Case Closed

Whew! Yesterday marked the end of a remarkable chapter in the life of our home. We finally closed the refinance of our construction loan. Normally this type of thing wouldn't result in a blog entry; I'm bad enough as it is with posts lately. But our refinance is a tale of deception, a local version of the banking crisis, and extremely good fortune (Providence?).

The front of the house nearly one year after we started work

Nearly one year ago, when we were still relatively on schedule with our renovations, I put down a deposit at Stellar One bank to refinance out of our construction loan (redflag #1 - most refis don't require deposits). Towards the middle of November 2009 it became clear our contractor wasn't going to finish on schedule due to a window placement issue. No big deal (to some degree); we canceled our refi and the bank said they were going to hold the deposit until we initiated the refi process again (redflag #2); who was I to argue. Admittedly, I wasn't super excited about this 'requirement' for them to keep our deposit, but at that point I had not reason to think things wouldn't work out down the road.

Fast forward 3 months. Towards the end of February, when the contractor finished the family room addition, I contacted Stellar One again to initiate the refinance. The original loan officer, who structured the construction loan and subsequent refinance was "no longer with the company" (we have heard through various channels: "fired"; redflag #3). A new loan officer had been assigned to the refi. And without going into all the bloody details over the subsequent six months we were strung with promise after promise to close the loan. Each time they didn't close it they refused to return our deposit because, so they said, they should be able to close it through some other loan process (redflag #4). By contract, we were required to refinance out of our construction loan one year after we started construction; i.e. by 9/1/10. However "new mortgage regulations", a lack of understanding of our file by subsequent loan officers (we had three new officers over 6 months), and, we later learned, some very incorrect dealings by the original loan officer resulted in us going nowhere by September.

The front of the house from another angle

Finally by mid-September I demanded (against the advice of my lawyer) that Stellar One return my original (and on their part bogus), several thousand dollar deposit so that I could pursue a refinance through another lender. Apparently the demand--directed to Stellar One's director of retail mortgage--was enough to cause them to finally return the deposit.

Throughout the course of the drama I nervously watched rates and prayed the local real estate market held firm long enough for our re-appraisal to stay high. If rates rose dramatically, especially as I expected after the end of the Fed's purchase of mortgage backed securities in March, we may not have been able to afford the new payments. If the local marked tanked, our appraisal may have came in with us showing less than 20% equity even though our original down payment and cash put into renovations put us well over that figure. Fortunately rates fell over those 6 months, netting us hundreds of dollars per month of interest savings. Had we refi'd back last fall, our rate would have been over a full point higher than where we are at today. And our final appraisal came in much higher than we expected, thanks to a slow but price-stable local market. Thus, the 'happy ending' yesterday at the lawyers office where Emili and I signed the paperwork for our permanent loan. Now if only we could get all the painting done...

Em and I out front of the homestead after trashing her wedding 

dress. More fun photos at: http://tinyurl.com/2010trashdress

Watch out for that Tree!

A few weeks ago during a bad windstorm, the Norwegian Maple in our front yard decided to let go of some branches. The results are below.

Ironically just a few weeks before this "free" cord of wood appeared in our yard, we had an arborist perform a survey of the trees on our property. The maple in question has given us concern due to its multiple dead and dying branches. And as expected, the arborist said that tree was past its typical lifespan of 50 years. He said we would continue to find dead limbs until in our yard and that in a few years (5-10?), it would have to be completely removed.

Interestingly, he also said that we shouldn't have any catastrophic branch failures and that he didn't see a problem with us parking beneath the tree. Well! Lucky for us, I had not yet used all of our mulch (see the first photo) and the remaining pile served to prop one of the branches up so as only to impose a minor dent on the hood of our car.

When another major storm blew in this past weekend (more on that later), I expected the entire tree to come down. Instead, just a few "minor" branches fell, even though damage within the 1/2 mile surrounding our house was extensive. My dad, who was here over the weekend, left me his pole saw so that I could remove more of the weaker limbs closer in to our house.

The entire episode has left us wondering what tree to replace the maple with. We love the privacy and shade it provides and would be loathe to cut it down until we have some replacement started. Currently we're considering one of the newer American Elm cultivars, known for both rapid growth and resistance to Dutch Elm Disease. Our plan (and hopefully our maple will go along with it), is to allow the Elm to grow up over a few years while we slowly take the maple down. Oh, and we're not planning to park under the tree any more either!

Progress: Mar & Apr 2010

New modernist structure in the front yard or something else?

The last two months has seen some good progress at the house, notwithstanding the lack of posts to this blog. Much of late February / early March was spent cleaning up all the construction debris strewn around the yard as it appeared from under the freakish 70" of snow that covered the ground this winter. I'm still awaiting a bill for the haul away (which will tell me the tonnage we discarded), however I filled most of a 21 cubic yard container with demo material from our side room, cottage, and siding. It pained me to create so much rubbish; but we donated as many good doors, sinks, and windows as we could to the Habitat Store.


