Flip This House CC Remodel

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Disaster Averted!!!

As always there are imperfections and disasters occuring almost daily. But this one was almost a permanent 1500 sq ft disaster:) We were all excited because we had chosen a beautiful wide plank Euro Oak flooring. It comes in the new UV Oil Finish or urethane finish. But the owner wanted to make sure that it was delivered with the Matte Urethane finish for easier maintenance. It turns out that all of the samples we had laid in the house were the urethane finish and we loved the coloring. The flooring installer went to the wholesale place and made sure the order was for urethane aluminum oxide finish. Then Dfin went into the flooring installer to pay for it and I gave her a sheet with our specifications that had in ALL CAPS… Urethane Matte Finish

59 boxes of flooring get delivered on Thursday. I open up one box and we put it on the floor and it looks yellowish, not like the samples. We don’t know what is wrong. There are no markings anywhere on the box that indicate what the product finish is. Everything marked on the box indicates it is what we ordered. Looking at the sides of the planks I cannot tell what type of finish it is. But we definitely don’t like the color… are we going to have to live with it???

We check the product number against the Internet and it says Oil Finish. The driver is not willing to wait for us to figure out what might be wrong and he leaves after 1/2 hour of loading all this stuff into the house with the help of 2 of my workers and staging the boxes in different rooms to acclimate. I call the wholesaler and 'Ooops… I’m so sorry, the manufacturer delivered the wrong product". You don’t check this when it arrives into your warehouse??? He knows we were adamant about the finish. What if we had waited for the installer to show up and f ind out we have the wrong product on Day 1 of installation. That would have pushed everybody back at least a week and the installer might go off to another job.

He insists that they will pick it all up and deliver the right product the next day. OK, we can live with that. Of course, Friday afternoon comes and goes and I have to keep trying to call to find out when they are going to deliver. I only have crew on site until 4pm to help move around 120 boxes of stuff (59 out and 59 back in) I finally get a call back with all kinds of excuses why it cannot be delivered on Friday - these excuses always (for 10 years) involve the truck breaking down or getting stuck somewhere. Never the true reason… they just have too many deliveries and cannot fit it in and/or the product really has not arrived from Los Angeles yet.

He insists they have to deliver it at 8am Saturday morning. I explain that there is no crew on site on Saturday morning and he promises that the sole delivery driver is going to carry these 120 boxes back and forth. Luckily the owner agreed to supervise the delivery and I can guarantee he ended up having to carry about 50 of those heavy boxes around somewhere. I wanted them to deliver on Monday morning but they kept insisting they were way too busy on Monday and Tuesday to deliver the stuff. What the hey??? It’s not my fault you obviously ordered (although he tried to blame the factory) the wrong stuff. How is this suddenly my problem??

Photos loaded of some progress and our new design dilemna. What to do with the fireplace to bring it up to the design standards of the remodel???

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I like the idea of a marble instead of the brick…but there is so much white, i would tend towards a medium grey.

In terms of the surround…it just needs straighter lines to go with the contemporary flair of the house. OTOH…leaving it the way it is would add a bit of character.

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Thank goodness you caught that in time! Everything is looking fantastic. I love the cabinet color and soffit solution.

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The brick has to go, IMO. Marble or quartz would look great there.

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I’m eager to see what you do with the fireplace. It looks a lot like mine, and I am not at all fond of the brick. I have brick in other parts of the house but it’s all been painted with a glossy white, so at least it fades into the background. I’ve also thought about refacing it with porcelain looks-like-marble tile.

Have fun with it.

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Fireplace

The trim pieces on the fireplace mantle are traditional. I would like to take the trim off and replace it with straight style trim. Currently the trim on the insides of the surround curve down to the brick and do not leave enough thickness to install marble or limestone slab which is 3/4” thick. It would stick out more than the surround. Thin ceramic or marble tiles might work but then there is a problem trying to hide the raw edges of the tile when they go around the fire box sides.

My idea right now is to replace the inside trim with a box straight trim that sticks out a bit so we can try to install slab pieces. Because we all know that bigger slab pieces always look better than tile!

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I had a boring old brick fireplace with a brick hearth and I had it covered with travertine (fp) and slate (hearth). It looked so much better afterwards! I hated moving away and leaving it behind.

I like the new photos. We considered noble grey for our countertop too, but chose cascata.

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Cascata is so pretty! I hope the Noble Grey ends up tying the floors and cabinets together. Every time a finish or another element is added to the room, everything changes.

