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Packing Up

The kitchen and bathroom had to be completely emptied and everything packed away. Dan was going to start work on the Monday after Easter so I was going to do a little bit each night after work and finish up on Easter weekend. We had a generous supply of Rubbermaid totes in the garage that we'd emptied a little over a year ago when we had a huge garage sale, so I planned to pack just about everything in those. The Tupperware and other light items would just be packed away in trash bags.

While I packed, I also made decision about what I could give to the Goodwill. I ended up with about a half dozen paper grocery bags filled with stuff to give away. I also found 14 glass juice bottles that we had squirreled away in the back of one of the cupboards. We used to re-use those for orange juice, but now just buy the cartons. All of those went out to the recycling bin.

There were several late nights that week, with me deciding to clean out a cabinet or two before going to bed.

Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, It's Off to Lowe's We Go

Since this is my first remodel, I asked Dan how we go about letting him know what our choices were for things like the toilet, vanity, faucets, etc. He told us just to go ahead and buy them and he would deduct the amount he had allowed for the item in his bid. When he prepared his bid, he used middle of the road prices for the various items. So armed with a list of items that Dan thought we would be able to pick out, we took a trip to Lowe's and Home Depot. Although Lowe's isn't that close to home, it has the added advantage of being directly next door to a Home Depot. I never understood the business decision that would put two competing stores right next door to each other. You can get from one store to the other without even leaving the parking lot.

At least during this trip, we ended up buying most items at Home Depot, even though intially we were more impressed with the selection at Lowe's. We also found that anytime you add the words "brushed" or "satin" to the description, the price rose dramatically.

By the time we left Home Depot, we had purchased the vanity, toilet, countertop, faucets for the bathroom and kitchen, a kitchen sink, garbage disposal, and the kitchen cabinet pulls. The big items we left at the store for Dan to pick up later. The rest of the stuff we piled into the car and took home with us.

On the weekend we took a trip to Best Buy where we picked out a new stove and microwave. The stove we have now is a hideous model from the 70's, in a ugly shade of gold. Our microwave still works fine and I really love how it operates. The only drawback is that it is huge and takes up valuable real estate on the counter. We took the microwave with us and arranged for the stove to be delivered in three weeks. One reason we chose Best Buy is that I had a coupon that would give me a $100 Best Buy gift card if I spent at least $1,000. Chase Credit Card sent me the coupon to compensate for the fact the my Circuit City Visa was worthless since they closed all their stores.

Over the next week or so, we continued to make occasional trips to different stores, gradually adding to our stock of items in the garage. By the time Dan was ready to start, we had just about everything ready for him.

Time to Make a Choice

Once we made the commitment to have Dan do the work, things started to move quickly. Dan was thinking about getting started the end of the following week so we had to made some decisions about what we wanted things to look like.

On Saturday, March 21 we met Dan at Interiors Plus, which is a flooring and countertop store a few miles from the house. It's owned by a man named Brian and his wife. The store is open Monday through Friday, but by appointment only on Saturday so we had the whole place to ourselves. After giving us a brief tour of where everything was and which things were more expensive than others, Brian left us along to browse while he and Dan talked.

Jason and I were a little worried that we might not be able to make a decision. Up to this point, neither of us could agree on anything, since we both have different taste. We knew we couldn't spend all day here.

As much as I like granite countertops, I knew it was way out of our price range, so we were settling on laminate instead. We started looking through the WilsonArt samples and it wasn't five minutes before we found one that we both liked. Of course, it was in the section that was the most expensive. That would prove to be a recurring theme throughout this whole process.

Once the decision on countertops was made, we moved over to the flooring. After viewing many, many samples, we both agreed on a wood pattern that was less rustic and more contemporary than the others we'd seen. The wood was maple with a hint of red tones to it. Of course, it too was more expensive than we'd originally budgeted. We just didn't find anything else that jumped out at us, so we decided to go with it. It didn't seem unreasonable to go with a good quality floor that would last for many years. It went well with the countertop and the paint color we had chosen. The only variable was the cabinets. We didn't know exactly how they would turn out after being sanded and stained. This floor would only work if the cabinets ended up being much darker than they currently are, without even a hint of yellow in the stain.

