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THE END OF RENO ROAD: THE DINING ROOM

2/24/2022

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Having more room to entertain had always been a dream of mine.  Over the years there have been many great holidays and parties in the old dining room, (see above) but it was always small and crowded.  Most parties did end up being indoor and outdoor, but with no access from the dining room to the outside, the groups were always very separate.  It was also a lot of work trying to set up a bar.  Cold sodas and waters usually ended up in ice tubs.  I really wanted more space and places for folks to congregate.  
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The new dining room has become the party space I have always dreamed of.  Sliding glass doors connect it to the outdoor patio and the vaulted ceiling makes it feel bigger than it really is.
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No more setting up a bar every time guests come over.  The bar shelves stay set up and the art deco antique bar I have had for years holds extra bottles underneath. Despite the fact that everyone tried to talk me out of it, I did a step down from the old dining room to the new dining room.  I knew we would not be able to match the original hardwood to the new hardwood, so doing a step down made it not so obvious.  Plus, I really like the feel of going directly outside with no step.
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Another idea that my construction people thought was stupid was putting a closet in.  I did that for a couple of reasons.  I could convert this room to a bedroom if I ever wanted to, but the real reason goes back to having convenience when I entertain.  The closet holds a second refrigerator filled with ice and cold drinks.  Next to the refrigerator is a wine refrigerator.  The shelves above hold party supplies, like paper plates, pitchers, silverware and serving platters. 
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I had originally planned to have the electric fireplace on the wall to the right of where it ended up, but I realized opening the closet door was going to cover it up.  A last minute change to the wall with the patio doors stressed me out a little bit because I wasn't sure if the tile I had bought was going to be enough. Like so many of the other changes I had to make, it turned out for the best.  I love that when you walk through the front door of the house at night,  you see the glow of the fireplace as soon as you come in.
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The old dining room was too small for everyone at larger gatherings and people always hung out in the kitchen. My first party to break in the "new" house, I had over twenty people.  Folks still hung out in the kitchen, but the old dining room has become the perfect space for smaller groups to break out and talk over wine, or have a loud debate with the kitchen people.  I had originally planned to do the new breakfast bar in quartz, but our vacation in Lake Tahoe changed my mind. The house we stayed at had butcher block and I fell in love with it.  I stained the butcher block myself and used the leftover pieces for shelves in the closet and the kitchen.
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In addition to the "new" house party, I had Christmas Eve, a small gathering for New Year's Eve and a small Valentine's Day dinner. Entertaining is now stress free, making all the stress of renovating worth it.  I can't wait to make more memories with the people I love!
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THE END OF RENO ROAD: THE LAUNDRY ROOM

1/27/2022

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Before I bought my house, I had never lived, as an adult, in a place where I had my own washer and dryer.  Having it in the garage didn't really bother me in the beginning.  It was still MY washer and dryer! When I had to replace them after the garage burned down, I was literally standing in the garage with my laundry basket ready to go when they delivered them, having spent eleven months back in laundromats.

But over the years, I yearned for having laundry in the house.  California weather is wonderful, but dragging the basket outside had gotten old.  Working from home, I also wanted an actual spare bedroom, since the second bedroom had become my full time office.  

I came up with the idea of doing a combo laundry/office and even though the end design wasn't even close to what I originally planned, I love the way it turned out.
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I have never been a fan of stacking washer dryers.  The original plan was not to have one, but when the laundry room location changed, I started thinking about it.  What pushed me over the edge was when  I saw the commercial for the LG Wash Tower.  I read up on it and all the things I didn't like about stacked, had been addressed.  Both the washer and dryer had a ton of room and the biggest thing, the controls are in the middle for both, not on the top.  No need to get on a step stool to start the dryer!
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One of the reasons I wanted the laundry room to have outside access, is I wanted to have a place where I could take off clothes that had gotten dirty working outside or in the garage, without tracking everything through the house.  I also wanted a spot to clean off muddy Kody paws. Or give him an entire bath if he ever ran into a skunk again! (Flashback to coming home one night from a gig at 300am to a dog who had been skunked and having to try to clean him off with the hose in the yard.)  I originally was going to put in a half wall doggie shower, but during construction, one of the guys building the shower suggested making it a full shower.  The more I thought about it, the more sense it made.  When I retire, I plan on converting the laundry/office room into a full bathroom and now the shower is already done.  The only problem was, I had bought the multi-colored tile I used on the side walls years ago and didn't have enough to cover the back wall.  After looking at tons of samples, I found this bright orange subway and decided to have them lay it vertical. It is a great accent and really picks up the light from the window across from the shower.
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I love 1940s Art Deco, but the last fifteen years, I have become a fan of mid-century modern.  (I call my design style Mod Deco). I wanted the laundry room to have terrazzo floors, orange color palette and walnut cabinets..  Doing research, I found out terrazzo floors are not cheap and would have really blown an already stretched budget.  I found this "fake terrazzo" porcelain tile at Floor and Decor for a quarter of what the real thing would have cost.  I wanted a custom walnut laundry cabinet, but what my contractor wanted to charge for that addition was nothing short of obscene!  I used a cabinet panel and Sektion cabinet from IKEA to get some division between my desk and the washer and dryer without a custom build.

