Recent Developments
Greetings Again, All !
You know (* sigh *)… sometimes I wonder where one is suppossed to find the time to do “it all”… to do everything that’s required for your work, your family, and your home. Lately, with another family funeral and the very hot weather here, I either haven’t had the time or the motivation to do much work that’s related to home improvement.
But here’s where we currently stand.
1) REPLACING THE GUTTERS: — ABS Home Services never came out to do the estimate on our gutters… and I pretty much dropped the ball because we really didn’t have the money at that time anyways. I’m now searching for a recommendation on somebody to do the work again. Whomever it is will have to be able to offer to do some minor carpentry work as well… since we still have that one facia board on the back of the house that is completely MISSING.
2) KITCHEN REMODELING: — Well, my wife has sold some stock and now has the money to do her big dream: remodeling the kitchen! It’s the room of the house that she hates the most. The cabinets are too dark on both the outside and the inside. What gets me is.. she actually complains that they are TOO deep… something that I disagree with. But I’ll let her get what she wants.
I asked for referrals at work for a designer who was experienced with older homes. I got one referral, but that person admitted she had no idea whether or not this person is experienced with older homes.
We called this person / company. (Forgive me, I’m writing this while away from the house, so I don’t have her name on me.)
She came over and we had an initial visit. My wife discussed overall what she had in mind as far as different pieces of the kitchen went. We discussed our current uses and problems regarding the kitchen. And we all agreed that we wanted to continue to work together.
This all happened this past Monday.
Now, we’ll wait two weeks. The designer is sending over a second person to verify her initial measurement of the kitchen. And she admitted that she wanted to do a bit more research on what was going on in kitchens during the period of the home. But I told her that that wasn’t that important, since the various time-ranges you see in the house vary from 1890-1930 or so, if you ask me. What would be more important is that we have workmen doing the work who respected the age of the home. My wife and I aren’t going to approve anything that we feel is out of character with the home anyways. But I don’t want some workman who’s trying to remove cabinets to accidentally pull a huge chunk out of a wall !!
My only regret is that we didn’t ask to see any of her previous work.
I think we went on how good her listening and feedback skills were. She seemed to understand what we were asking for.
Now, here’s the kicker for you women out there.:
We are not rich people by ANY means. I mean, only recently did we pay over $5000 for any car!! However, my wife has a stove in mind for this kitchen…. a stove that is MORE expensive than ANY of our vehicles!
Check out the 1850’s reproduction stoves at Elmira Stoveworks !!
Yes, she wants one in the $6-8000 range ! Yikes !!
Well, it’s her money !!
The designer promises to try to make the stove a focal point.
I went to that website and what’s nice is… they have a system on that site where you can dynamically create your “dream stove” and it will show you a photo of the final product, plus break down all of the prices!
Now, we filled out a quote and then submitted one of those “contact us” forms. Haven’t heard back from anybody yet, oddly enough. But that same day, I did a search on Ebay and discovered one Ebay user / company, DirectKitchenSource, who claims that they will undercut ANY distributor’s price on Elmira Stoveworks.
So, I emailed them, inquiring about buying a stove through them. It seems that, although the Elmira Stoveworks website allows you to generate a quote, they don’t really sell through their website. That quote is just a guide. They refer you to one of their distributors.
And DirectKitchenSource took the quote I generated on the Elmira website and came back with the same stove for about $1000 less… plus free shipping!
There’s just one minor hurdle that my wife has to decide before we order: Whether or not we want to get the convection oven option. It seems that if you get that option, all of your stove controls are then hidden behind the top-front panel on the stove… which is really cool !! (We saw one in-person at an appliance store in Wisconsin a few weeks ago.) But if you DON’T want a convection oven (and, to be honest, we don’t), then Elmira can’t offer you the hidden controls… for some odd reason. Instead, the controls are put down next to the cooking surface, to the right of the burners.
Bummer. The cost of the stove would then be about $900 less. But is $900 worth it, just to hide the controls from sight?
Not sure.
My wife’s thinking this over. Oh, plus she’s got to figure out if and when she wants to sell some stock to cover this… as this little baby takes up about HALF of her original kitchen remodel budget… so we’ve had to promise the designer that my wife would pay for it OUTSIDE of our remodeling budget! Sheesh!
3) REPLACING THE FRONT STEPS, NEAR THE STREET: — The city has had to modify their original schedule for putting in a median and replacing the asphalt in the “extra lane / parking area” out in front of our house. They now won’t break ground until at least March of 2006. And I just feel that I should not replace our front steps (the ones near the street) before I see just how far they’re going to come with the asphalt and whether or not we’re going to get a curb.
4) COOLING PROBLEM PRETTY-MUCH RESOLVED!: — As you may recall, we were concerned that this summer, we’d once again have problems cooling off the second floor of our house.
As of today, we’re in our something-like-7th-day-in-a-row of 90+ degree heat! And I can honestly say that at night, our bedroom is very cool!
Two things seem to have resolved our issue:
a) The fact that our roof now has 4 new roof vents (which were put in by the roofers last fall). So now the heat has someplace to escape!
and, most of all:
b) I discovered that there was a large vent in the parlor, immediately beneath our bedroom. I suddenly realized that this vent probably SHARES its duct with the vent in our bedroom. I closed this large vent, figuring the first floor was plenty cool already… and the other first-floor vents could make up for the loss of this one. Closing this vent really increased the flow of cool air to our bedroom!
Now, we keep our bedroom door closed all day… and when we go to bed at night, we’re still very cool! And, as far as the other bedrooms on the floor, we only have a few minor problems: The bedroom next to ours gets a lot of morning sun… at least before 10 AM it does… so that room tends to heat up a bit in the morning. And the bedroom that has my computer in is always a bit too hot… which is understandable, considering the fact that not only does it have a large south wall… but also the computer itself is adding heat to the room.
But our immediate problem is solved! And for a whole lot less than the $8000 we were quoted on a second air conditioner!
5) GOT A REAL WICKER FRONT PORCH SWING: — My wife’s birthday was earlier this month. I wanted to get her a REAL WICKER front porch swing. Yeah, I know. People say the artificial / plastic ones last longer. Real wicker doesn’t like water. Well, we both felt that our front porch is sheltered enough from about 90% of the rain that we get… and we can always bring it indoors when the real big storms come along.
So, I searched locally and online for WEEKS for a real wicker swing. On the local scene, Seasonal Concepts said they could order me one with a starting price of around $800 !! Yikes !!
Well, then I checked Google and found Frans Wicker had some reasonably priced ones… and not much competition for real wicker swings.
I then checked Ebay, just to see if any were on there. I discovered that Frans Wicker had one being auctioned !! Now, I had to email them a question, because their ad had a mistake in the wording. I had to clarify that they would indeed provide FREE SHIPPING. They said they would. I told them that if I won that swing, I’d absolutely HAD to have that swing by a certain date (roughly two weeks, but the Memorial Day holiday was in the way there). The rep promised that they’d have it to our house on time.
Well, I won the auction and for… I think it was only $225, I bought the swing and delivery was free! It arrived about 4 days AHEAD of her birthday! And I could see on the invoice that somebody had written some notes for their shipping department that the swing HAD to be real wicker and that it HAD to be on-site by her birthday!
Overall, it was a very pleasant experience! And I want to thank Frans Wicker for their honesty, their promptness, and their terrific price !
Gotta run!
Lots to do!
Until next time,
-= Dave =-