With the kitchen decisions out of the way, we moved on to the flooring for the bathroom. Since this is the bathroom that Jason uses, the choice was left to him, although I was happy to give my input. After going through all the samples again and not finding anything he liked, he noticed the flooring on the cover of the Armstrong brochure. We both thought it would look great with the brown vanity and blue walls. There just didn't seem to be a sample on the racks and he was reluctant to base his decision on a picture. Fortunately, he happened to see a stack of samples on a nearby table and there it was. It looked a little different in real life, but we both still liked it. And of course, it too was a premium choice and it only came in 12' lenghths. Fortunately, there will be enough left over for me to use in my bathroom at some distant time in the future when I'm able to get my bathroom redone.

Decisions made, we set a time for Brian to come out the following Monday and take measurements. We also brought the samples home with us to see how they looked in our house, with our lighting.

Even though we were both pleased with our choices, we ended up making one more trip back to the showroom, just to be sure. Brian's wife Pam helped us, pulling out possible samples for us to look at. In the end, we stayed with our original choice for the kitchen, but changed the bathroom selection. It's still the same pattern, it just has lighter shades of brown than the original selection.

Dan, the Contractor

I mentioned to my boss that we wanted to get some things done around the house and asked if he knew of anyone that he could recommend. It was the best move I could have made. He immediately gave me Dan's name. Dan is a contractor and owns RHD Development. He also attends the church that I work for. My boss also gave me the names of a great painter and a guy that does excellent sheetrock work. We talked for about a half hour, with me telling him what we were thinking of doing and him giving me pointers. It was the best half hour I ever spent.

Once the refinance money was safety in my account, I felt ready to give Dan a call. I left him a message on his cell phone and in a very short time he gave me a call back. We set up an appointment for him to come by the house the next Friday.

On Friday, Dan arrived right on time and we went through the house showing him everything we wanted down. He would come up with a bid and then we would decide how much we could afford to get done.

The two items that are most important are replacing the roof and the main bathroom. During the big wind storm a few years ago, we lost a lot of shingles off the house. I had someone come out and replace the missing shingles, but I knew that was only a temporary measure and that eventually I would have to replace the entire roof. Since there were already two layers up there, I knew this time I would have to have the existing layers torn off first.

The main bathroom really needs work. There is water damage to the floor from either the toilet or the shower. The kitchen is on the other side of the wall and you can tell there's something going on under the flooring because it's very spongy along the wall.

Other things on our wish list are to update the kitchen, remove the air conditioner unit that was in the wall underneath the family room window, remove the ceiling fan in the living room, install a light fixture in the hallway, and replace the windows with energy efficient ones.

After about a week, we met with Dan again to go over the bid proposal. His bid was very reasonable with the bid for the windows coming in at least 40% less than the other two bids we received. We totaled things up and decided that we could get everything on our list done, which was way more than we were expecting.

We are both so excited to get started. It really seems like a dream at this point.

Windows

For some reason, the only three appointments that we actually scheduled during the Home Show were for windows. Two were with major name brand window companies and the third was with Sears. Both of the presentations for the windows companies were basically the same, except one guy showed his on a laptop and the other had it on paper. Each one claimed they were the first to offer vinyl windows and that their windows was superior to everyone elses. They both performed a heat lamp test showing the superiority of their windows. I have to say that that test was pretty amazing. The man went outside and held up a heat lamp to the glass patio door. We were on the inside and could instantly feel the heat coming through the glass. Then he held the lamp up to the "competitors" windows and although it wasn't quite as hot, you could still feel the heat coming through. Finally, he held the lamp up to his company's windows and you couldn't feel any heat come through. Since both companies did the same test and both windows performed equally well, I would have to believe that windows with the same performance rating would fare equally well on the heat lamp test.

