Slight slight progress

Finally!!

Some progress is being made although at a tortuously slow pace from my perspective. Contractor is working towards a framing inspection on all three spaces at one time. This means that  even though the kitchen framing is done work is only happening on the outside until the those spaces are ready for the framing inspection as well. After that the electrician will wire all three spaces at once and then we'll get an electrical inspection. After that insulation will be put in, insulation inspection done and then drywall. 

The other day I told the foreman that he needed to stop demoing things and build me something or I was going to lose it. He found this quite amusing, and I think endearing, and was very excited to show me the skeleton of my new vestibule when I got home from work. Below is the frame of what will be a 4 ft x 7 ft new front entry. This space will eat into our front porch but will also be unified with both the existing front entry and entire newly opened space, thus stoping the feeling of almost tripping on the stairs upon entry and enlarging the whole feel of the main floor (I hope). 

New vestibule

Below you can see the start of our newly enlarged mudroom. We had intended this to be much smaller but when they started laying it out I realized just how tiny, useless and visible from the kitchen it would be. I had always wanted sliding glass doors and a connection to the family room deck so we decided to make the mudroom into an "L" shape, along the back of the garage - allowing for the sliders, and thus lots more natural light, a better view of the back yard, and the gained space of the door swing. The mudroom as originally planned was going to basically be 6 ft by 8 ft, but this one will be an L which is 6 ft by 10 ft and then to the left another 6 ft by 12 ft. In order to do this we had to disassemble the entire main deck and rebuild it, which was an expense we hadn't planned on just yet.

Floating foundation started and footers ready for filling. And lots of mud being made.

Outline of new mudroom/outdoor connection

The part which connects to the kitchen is not going to have much in it and I was warned it will just be a hallway. However this hallway will connect my kitchen, garage (the two doors currently in view) mudroom (the part along the garage) and deck/backyard area, so to me that's a pretty useful hallway. Also now the actual mudroom contents can be hidden along that back wall and not in view of the kitchen and dining area. So while this change added almost 30% to the cost of the project, it is really going to be incredibly useful. My only concern now is whether we're getting into the "we should have gone whole hog and put a huge addition off the back" but that would have been considerably more still and that was just not in the cards, nor even really necessary. I never wanted and don't need a huge house.

Hoping that this week the rest of this structure gets built and we can get on with actually finishing the inside space.

Psychological study

Reactions to living through massive reno. Match family member to number.

1. Loving all the processed foods, highly, and somewhat surprisingly put off by the chaos.

2. Excited by the chaos, hating the bad food, secretly enjoying the relief of not being able to prepare proper dinner.  

3. Ignoring the chaos, missing healthy food. Definitely not liking the abundance of kitchen talk.

4. Hating every aspect.

Living room - currently serving as dining room, living room, kitchen, mud room, hallway.

I'm kind of surprised by our reactions to living through all this chaos. The mess and mayhem don't really bother me all that much, and having our floors covered with cardboard and plastic has some advantages in the winter. I may implement it next year!  However with no end in sight this dorm-style living is getting old really quickly. The other day I watched a friend take some fairly straightforward roasted tomatoes out of the oven and had a huge pang of jealousy or regret or longing or some odd emotion for the ability to create healthy nourishment for my family. I didn't actually want to eat the tomatoes, or even serve the tomatoes, I wanted to create them. I guess as much as I deride needing to cook dinner every night and seemingly constantly feed people every moment that I'm home, there is a part of me that misses the creative and maternal alchemy that is cooking with fresh food.

I'm also really not enjoying my contractor coming up with some new cost every time I blink. When people describe how stressful living through a renovation is, or when tv shows show homeowners melting down out about rising costs, I didn't quite realize what that stress felt like. It's the feeling when you take your car in to be fixed and have no idea if the mechanic is lying to you or not, or if you should sell the car and buy a new one because you can't predict what will break in the future. It's that, "I really don't want to be ripped off" rising anger but with much bigger numbers and every day for weeks and months on end.

Dave is much more thoroughly and deeply agitated by the huge chaotic mess we live in, and is also coming in and out of the details of the contract so is even more plagued by irritation over the seemingly daily increased costs.

