Come, walk right in!  It's an exciting time to be here, because, guess what...  We've finally started!  The issues with the permits are still continuing, but we've been able split things out a bit and figure out what work we can go ahead and get started on in the mean time.  So the contractor has started disassembling the kitchen, pulling up the floors that will be replaced, and stripping plaster and sheetrock off the brick wall that will be exposed.  It's a small step, but at last it's a step in the right direction!

The kitchen, sans cabinets!

Even the neighbors were curious to see what was going on!  :-)

There's always something...

This post isn't really going to provide much in the way of updates, because as one issue gets resolved, another one pops up!  A week an a half ago, I found out that the permits for the house couldn't go through because the garage has corrugated metal roofing and siding that is old and rusted, but that the city views as a historic material.  It's not actually historic in any way, shape, or form, but the city says it must be preserved.  As a result, we decided to break the work into two phases, so that we can get started on the rest of the house while we figure out what to do with the garage.

Surprise, surprise, however, there's something else!  It seems that the existing deck is not in compliance with the city codes regarding how much of the lot can be covered with structure and how close it can be built to the property lines.  So while I expected that we'd be able to work out the permit details and get started last week, this didn't happen.  So now, looks like the deck and garage will both be the second phase.  I've been talking to both the builder and the architect a lot over the past few days to come up with a new plan.  Hopefully we can get the rest of the work started soon while we figure out what we can do about the deck...

Time...

Lots of people have been asking how the house is going lately!  Until today, I hadn't posted anything on the blog in over a month...  And at that, the post that I just put up was actually written a couple weeks ago, and all I did today was finish it up!  In reality, not much has happened in the past month, which has been supremely frustrating!  And since I generally try to keep things positive, that basically meant I just didn't write anything.  But basically, what I've learned is that nothing is simple when it comes to construction!

From the beginning, I expected this to be a long process, but not quite this long.  I moved to DC in December, figured I'd start looking at houses in early spring, and hopefully buy one by the end of spring.  That gave me a month after buying to figure out contractors and details, hopefully start construction in mid August, be done by the end of September, and move in by November 1st, when my lease expires!  Boy was that an optimistic schedule!

I met the first part pretty well, I started looking at houses in time to close by early June.  That's when things took longer than planned.  I pretty well had the kitchen and bathroom figured out by the end of July, which was part of the plan, but since it turned out there were so many other things to do, too, there were still a ton of decisions to make...  Then, meeting with contractors took twice as long as I expected!  About 2 months worth of scheduling and meeting and waiting for quotes.  By the time I finally got all the quotes and picked my favorite contractor, my cabinets and appliances had already arrived!

Once I finally worked out the contractor details, we had to draft actual plans.  I expected that to be a quick process, because it's an existing house, and I knew exactly what I wanted.  Ended up taking about a month to figure out the plans once I finally met with the architect.  The next step, submitting the permit, got even more complicated...  Apparently, the permit office's historical review board felt that the rusty, dented corrugated metal on the garage was historic and needs to be preserved!  I'm not sure I fully understand why, but that's holding this up a bit.  Until we can work that out, we're splitting the garage and house into two jobs, so that we can at least get started on the house  So now, about the time when I originally expected that I'd be just finishing up moving in, we've finally submitted the application to get the building permit!  Thankfully, my landlord let me extend my lease several months...

Perhaps a brief timeline of events up to this point would help:

