Three months after our original plans fell apart, we are under contract again!
After some final tweaking of the contract to drop the bid to a more "friendly" amount, the Sams stopped by today and we made it official! We moved some of the expenses to an "addendum" so that the official bank bid was lower...therfore lessening the amount we will have to come up with to put the loan in place. I gathered up (again!) all the financial information the bank needed to go through this process (again!) and e-mailed it on its merry way today. Hope no snags come up!
The things we moved out of the official bid were the great room ceiling beams, appliances, some of the hardwood floor allowance, and some of the stone allowance. This is all stuff we will pay for out of pocket as we go, but now we don't have to give that money to the bank before the project even starts. The appliances and flooring we could even put on no-interest financing with the stores if we want. The beams we will definitely still do. The stone allowance was going to drop anyway since we are pulling back on how much we are putting on the exterior of the house. We are going to be paying for this stuff out of pocket either way, but this way we can do it over the next 12 months instead of in April.
Mark or Jamie will be dropping off selection materials soon for the choices we need to make first (siding, shingles, etc). They also suggested meeting with their cabinet guy soon. He's the one they are suggesting does all the cabinetry work in the house (kitchen, built-ins, bar, etc). We also told Heather to go ahead and produce real full size blueprints.
Feels good to be at this point!
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
Quick turnaround again on revised plans
Well that took just a couple hours...already have revised plans in my email. Here they are:
Main Floor:
Lower Floor:
Garage:
Front Elevation:
Rear Elevation:
Side Elevation 1 (part of approaching view from driveway):
Side Elevation 2:
Main Floor:
Lower Floor:
Garage:
Front Elevation:
Rear Elevation:
Side Elevation 1 (part of approaching view from driveway):
Side Elevation 2:
A new bid, and yet more proposed changes
Been a little while since I posted but it feels like a lot has happened.
On Wednesday 2/24, we met with Mark and Jamie to go over the revised bid based on the changes we made. We had really hoped that the changes we made would reduce the cost quite a bit (dropping the vault size, reducing the beamwork, dropping tongue-and-groove, squaring up the garage, etc). However, some other things crept in that pretty much canceled out that gain.
For one thing, they did a detailed look at the site and realized we were going to need some more excavation that we thought to pull off the walkout. Also, with the changes we made, we actually ended up with a little more foundation, and more deck than the original bid. So when it boils down to it, we are at about the same number. We can make it work, and there are some things we can tweak to bring down the cost.
OK enough of that talk...we spent some time pouring over the plans and making changes. Feels like we have done this 100 times over the last few months. At first it was fun, but we are really ready to move on to the next step of actually building this thing and picking stuff out. This will be long, but its easiest for me just to cut-and-paste the email I sent the designer explaining our proposed changes. If you see anything stupid, please say so!
MAIN LEVEL:
1. Bedroom 2 & “Hers” Office: Move the small south facing windows “in” toward the east slightly. Enough to leave about 2’ of space on the south walls between the windows and the corner. Reason here is that opens up the corner for something like a bookcase or toy chest.
2. Bedroom 3: Instead of 2 smaller closets, make one large 8’ closet and move the door east to the corner. (unless you have a better idea for this room, we couldn’t come up with anything else) We thought the double closet was more that needed and reducing it and moving the door over opened up just a little more room space.
3. Master Bath: We’ve been debating shower size and arrangement and here is what we have come up with. not sure how feasible this is. Want to end up with a fairly “enclosed” shower of about 3 ½ by 4 ft. Want to move the north wall of the toilet area more south. In my drawing I’ve taken away a some of the wall “jutting” out to the north of the fireplace, allowing the toilet area to shift south a foot or so. That gives us more room to play with for the shower, and would allow the arrangement pictured in attached plan sketch. Entrances would be narrow (I was thinking 20 inches?) to help hold in the heat (we are planning no shower door). This also puts a small linen closet back in the bathroom.
4. All non-walk-in closets need to have 2’ interior depth (applies to lower level too). From the look of the plans this is probably true.
LOWER LEVEL:
1. Rec Room: move the window to the west in order to center it on the exposed interior wall. Think this will look better from the inside. Realize this will result in window not being centered on the exterior, but its under the deck and rear facing anyway.
2. Bedroom 4: Move door east to corner of room
3. “His” Office: move closet to north end of room, recessed into mech room. Lengthen to 8 feet. Flip entrance door to office to open into the south wall.
4. Put a utility sink the Mech room
5. “Hers” office move window over (as mentioned above)
GARAGE:
1. Return the storage stairs back to previous design. This also moves the entrance to the house back to previous location, and puts mud room back to the prior configuration as well. Place the stairs as far right (west) as possible while avoiding having the two doors (storage access and back door) conflict with each other. Have them open as pictured in diagram.
2. Change stairs leading from house to garage to simply step down walking northward, instead of having the large platform.
3. Move the east door on the garage back to its location nearer to the house entrance. Leave 3 feet of space between the door and the south garage wall to accommodate garbage/recycling cans in that corner.