And the kids, who I didn't even think that much about when planning this, are out of sorts and annoyed. Alex is really hating having everything asunder, and Natasha is definitely missing some real home cooking, and not enjoying straining for my attention. 

Future kitchen with temporary sink.

We made matters worse by enlarging the back mudroom project. This of course added several weeks to the torture project. More about that in the next post.

Demo!

Most of the decisions are fine but the countertops were paralyzing for some reason. Lots of demo and temporary

After a few contractor delays we finally started. It's been a crazy busy time at work and home so I've been a bit stressed. I just can't wait to get past the big decisions on countertop and layout.

Temporary walls until beams go in.

Sophie is not happy.

View of dust wall.

Temporary kitchen in living room. Kind of cozy actually!

First glance of the future

Finally the dust wall is down and I can see my vision starting to take hold. There is still a bit more opening to do and the extra rooms on the front and back aren't even started.  

I furiously texted my neighbors begging them to come look and they happily obliged.  I love them!

The overwhelming thoughts are: 1. this is so much better!!! 2. this still isn't that big!! 3. thank goodness we're doing the front bump out vestibule bc you really do open the door into the stairs currently. 4. we really need to open up entrance to living room more. 5. I'm really glad we didn't do a "half way" revision which only took down a small wall...that would have been way too small.

There are a few add-ons that seem expensive for what they are but now I think they're totally worth it. Mainly opening of supporting walls in the living room, to have better sight lines.

In a sense, I'm kind of glad we'll have the kitchen "open" in a sense, to the living room and not the family room. We will have not an inch of wasted or unused space in this house. If the kitchen were open to the family room we'd barely use the living room.

I haven't spoken about this too much, but living entirely in our living room and family room hasn't been so bad. The only real frustration is when it's so cold outside that all my food freezes and it's too cold to grill. I was kind of counting on our moderate mid-atlantic winters, not an arctic tundra. But all in all it's really not so bad, and, it was our choice. We weren't hit by a hurricane and caught off guard.

View towards what will be the island, pull out pantry, fridge, ovens

View towards what will be the table area

Table is standing in approximately where the island with sink and dish washer will be. Other appliances will be behind

View towards living room, from about the table area, the pretty detailing along the stairs is now much more visible.

View of what will be island, and coffee area under window. Door to basement removed and second opening started to living room

View from dining area towards back. Mudroom will be beyond that door, which will be removed.

Mill visit

Tour of cabinet mill and contractor offices

Main offices of contractor in Gaithersburg

Preliminary view of kitchen

The other day I got a tour of the cabinet factory and showroom. This was exciting and kind of anxiety-producing at the same time. I thought I had a really precise idea of what I wanted. When faced with the multitude of competing interests I realize that's not as true as I thought. Also I am a non-committal kind of person in the first place, even for something like a dinner arrangement, so this is really hard for my personality-type. Don't get me wrong - putting in this kitchen is a 10 year dream, we're lucky to be able to do it and I recognize complaining is unseemly.  I've never had even a mediocre kitchen as an adult (that would be 20 years), except for one apartment rental for one year in my late 20s. Choosing all my preferred finishes, layouts, arrangements is awesome and debilitating at the same time. It's also ridiculously time consuming at an already really busy time of year/work. It's holiday season and I have two big work projects I've been angling to do for the same 10 years, only now they're actually happening. There is only so much my brain can focus on at one time. I find myself thinking about one project as soon as I try and work on another. Perhaps Aderol would help.

Choices, choices, choices!

I really do love white cabinets and they would look historically accurate in my house, but 1) Dave wants a more natural wood and 2) I'm getting pretty high end cabinets and covering the wood grain with paint so that they're indistinguishable from IKEA cabinets seems like a mistake. I could just buy IKEA cabinets and save a fortune! However I already have a brown room and I really don't want another one. I want a white crisp room. So to compromise we'll have a contrasting stained dark wood island. I think this will look nice. Funny because in all my years of thinking about this, incorporating Dave's taste never even crossed my mind. This is not as horrible as it sounds because a) we usually have the same taste and b) whenever I would talk about "the kitchen" he would get annoyed, so this was mainly a conversation in my own head.