The floor delivery was just funny - I was so excited, and then we put a piece down next to the cabinets while the guys were loading in box after box. My heart sank a little because it looked different than the sample board (which we had moved from room to room in the house while choosing). I just told myself that it would all look great after it was installed - and that I had picked it and there was nothing to be done - but fortunately CB was not convinced that it was the right material. The funny part was that the driver would not wait until we confirmed with his office, so the suspect floor boxes just kept coming in. I think the flooring company called back just about the time the driver pulled away to confirm that they had sent the wrong finish.

The other funny part was when CB was trying to reschedule the re-delivery and said that a crew would not be on-site on Saturday morning, the scheduler’s comment was that his driver “wouldn’t like that.” Oh really?! How about sending someone with him? Or delivering on a date with crew on-site? Instead, the driver and Hubby loaded and unloaded all the boxes…it took about an hour…

The finish on the floor makes all the difference, and I was instantly happy when the new board went down for the test in front of the cabinets. Get this - it looked like the sample board :slight_smile: Yay!

I had ordered two pendants for above the island about two weeks ago. On Wed 1/31, it was still showing that the ship date was 2/5, and that the order could be cancelled before shipping. I was a little unsure of the purchase, so decided to cancel (following their protocol online) and to just look locally for lighting. Low and behold that night I received an email from the company that I could not cancel as the PENDANTS HAD BEEN SHIPPED that afternoon, and here’s the tracking number. So is this a retail strategy? Cancel an order and they will ship it??

Aaaagh - the lights I had been obsessing about arrived on Saturday, and the scale is too small :frowning: So now I have to reship them back, and pay a fee. I ordered another set from another Build.com, crossing my fingers.

Wayfair came through in a big way last week! I had ordered a Blanco sink from Amazon (showed up as on Prime and in-stock). All of a sudden, it was delayed for 10 days. CB had already scheduled the fabricator, so I found the same sink as an in-stock item on Wayfair, and it was only $23 for next day shipping. It arrived in time for the Stone guy to take back with him to his shop. Yay Wayfair!

This is one inspiration photo - my cabinets are the exact same colors as these:
https://www.houzz.com/photo/96945602-coastal-contemporary-kitchen-contemporary-kitchen

Also, I love Studio McGee’s aesthetic:
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/60249960/

Just from trying to parse out what I like about these designs, I am trying to include pops of black/charcoal grey in the rooms. My sliding glass doors won’t be painted black (as in the first photo) but I did order two similar black pendants for the island, and will use black hardware for the cabinet pulls. As much as I do like tone-on-tone, I don’t want the rooms to be monochromatic. We also need to incorporate some wood and natural elements, though I think the floor will warm everything up!

The staircase is going to have black iron balusters and a wood rail/newel posts. We are also going to add the white trim on the side, like this one, which also eliminates the need to wrap the each step with the wood nose (is that the term? idk!) https://www.houzz.com/photo/48352769-modern-contemporary-stair-banister-contemporary-staircase-san-diego

The fireplace will be fun! CB suggested painting the mantle black/charcoal grey/whatever, which I think will outline the limestone or travertine or marble really really well, and continue the aesthetic.

All the downstairs rooms are painted with a custom blend of Benjamin Moore’s Winter White, which is a light, soft grey, and just a tad lighter than the cabinet’s Moonshine. It’s very zen, and I think will be a good backdrop for everything else. The color looks a little different in each room/area.

CB may be bringing a chandelier that she didn’t use on one of her other flips. It would be fun if it works somewhere!

I bought this totally cute mirror from Ikea for the upstairs bath: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/60249960/ It’s still in the box but looked really cute when Hubby and I held it up on the wall. It will have a small white herringbone tile all the way up the wall behind it.

The design decisions are all exciting but mostly stressful at the same time…CB is much more decisive than me, which is wonderful. Even though this is her EIGHTEENTH project, and she has had lots of practice making decisions, I would still be terrible at doing this even with lots of practice. She has an eye for color and a a confident nature that one would need for this work.

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The Ikea link w/the Studio McGee reference is incorrect :slight_smile: Just search that firm for their website/social media if interested!

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Fireplace

We are moving faster on our fireplace design than I thought we could.

The brick hearth has been torn off the floor. I thought this was going to be worse than it was. Luckily the brick and mortar just popped right off the concrete slab floor. It’s a nice clean floor now. Then my guys cleaned out the fireplace box with soap and water, rinsed well. We have sprayed the whole interior with the BBQ High Heat black spray paint and we have a clean slate to work with. We also sprayed out the sides of the brick on the outside of the firebox so that our slab will meet up to a nice black interior

But, boy did we luck out!!! I sent a photo of the type of greyish vein marble that I wanted to use for the fireplace surround to my fabricator. He does not have any left over in his yard. So, I had to drive down to his yard again (have already been there once to look for bath vanity countertop). I like to go through his yard to look through all the remnants he has left over from his jobs. He has a lot of 3/4 slabs left over from doing large kitchen jobs, plus he has a lot of gorgeous expensive stone sitting around.