• December - I moved to DC, found a place to rent in Silver Spring until I could figure out further details
• February - Finally sold my place in Atlanta after about 5 months on the market
• March - Met with my realtor in DC to start looking at houses
• Early April - Found a house I liked, made an offer, got outbid by a lot!
• Early May - Found another house I liked, which needed a bit of work, made an offer
• Mid May - After some negotiating, came to a deal, signed the contract
• Early June - Closed on the house!
• Late June - Started meeting with potential contractors at the house to get quotes on what I wanted to do
• July - Spent every weekend at kitchen and bath showrooms to try and pick cabinets, tile, granite, fixtures, appliances, etc.!
• July - Continued meeting contractors to get quotes
• Early August - Ordered cabinets, since they take up to 8 weeks to arrive, ordered appliances too, figured out pricing on the tile, granite, and fixtures to be ordered later
• August - Still meeting with contractors to get quotes, trying to get quotes from the ones I'd already met with!
• Late August - Finally picked a contractor
• Very Early September - Cabinets arrived!  Took 4 weeks, instead of 8, and I hadn't even met with the contractor to plan the work!
• Early September - Worked out details with the contractor, who put me in touch with the architect.
• Late September - Multiple meetings with the arcitect
• Early October - Got the first draft of the plans
• Mid October - Finalized the plans
• Late October - Working on getting permits

So now, it's just a matter of waiting for the permit for the house to come through, hopefully by the end of the week, and then we can start work next week!  We'll see how the permit for the garage pans out.  The contractor told me it would take about 2 months to do the work, so hopefully by the start of the new year, it'll be ready for me to move in!

So many decisions...!

There’s a lot that goes into a house…  Growing up I remember a lot of what my parents went through building our house, but it’s hard to really appreciate it all as a kid.  I started the process of trying to figure out what this house will look like when it’s done back before I even closed on it.  I first found the house back in April, and the whole real estate process to get to the closing took somewhere around two months to go through.  Through that whole time, I formed a pretty good idea of what I wanted the house to look for.  From the homes I looked at, it was obvious that having a master bathroom drastically boosted the sales price, and I knew I wanted to do the kitchen.  And during the process of looking at houses, I saw quite a few that had exposed and refinished one of the brick walls as an accent, and it looks very cool, so that was added to my list.  My list grew a bit longer when the inspector revealed the water damage to the back of the house, which requires replacing the siding and deck.  And then there’s the fireplace that I’d gotten used to having in Atlanta, and since I used it regularly in Atlanta, I’d definitely miss it in DC’s much more wintery winter!  And originally, the backyard was a project for the future, but turns out it’ll be cheaper and just a better idea to go ahead and do it now.

Render of what the new backyard will look like when it's done.  I wasn't going to do the backyard until later, but the current jungle of a yard needs be torn up anyway, so it just makes more sense to do it now.

So there are a lot of things to do!  And what I didn’t really appreciate at the start of it all is just how many decisions need to be made for each and every item on the list!  Take the kitchen…  There are cabinets to choose, which requires picking a cabinet vendor, color, style, finish, and layout!  There are way too many options for all of them, and I think in all it took about 4-5 weeks to come to any sort of consensus on the first four, and another two weeks to figure out the layout.  And then it takes 4-8 weeks for them to arrive.  And of course, the cabinets have to go with the tile, the counter, and the backsplash!  There was another two weeks of visiting tile and granite showrooms to get an idea on that.  Oh, and don’t forget the appliances and sink with fixtures…  I actually still haven’t decided on a sink or faucet, but that’s probably the only unknown in the kitchen, yet.

Chosen kitchen cabinet design with the current front runners in tile and granite

Cabinets come in gigantic boxes!!!

A room full of cabinets waiting to be installed in the kitchen...

Now the kitchen was actually fairly simple compared to the bathrooms.  The kitchen was pre-existing, and I’m just updating it.  The bathrooms, however, are not!  There is one bathroom, which is being torn out completely, and replaced with two new ones.  So in addition to figuring out layout, tiles, backsplash, fixtures, and cabinets, there’s also the floor plan to decide on!  And in drawing up a floor plan, there’s building codes to consider…  Turns out you need almost 3’ of space for a toilet that’s only about 18” wide…  Who knew?  But finally, after 3 or 4 totally different floor plans, all the tiles for the master bath are chosen and most of the other details are figured out, too.
But you know what’s hardest about all of this?  Picking colors!  I generally am not too picky about colors.  I had an idea that I wanted dark cabinets, because for some reason I like darker wood, so I picked a nice cherry with a darker finish.  But what color tile or counter goes well with that is far beyond me!  Even more so, what color siding do I want?  I honestly really don’t have enough of a preference to be picky, let alone what color deck and patio stone would match.  And I still have things to decide on with regards to what color the wood floors should be, what color to paint the walls, etc.