It's a great workspace.  I have a wonderful view of my yard out the window and it's so easy to throw in a load of laundry while I am working on a presentation.  Like so many things in life, not what I planned on, but exactly what I needed.



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THE END OF RENO ROAD: THE OUTSIDE

1/13/2022

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Yes, I have come to the end of Reno Road.  It was a long road.  It was a stressful road.  Sometimes rounding the corner on Kody and my morning walk, I still catch myself hoping to see a truck in the driveway that isn't mine (that meant work was actually going to get done).  Then I remind myself, THEY ARE FINALLY FINISHED!

But now that it's over, I really love how everything turned out. Seeing a binder full of ideas and numerous design changes come to life has been amazing. Besides learning what a shear wall is, I learned some great life lessons.  Starting with sometimes big disappointments turn into something better.  Case in point, the original plan around where I was going to add 267 square feet.
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This is the before.  The dining room was planned for where the blue trash can and air conditioner were.  The laundry room was planned for the area directly on the right.  After the plans sat with the city for four months, we were told we could not build the laundry room behind the garage. I am still not sure why or even if I had been able to go to the city in person (thank you COVID) if I could would have changed things.  The fact it had taken so long to get anyone to even look at the plans, I decided to come up with a plan B.  My contractor suggested adding the laundry room to the back of the dining room, but I wanted backyard access from the dinning room.  After doing some measuring and spending an entire weekend going over things, I came up with the alternate plan
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I decided to add the laundry room on the left side of the house, leaving the deck and orange tree in between the two new rooms.  The laundry room, which was also going to be doubling as my office, would be entered through my guest bedroom and have access to the outside. Of course that meant moving the electrical panel.  The same electrical panel I had just had upgraded in preparation for the addition.  Add $7,000.00 to the budget. 
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Explaining my design to people, even my contractor, I felt like no one got my vision.  The D-Man, who usually has no design sense, described it perfectly.  "It will look like your house grew two legs." That's the phrase I started using. Even though it was a  huge change from what I had always imagined, now that it is finished, I love it.
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Working in the new office, I have a great view of the deck and the yard, but what really makes the new design, is the outdoor space.  The deck now feels like a little private outdoor cocktail lounge.  This summer it is going to be the go to spot, especially during those hot San Gabriel valley days.
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The area I originally planned for the laundry room is now the path to the backyard and the new home of the air conditioner.  One more plus, is I still have access to the garage from the backyard.  We moved the door to the side of the garage before we knew we were not going to be able to have the room there and I hated having to go through my side gate to get to the garage. I moved it back when the plans got changed even though it added another $1,000 to the budget.  For me, it was worth it.
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It took me a long time to decide on the outside color.  The D-Man really wanted me to go with a bright pink, similar to the last time I had the house painted.  The pink had faded over the years and even though everyone in the neighborhood knew it as "The Pink House", I was over it. I knew I wanted to keep the trim black to match the new black windows.  I toyed with doing the house white, since the black and white combo is really hot right now, but in the end, I couldn't see myself living in a white house. I had bought this colorful lion door mat and had it in the garage, waiting for the house to be done. One day I moved something that was on top of it and staring at it, I knew.  The blue was jumping out at me. I guess most people don't paint their house based on the color of a door mat, but what can I say? Most people don't have a house with two legs either!
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Holiday Season 2021

1/6/2022

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It may sound strange in the middle of a pandemic, but this holiday season was one of the best of my entire life. Starting out with a wonderful day at Six Flags Magic Mountain riding rollercoasters and ending with a New Year’s Day spent eating leftovers in sweatpants on the couch watching football, it was everything I was hoping for. After a long year of the stress of learning a new job in the middle of a crazy renovation, while COVID was going on, it was wonderful to enjoy what is really like having a new home, without the hassle of moving. Entertaining friends and family on Christmas Eve was a blast.

