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!

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.

Week 13-14 (Dec 21 through Dec 28)

When we started designing the renovations back in June we decided we would spruce up the kitchen by painting the cabinets. We liked what we saw in our two walkthroughs (as well as the photos we looked at again and again during escrow) and therefore set aside only a minimal amount of money for kitchen improvements. Our final renovation decisions included a new Family Room, Front Porch, Air Conditioning, Siding, and improvements to a detached "cottage". Below is the floor plan showing the porch and sunroom additions as well as a key plan of the kitchen showing original photos.

Photo 1: Back of the kitchen

 

Photo 2: Side of the kitchen

 

Photo 3: Kitchen wall adjoining dining room

Photo 4: Dining room wall adjoining kitchen

After a few months of living at the house we found that we rarely used our dining room. We set a small table in the kitchen and ate almost all of a our meals in there. With two small children almost half of our dinner time is spent getting up and down for things we forgot and cleaning up spills! The exception to the kitchen "nook" dining has been two birthday parties we hosted because we needed more space.This became comical when we ate Thanksgiving dinner in the dining room and our three-year old son requested that we sing happy birthday because all former meals there were birthdays. We'd thus come to realize that our kitchen and dining rooms were too detached--both from one another and from the rest of the house--and that some modification was needed.

Unfortunately this realization came after we had burned through most of our contingency and reserve funds, so modifications had to be relatively inexpensive. We couldn't do new cabinets but the countertops cried out to be replaced; the laminate had de-laminated in several spots and was cracked and severely stained in others. Our "ultimate" kitchen design would have included taking over the small bathroom adjacent to the kitchen and making it a breakfast nook. In addition the wall between the kitchen and dining rooms would be removed.


We explored this option for several weeks. Around the same time however, a construction mishap (for lack of a better term) at the sunroom sapped most of our remaining reserve fund. Thus, our kitchen re-do would have to be shoestring. We opted to remove only the non-bearing wall between the kitchen and dining rooms and add an island coutnertop between them. The fridge and adjacent cabinets would be moved to the interior wall and we would paint the cabinets (as originally planned) to freshen them up.

The photos below show only a few days of work in this area, basically the removal of the wall. The impact already is amazing! We anticipate a couple more weeks to get things functional again, though it will likely be a month or more until we have things buttoned back up. Until then, we're eating breakfast in our hallway and dinner at my inlaws.

Photo in the same direction as "4" above.

 

Photo in the same direction as "3" above.

Weeks 10-12 (11/30 through 12/14)

These few weeks saw the substantial completion of the contractor's work, including--with much excitement on my part--the siding. Since Week 2 way back in October we have had Tyvek or plastic on substantial portions of our 2nd floor. I've been somewhat skeptical regarding the purported water-proofness of the Tyvek system (and less so of the plastic sheeting), especially after the entry room ceiling showed signs of leaking (after the new roof was added. The entry room is the one story portion on the right of the house; see below).

Siding completed on the front | Tyvek still on the side

Apparently water was getting in behind the roof flashing because the flashing was installed over the Tyvek. The new siding, installed on top of the flashing, has corrected the issue. Anyway, waterproofness caused only part of my anxiety over the last several months. Our house sits on top of a ridge. Being as such, we have pretty decent winds on a regular basis. And when wind gets behind Tyvek, especially if its not nailed super well, it produces an incredibly loud whipping sound. It's loud enough to have caused many sleep-deprived nights for Emili and I as well as our children (which in turn, makes for more sleepless nights for us!)

Siding mostly complete on the back | We still need to paint the addition siding!

Needless to say, we are incredibly happy to have the siding complete. Everyone is sleeping better. There appears to be no more leaking. And the visual impact of the new siding is striking (the old siding was a cracking and mold-stained wavy asbestos).

"Finished" front elevation with a (relatively) clean front yard

At this point the contractor has only very minor things to complete, including, as I'll detail in a later post, a fairly substantial construction mishap. Other than that, we're still awaiting the concrete floor in the entry room as well as a carpet / vinyl in the rental. We also have lots of painting to do and the weather in Charlottesville has been less than cooperative lately. Finally, last week we also decided to demo one interior wall in the house--the one between our kitchen and dining rooms. The initial impact has been amazing (more in a later post). Its currently causing a bit of a challenge in terms of eating at our house, but in the long run will be totally worth it.

