Day 2 Note From Jill

Matt:

Samples have been dropped off this morning—I left them on the kitchen table, I have marked my (2) favorites. Let me know what you think.

Put a post-it note on the area in question on the doorway—I will take a look at it tomorrow when I meet with the electrician.

Two things noticed this morning during demo (already):

1) We plan on leaving the tile floor in place, it is very secure and the new tile will go over it just fine. We will be using a spray foam insulation in the walls next week, instead of the standard batt insulation (this is the product you see on TV that get sprayed in and expands). Better product, improved R-value.

2) The piping under the sink looks pretty funky (rotted). Once the walls are open, we may recommend that this area be replaced/replumbed (not in the original proposal). I will let you know our thoughts.

Also, some plumbing materials are being delivered to the house today. You may need to find a home for them temporarily until they are needed.

I am going to have the electrician install the ceiling boxes in the same location that the lights are hanging currently, with the recessed light in the center (or as close to original based upon ceiling obstructions that we may find).

The top in the vestibule will go wall-to-wall. We will plan on installing it above the height of the mail door when it is opened.

All for now….

Jill

Starting January 18, 2011

Here's the tentative schedule:

Matt:

Schedule for bathroom has been established (so far) as follows, all arrivals approximately 8:30. Please have spaced removed of all personal belongings prior to start. Will you be there the morning of the 18^th, or will you leave a key? We will install a lock box.

Tuesday, Jan 18^th, HVAC to demo radiators, measure for countertop for vanity and vestibule top

Wednesday, Jan 19^th demo and build new wall behind toilet (confirmed)

Thursday, Jan 20^th, rough electric (confirmed)

Friday, Jan 21^st, electrical inspection

Monday, Jan 24^th, spray insulation (confirmed)

Tuesday, Jan 25^th, insulation inspection

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday Jan 26^th-30^th, drywall (waiting on confirmation)

Monday, Jan 31^st, tile floor (subject to above)

Tuesday, Feb 1^st, grout floor (mirror tile cannot be installed until cabs go in and new window framing is installed) (subject to above)

All for now….

Jill

P.S. We will need to finalize granite for vestibule countertop. I have my eye on a couple of pieces of stone. You and Laurie will need to stop by during daylight hours to take a look at materials, the light in the storage barn is not sufficient after it gets dark out.

P.P.S. Ray wants to know if you may want to consider retiling the front vestibule “while the radiator is removed”, it would be the best time to consider redoing that area.

Agreed!

We agreed on our final design and I put money down. Now we're committed.

Jill thinks that the cabinets, always the critical path, will be done in about four weeks, making our tentative start date around 1/24/2011.

We still need to pick out the granite for the radiator cover in the foyer. We'll do then whenever Jill has something cool for us to look at.

Here are the preliminary drawings. (The sink and fixture are wrong)

Close To A Design

Jill--

Starting with your original design dated 10/13/2010, let's make the following changes:

• Two piece Kohler toilet
• No crown molding in either area
• 19" vanity w/ glass vessel
• No picture light in the entrance way

We want to stick with the cabinets you originally proposed with the glass & LED lighting on the south wall and the bottom drawer on the vanity cabinet. We also want the glass, pendant lights (similar to the dining room).

A couple other repair items I'd like your to include would be the closet doors in the entrance was (the rollers are not working properly), a new latch on the 2nd floor medicine cabinet, and, as we discussed, the dishwasher mounting brackets.

I think that's everything that we talked about, but I'm probably forgetting something.

Let me know if you need anything else. Otherwise, I'll see you Tuesday.

--Matt

Cost Cutting Options

I have been looking at the project to see where changes can be made to keep the design the same but bring down the price…

Alternatives would be to:

1) Delete lighting from top of back wall cabinet, just have solid doors (this would then avoid the up charge applied to the cabinet for interior finishing)

2) Eliminate crown molding from around the room

3) Replace the trim around the door and window, but not take it around the mirror. Paint trim around window to match door color (not vanity). Install a decorative mirror instead of the tile work/wood frame concept.

4) Standard two coat single color paint technique rather than decorative.

5) Delete pendant lighting and stick with recessed lights only above vanity.

6) Change to a standard, tall, two piece white toilet, rather than the one piece model

Do any of the above appeal to you?

Jill

Cost Estimate

We met last night with Jill. We have a few things left to decide:What do we want for lights - recessed, pendants, or a combination of the two?

• The color we chose for the cabinets is no longer available. What color do we want now?
• Do we want a bottom drawer on the vanity?
• Should we switch to an oval vessel sink so that we could go with a 18" vanity, saving three inches of space?

These are details. The big question is the cost. The total was just shy of $21K.

Do we want to spend that kind of money on a powder room?

Time to think.

Design Meeting on September 15th.

We met with Jill at Artisan K & B yesterday.

Before our trip to San Francisco, Jill had dropped off some samples of cabinet colors, wall tiles, paint, and floor tiles. She also has a sample of a very interesting terrazzo product made of recycled concrete and cobalt blue glass (actually fragmants of Sky vodka bottles). They had recently installed counter-tops with that product at Miller Park. Laurie didn't really care for any of the tile choices, and we were both intrigued by the terrazzo.

We discussed this with Jill, and she suggested a grey for the cabinet color. None of the tiles she had really worked, we we went over to 21st Century Tile to look at options.

Every time I am involved in these things I thank my lucky stars to have the advice of people who know what their doing. I mostly watched as Jill and Laurie looked at different tiles for the wall and the floor.

We have a small window in the powder room that is stained glass and are incorporating that into the design. We're thinking of an over-sized mirror to the right of the window and framed the same. Inside the frame will be a 3" border of clear, cracked glass. The vanity top will be the blue terrazzo, with grey cabinet beneath. The floor will be 20" square, grey/blue tiles laid diagonally.

The lighting will probably be one recessed with a couple of hanging fixtures similar to that in our dining room. we'll also have lights inside the cabinets with glass doors on the south wall.

The design is coming together nicely.