The term "Bidding War" conjures up images of fast talking auctioneers and stone-faced buyers spending millions with the simple lift of a numbered paddle or nod of the head. If that bidding process is the heart-pounding guerrilla skirmish of bidding wars, then the bidding process to do our addition was the castle siege of bidding wars. The goal was simply to outlast the enemy hoping he would eventually give up. We did not give up.
After final completion of the plans (if they ever really are final), our architect’s company submitted their bid. We also sent the plans to two other companies. One did the original addition to the house 17 years ago, the other did an addition to Sarah D’s parents house. The latter company’s owner stopped by on Valentine’s day, was very nice, asked a lot of relevant questions, and had a lovely portfolio. When he left, Colleen and I were very taken with him and couldn’t wait to get his bid. Three weeks later he emailed a quote that was 40% higher than our first offer. One down.
When the owner of the second company also stopped by to pick up the plans, he asked few questions and went quietly on his way. After not hearing from him for three weeks, I called him up and he said he had a few questions for me, which I answered to the best of my ability. Two weeks later we still hadn’t heard from him so I called again. He had more questions for me (apparently I should have been calling him more often). Six weeks after getting the plans from us he delivered a bid. It was about 10% under our architect’s company, but after waiting six quiet weeks for the bid, we were not excited to jump at that opportunity.
We went back to our architect’s company and asked them what they could do for us. They sharpened their pencils and came back with a quote that was low enough to give them the job. Colleen and I feel very good about the work staying in the hands of the people who have been there the whole time and we are excited about moving on to the next steps.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Final Plans
Well, these didn't really publish with the resolution I was hoping for, but they are the "final" plans. I took out all the notes and measurement lines so you could more clearly see the actual floorplan.
This is the first floor:
This is the first floor:
This is the second floor:
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Bidding Wars
It's been awhile since the last update, but not a whole lot exciting has gone on until very recently. Colleen and I went around a few more drafts with our architect. A couple of small things changed:
- We came up with a pretty ingenious solution to our venting problem. We are going to run the main vent from the air handler down behind the toilet.
- We added a porch to our new entry way.
- We changed both entry way closet doors to face toward the entrance rather than out into the room.
So, nothing really major. The big news now is that we have our final plans! Shortly after we got the plans, our architect's company gave us their bid. It was higher than we were hoping but not really higher than we had been expecting based on previous versions of the bid and changes that we were making.
Now, let the bidding wars begin. We have two other places to which we are planning to bid the plans. Hopefully they'll come in with a better number. I'm anxious to get to some actual ground breaking so I have some better stuff to put on this blog:-) Stay tuned.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
The Bathroom
It's hard to overstate how small the bathroom that Colleen and I share is. If you have a 17 inch monitor, then the floor plan below is actual size, give or take. As you can see, if one person is standing at the sink, then the other person is, well, not in the bathroom. 
Our whole morning routine is actually a pretty well orchestrated ballet. The problem is that if the timing gets thrown off even a little, then all hell breaks loose. Colleen washing her face and me brushing my teeth at the same time generally results in an unpleasant face being made at the back of the lucky sink-user's head.
Our whole morning routine is actually a pretty well orchestrated ballet. The problem is that if the timing gets thrown off even a little, then all hell breaks loose. Colleen washing her face and me brushing my teeth at the same time generally results in an unpleasant face being made at the back of the lucky sink-user's head.For all these reasons, we decided to go overboard on the new bathroom. Big shower, big tub, big two basin sink, generally just big. Inserted you can see the floor plan as well as a perspective drawing of one corner of the bathroom. (I made the perspective drawing point-and-click colorable so we could experiment with decorating it, see some attempts below.) I'll point out a couple of the big features.
- Double Basin sink: having grown up in a house where my parents had one of these, it seemed standard. Now that I'm grown up and don't have one, it seems like the holy grail.
- Whirlpool tub: Based on the shopping so far our favorite is a 6 foot long 75 gallon jetted tub.
- Wall Mounted TV: In our current bathroom/bedroom configuration Colleen can watch DVDs of 80's sitcoms while she gets prettied up. This TV gave us that advantage without having to completely orient the bathroom with that one goal in mind.
- The Shower: after looking at some widely available standing showers we pretty much just decided to design our own and pay someone to tile it. Our architect actually suggested that we get single slabs of marble for the flat surfaces since it cuts down significantly on the amount of grout work to clean. We loved the idea (though we have yet to see any cost figures). The shower is going to be about 4x5 feet and have two independently controlled shower heads and a half a bench in the back. Hopefully it will be awesome.
