It's Starting To Come Together!

This weekend was busy! Yesterday I visited a few showrooms to see what prices we're looking at for granite and tile. I found a mega bargain: 2 steel gray granite slabs for $300 each! They're trying to get rid of them and so offered me an amazing deal. That comes out to $6.31/SF as opposed to the others they have which are mostly over $20/SF! Yeah, I'm definitely calling to reserve those tomorrow morning. This is what it looks like:

Today I met with contractor choice #1. We were at the house looking over my plans, the configuration of the rooms and reviewed estimated costs and schedules for over 3 hours! It was great!! He's a perfect fit.

Next on the list is to call the city planning department to ask about permits - how long they take for my scope of work, what format they need to be in, and how long any mods will take later. Apparently, the city of Sunnyvale is more lenient with home owner designers submitting plans, so I'm going to spruce up my drawings (see the last blog post) with dimensions, outlet locations, material types, etc. and get the permit myself.

My newly employed PM (he's a Project Manager for now, until he passes his general contractor's exam) will bring in an electrician, plumber and structural engineer to get their cost estimates for the work. My hope is by this time next week there will be a firm schedule and budget in plan.

Two good news items came of today's meeting: one, PM said he can do the work in 3 weeks! That's for both the kitchen and bathroom and AFTER all permits have been approved; two, the current owners will be out of the house on Feb. 1st! This gives us 5 extra days to work in the house before move-in day -- this is very good news!

Every time I go to the house I get some more clarity on what I want to do with it. The #1 concern of the moment is how much of the wall can be taken out. I'm determined to take at least the larger part down just so the space will seem more open.

#2 question is where to put the washer and dryer. Right now the plan is to move them in to what is currently the coat closet (see the open space in the far corner of this view). The problem is that they will stick out from the closet a couple of inches, so the doors can't stay. This doesn't concern me too much, especially since different ones will probably replace those later.



The closet that is currently the pantry will stay and turn in to a coat closet, leaving a 3.5' wide space to either be filled with more cabinets and counters...or could be a space for my kitchen table. It juts out a bit in to the room, but it just might work.

You might notice that the fridge has moved to the opposite wall from the previous plan. I think this will open up the window wall some more and balance out the pantry cabinet and/or partial wall if it has to stay.