Hit Brick Wall When Couldn't Afford or Find Builder
Bridget
5 years ago
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Bridget
5 years agoRelated Discussions
Things you couldn't live without or wish you had added
Comments (37)Surprised no one has mentioned, but even in SoCal, I love my Warm Floors in the bathroom under the travertine - could be my favorite thing! During the winter, I wanted to lie down on my bathroom floor. Glad I held out for an outside spiral staircase to the upstairs deck, two-sided office desk, pot filler, upstairs laundry, pool bath, undercounter micro drawer, trash compactor (everyone tried to talk me out of that & said they were passe'), recycling bin, fixed & handheld shower (overhead shower was a bit of a waste...), doggie door hidden under kitchen desk - people think she's magic when she appears :), pull-out shelves for printers, etc in office & grommets for wires & got rid of most of the clutter, LOVE the light system & setting up scenes - esp. our 'night track' button that saves me turning on & off 6 banks of lights just to get down to the kitchen at night, my daughter's 'all-off' button that blinks until she turns all the lights off @ night Bain-Ultra air bath - no more gross jacuzzi jets shooting out gunk! Wish I had closet lights that come on when doors are opened, had organized the pantry lay-out a little better, figured out drawers/pull-outs for wrapping paper better, looked more closely at cabinet depths - can't fit a whole lot in, perhaps put an elevator in - was $10K in the beginning & just heard a woman is paying $70K to retrofit her house for one. I need the exercise now, but who knows what the future will hold... not a whole lot more than that though - we thought it out pretty throughly. STUPIDEST purchase ever - the Aquatics laundry air sink - basically a jacuzzi for my underwear that you can't even use soap in as it bubbles over & makes a mess. You can do a better job swishing your hand around in the sink a couple of times. Whatever possessed me to get this, I don't know... Almost Done!!...See Morefoundation wall hit by bulldozer
Comments (33)The foundation is perhaps single most important thing that your builder MUST get right if your home is to be structurally sound. Please DO NOT accept a patchwork job. If your builder won't make this right, and I do mean RIGHT, not merely patched over so that it "looks okay" then you are better off not moving forward with him at all. So stop worrying about whether you might make your builder mad and realize that he should be worrying about keeping you happy! Yes, it can be scary to stand one's ground with a builder who pulls that "I'm a professional, I been doing this for many years, I know what I'm doing" card. But this is going to be YOUR home. You have the right and the responsibility to stand up for yourself. Remember that the builder works for you, not the other way around. I notice you chose "turtle3639" for your screen-name so I'm guessing you identify with turtles in some way. Well, do keep in mind that the only way a turtle can make progress is by sticking his neck out! LOL! Good luck and stick with this board as you build. The folks here can get a bit contankerous sometimes but they will always give you the benefit of their hard-earned knowledge and their HONEST opinions....See Moremollyred, your ideas really hit the mark for me!
Comments (3)In nature form tends to follow function, so simple things that enhance how we function as human beings tend to be beautiful. Let's start with light and warmth. We evolved as mostly outdoor creatures, getting a lot more lumens per day than we do now as indoor creatures. For this, among other reasons, expanding your window is an excellent idea, provided that you can afford the heat loss that you might incur. Natural light is GOOD for us, and if you can get more by affordable means, I think that you should do so. Also add lots of pot lights and undercabinet lighting for when the sun isn't out. For simplicity's sake, I'd stay away from sconces, pendant lights or anything that might seem to add clutter. Your kitchen looks rather, uh, compact. Will you be able to expand it any? If not, can you afford to lose the storage from the two cabinets that you propose to remove? If you possibly can get along without them, do it. The greater sense of spaciousness that you will have from the expanded window should more than compensate for the lost storage. I don't think that it will look "funny" if you have cabinets wrapping the corner to the left of the expanded window but not to the right. Nature isn't symmetrical, and the modern esthetic aims for balance rather than uniformity. Your cabinets and cooking center on the right should balance nicely with your cabinets on the left. Chuck what I said about a cornice above the window: that was an attempt to make things tie in to repainted existing cabinetry. Simple, light, unfussy sounds so right here. I don't know how much you like your 3-part sink, but until recently I had a