The Kitchen

This is the first domain specific posting about a sub-element of the house (save for various musings on the bridge which is a major project in its own right). Since most of the primary elements of the house design are done (or done until we find out we can't afford floor to ceiling windows) it's time to focus on designs for the next level of key items. The kitchen is first up.

The kitchen tends to be the most expensive room in the typical house (on an all inclusive cost per sq ft basis). This is probably obvious to most people given the number of expensive appliances and finishes that are jammed into an often small space. We went to a kitchen design store the other day and they asked our budget which I gave some ballpark figures on what I calculated for the appliances, cabinets, fixtures, etc. That didn't add up to them. They wanted to know the $/sq ft we were planning on. I had never thought of it this way. Part of the challenge for us is the kitchen is meant to be open to the dining and living room so where the kitchen stops and others begin is not clear. I could condense it down to have a better number but methinks it best to stick to my original calculation and find a reasonable sq ft to apply.

In any case, we think we've actually found most of the appliances we want. We both love to cook and can prove that by being the only people I know who live in NYC and actually cook 5-6 nights a week. Much credit for this goes to the girl as she enjoys it to the level of being able to crank meals out night after night after a days work. That's not for me. I prefer the plan and execute all day on the weekend production. I rarely can plan more than a day ahead for a meal so when I'm doing a big one I need to spend the morning deciding, the afternoon buying, and the evening cooking (and enjoying my wine; there are few better experiences than "cooking with wine").

Back to the appliances. Even though we like to cook we don't need many fancy things. We're pretty much old school DIY in the kitchen types. The array of crazy new tools baffle us and a few experiences show how early enthusiasm with a dehydrator leads to it collecting dust in the pantry after a month. We even have debated not having a D/W as we never use the one we have in the apt but we'll probably have one since real estate people tell us it shows its value in resale. LG has great french door fridges with lower drawer freezers that are the most energy efficient of main stream makers (there are some better ones for super energy efficient which tend to be less aesthetically appealing and more expensive). And they are stainless steel and mid-priced ($1500-2000).

The stove/range is where the real decision comes in. The "trophy" range in the Viking/Thermodore class is very tempting. I did some research with consumer reports and on other online places and as you'd expect they basically concluded they don't cook any better than your average $1200-1800 stove (and even one $600 model got high grades). However, this is not a passionless utilitarian debate. They look good! Also, ironically they are the only ovens which still use the old fashioned temperature knob instead of digital programming. No biggie to me but the girl don't play digital in her cooking. So we've compromised on this: we've picked out our trophy range (Thermodore professional; we like the temperature dial in the middle) either as one range or separate top and oven and have a fallback to a midrange if budget is tight (probably GE Profile, JennAir, or similar in that class).

Cabinets are expensive. Our architect has been advising Ikea but I DESPISE Ikea (more on that in another post but it is cheap and poorly made crap that should have no places in a nice modern home). We are hoping to keep costs down by not having upper cabinets over the counters just under counter and an island. We'll have open shelving above which we prefer anyway and gives the kitchen a lighter more open feeling. I really like the new lines of back painted with glass fronts that are around. But they are very expensive and our aforementioned kitchen shop advised that if we don't want to spend $35-50k on a kitchen to look for lacquer painted MDF instead. This should work for us and cut the cost in half. We want a strongly colored kitchen and are leaning toward red for the cabinets but other colors will be explored. We're leaning toward engineered granite or concrete for countertops.

All-in-all our new kitchen will be a huge novelty for us compared to our 80 sq ft apt kitchen with 1930s stove. Our concepts to go the architect soon so he can earn his keep.

Moving Along...slowly

Things are moving but not at breakneck pace. We've sent out the bids to two other contractors and are waiting for prelminary estimates from them. One thing that will hopefully benefit the back and forth with them is we provided much of the detail requested by the first bidder right up front. So theirs, theoretically, should be more refined. We're also waiting for the refined bid from the aforementioned bidder #1. We did receive their bridge estimate at $44k. Toward the high end but actually something within our target budget! Champagne (or Mad Dog mixed with club soda for us after the bank gets drained by this process) anyone?

More this week hopefully.

Some progress on bidder #1

Well, we have made some quick progress with bidder #1. I talked with their project manager last night and he re-expressed his interest in the project even after I told him we had to be much closer to the $200 sq ft than his $250 sq ft. He understood and said how this was preliminary done w/o a lot of the details which they had to put in some higher assumptions for. But he also did say that $200 sq ft is the minimum in our area (NE).

It affected some action since their architect sent over a letter to mine this morning asking for a lot of detail on many of the variables in the project. Much of this has to do with the HVAC setup, finishing work, and materials used in potentially expensive places like the bathroom. The hopeful news is that since we're going with a minimal HVAC (no AC), wanting to do much of the finishing work ourselves, and keeping the bathroom pretty minimal and modest as far as finishing and fixtures go there might be room.

The other item the PM revealed to me was that he put in extra labor assumptions than normal because the house is up on stilts over a slope and they'd have to put up a lot of scaffolding and lug a lot of materials up onto it. I told him of our architect's idea that the construction staging area be at the top of the hill which is on grade with the house and thus lugging should be less and no much different than normal. He thought that could make a difference.

Rolling up the sleeves is next week so we're hopeful.

Our First Bid

Right before the holidays we met with a builder up at the site. This builder is doing a house near our property who we had met over the summer. The meeting went well and they brought their architect/manager, project manager, and lead contractor. A solid showing we thought. We spent a good hour+ with our architect (Matt) running through it. Unfortunately, there was six inches of snow on the ground so we couldn't get to the actual site.

They seemed very enthused about the project because it was different from the more conventional homes they had built. Their architect particularly liked the modern design and eco elements. We told them at the end our target of sub-$200/sq ft and they didn't blink. They promised a rough bid turned around soon.

Today we got their bid. It came in quite high at $300/sq ft to our surprise. After we took the deep breath I talked with Matt and he said he wasn't shocked. All along he'd been advising that this is where he'd been seeing bids come in at. The one problem with the bid was that it didn't break down most of their core building estimate. It only broke out non-core items that would be subbed out. So we have to go back and get some detail to see why their number is so high. Was it a negotiating tactic to come in high to negotiate down esp. if they built in large margins for their labor? Did they put in high numbers on key elements like windows and concrete?

Matt says that he can usually find a way to trim off 10%, even 15% but getting to 20% is often the max. Beyond that it becomes difficult and you really are changing the project from both an architectural and builders standpoint. Does the builder flat out need $100k in labor fees to take the project? Then it'll be tough to negotiate down. In any case we're going to go back to them and get the detail of their bid and enter with an attitude of "we're apart on the number can we roll up the sleeves and get to a better place". In addition, we're bidding out to others so we can see if this is the market rate or unreasonably high. We also got a separate dealer bid on our windows since that's such a large and key element of the design. That came in high at $70k (we thought more around $50k) but there are ways to trim that back since we had large and custom elements there. But again, that might just pull us back $20-30k.

If we can't get one of the contractors into the range we need our options are few and not great: 1) we can do a house re-design but as Matt said we don't have a lot of quantity (sq. ft.) nor complexity (pretty much dimensional w/o crazy design elements) to take out; in fact the one unique item is the floating poll design and Matt doesn't think putting that on the ground really changes the equation that much; or 2) put the project on hold to see if there are other avenues to build it or if time and a declining housing/building market helps us. Obviously the latter is not desired and leaves a lot of risk to the market.

Here are fingers crossed.