We left the first Sales Rep in the dining room working on our free estimate and Jason and I huddled in my office, each coming up with our own gut estimate. We were both shocked when the estimate came in at $14,000 for seven windows and two sliding glass doors. This was after the Home Show "discount" and the energy tax credit. Then the sales rep looked us square in the eye and asked us when we would like to schedule them to come out and measure. We'd already decided that there was no way we were going to sign anything right there on the spot, so we explained that we had other people coming in for estimates and we'd make a decision after that.

The following week we had the second company come in for an estimate. This was a little lower, around $10,000, but still more than we had expected. We were getting discouraged and staring to realize that maybe we wouldn't be able to afford windows after all. We'd just have to live with our old aluminum, single pane windows forever.

The next day Sears was due to come by for an estimate. They were scheduled to be here at 6:00pm. Five minutes before six, their office called to say that the sales rep was running late and would be there in a half hour. Since the presentations tended to run at least two hours, I explained that this would make it too late in the evening for us. They offered to reschedule, but I declined. I basically told them that there were plenty of companies out there that wanted our business. If they couldn't hold to their scheduled time, it reflected poorly on them as a company. How was I to know that this tardiness wouldn't also carry over to the installers when they came to install the windows.

So we were basically at the point where we were going to just forget the windows and concentrate on the other repairs and remodeling we needed done.

Home Show

There was a Home & Garden Show at the Expo Center at the end of February. We were leaving for a Disneyland vacation in a couple of days, but made time to go out to the show and look around. We were armed with discount coupons for our admission tickets, but a vendor walking in at the same time as us handed us free tickets!

Once instead, we started at one end and worked our way through the show, stopping to talk to vendors about windows, roofs, cabinets, bathroom remodels, flooring, etc. You name it, there was someone there selling it. We made several appointments for people to come out and give us estimates for windows. We also signed up with many other vendors for free estimates, asking them to please call after mid-March. We didn't want our answering machine filled up with calls while we were on vacation. Very few of the vendors heeded our request. We returned with multiple calls from several vendors. I immediately took them out of the running, since they couldn't seem to follow a simple request.

While we learned a lot about the options that were available, it was also a little discouraging. Many of the vendors seemed to over-inflate their competitors pricing in attempt to make their own products seem more reasonable.

At the end of a long afternoon, we returned home with bags full of brochures and information and dreading the process of meeting with all these people and listening to their sales pitches. Unfortunately, we figured this was the only way to get things done.

Decisions, Decisions

Once we knew that the money would be there, we made a trip to Home Depot and spent an entire Sunday afternoon going up and down the aisles trying to get a feel for how much things cost and to see what was out there. Of course, Jason and I have completely different tastes. I tend to gravitate toward the neutral, safe selections, while Jason likes things to be more exciting. Since the bathroom is mostly used by Jason, I decided to just let me him make all the decisions. The kitchen was the most difficult. We weren't sure whether we should choose a wall color first and then tie the counters and floor to it, or if we should choose a countertop and then match the floor and wall color. It was becoming very frustrating and we doubted that we would ever make a final decision.

The Big Refinance

I decided to look into refinancing my house and possibly pull some money out to get some much needed repairs done around the house. Rates were low and I knew I would never be able to pull together enough money in a timely manner to get these things done. On a Sunday evening in mid-February, I completed the online application to refinance thru my current mortgage lender and submitted the application, fully expecting to be told that I would be contacted in a few days. Much to my surprise, I was immediately approved for the full amount I requested. Things moved quickly after that. I was contacted by a loan officer who emailed me forms to sign. The appraiser called a few days after that to set up a time to come out the following Saturday. We scrambled to get things looking as good as we could in a short amount of time. First thing I knew I was signing papers at the escrow office and the money was wired into my account. It all happened so fast, that I could scarcely believe it happened.