Four days with the D-Man and family in a VRBO with a heated pool in Palm Desert meant we missed most of the LA rain.  In fact, after seeing the weather when we pulled in the driveway, Kody refused to get out of car.


 A quiet New Year’s Eve with delicious food from Daphne’s and a lot of champagne meant we got to see Miles Cyrus lose her top. Who knew staying home could be so much fun?


What made it so great? It wasn’t about the things, although I did get some nice gifts. It was about the good times and new memories. Which is what the holiday season is meant to be.
Hoping your holiday season was filled with laughter and love.

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THE TRUTH ABOUT IKEA

12/13/2021

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I am going to confess straight up.  I am not a fan of IKEA.  Oh, yes, I have walked thru the store my fair share of times.  I have profound respect for the way they set things up, so you see a lifestyle, not just  furniture.  In fact, they do it better than anyone else.

I will also confess that I have bought things from IKEA that I really like, but other than a bathroom storage unit, I haven’t bought any furniture.  They have some nice-looking things, but I don’t find their furniture particularly comfortable or durable.


HGTV magazine along with other design and home improvement magazines feature their products quite a bit, something I really don’t understand.  If you are looking for reasonably priced couches and beds, there are plenty of other stores that do it better. And the “IKEA HACKS” trend? (Articles and blogs where people take something they bought at IKEA and make it into something much nicer.) Why is everyone having to “hack” IKEA stuff if IKEA stuff is so great?


But yes, during the reno from hell, I went to IKEA.  Numerous times as it turned out.  Here are three truths I learned:


DELIVERY WAS A LEARNING EXPERIENCE
I ordered five different cabinets for the laundry room, and due to design changes, I only ended up using one.  (See below for returning to IKEA). They were delivered together in several boxes. Unfortunately, the one I decided to use, was missing the shelves.  Unbeknownst to me, the shelves should have been a separate box.  Since I wasn’t aware everything has a a different part number, it was hard to determine what went with what and I didn’t notice the shelves were missing until I was having the cabinet put up, months after it had been delivered.

“Just call IKEA, and they should be able to send you the missing shelves,” the cabinet person said.
In theory, that was true.  The reality was that due to the supply change mess, I ended up waiting six weeks for the shelves to turn up and because it had been so long since everything had been delivered, I had to pay $20.00.

If I ever do IKEA cabinet delivery again, I will pay more attention to the shipping list and actually check off everything as it is being dropped off.  Don’t trust that everything is there, because it probably isn’t.

THEIR CABINETS ARE A REAL VALUE

For the price, IKEA cabinets are a good value.  I have had two IKEA cabinets in my bathroom for over 15 years and they have held up very well.  The one I now have in the laundry room looks good, wasn’t super expensive and seems sturdy.

NOBODY TAKES RETURNS BETTER

Dragging back multiple cabinets to IKEA after numerous design changes was not fun.  That being said, they have an organized system for returning merchandise that has you check in via a kiosk when you get there.  Your name goes up on a screen and you see where you are in the queue and how many minutes the people in front of you have been waiting.

The timeframe to return is super generous. If you have a receipt (the email they send you when you buy online counts) you have 180 days for opened merchandise and 365 days for unopened merchandise. You do have to produce the credit card you bought with. One of my returns was bought with a credit card that was later compromised, so they gave me store credit. 
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Overall, yes, despite not being enamored with IKEA, I can say I am incredibly happy with how everything turned out in the end.

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TRAVELING RENOVATION ROAD

10/15/2021

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It’s no secret that I am a total HGTV addict. It’s my go to station day and night, the background sound of my evenings, weekend mornings and Sunday nights if it isn’t football season.  So, you would think, watching all that home renovation, a 250 square foot addition to my 948 square foot house would have been a slam dunk.  But what’s that saying?  You don’t know what you don’t know. 