The other big area of improvement for April has been the front porch. Easter weekend, when the concrete slab in the side room wasn't quite ready to be painted, we decided to paint the brick at the front of the house. We had always intended to paint the brick, Emili just bumped it up on the list when we couldn't paint the side room (due to drying time of the concrete). Within a few hours, the house looked transformed (again); from two colors and two materials to a single color. Now we just have to paint the brick on the other three sides!

Newly painted brick at the front of the house.

The other major undertaking at the front porch area was painting the porch itself. The contractors finished the front porch area just before we received our first 24" storm of the season in December. After the storm, it didn't get out of 30 degrees for two months making painting impossible. When the weather finally warmed, some of the floor boards, especially at the perimeter of the porch, had "cupped" a bit. As part of the final punchlist (which was finished last week!), the contractor belt-sanded the front before we painted it.

View of the sanded deck, prior to painting, 

from within the enclosed porch.

Another view of the porch with plastic around it, 

intended to keep the pollen off it while we painted. 

Once the sanding was done, we stapled plastic around the outside in order to keep pollen and leaves off the porch while we added 3 coats of paint. It was pretty fun to work inside of the plastic and we definitely saw a few people drive by slower than normal as if to ponder what the heck we were doing. This weekend brings good weather and goals of mulch, gardening, and possibly finishing the floor in the family room.

Finished floor on the porch.

Mulch pile. Hopefully I'll make some headway this weekend!

From the Archives: Ode to Los Angeles

A year ago last week Emili and I ended our seven year sojourn in Los Angeles and moved back to our historical roots on the East Coast. As I sat in a coffee shop in West LA last February, between beating rush-hour traffic out of downtown and waiting to arrive at my last construction site visit, I wrote the following in my journal:

The last three months have been incredibly hectic. Since taking the Structural Engineering Exam in late October I finally decided to return one last time to academia, selected a school, found a new job, gave notice at another. Today is my last day at that job--Structural Focus. As this day has approached I've often wondered whether we are making the right move. I love my job, my co-workers, Los Angeles... Right now Charlottesville feels very provincial by comparison.

In many ways I've learned most of my engineering skills--career related ones anyway--while at Structural Focus. I'm extremely thankful to have worked there these last 2-1/2 years. I'll truly miss the friendships I've formed with my coworkers. And I'll probably never find a work environment with the same mix of professionalism and freedom--relaxed professionalism--ever again. 

Beyond leaving my current job, moving out of Los Angeles is the end of an era. Shortly after getting married Emili and I moved to a city that was 2500 miles from our closest family members. We moved with many friends to a city that none of us knew. In our seven years here many of our friends have moved on, moved up, moved away, left the bonds of fellowship. Now is our time to move.

Last week while driving to Big Bear to go snowboarding with my coworkers we drove by the hotel where Emili and I spent our second anniversary, past two different campsites where we spent weekends with friends from kairos, past scores of burned acres from our first close up encounter with wildfires in 2003.

 I definitely miss having a mountain like Big Bear so close to home.

Emili and I had dinner recently with Amy Murphy and Michael Maltzan, a fantastic couple who have shaped our story  in so many ways... We also shared a few hours with Gary and Pam Hilliard, who took the daring step into homeownership in Southern California with us and who re-taught me the joy of trail running... We had a meal wtih Ben and Lauren Thompson--a couple we have grown up with individually and together for 12 years. And tomorrow we'll share our final meal on the West Coast with Kevin, Annie and their son Luke for his 2nd birthday. Our sons will say goodbye and probably never remember this best friendship they had for two years. 

 Photo from an annual Kings Canyon trek. This is at the 'summit' of Glen

Pass, 2008. Relatively close to Los Angeles, a bit further from Virginia.

So many times I've second guessed. Not completely, but deeply second guessed whether moving "home" is what will make us happy. Obviously no place will completely make us happy; our choice to move East is what we want for our family. We have wonderful friends who have already gone East before us and are hoping to reconnect with them. But its impossible to live somewhere this long and not put down roots. I assume we're going to feel uprooted and unstable for months to come...[] For now reality calls me back to my last site visit on this my last day of work--to look at the nearly completed construction of a house I started designing my first month at Structural Focus.

We've been in Virginia a year now. Roots are starting to grow. This second year will hopefully see the inauguration of annual traditions. And while Los Angeles and California now feel worlds away, on occasion there is a strong call to return and "Go West...", again.

Progress: Jan & Feb 2010

For much of January and early February we attempted to put our kitchen back together. After removing the wall separating the kitchen and dining rooms (see this post for original kitchen / dining photos), we wired several new lights (the white pendants you see below), patched the floor, re-plumbed the sink and stove gas line, fixed a plumbing vent line, and plastered all the gaping holes back up. The other major effort was replacing the peeling countertops and re-orienting the fridge and adjacent cabinets to the side wall. 