For those of you quick thinkers out there, you may have realized one of the problems with big tubs and double showerheads: hot water. If you have a 40 gallon hot water heater (like we do) you can't fill up a 75 gallon tub with hot water. So, what do you do? You can:
- Get a bigger hot water heater. Unfortunately, this would result in moving our hot water heater further out from it's nook under the stairs significantly impinging on our closet space.
- Add a hot water heater. If we got a heater just for the bathroom we would need an enormous tank just for the one room. Lots of wasted energy to keep all that water hot for the few times we'd use the big tub.
- Add a tankless water heater. Electric tankless water heaters max out at 4 gallons of 105 degree hot water per minute. At that rate it would take 15 minutes to fill our tub
- Add a gas tankless water heater. Bingo! Gas tankless water heaters will heat over 10 gallons a minute and are about the size of a piece of carry-on luggage. We can put the heater in our washer/dryer closet so the hot water will have only a few feet to travel: no waiting for hot water to travel all the way across the house. Also, with a tankless water heater you never run out of hot water (unless you run out of gas of course).
Monday, January 5, 2009
HVAC
Warning: I'm going to do a bit of venting in this blog entry. Appropriately, I'll be venting about venting.
Last Monday, our architect came by for one of his standard meetings. I was under the impression that we were basically going to go over the most updated drawings (which shouldn't have changed much) and see what other detail stuff he had done (interior/exterior elevation drawings etc). Unfortunately he started off by asking us what our thoughts were on heating and air conditioning. Well, Colleen and I had talked a long time ago about getting central air for the addition since the greatroom would be almost impossible to heat with window units. Our architect even put a heating pump and ventilation stuff in the plans so we assumed he was sort of taking care of planning that part of the process. He was not.
Now, part of this problem is born from ignorance on our part. We didn't realize the amount of room needed for venting and an air handler. Maybe we should have been more informed; on the other hand, maybe the guy we're paying by the hour should have mentioned something about it before we got this far in the planning process.
For those of you out there who are, like Colleen and me, blissfully ignorant about these sorts of things, I'll fill you in. A heat pump basically just takes air in from the outside and changes the temperature. An air handler is required to actually pull air from inside the house and move it all around to your rooms. This is not a small piece of equipment; it's about 2 feet square and 4 feet tall. Normally it goes in the attic or a closet. The entire house must be vented to this handler. An intake vent must also run to the handler. These vents cannot be small. Normally these are put under the house in the crawlspace. All of these things cause complications in the floorplan that Colleen and I meticulously laid out. First, we don't have a crawlspace. Due to the hill behind our house that we were already going to have to cut into, it was decided it would be considerably easier and cheaper to build the addition on a concrete slab. So the vents can't go under the floor. Secondly, if we put the vents below (or, at a greater expense, in) the floor joists above the first floor then we lower the ceiling which would become a bit claustrophobic at the entryway. Thirdly, our roof slopes at quite a few angles and so the attic is never very tall (4 feet would be about the max height). Finally, we designed our precious closets to store things like clothes, coats, and snowboards, not to house venting.
In short, something is going to have to give. I've been doing my research and I have some ideas about how we can mitigate the damage, but I need another meeting with our architect (who remains nameless for just occasions such as these) to verify my findings.
Last Monday, our architect came by for one of his standard meetings. I was under the impression that we were basically going to go over the most updated drawings (which shouldn't have changed much) and see what other detail stuff he had done (interior/exterior elevation drawings etc). Unfortunately he started off by asking us what our thoughts were on heating and air conditioning. Well, Colleen and I had talked a long time ago about getting central air for the addition since the greatroom would be almost impossible to heat with window units. Our architect even put a heating pump and ventilation stuff in the plans so we assumed he was sort of taking care of planning that part of the process. He was not.
Now, part of this problem is born from ignorance on our part. We didn't realize the amount of room needed for venting and an air handler. Maybe we should have been more informed; on the other hand, maybe the guy we're paying by the hour should have mentioned something about it before we got this far in the planning process.
For those of you out there who are, like Colleen and me, blissfully ignorant about these sorts of things, I'll fill you in. A heat pump basically just takes air in from the outside and changes the temperature. An air handler is required to actually pull air from inside the house and move it all around to your rooms. This is not a small piece of equipment; it's about 2 feet square and 4 feet tall. Normally it goes in the attic or a closet. The entire house must be vented to this handler. An intake vent must also run to the handler. These vents cannot be small. Normally these are put under the house in the crawlspace. All of these things cause complications in the floorplan that Colleen and I meticulously laid out. First, we don't have a crawlspace. Due to the hill behind our house that we were already going to have to cut into, it was decided it would be considerably easier and cheaper to build the addition on a concrete slab. So the vents can't go under the floor. Secondly, if we put the vents below (or, at a greater expense, in) the floor joists above the first floor then we lower the ceiling which would become a bit claustrophobic at the entryway. Thirdly, our roof slopes at quite a few angles and so the attic is never very tall (4 feet would be about the max height). Finally, we designed our precious closets to store things like clothes, coats, and snowboards, not to house venting.