I really had no intention of getting such custom cabinets and I'm slightly uncomfortable pursuing them. It was an unintended consequence of the contractor I chose. We are building two small rooms and taking down 3 walls, including 2 supporting walls, so I needed a contractor I felt really comfortable with and who is used to large projects. That contractor happened to be the one who bought his own cabinet mill. On the plus side I'm getting custom cabinets for about the same price as semi-custom, because there is no middle man. On the other hand I'm now not working with a "kitchen designer" in the traditional, middle aged Bethesda fancy woman sense. Instead I'm working with a master craftsman, who has been building cabinets for 30 years and is kind of a burly, woodsy guy. However between the two of us it seems to be going ok. I'm struggling a bit with balancing storage vs. dining space and how many ovens to buy but that's about it. 

Master carpenter Allen, and project manager Natasha

Lots of future cbinets

Someone else's cabinets about to be "antiqued"

Millshop where my cabinets will be made

Backsplash possibilities

Beautiful natural cherry I hope I don't regret not getting

It's not that big

Our house is just not that big. It's not that small, but it's not big enough for all the ideas I have for it. It could be made bigger but we're not doing that. See last post.

So my plan never involved a formal dining room. I am not a big formal dining room kind of person. I barely get out of my pajamas. My neighbors know this is not an exaggeration but the rest of you will have to trust me. We will have an eating area with a cozy, inviting bench. But we have to seat 10 people. I have 10 people at my house regularly. Ask my cousins. First, second, third cousins, they all show up and we end up being 10 people. I love it, but each booty needs a seat. Currently we kind of squish in and no one can walk around the table. I don't love that.

So the other day the cabinet maker and construction foreman came over for a 2 hr meeting. We discussed endless intricate details which all seemed to convey just how small this space is. Actually it's not that small. It's 11 x 21, with the middle section soon to be 14 x 21. Details were coming along, changes being discussed, reassurances made about how different it will feel with the walls down. Then we got to planning the eating area. Table has to go in the 11 ft wide part and that's just not big enough. All this would be easily improvised if I didn't insist on a large center island and a separate wall oven and cooktop, and coffee bar, and and and. I have to prioritize.

So I will spare you the details of the heart attack where I thought I'd just blown my deposit because this whole plan is impossible and that's why we haven't done this for 10 years and we have to move and I want to throw up. Pause. Breathe. Reset. The cabinet maker found a solution involving a pretty small extension to an existing wall, and a slightly unconventional layout being more squarish than rectangular for the big meals, but now we can fit 10 or 11.

There were two related realizations that came out of this conversation. First is that I really cannot comprehend what it will fee like with the walls torn down and thus it's hard for me to make layout decisions. The contractors with dozens of years of experience are much better at it and were gently guiding me to see that sometimes extending a wall can actually make the space bigger, by allowing better layout. All my years of living in and thinking about this space isn't the only kind of experience needed to imagine it better. Also, everything is a compromise. I have to prioritize my wish list of more open space, a big island, lots of counter and storage space and a big table. In any home, those priorities are in conflict with each other so we have to figure out the best balance. Notice I didn't even throw budget in there. In a sense budget is the least of the players when balancing storage space vs. flow.

But the whole thing was a bit of a gut check on my expectations. I have to stop imagining that I'm going to end up with a huge open, roomy space, that one sees in the large 6,000 square foot tear downs around here. It will be a huge improvement from what I have now, but I'm not sure I have the right image in my head. And I swear to God, there is a little part of me that thinks this kitchen is going to cook dinner for me.

Am I dreaming?

So I got this email....I think I might be dreaming

Jenna,

Yes, Wednesday (November 19) at 11:00 am will work for me.  Please meet me at our showroom/office:

 18761 N. Frederick Ave Suite CC Gaithersburg, MD 20879

This process includes but not limited to:

- Mill work selection

- Counter top (granite) will provide samples (from our office) and also we will go to Artistic granite (7910 Cessna Ave. Gaithersburg MD 20879)

-  We have some tile samples here in our showroom (if you do not like the choices, we will proceed to The tile shop (15142 Frederick Rd Rockville MD)

- Selection of faucet fixtures at Somerville (15815 Frederick Rd Rockville MD 20855)

Typically this process takes approximately 2 hours or less, so please plan accordingly.

*Did you receive Jeff's drawings?

* Can provide a good contact number for me to contact you?

Thank you and advise if you have any questions,