...and in conclusion...
Decision made in
March 2002, our contractor recommended a builder and architect. Seems crazy, but
I never got competitive bids. I was anxious to get the roof off before the
winter, and I felt very comfortable with Greg Grew and Mike Sabino on first
meeting. The way many architects work is that you pay them a percentage of the
project cost (usually around 10%). Greg sets his fee independent of the builder
estimate, which is not only significantly cheaper, but if you make changes while
the work is going on you owe your architect more money. Still, expect to pay
$10,000-20,000 even for a architect that charges separately. It's worth it. No
matter how good the builder, the plans are everything. After we signed the
contract with Greg and paid the deposit, Greg's people came and measured every
millimeter of the house. About a month later, Greg returned with his initial
sketches. He knew we needed a lot of storage space and his vision for our house
was stunning. I expected a simple staircase, but he saw a grand 2 story entry
way with a 2nd story that overlooked the entry. We were very pleased
and would be adding about 1,500 sq. ft. of living space. I had some minor
changes and we quickly moved to the construction documents phase.
We had our final
documents in June 2002. The next few months were about selecting the type of
fixtures we wanted to help Mike settle on an estimate ($215,000) and getting the
necessary permits. Work began in October 2002. Watching the roof come down was
very scary. This was the point that there was no turning back. We were really
doing this.
It didn't take long to run into a major problem. The first weekend after the roof came off, we had a torrential rain storm. Eric was out of town and my mother was staying with us so she could stay with the girls while I worked on Saturday morning. At about 1 am on Friday night, Laini came into my room and told me that the bathtub was running. I was half asleep and didn't know what she was talking about until she told me that the bathtub was running in her room! I rushed in and found water gushing from the ceiling. I stayed up that night going room to room with buckets and garbage cans catching the leaks. Mike was out of town, but his friend Scott (who is also the tile guy) came over and spent hours pushing water off the tarp above us. Next...