Left: Original upstairs floor plan; Center: 2nd iteration (the first iteration isn't shown); Right: 3rd (and final) iteration

There are way too many decisions that go into designing a house.  But thankfully, I’ve had plenty of help.  Being an engineer who likes to play with CAD, I naturally took some measurements and put together a model of the house to help with planning.  While some might call it a little obsessive, I now have a very accurate SketchUp model of the house, what has been invaluable in the whole process, because I can toy with things fairly easily, including sizes and shapes, colors and tiles, and pulling models from the internet just to try out!  Also, it makes it much easier to communicate what I want to the builder and the architect when I can just send them the model!

But more than the computer model, the biggest help has been friends and family.  My mom, despite building a house of her own right now, has always been more than willing to take random phone calls asking seemingly ridiculous or minor questions about anything and everything!  And Betsy has been more than happy to go along and look at tiles or granite or whatever the item of the day is, and provide her interests and opinions!  This is such a massive task, that there’s no way I could do it myself, so I’m extremely grateful for all the help!

E Pluribus Pun-um

Before I start this post, I have to apologize to a friend of mine, who might end up significantly more in debt because of it...

DC is a city full of pride in itself, and as such, it loves to make jokes about itself.  Now many cities have businesses with cute punny names, but it seems like DC has an inordinate amount of them!  So I decided to compile a few of my favorites that I've found over the past several months!

We, the Pizza: Delicious pizza that everybody can love, about 3 blocks from the Capitol Building

Howl to the Chief: Adorable pet store for your First Pup on Barracks Row

Founding Farmers: Excellent farm-to-table restaurant George Washington could approve of

DCanter: Wine shop on Barracks Row, proudly sporting the red, white, and rosé!

District Taco: Not exactly a pun, but good tacos, and a clever use of the map of DC in their logo!

Not all of DC's good puns are necessarily related to the city's status as the US capital!

Thai Tanic: Haven't been to this one, but I've got a sinking feeling they serve a lot of iceberg lettuce!

Thaiphoon: There's quite of wave of punniness when it comes to Thai restaurants!  Haven't eaten here either, though.

Grill from Ipanema: Another one I haven't tried, but I'm sure they've got lots of options, maybe even a Brazilian of them!

Papa Razzi: This one I found online, but it seems to have closed and disappeared, perhaps because of too many embarrassing pictures?

Visions of the Future

At last, this is probably the post most people have been looking for, what I am going to do to the house!  As someone who generally likes to be very organized and precise about things, naturally the first thing I did when I bought the house was inquire about floor plans, which of course the seller didn't have.  So instead, I made my own.  I measured just about every wall in the house (As Betsy would attest, some walls 2 or even 3 times!), then drew up rough 2D plans using a CAD program.  Then I discovered the wonders of SketchUp, and that quickly evolved into 3D renderings of the house and what I want it to look like!  It should come as no surprise that I've enjoyed making the 3D model of the whole house way too much!  :-)  So below is a list of what needs to be done, what I want to do, and some renderings of what things will look like, enjoy!

First and foremost, the back of the house needs to be fixed!  The siding was poorly installed, and, frankly, is just ugly stucco.  The lack of proper trim and flashing means that water has gotten behind then siding, so it's started to rot out.  Thankfully, there's Tyvek under the siding at least, so the structural wood is in tact, but the siding needs to be replaced.  This is the most important task.

A corner of the rear siding where the underlying rot and water damage is evident

The stucco siding itself is really not all that attractive anyway, so the house will look much better after it's replaced

Along the same lines, the deck was not properly constructed, so many of the boards are splitting or warping, the stair are in danger of falling off, and the whole thing shakes if you move too much.  So it will be replaced with a new deck of roughly the same size and design but using composites instead of wood.