Week 9 (11/23/09)

Being that this was Thanksgiving the contractor had a short week and worked mostly on punchlist items (cleanup type stuff related to the original scope of work). My parents came into town for the holiday and as soon as my dad arrived I put a paintbrush in his hand!

The four days off provided spectacular albiet chilly weather and my dad and I endured the difficult task of painting every nook and cranny between the exposed rafter tails. I love the look of open rafters but partway through painting them wondered about the sanity of their detailing. My neighbor had warned me they would be a painting nightmare and all told we spent a combined 20+ "holiday" hours on them. We did sneak in a few good runs (6 and 10 miles) and were able to catch the entire VT / UVA football game. So all in all it was a great few days.

As I'm writing this post a few weeks late, I can't believe how fortunate we actually were. Since Thanksgiving, Virginia has rarely had two consecutive days above 50 degrees; I've tried to paint the rest of the exterior as well as the porch columns, to no avail. The cold weather culminated in 24" of snow this past weekend! This change in the weather took a bit of adjusting for me...after living 7 years in Southern California I'd become accustomed to having 70 degrees and sun after a day or two of rain. I forgot that when winter comes on the East Coast, it usually doesn't leave for months. So to have a few extra able bodies around the house both to help paint as well as watch the kids (thanks mom!) was priceless. All of the "critical" painting got done and the exposed wood was sealed for the winter.

Week 8 (11/16/09)

As we're closing in on the original completion deadline (Nov 30) I'm realizing that we're not going to finish on schedule. To those who have done renovations on old houses this will come as no surprise! Even the general contractor who has stayed relatively close to his schedule will not hit the target date. The schedule has caused me a lot of headache over the past few weeks due to our loan committment deadline. However this week I was able to negotiate out of it (which is doubly good as rates have come down even more) and will re-lock our permanent loan after Thanksgiving. This means our construction loan will close early next year.

Loan locks and deadlines notwithstanding work moved steadily along this past week. The contractor shingled the entire roof, installed skylights in the sunroom, finished interior trim, and finished the porch floor. On our end we cleaned the cottage in order to finish and wax the floor--we decided to have a finished concrete floor rather than the less durable laminate floor option--and we also began painting the .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weeks 6 and 7 (11/2/09 and 11/9/09)

Trim and finish-type work continued this week in earnest. The sunroom / family room (we still haven't decided what to call it) received batton strips and window trim on the exterior; the interior was drywalled. On the front porch the roof plywood and ice shield were added.

 

 

 

 

 

Since the roof was added to the front porch we've been really happy about the amount of light still reaching the current dining and living rooms. We were initially a bit worried (particularly about the living room) being dark, especially now that the days are really short. However the porch ended up being set up high enough so as not to block too much winter daylight. Next week two skylights will be cut into the roof of the sunroom directly in front of the living room windows which will add more light back into the living room.

So overall the contractor is making good progress and is, for the most part, on schedule. On the other end of the spectrum, the tasks that we have taken on--the cottage upgrades and entry / bathroom--are dragging! I'm not sure if this is because we're running the show (as compared with the contractor) or because we encountered several unforseen conditions; lots of sill rot in the cottage and the large hole in the entry room. Whatever the case may be, the cottage is finally nearing the 'trim out' stage where I can get moving on the kitchen and where we can paint the walls.

Week 5 (10/26/09)

It felt like lots of work got done this week. Monday after work I tore off part of the front siding in anticipation of the porch framing going up. Much of the back siding also came off in order to repair rotted trim around three large double windows.

 

 

While the massing of the porch was changing the feel of the front of the house, the contractor began working on many of the details at the back sunroom. Radiant tubing was placed in the floor before pouring the concrete; wood beadboard was added between the exposed rafter tails; and 4x10 sheets of Hardi-board siding were installed (eventually they will add batton strips for a board-and-batten look).