 

  

  

  

We still have a lot of "finish" work to do in the kitchen. We plan on replacing the track and chandelier lights, painting the cabinets and walls, and possibly white-washing the floors. This work will be done over the next few months, once we have finished the cottage and exterior painting. 

The winter weather broke enough this weekend (we've now reached the all time record for snow; good year to do construction!) and allowed us to get some painting done, namely the front porch ceiling and primer on the back family room. In the photos of the family room you'll see that the contractors were able to add the new transoms between our most recent 10" and 18" snowstorms. 

 

Using sky blue paint for the porch ceiling helps prevent 

wasps and the like from building nests, or so we're told.

  

  

 

This week we're hoping to paint the walls and get a finish coat of sealer on the concrete floor in the family room so we can begin using it (3 months late!). Though we still have a bit to do things are starting feel more finished.

a lesson in patience

Its probably too early to fully detail what our home renovations have taught us. However with the almost daily anxiety we're experiencing trying to finish everything up, we've learned many things already, as they say, "the hard way".

Luckily the new porch rafters were sized for snow loading! Three days after "substantial completion," Charlottesville enjoyed the largest single-drop snowfall in 40+ years. We ended up with 24" pushing down on the new rafters.

The major lesson looming in my mind recently has been how quickly we took on the renovations, how un-patient we were to get going. Conventional wisdom says to live in a house for a year (or more) before deciding what to do with it. For us, after two 30 minute walkthroughs--one open house and one deciding what needed to be renovated--we defined most of our current scope of work (a front porch, back family room, cottage renovations, central heat and AC, and new exterior siding) and plowed forward with the loan process. I mean, between the two of us we're an interior designer and a structural engineer. We can remove walls and re-arrange the guts of the house. Why wait?

The terms of the renovation loan we were offered also made doing the work up front rather than waiting very appealing. Added to the attractive loan terms was the need to have the design approved by the appraiser / underwriters before closing on our loan. And with future plans for me to begin working on another degree in the fall of 2010, we decided now was the time to go for it.

This decision led to a hastily assembled set of plans and a relatively loose scope of work, particularly with the details. One benefit of not detailing everything out was that it allowed us to make game day decisions on many smaller issues--how the soffit would look, where exactly the porch columns should be located, etc. And lots of details needed to be decided during construction rather than beforehand because we didn't have access to the house while developing the final plans (the previous owner didn't want us frequenting the property during escrow to take measurements, decide on massing, ...). The downside to the quick design period has led to several change orders, lots of miscommunication with the contractor, and even questions like: "What do we really need this family room for anyway?" shortly after the foundations were excavated.

The back-yard facing family room is on the left. It is still unpainted due to the cold weather.

Many times over the last few months we have wished we'd lived in the house longer before plunging in; wished we made different decisions during construction; wished we had the help of another two dozen sets of eyes (maybe even an architect!). We've wondered what we could have done with money we spent on portions of the project we had already finished--especially with the family room. "You know, for the price of that room we could have traded our scratched floors for newly sanded ones, purchased replacement windows that don't leak volumes of cold air, and an expanded our kitchen design from the relatively simple one we're pursuing." And after living in the house three months all of these details--new floors and windows and a better kitchen--became "priorities" that the two 30 minute walkthroughs didn't reveal. On the flip side, we're fairly certain that we would not have worked out the massing of the front porch or the roof tie-in over the entry room unless we had the family room addition at the back. And this, from an exterior perspective changed the entire feel of the house in a way that we are very, very happy with.

In short the renovations are a mixed-bag of victories and losses. At present we're certainly happy with more of the decisions than we're disappointed with. But we'd have hoped that with all the money we've paid out and inconvenience we've lived with for 4 months, that everything about the design would fall under the positive category. I should know by now that no project is ever 100% what the owner wants. Still...

We've found it extremely difficult to be patient with our house. We want everything done up front so we can enjoy not renovating it once we're done (with our house in California we did many projects right before selling and we regretted not being able to enjoy them longer). Just this week we made another impatient decision: we rushed in an bought a sink online without checking local dealers. We saved money on the sink but not on shipping and we ended up ordering the wrong sink anyway (due in large part to a misleading photo on the web page). Now we can't return it. After calling around we learned we could have bought the same sink locally for less than the cost of the online sink plus shipping (and we wouldn't have had to deal with the extremely unhelpful "customer service" people at efaucets.com). I suppose soon enough we'll be finished with construction and can practice patience watching our bank account recover from the past 6 months!

So would more time up front have led to fewer regrets? Probably. Would it have eliminated all problems? Surely no. Were we able to do it over again I would have tried to pass a preliminary design by the appraiser and then modify it after 3 months of living there--before bringing in the earth moving equipment. Though on that that schedule the excavators would have been breaking ground right when the 24" of snow dropped. Unfortunately renovating a home is so infrequent an occurrance that it is difficult to learn and apply the lessons from one project to the next. This is where conventional wisdom could have helped us. If only we had listened better.