The current upper and lower decks.  If you look closely at this picture, you can see some of the large structural members are split around the bolts holding them together.  Also, the stairs in the front of the image and poorly attached

Some of the boards on the railing are also splitting and warping

Even some of the decking boards are splitting and rotting

The garage is also a disaster, as the concrete floor is broken, the roof supports are rotting, and there's mold on the walls.  The simplest fix here is to just tear it down and put a new one in its place, which will match the new siding on back of the house and won't collapse under the first good snowfall of the season!

The outside of the garage is a cheaply covered, showing the jungle of a backyard, too!

The inside is not in good shape, either

Many of the roof supports are rotting, and they have been "repaired" by nailing new boards into the rotten ones!

There's a few other minor repairs, too.  The front retaining wall is missing some stones and needs better drainage, the front of the house needs to be cleaned up (there's lots of chalk and paint splatter on it), some repairs to the front sidewalk, and a few minor things on the roof.

The front wall has some group and stones missing, and needs better drainage

But now, on to the fun stuff!  My plan all along when buying a house involved redoing the kitchen and master bathroom.  In the case of this house, the kitchen isn't in bad shape, but it's about 10 years old and used very basic quality materials.  There's also an existing kitchen in the basement that is much older and more cheaply done.  So I'm going to save the cabinets from the kitchen that I'm removing and put them downstairs as a bar in the future!  Then, I'm going to redo the kitchen with new appliances, adding a peninsula, and floor to ceiling cabinets.  Since it's a relatively small kitchen, this maximizes both the amount of counter and storage space.

The new kitchen layout with peninsula.  The bottom is the left wall, which will be exposed brick, and has the pantry cabinets and refrigerator.  The top is the right wall and will have the sink and dishwasher in the peninsula and the range against the wall.

3D view showing the pantry cabinets and refrigerator

3D view showing the stove and over counter cabinets.  The peninsula will have an overhang that will allow for seating.

The view as you walk into the kitchen, showing the cooking area.  I've chosen to go with a double oven range, as it gives a little bit more oven space, and provides the advantages of having two ovens without needing to have a full wall unit.

In many of the houses in Capitol Hill that I've seen, people have exposed one of the brick walls, and it looks very nice!  So I'm going to expose the brick on the left side from the front door back through the kitchen.  In addition, I'm going to take out the small wall between the kitchen and front living rooms, so it's more open, making the whole first floor an open floor plan.  Finally, I'm considering removing the random box around the chimney and installing a fireplace with a gas insert.

Upstairs there actually is no master bathroom.  Therefore, I'm going to take the existing bathroom and expand it, turning it into the master bathroom, then adding another small bathroom next to it to be the main bathroom on the second floor.  The master bath will feature a stand-up shower, rather than a tub/shower.  People buying now look for two sinks in the bathroom, but I don't have that much space, so I found a sink the is wide enough to allow two faucets without needing as much space as two separate sinks!  The existing bathroom has a clawfooted tube, which I'll save and put in the new spare bathroom.

The bottom shows the existing floor plan, with the small room between the middle and rear bedrooms being the current bathroom.  The top shows the new floor plan, where the existing bathrooms has been expanded into the master bedroom a bit to make the master bath, and some space has been taken from the adjacent closet and middle bedroom to create the new main bath.

Floor plan of the master bath, showing the shower and double sink/vanity

3D rendering of the bathroom

3D rendering showing the shower design

Finally, there's some things for the future!  All this is a lot of work to do, so some of it might get pared down for now and saved for later.  Also, the basement needs some updating, so a year or so down the road after I've moved in, I'm going to modernize the basement.  Also, the backyard layout currently makes more than half of it really unusable, so I'm going to do some work eventually to lower the patio under the deck so I can use that space, remove some of the jungle-like foliage, and add an outdoor gas fireplace.

All in all, it's a lot of work, but the house should be really nice when all this is said and done.  I'm definitely nervous about taking on such a large project, but I'm really excited about what it'll be like when it's done.  And by the time I move in, I'll have taken this I bought house and really made in my house!