sink like yours and hated it, because it took up so much space yet the numerous basins couldn't really accommodate much. If you go to a single bowl sink you'll get more space in the actual sink with less use of precious countertop work space. How I operate in the kitchen is very important to me. I'm right-handed and I like to flow from sink to chopping/prep spot to stove. It looks like you have a right-hand flow so that's good, but your prep space is so small. Any chance of moving the cooking center further to the right and giving yourself more room for prep? For additional storage and ready accessibility, I'd suggest one of those storage systems that is suspended from a bar mounted against the wall under the cabinets. It holds modern spice racks and untensils above the counter so you don't lose any horizontal work space, yet keeps frequently-used things right at the point of use. I like your hardware choices, and think that they would be fine if everything else is simple. I'd only go with one style though, either knob or pull but not both, and only with a slab door; even a shaker rim would be too much with them, imho. I tried the minwax website but couldn't bring up your "old english" color. Still, most walnuts have a cooler, bluer base to them than woods like cedar, which has a red base tone. Gray or silver or mixtures with same will be dynamite with a blue-based wood, leavened with amber tones from the stone tiles. The names of stone products vary so much: harvest gold = autumn harvest = autumn gold, but here are some websites for the kind of stone that I had in mind: http://www.brazilgranite.com/products.php?pageid=73&ind=4 http://tile-direct.com/cid/49/pid/108. This is one for fun: http://tile-direct.com/cid/69/pid/209 This is the "T" knob that I was thinking of: http://www.knobdepot.com/detail.aspx?ID=6587 For laminate or solid surface materials, the following looked like they might be promising: Wilsonart crystalline onyx, greystone, mesa flint and mesa desert Cambria- Windsor, Victoria or Hyde Park Caesarstone Tan Brown 9350 Silestone of Canada - Alpina White, Silver Nube or Rosa Grey. You were talking about laminate counters, but perhaps you would consider an engineered stone? With it you can undermount your new sink, which gives you a simpler line, easier cleanup overall, and a few more inches of counterspace that would otherwise be hogged by the rim of a drop-in sink. The materials cost and labor to mount it are not all that different, plus you get a much more durable product. As you say, a lot of premium components went into building your house in the 80's, and I don't think you'd ever regret adding this relatively affordable luxury. So here's your new kitchen: lighter, roomier, clean, warm, earthy, with cool touches of silver gray and gleaming metal. HTH....See MoreAny reason a DW couldn't go next to a fridge?
Comments (34)I think you've been given a lot of good suggestions but if money is so tight right now that you're digging in the couch, it would make sense to wait a couple of years until you can afford to do it right. It doesn't make sense to spend good money on something that doesn't resolve all your concerns with the space. There are many ways to do a budget remodel that looks nice and would make you happy to look at it but if you aren't resolving the function, work flow, and storage concerns, it's still not money well spent, imho. If it were me, I'd save for a bit and, in the meantime, research ways to get the kitchen you want and need the frugal way. For example, if your cabinet boxes are in good shape, you could do something similar to what we're doing. As we're are inherently pretty frugal ourselves, we are reusing our cabinet boxes but moving them around to where we want them. The new cabinets we need are being purchased from Habitat Re-Stores. We've been fairly picky when choosing them by searching for quality built cabinets in excellent condition. We'll be purchasing new door/drawer fronts for them so they all match and then painting them ourselves. This is saving us about $4000 over the Ikea cabinets we were originally considering. if you keep working at this time to get a good plan finalized, you will know what you need for you plan and could start watching for sales and, if you have someplace to store items until you're ready to do the work, you could stock up on the things you need when you find great prices so you have most items stockpiled when you're ready to start. Let's say you get to the point where you have the money for everything except counters and backsplash, you could get started and just use plywood counters for another year or so until you've saved up for the counters and backsplash you want. It really doesn't need to be done all at once. Hope this is helpful. Edited to add: SJhockeyfan makes a good point about the fridge. Many fridge doors can be switched so the door swings the other way. Check to see if yours is one of them....See MoreBridget
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