I have lived through 11 months of a fire restoration, a couple of kitchen remodels and a bathroom gut, so I am far from a reno virgin.  But I had never added square footage to my house, although I had been planning and dreaming about it since the day I moved in 30 years ago.


Of course, the size of the addition, the type of addition and where the addition would go over the years has changed many times.


I finally decided the two rooms that would make me the happiest were a new larger dining room and a laundry room/office.


Having laundry in the garage is very California, but I have always hated it.  In the summer, a pair of underwear always ends up in the dirt.  Winter with the rain and mud is even worse. Having an in-house space to wash and dry and moving my office to the laundry room, meant my second bedroom could finally be a guest room.  (Friends from outside of So Cal, I hope you are listening!).  I also want to entertain more, but it was always difficult with a small dining room that didn’t have direct access to the backyard.


So, the decision was made, the finances, after quite a few missteps, were obtained and off I went down renovation road.


Here are some of things I found along the trip.


There are lots of surprises- none of them good
Surprise!  The city won’t let you build where you planned so the whole laundry room must move to the OTHER side of the house.  Surprise! The deck D-Man and I spent one entire summer building is right where the footings go for the new rooms. (The deck was taken apart and must be put back together once everything is done).  Surprise!  The electrical panel must be upgraded. And then moved after the upgrade because of the new plan.  Surprise! The day they moved the panel, I rented a We Workspace so I could get some work done.  Only to be called home less than two hours after I got there because they needed to get to the crawl space in my bedroom.  The same bedroom Kody and Aja were sequestered in. (Kody wasn’t having strangers enter a room without his Mommy being home.)
Surprise! The only person who knew how to light my 1948 O’Keefe & Merritt stove after they turned off the gas to do some work was the guy from the gas company. Who was kind enough to come out after the whole kitchen smelled like gas.  What surprises me the most, is how anyone who doesn’t work from home ever gets an addition completed.  

Let me give you an example.  My air conditioning unit had to be moved to accommodate the new dining room. They moved it to a temporary location until a concrete slab and the electrical could be set up to move it to the permanent location.  The week the permanent location move was happening was the week we took a trip to Lake Tahoe.  I returned home to find it had been put back in its original spot, which was smack dab in the middle of my new dining room.  OOPS.

I also was surprised how many questions I had to answer on a daily basis and how hard it was to keep focused on MY work. Which brings me to the next point.

Unless you hire the designer, you are the designer. And it’s a lot of work.
I have binders full of pictures I have taken off websites and magazines.  I can look at tile, lighting and paint colors for hours.  I have been buying things for this renovation for years.  But even I got tired of sourcing (especially with the supply chain disaster), measuring and changing plans every time something we weren’t expecting popped up.  I rarely return anything, but I became a regular at the Customer Service desk at Home Depot.  A lot of drama that came up should have been caught earlier on.  My major complaint about my contractor is that he didn’t always watch the video all the way through.  I mentioned to him right after we submitted plans that I had changed my mind and wanted to do a stack washer dryer.  “No problem,” he said.  “Those are minor details.”

Except it wasn’t a minor detail when where I wanted to put the washer/dryer was right where the window was, along with it being a shear wall.  We managed to change it without having to resubmit to the city, but it was stress that shouldn’t have been there.

It ain’t like HGTV

First off, clean and job site are never in the same sentence.  That pristine yard the Property Brothers always seem to have while they are working on the house, didn’t happen at my place.  You know how they are getting ready to stain or paint something and Jonathan has samples and talks the homeowners through it?  The guy who was going to stain the shiplap for my dining room ceiling came with an opened can of stain, slapped it on two boards and said, “This is good right?”  I had asked for the stain to be as close to my new dining room floors and this color wasn’t in the ballpark.  In fact, it wasn’t in the parking lot of the ballpark.  When I said, “No, not good.”  His reply was, “Well, I guess we are going to have to try and get a custom color or something.”  I walked into my garage and produced a can of stain that once we put it on the board and held it next to the floor was almost an exact match. “You got any more of that?” Mr. Never To Be On HGTV asked. REALLY? 

