Today we started the La Jolla Townhouse remodel. I needed to get in there and tear everything open because everyone wants a ‘plan’. I don’t know how anyone has an absolutely perfect plan without knowing where everything is routed in the house. There are many cost/benefit decisions that have to be made when you know how much it is going to cost to redo plumbing, etc. Just today I discovered an issue. We opened up a cheap dropped ceiling (with the flourescent lights covered with yellowish acrylic panels no less!) and found that there is a heating duct dropped under the ceiling joists going over to heat the master bathroom upstairs. Guess what, decision just made. We are going with radiant heated floors up in that bathroom in order to get rid of that duct!
The owner of this property is a divorced Dad with 2 girls ages 10 to 13. The reason he bought this property is to be closer to the girls who live with their Mother up the hill near UCSD. Mother’s house was Flip #3, with the IKEA kitchen in an earlier thread. He says he only plans to live in it for about 4 years and then sell it. So, we need to do everything with an eye towards resale, although he is a ‘bachelor contemporary’ type of style
I’m still not sure of the exact design or style or finishes. But, that’s OK because we need to get in there and oopen it up and kind of ‘feel’ it. Every day he comes up with something that will add to the budget. So, I have no idea what in the world the budget is going to be for this project, guessing around $150k. Don’t have any idea of schedule because I am removing things from scope and he is adding things. So, it’s very fluid right now.
There are 8 townhomes located on a private road above Torrey Pines Blvd on 3 acres. They are very tucked away and private. I am not going to reveal the exact address, but the private road is Caminito
El
Ros
ario
You will not be able to do a Google Street View because I don’t think the little Google car went up the private road, but maybe a satellite view
Start at the bottom where I took pics of the demolition plans and new floor plans. Work upwards through the before photos and the finale of two photos at the top of the group photos where we have already opened up the kitchen to the big views on Day 1.
I added comments to many photos to help understand what you are looking at. Please note that these photos are just an afterthought with my cell phone, not good photos. And, we don’t get the benefit at the end of staging and gorgeous professional photographs
This place is full of “what were they thinking?” moments and reeks of cheap. Your new upstairs floor plan is a HUGE improvement, as is opening out the kitchen.
I can understand why he wants to paint out the wood ceiling, but I kind of like it. Maybe you can postpone a decision on that until he sees how it will work with the new look overall. If I were him I would replace those pseudo-Spanish railings with something sleek and modern before painting the ceiling. If he goes sleek and modern overall, it might add a welcome touch of natural surface. (Or not. And I realize that what might look nice from down below might look oppressive from the loft.
If he spends $150K on this will he have outbuilt the neighborhood?
$150k is a drop in the bucket for these $1M+ homes. We are helping D2 look for a place in the area. With a much lower price range than that, no wonder these townhomes didn’t pop up on the search. Lol
I charge time and materials with a Project Management weekly flat fee.
Each week I prepare a detailed spreadsheet with costs broken down by areas of scope such as kitchen, bath, flooring, etc. But, as you have seen, the ‘General Misc’ column ends up a whopper as things like garage repairs, general cleanup, drywall repairs, endless painting and touch up, etc just rack up labor costs like you wouldn’t believe!! I attach all receipts. This helps owners have a good accounting for capital improvements to add to their base cost when they sell.
I have no idea whether it will be $150k. That’s just a stab in the dark right now. We have actually removed several things from the Scope of Work in the last week. First, I wanted him to replace the big sliders on the front balcony with Accordion doors. They would actually create more obstruction to the view, but it would add the sexy Wow factor for his resale. Unfortunately, I priced out the accordion doors and by the time we get them installed, its $10k. Since we were going to replace the accordion doors, we were also going to replace all of the surrounding fixed windows from single pane glass to dual pane glass inserts. After analyzing it, that is a huge endeavour because they are so high!! If you look closely you can see ones that are up at 20ft high and really hard to get to through the wood ceiling structure. Yikes!!! I didn’t say a thing, but he removed that from the Scope of Work when we nixed the accordion doors. Thank Goodness!!