4. leave utility sink under the storage stairs…close to the entry door for enough clearance.
5. Place a window centered on the south wall of the workshop. We are thinking a rectangular awning window about head-high so you can see out of it. Nothing huge…enough to let in some light on the south facing wall. Maybe 3 feet wide or so.
6. Move the door leading from the main garage to the workshop a little further north…far enough so there is 3 feet of wall space on the diving wall between the door and the south end of the garage. This will allow for ample storage area on that south wall.
7. Still talking about that same door to the workshop. Is there such thing as a slider and/or pocket door we could put here? If not, I would have the door open as pictured in attached sketch.
8. Clarification on the workshop big garage door…the plans say “9’x10’ door, but it’s actually 10 feet wide, 8’ tall right?
MAIN FLOOR CHANGES:
LOWER LEVEL CHANGES:
GARAGE CHANGES:
On Wednesday 2/24, we met with Mark and Jamie to go over the revised bid based on the changes we made. We had really hoped that the changes we made would reduce the cost quite a bit (dropping the vault size, reducing the beamwork, dropping tongue-and-groove, squaring up the garage, etc). However, some other things crept in that pretty much canceled out that gain.
For one thing, they did a detailed look at the site and realized we were going to need some more excavation that we thought to pull off the walkout. Also, with the changes we made, we actually ended up with a little more foundation, and more deck than the original bid. So when it boils down to it, we are at about the same number. We can make it work, and there are some things we can tweak to bring down the cost.
OK enough of that talk...we spent some time pouring over the plans and making changes. Feels like we have done this 100 times over the last few months. At first it was fun, but we are really ready to move on to the next step of actually building this thing and picking stuff out. This will be long, but its easiest for me just to cut-and-paste the email I sent the designer explaining our proposed changes. If you see anything stupid, please say so!
MAIN LEVEL:
1. Bedroom 2 & “Hers” Office: Move the small south facing windows “in” toward the east slightly. Enough to leave about 2’ of space on the south walls between the windows and the corner. Reason here is that opens up the corner for something like a bookcase or toy chest.
2. Bedroom 3: Instead of 2 smaller closets, make one large 8’ closet and move the door east to the corner. (unless you have a better idea for this room, we couldn’t come up with anything else) We thought the double closet was more that needed and reducing it and moving the door over opened up just a little more room space.
3. Master Bath: We’ve been debating shower size and arrangement and here is what we have come up with. not sure how feasible this is. Want to end up with a fairly “enclosed” shower of about 3 ½ by 4 ft. Want to move the north wall of the toilet area more south. In my drawing I’ve taken away a some of the wall “jutting” out to the north of the fireplace, allowing the toilet area to shift south a foot or so. That gives us more room to play with for the shower, and would allow the arrangement pictured in attached plan sketch. Entrances would be narrow (I was thinking 20 inches?) to help hold in the heat (we are planning no shower door). This also puts a small linen closet back in the bathroom.
4. All non-walk-in closets need to have 2’ interior depth (applies to lower level too). From the look of the plans this is probably true.
LOWER LEVEL:
1. Rec Room: move the window to the west in order to center it on the exposed interior wall. Think this will look better from the inside. Realize this will result in window not being centered on the exterior, but its under the deck and rear facing anyway.
2. Bedroom 4: Move door east to corner of room
3. “His” Office: move closet to north end of room, recessed into mech room. Lengthen to 8 feet. Flip entrance door to office to open into the south wall.
4. Put a utility sink the Mech room
5. “Hers” office move window over (as mentioned above)
GARAGE:
1. Return the storage stairs back to previous design. This also moves the entrance to the house back to previous location, and puts mud room back to the prior configuration as well. Place the stairs as far right (west) as possible while avoiding having the two doors (storage access and back door) conflict with each other. Have them open as pictured in diagram.
2. Change stairs leading from house to garage to simply step down walking northward, instead of having the large platform.
3. Move the east door on the garage back to its location nearer to the house entrance. Leave 3 feet of space between the door and the south garage wall to accommodate garbage/recycling cans in that corner.
4. leave utility sink under the storage stairs…close to the entry door for enough clearance.
5. Place a window centered on the south wall of the workshop. We are thinking a rectangular awning window about head-high so you can see out of it. Nothing huge…enough to let in some light on the south facing wall. Maybe 3 feet wide or so.
6. Move the door leading from the main garage to the workshop a little further north…far enough so there is 3 feet of wall space on the diving wall between the door and the south end of the garage. This will allow for ample storage area on that south wall.
7. Still talking about that same door to the workshop. Is there such thing as a slider and/or pocket door we could put here? If not, I would have the door open as pictured in attached sketch.
8. Clarification on the workshop big garage door…the plans say “9’x10’ door, but it’s actually 10 feet wide, 8’ tall right?
MAIN FLOOR CHANGES:
LOWER LEVEL CHANGES:
GARAGE CHANGES:
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