The one thing I suggest you remember is it is going to get bad before it gets better.  The pictures above are a great example.  The one on the left is the BEFORE.  The one on the right is the AFTER.  Or at least the current AFTER.
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We are already a full month past what I thought would be the end of renovation road but starting to see it in the horizon.  Stay tuned.
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RABBIT HOLING AND RENNOVATION

9/2/2021

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This blog has been VERY neglected since the addition on my house has finally started.  Although it has been exciting to begin and see things happening, it has also not been conducive to me wanting to sit down and write about it every night.  Adding that with the band finally starting up again and work being, well, WORK, the only thing I seem to do after a long day is my new hobby.  I call it “rabbit holing.”

What is “rabbit holing”?  That’s when you start looking for a new dining room chandelier and basically spend two hours a night for a week searching for the perfect one that won’t be more than your house payment. Then you find it and it is back ordered and isn’t expected until Christmas of 2024.

To say my timing on doing this addition was a little off, is an understatement.  Every purchase has felt like trying to get Bruce Springsteen tickets.  The costs of lumber and labor have skyrocketed.  Even IKEA is picked over and covered with furniture and shelves that have “Temporarily Unavailable” tags.
Thankfully, from this perspective, I have literally been buying things for this project for years.  There has been laundry room tile in my garage for so long I had forgotten what it looked like.  Buying ahead, in this supply chain nightmare, has been a blessing.  Except I can barely walk in my garage.

Unfortunately, one thing I didn’t buy was windows.  That was left to my contractor, who apparently hadn’t done window ordering recently.  He said we had plenty of time.  He was wrong.  We ordered June 17th.   The timeframe they gave us was two months instead of two weeks.  That timeframe has come and gone.  They are scheduled to show up next week.  This has pushed the whole project completion date back to possibly October.  If we get lucky.

I ordered a door from Lowe’s.  The day it was scheduled to be delivered, they sent me an email saying they had cancelled the order with no explanation.  I re-ordered it, but delivery wasn’t an option.  It had to be picked up in the store.  Again, no explanation.

Forget calling to get answers.  I tried calling Lowe’s one day 15 times and never got anyone to pick up the phone.  Floor and Décor just plain doesn’t answer their phones at all certain days of the week.
The other issue has been the constant changes to the design, due to what I want to call, “Surprise Moments.”   I will go into some of those in more detail on another blog, but it goes without saying, none of these have been happy surprises.   Simply put, what it all means is I either had bought things that didn’t work and/or had to find things that would work.

I finally decided that for my own sanity, I had to make decisions, suck it up and get everything that I needed.  My credit cards are sad, but I feel like I can finally move on with my life.  For now.  While I was writing this, I got an email saying the fireplace that was coming tomorrow is now on back order.
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Rabbit hole, here I come.

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Vacation in Lake Tahoe

7/22/2021

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I was looking forward to doing vacation this summer after spending last summer at home.  What I was not looking forward to was getting on a crowded airplane and paying a hundred dollars a day for a rental car. If we could find one.  I was looking for relaxation, not stress and frustration, so the D-Man and I looked for another road trip.

We decided on Lake Tahoe.  We had been there years ago in the winter for a weekend, but since neither one of us ski, it was something of a waste.
I asked around and heard some great things about Lake Tahoe in the summer, so we started investigating VRBOs and Airbnbs.


I must admit, I was late to the VRBO party, but we have done four of them and they all turned out great.  We chose a two-bedroom one bath cabin that was a five-minute walk from Regan Beach, was pet friendly, had a hot tub and came with bicycles.  It even had a wood burning fireplace that we used one night after a rainy day.


Doing a VRBO also means we don’t have to leave Kody and Aja behind.  Aja, my just over a year cat, has become quite the traveler.  She has been to Northern California twice, Palm Springs and can now add Lake Tahoe to her list!


We spent the week walking Kody to the beach, hanging out, and just relaxing.  We found Pick Six Sports Bar to be a great place for an afternoon snack and happy hour on the rooftop bar.
We did find time to do a few activities.  Here are the three things I would recommend if you are spending some summer time in Lake Tahoe.
 
Bike Ride to Camp Richardson:
From our VRBO, Camp Richardson was about 14 miles round trip on a mostly flat bike trail.   Lots of scenic views and almost off street all the way.  Camp Richardson itself has some beautiful beaches.  We hadn’t really planned to stay there. In hindsight, I wish we would have packed a lunch and hung out for the entire day.  On my list for when we go back.
 