Another issue was that there is the big window in the kitchen right now above the sink location. That dang window just looks straight at the wall of the neighboring townhouse. I wanted to close it up and use that wall for a long row of tall cabinetry to try to get more functionality into the tiny kitchen. The HOA is having a fit, insisting we have to keep the window and the exterior decorative bars. That means we would have to invent some stupid drywall closure on the inside of an existing window. After much thought, we gave up on closing up the window.
I am insisting that we have to add two new windows on each side of the fireplace, mounted high to capture light and a view of the hills to the left of the unit, above the neighbor wall. Right now the unit looks like a tunnel and I am a big believer that if you are an end unit you need to open it up and emphasize that there is natural light on one side. This has to get approved by the HOA and may involve mounting Spanish iron grills on the exterior over the windows. Another Yikes!!! 15 ft off the ground And who knows how much to have iron grills custom made to match the 70s iron work.
The HOA is refusing to ‘approve’ anything until they have the absolute final plans that are submitted to the City. It’s another chicken and egg thing. You are not supposed to submit to the City until you have HOA approval, but the HOA wants the final plans. We don’t have time to wait 30 days for HOA approval before submitting to the City. And now the HOA is stating that ‘people’ are out of town for 3 weeks and they cannot possibly get everyone together for approval. I am not clear who ‘everybody’ is since there are only 8 residents.
And this morning, Day 2 of the project, we already have our first HOA/Neighbor issue. The HOA president was very clear on WHICH two parking spaces we were allowed to park in. This morning, as soon as my carpenter arrived, the neighbor to the left came out and told him he was not allowed to park there because those were ‘her’ spaces. He starts calling me and asking if he should go home. Dang it. I get on the phone to the owner and he says he will try to resolve the issue.
There is an end unit that was sold recently. It was sold to an out of town investor, another lawyer. Some local real estate agent convinced him it would be a good flip opportunity. She is ‘managing’ the project. This unit has the exact same layout and they opened up the kitchen and added the bathroom upstairs, very similar. So my owner is piggy backing off everything they did and using the same draftsman and structural engineer. My owner hates all the finishes that they did but keeps dragging me over there to show me what they did.
I am not clear on what is going wrong over there but they were supposed to be done with their remodel in 4 months. It is now month 8 and a couple of guys show up every now and then to work. The neighbors are livid because it is taking so long. This is why we are under intense scrutiny over the parking and the time schedule. Rumor has it that the out of town owner (New York I think) is a lawyer that got so wrapped up in a trial he forgot to pay the crew and they stopped work for awhile. I think the designer is the real estate agent and there are some horrible design choices in that unit. Maybe it will finally come up for sale soon and we can see some listing photos.
Is the HOA really going to make you keep those horrid bars on the windows? I could never live some place with bars on the windows, I’d feel like I was in a cage!
The small community is very interesting. There are 4 buildings. Two are contemporary architecture and two buildings are the Spanish architecture. The stucco job on the outside of the spanish ones is horrid. On this unit there are stucco patches everywhere (which I kept pointing out to the owner are evidence there was a huge roof leak at some point) that are very poorly done and stick out like a sore thumb. Have no idea why the HOA is clinging to the curved iron work over the side windows.
The contemporary buildings had a makeover several years ago, probably paid for by the owners in the buildings. They are nicely done and have a good stucco exterior, etc. The spanish units have seriously deteriorated lighting and are in somewhat poor condition. Their iron balcony railings are all rusted and falling off.
Yes, those iron bars are awful. One of the first things I noticed when looking at the photos. I thought it odd because having been in that area, I didn’t see it as having security concerns. Now, it is clear they are there for someone’s idea of “decorative”. Ugh. Too bad they can’t be removed.
It looks like the townhomes are duplexes. A precedent has been set by one of them being brought up to a more contemporary look on the outside, so if both parts of the duplex get an outside makeover, I wonder how much stink the HOA would make… I would pay for the removal of the bars off my neighbors’ part of the duplex!
And who knows how much to have iron grills custom made to match the 70s iron work.