Busy little bees

I'll try to keep this all roughly chronological, so bear with me...

Last week, after a fair amount of chasing-down, we finally got a bid from Tom McC, which was more in line with Hakewill's than with Bryan's. So, we called three more of Bryan's references (that makes four now, including Matt L., for those of you keeping score at home) who all said nice things about him. Whew -- that was simple for a change. Cam called Bryan on Monday and checked that he was still able to start the first week of January (which he is) and told him that we'd like to hire him to be our general contractor. Ta-dah.

We got in touch with Andrew and let him know we'd picked Bryan, and he suggested we all get together this week to look over the electrical/lighting plans and the new bathroom elevations, and to go over some possible ways to shave a few thousand dollars off the bid (which I vaguely talked about earlier).

Fun stuff came out of this discussion. First of all, we're going to recycle two existing doors in the new pocket-door openings. The door between the new hall and the kitchen will be repurposed from the existing door between the living room and the kitchen, and the door between the breakfast room and the bath will reuse the door that's currently there (it's a standard swinging door now). Best of all, we can salvage the handle/lock assembly from this door for the door between the bath and the bedroom, which has been missing its hardware forever.

(If you're having a hard time visualising all of this, the preliminary plans are on Flickr... I've got them restricted to Friends & Family only, so drop me an email if you want to be my Friend. I haven't figured out how to tag people as Enemies or Stalkers yet, unfortunately.)

Other changes: We're going to change the window into the breakfast room to just a "cased opening" -- meaning it won't have any glass or moving parts, only a frame. It'll still be the twin of the old window, and so will create that "old porch" look we were going for. We're also going to leave the bathroom window in its current position, replacing the operable parts with a Marvin Tilt Pac (like we did in the dining room) to keep the weather and noise out, while eliminating the rather extensive labor of moving the window opening by just a few inches. Everyone -- by which I mean the pros -- all agreed that the shower will still be plenty wide enough, and I think I agree... we'll be recapturing all of the width of the tub walls, after all, and the glass will make it seem more spacious.

OK, so here I'm already out of time sequence. Back to the weekend:

We were very worried about the budget, so we decided to visit a few of the vendors that Andrew suggested to do a little reality-check shopping. Unfortunately, few of these places are open weekends, and none are open on Sundays... grr. We headed down to Chic Tile in Redwood City first, since they were only open until 3pm. The sales people were distant at first, but helped us nail down a few missing prices on unmarked items, and even found us a really affordable plain subway tile ($3-4 per square foot) when asked.


They also had a nice collection of marble tiles, with an old-school basketweave for the floor...

...and a lovely (and affordable) 3x6 field tile for the shower walls:


After that stop, I felt muuuuch better about the budget. I had visions of compromise thoroughly in mind, and I was very glad to be wrong.

Next stop, Gilman Screens and Kitchens, where we saw samples of manufatured stone countertops from Caesarstone and Silestone. Unlike Corian and such, these quartz-based countertops have the cool feel of true stone, but they're much more durable. Most of them come in a honed (semi-matte) finish, which we liked as a way to mimic the more-costly (and finicky) soapstone appearance we both like. The sales rep took a copy of our plans, and said he'd fax us a quote after the weekend.

Since we were already in the 'hood, we stopped in to Floorcraft. We saw a few affordable alternatives to our marble floors, a cute porcelain hex tile and a non-stone basketweave, too. We'd hoped to get some quotes on stone counters, but the salespeople treated us like invisibles, so we headed out.

Back to SOMA where we stopped in at Ceramic Tile Designs. Lots of gorgeous tile here, most of it well beyond our means. Of course, we had to -ask- to find this out, as none of the samples offered anything so gauche as a pricetag... heaven forefend!

Sunday, we headed over to Emeryville to see what Expo Design Center had to offer. This chain is owned by the Home Despot, but instead of being a ginormous, grimy warehouse, it's actually reasonably pleasant. One whole corner of the store is set up with lots of sample kitchens, with clearly marked price lists for cabinets, appliances, countertops, fixtures, yadda yadda -- kind of like IKEA but all grown up. As you exit the sample kitchens, you're disgorged into an appliance showroom, with everything from GE to Aga on display for poking and prodding. We actually got to play with a fridge and a dishwasher that we hadn't previously considered, and probably will end up buying.

It's a genius retail concept, because you know they're getting massive slotting fees from the manufacturers to display their stuff, and then squeezing them on the back end for lower wholesale prices. And then, of course, they're marking it all back up to just below the other guys' retail prices, and making the usual 50% profit. Genius. And, from a customer perspective, it's a much nicer experience than shopping at Sears or Lowes or any place else that sells (some of) this stuff: Soft lighting, nice clear pricetags, a few salesfolk milling about but generally leaving you alone.

The back of the store has rugs, carpet, flooring, some furniture, and other stuff we didn't need. The middle of the shop had a nice selection of tile -- slightly lower prices on marble tiles almost identical to the ones we'd seen Saturday at Chic -- and a really sadly under-stocked collection of bath fixtures. Happily for us, they did have the toilet and sink that we'd been leaning toward, as well as their matching faucet set.

The last part of the store is the in-stock warehouse, although "warehouse" is a bit of a misnomer. Everything's on display, with clear indicators of where you can find the corresponding boxes on a nearby shelf. We were happy to see our kitchen faucet on display (and ready to take home, if you want plain chrome or burnished brass), as well as all of our bathroom parts and a nice assortment of kitchen sinks. A surprisingly pleasant experience, all in all. And they're open Sundays, just like a real consumer store that wants your business -- go figure.

Today we got the quote on the counters from Gilman... something like $5K for the Silestone counters, and another $700 or so for the butcher block for the not-an-island. Hmmm... that's more than $100 a square foot. (At least that includes installation, but still!) We're thinking now that we'll probably use butcher block for the whole kitchen, as it's (a) in the right time period (b) interesing and attractive and (c) much more affordable than anything else other than (shudder) laminate. Cam's dead set against tile -- and I understand why, although I don't feel as strongly -- so wood seems to be a pleasant compromise.

All in all, I'm feeling rather happy tonight. I enjoyed meeting Bryan and his partner Noel (who we're guessing is going to be our job foreman) -- they seem like upbeat, smart guys. And I'm happy with the money-saving changes we've planned. They all seem like good ways to honor the spirit of the original design in a more affordable way.

OH! Almost forgot the big news: Bryan and Noel say they think they can start on the plumbing and electrical for moving the laundry downstairs as soon as next week! Wow! We might have a functional temporary living space downstairs by Thanksgiving. OK, perhaps that's too optimistic. But if we buy the IKEA cabinets for the laundry area this weekend, we can be ready to bang them into place as soon as the jobs are done down there. (There's already water in and out, from the room's previous incarnation as an illegal kitchen, and the gas line just needs to be moved a short distance.) Looks like we're well on track to move downstairs by the end of the year.

Andrew's going to email over the elevations for the bathroom soon. Once they're here, I'll post them on Flickr and link to them from the blog.

That's all(!) for now.