Rent A Boat
The D-Man and I had a funky experience when we rented a boat on our last lake trip, so this time, instead of a pontoon boat, I rented us a smaller version.  D-Man usually does most of the boat driving and even though this one was smaller, he thought it was a little harder to manage.  Adding to the fact that the lake was at an old time low, we hung close to the middle, so we didn’t damage the propeller.  Even with all of that, nothing beats spending the day on the lake in a boat.  We had yet another adventure when we got a little turned around and ended up in the wrong marina waiting for someone to come and get us. We ended up turning the boat in an hour late, but the crew at the Action Water Sports Lakeside Marina were wonderful and didn’t charge any extra.  We left Kody home this time, but they welcome dogs and don’t add any additional fees.
 
MS Dixie II Dinner Cruise
Yes, this is as touristy as an event as you will probably do in Lake Tahoe.  The food on the dinner cruise is average and the live band does the traditional cover music, but it was still worth the time and money. Having someone else drive you around the lake while you enjoy a cocktail, and some dessert was well worth it.  It didn’t feel overly crowded and we got to see a bear jump in the lake from the beach and take a little swim.  Bears swim a lot faster than I ever thought they could.  A good piece of info if I ever see one swimming behind me!


Driving home, we took a more scenic route along the stateline.  A tougher drive from a mountain perspective, but the scenery was breath taking.  The one thing we kept talking about on the drive, was when can we go back again!
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Surviving Permit Insanity

5/19/2021

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So how have I survived waiting for the elusive permits to build my addition?  By building something else!  I designed and with the help of the D-Man, built a privacy wall behind my fire pit.  I then decided to do a little bit of finish work on my back garden.  The new Home Depot in Pasadena became one of the few stores I visited frequently during the pandemic.  Bringing home the wood and posts was no small feat in my pickup truck.  I ordered the black decorative screens from Walmart on line.  Then it became a lot of staining, measuring, cutting, drilling and driving deck screws in the boards and screens.  The D-Man had gotten me some new Ryobi tools for Christmas.  It was so much easier than when we built the deck using Black and Decker tools that are built for hanging pictures in an apartment! If you have any DYI plans, let me give you the best advice you will ever hear. GOOD TOOLS MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE!  I found some great solar lights from Plow and Hearth that fit on top of the posts and they actually provide some nice light in the evening.  Looking at it gives me hope, that yes, maybe some day, my little home will get a little bigger.
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DRAMA WITH MPC, HALF DONE AND MY 250 SQUARE FOOT ADDITION

4/28/2021

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I never thought, at the start of the pandemic, that one year later, we would still not be back to a normal life.  I also never thought I would still be waiting on my house addition.  Not waiting on it to be finished. WAITING ON IT TO BE STARTED. (See above for where it should be).

To say I am frustrated, after waiting this long, is a total understatement.  Every time “ 100 Day Dream Home” comes on HGTV, I have to change the channel.  I can’t get 250 square feet built in over 200 hundred days and they manage to finish a whole house?  They are definitely not working with the LA County Building and Safety San Gabriel office. This of course, is not my first rodeo.  Remember, I am the person who spent 11 months living in a Residence Inn while fighting with an insurance company, the city and my contractors after my garage burned down.  The only thing that is keeping me from going completely off the rails, is that all turned out well in the end.  I can only hope for the same.

Even before I spent a month lining up a contractor, the addition was full of drama.  The first time I had bids done on the project, I was blown away by what such a small addition was going to cost. This year, the bids were even higher.  I had thought Covid would drive prices down, but it had the complete opposite effect.  The construction business is booming and materials to build are at one of the highest costs ever.  Interviewing contractors is an interesting task.  They are asking for a lot of money and many of them proceed to tell you how YOUR house should look.  Almost like they think you are working for them, not the other way around.  Needless to say, that attitude helped narrow down my list. 

I finally found a contractor whose mission statement (it was even on the back of his shirt) was “your vision becomes reality”.    His bid wasn’t the lowest, but it wasn’t the highest.  He didn’t roll his eyes when I said I wanted a dog shower in my new laundry room and he at least pretended to think my binder full of design ideas was fascinating.  I called his references and he came in just short of walking on water.

