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!