In short, something is going to have to give. I've been doing my research and I have some ideas about how we can mitigate the damage, but I need another meeting with our architect (who remains nameless for just occasions such as these) to verify my findings.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas and/or happy holiday(s) to everyone out there. I'd like to thank both people who read this blog, it means a lot to me.
On a serious note, Colleen and I would to thank everyone who has contributed to our addition with a Christmas gift this year. We actually just recently had a conversation with our architect about buying stuff on our own like the tub and bathroom fixtures. Even if we don't end up doing buying much ourselves, we'll still need flooring and paint and lamps and bar ware etc once the construction is done. Hopefully everyone will get to enjoy the new greatroom with us and the guestroom is always open.
On a serious note, Colleen and I would to thank everyone who has contributed to our addition with a Christmas gift this year. We actually just recently had a conversation with our architect about buying stuff on our own like the tub and bathroom fixtures. Even if we don't end up doing buying much ourselves, we'll still need flooring and paint and lamps and bar ware etc once the construction is done. Hopefully everyone will get to enjoy the new greatroom with us and the guestroom is always open.
Thanks again and Merry Christmas,
-BruceSaturday, December 20, 2008
The Floor Plan
The floor plan of the original addition made sense for the people who were living in it. For example: they were older and so a full bathtub and large bedroom sized closets on the lower floor made sense to avoid stair climbing. However, as the occupants changed, so have the needs. Colleen and I like to entertain and the current L shaped living room only fits about six people comfortably and even with only six, they can’t all face each other to talk. Also, since Colleen and I carpool, we end up both needing to use the very small bathroom at the exact same time. Finally, Colleen and I would like to, at some point in the future, join this new fad of having offspring. Given that we barely have enough room for ourselves and our stuff, we couldn’t figure out where we’d put a little one.
The first drafts of the floor plan had the addition being built directly over the current carport with the assumption that we would then “re-carport.” Ultimately, zoning restrictions prevented building in that area and so we were forced back into the hill in the backyard. At first, this seemed like a major downer; however, with the help of our architect, we have found a floor plan that is in many ways superior to anything we could have created in the former space.
There will be lots of detail in forthcoming blogs, but for now I’ll just give you a general overview of what we are planning. The addition will extend out the back of the house 16 feet. It will reach from the corner of the carport to the edge of my and Colleen’s half of the house. The bottom floor will be a great room with about 1/3rd of it devoted to an eating area and the remainder a living room area. The second floor will be a new master bedroom, walk-in closet, and big master bathroom (which will have its own blog entry soon) and a laundry closet.
Obviously we’ve addressed all our major goals. We also get a new more formal entry way and a redesigned kitchen which will increase our counter and cabinet space while feeling more open. Pretty much the only down side to putting the addition out the back of the house is that what is currently the guest room will have only one wall open to the outside world, so it will be a little lacking on natural light, but since this will basically be a gaming and computer room, no big deal.
The first drafts of the floor plan had the addition being built directly over the current carport with the assumption that we would then “re-carport.” Ultimately, zoning restrictions prevented building in that area and so we were forced back into the hill in the backyard. At first, this seemed like a major downer; however, with the help of our architect, we have found a floor plan that is in many ways superior to anything we could have created in the former space.
There will be lots of detail in forthcoming blogs, but for now I’ll just give you a general overview of what we are planning. The addition will extend out the back of the house 16 feet. It will reach from the corner of the carport to the edge of my and Colleen’s half of the house. The bottom floor will be a great room with about 1/3rd of it devoted to an eating area and the remainder a living room area. The second floor will be a new master bedroom, walk-in closet, and big master bathroom (which will have its own blog entry soon) and a laundry closet.
Obviously we’ve addressed all our major goals. We also get a new more formal entry way and a redesigned kitchen which will increase our counter and cabinet space while feeling more open. Pretty much the only down side to putting the addition out the back of the house is that what is currently the guest room will have only one wall open to the outside world, so it will be a little lacking on natural light, but since this will basically be a gaming and computer room, no big deal.
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