He had his architect draw up plans and we submitted them to the city.  And we waited.  When we asked what was taking so long to review some simple plans, the reply was, “The pandemic.”

 He alleviated some of my frustration around not being able to get started with the addition by doing some painting in some of the other rooms and installing my pet pantry.  I also had a new electrical panel put in to prepare for the additional electrical needs.  Unfortunately, thanks to the city, that panel is now part of the drama.

The laundry room was originally planned for right off the back of the garage.  Since the washer and dryer were in the garage, swapping everything to the new planned space would have been easy.  Except unbeknownst to my contractor or me, you cannot build off the back of the garage.  I still don’t understand it, but rather than fight it, I had to redesign the laundry room and move it to the other side of the house, off the second bedroom.  The second bedroom that has the new electrical panel on the outside wall.  The brand new one that will now have to be moved. When and how is still being discussed.

So new plans were resubmitted.  And you guessed it, we waited.  The week after Christmas, I decided it was time for me to talk to the city, not my contractor, so I made a phone call. They told me the plans were being reviewed for corrections and we should have the corrections back in about a month. 

January 24th, they sent back corrections.  The architect uploaded the corrections on February 12th.  And then, nothing.
The end of March, with still no word, I once again decided enough was enough and made some calls.  Turned out the corrections had been uploaded, but the plan checker had not been emailed that they had been uploaded.  My plans had been sitting in purgatory for almost 6 weeks because “proper procedure” had not been followed.

I was livid.  My contractor tried to back pedal a little, by saying the city should have seen they were uploaded, but he backed off that pretty fast when I said, “Your people should know procedure.  I shouldn’t have to be handling this, but now, I WILL be handling it.”   I began referring to the architect as Half Done.

I contacted the plan checker via email who had been assigned to the plans asking what timeframe we were looking at.  “There are 11 plans in front of you.  Contact me in 2 weeks and we will see where yours is,” he sent back.

Two weeks to the day, I emailed Mr. Plan Checker (aka MPC).  I heard nothing.  Two days later, I emailed him again.  I got this reply: “I am trying to do a fair job for everyone. I will keep your project in mind and will try to get back to you as soon as I can.”
I thought my head was going to explode. That was not an update, not by any stretch of the imagination.
Another phone call got me the name of MPC’s  supervisor.  I sent another email detailing the whole sad story.  I heard back from her in a few hours.  She also sent an email to MPC, telling him to give me an update and copying me.

He replied the next day.  “There are six plans ahead of you.  Check back with me in a week and hopefully, yours will be completed.”

A little math here.  Two weeks before, there were eleven plans ahead of me.  Now there were six.  That means this guy managed to complete five plans in two weeks.  That’s one plan every two days.  I decided I REALLY want this guy’s job.  By doing the same math, he wouldn’t be getting to mine for another two weeks.

But miracle of all miracles, I received an email at the beginning of the next week telling me my plans had been reviewed.  Two minor corrections needed to happen. One was something about the type of insulation on the plans and something called a T-24 needed to be signed by Half Done.  I found it amazing that he had managed to complete six plans in four days. Perhaps having his supervisor on the email chain observing how much work he was completing was helpful. I also found it interesting that Half Done had not signed something that sounded important.

The corrections were submitted in a couple of days.  My contractor said we were probably three weeks away from a start date and a possible finish time of mid-August.

This week I emailed MPC to make sure he had everything he needed.  No reply.  I asked my contractor where we were and he said Half Done hadn’t been able to get an answer.

I emailed MPC a second time.  He replied and copied Half Done that the T-24 needed to be registered. Doing some Google research, it seems this mysterious T-24 is a Title-24 energy report.  I am still not clear where it has to be registered.  It would have been nice if MPC had mentioned it not being registered, instead of saying it needed to be signed.  It also would have been nice if Half Done had known it needed to be registered.  I don’t want to share the fantasies I am having about what I would like to do to these two because I don’t want to spread hate and violence on this blog.

I am calculating this is going to put us back at least 2 weeks, meaning it is now looking like September before this is done.  Which will beat the time it took me to get back in my house after my fire by about 3 months.

Not a record I wanted to break.  But stay tuned.  I am betting there is going to be a ton more drama to come.

I

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