I looked at beautiful limestone and marbles. But most of them were ranging into the ‘travertine’ colors which are too brown beige for our design. It would work but it wouldn’t be Wow. Then I stumbled across 2 pieces of White Macaubus Quartzite. Quartzite is one of my favorite materials but it is very expensive. When I took some pictures and sent them off to Dfin, she identified the slab as White Macaubus. Turns out this was one of her absolute favorites when she went to the slab yard to look for kitchen countertops, but it was very expensive to do the whole kitchen. How lucky did we get!!!

It’s a win win for everyone. We got the material for only $200 bucks. My fabricator does not have to drive all over the place and spend time picking up materials at a retail slab yard. AND he can get rid of stuff sitting in his shop for a little profit. So, in the end we are only going to pay $200 plus labor for fabrication for a new hearth and fireplace surround!! Probably less than we would have paid for fancy tile materials.

I loaded some pictures of the slab and our progress

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Excellent choice! Can’t wait to see the finished fireplace. :slight_smile:

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That slab is beautiful! Enjoy using it.

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Wow. That’s going to be gorgeous. Looking forward to seeing the finished project.

Still feeling pea green with envy and wishing we could clone coralbrook.

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I need a Coralbrook clone to oversee a bathroom remodel of sorts. The prior owners made the hall bath a kids bath, and the vanity height is up to about my knees. :slight_smile:

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OMG! White Macaubus surround for $200! That is amazing, I loved the White Macaubus when I was redoing an island but would have had to pay for the entire slab so it was a no go. So happy for DFin

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BUDGET

Here is where CB is NOT doing a good job on this project. Our budget has just blown up.

Original estimate $135,000 (including project management costs)
Current Spend $158,000 and still counting. This does not include appliance purchase because that was outside the budget

What went wrong???

First, the budget did not include the permit and services cost because I didn’t want to try to estimate what it was going to cost. $5,000
Second, and worst nightmare… the City came back at the last minute and required full footings, insulation and fireproofing drywall in the garage under the attic conversion. This has turned into the never ending project because it is trying to jackhammer out footings, set brand new posts and hardware, drywall a million puzzle pieces around existing shelves, posts, etc. There is over 400 ft of drywall corner bead in this little garage area. Cost so far $5,500 and we still have a day of sanding and painting this area

Upgrades to windows and doors from original estimate about $4,500

And, with any project that you get started and it is your own home there is a bit of "Oh, while you are here, can you do this??? Or the infamous domino effect… if we pull this out/ fix that/ open that up… we might as well put it back together with better, safer stuff. An example… We had to open up some walls upstairs to get access to wiring and heating. While opened up we noticed honey comb/dead bee hive and other yucky things. So, we pull out all of the insulation and vacuum everything out and put in new insulation and close up walls.

Also, we opened up the walls in the prior owner attic bathroom build and the plumbing was all wrong. We had to redo all the plumbing upstairs to get it correct and to current building code. Not to mention a bunch of freaking electrical nonsense for the new energy codes.

Plus there are some beautiful items getting installed that are higher cost than I would normally do such as a midnight blue vanity in upstairs bath. It all snowballs.

There was a large contingency built in but we blew through that with the garage issues.

At this point I don’t even know where we are going to end up because most of the lighting is not purchased yet or posted against the budget. Still have to do the powder vanity design, etc. The only costs left for the kitchen are countertop installation and appliance installation. That might be the one room where we came in on budget. $30,000 not including refrigerator, microwave and stove costs.

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well, it seems to me that you had no way of knowing that the city would do #2. And with ALL remodel projects, one never knows what nightmare scenarios will be found when walls are opened up. I’m sure the CC owner will be THRILLED with her home once this project is done.

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20% over doesn’t seem that bad when you consider the amount of things in house that are getting touched.

If you hit 50% over, then it’s time to worry. :smiley:

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I just looked closer at original budget and it was $135,000 plus $6,000 for contingency. So it was $141,000 plus permit cost (which went $1500 over my $3500 estimate) So we are about $12,000 over but still going strong!!

But most of the painting is done

We still have $4,500 for flooring install and about $10,000 more in labor probably for baseboards, door installs,trim work, etc

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As long as your client isn’t complaining…then it’s all good!!