I have six children and, at that time, they were aged 1 to 17. We needed a house big enough for our family, we wanted a big lot and a pool. I used to drive around the neighborhood like a stalker, looking for THE HOUSE. We found it. A weird added-on ranch house that looked like it was about a mile wide and 2 feet deep. The lot was big and beautiful, with lots of trees, and a huge pool. Too huge, actually, but a pool nonetheless. The house is L-shaped with additions at both ends. A master bedroom and bathroom and another bedroom had been added on to one end. A huge family room had been added on to the other. The problem with the family room as that it was on the far side of the garage and could be reached only by walking through a long laundry room. Or from outside through its own door, making people confused as to which was the front door of the house. There was a long room next to the kitchen that may have been intended to be a family room, but really just served as a hallway to the bedrooms. We used it as a dining room since the real dining room was tiny. It had all the flaws of a typical 60s ranch house--small rooms, low ceilings, aluminum windows, cottage cheese ceilings, ugliness. I know there are people who like ranch houses, but I'm not sure why. Maybe they're just trying to have a good attitude.
But, it was big enough for my family and we figured that we would eventually remodel. We did do a few things: replaced the cheap white carpet with tile, scraped the cottage cheese off the ceiling, painted, etc. We realized, though, that we had to do SOMETHING big. And we would. Someday. This future remodel loomed over us and became the excuse not to fix anything. Damaged doors (including their locks, rendering our house unlockable), a leaking roof, broken kitchen cabinet doors, drawers that stuck, bad plumbing and on and on.
My husband, Carlisle, and I discussed all the options--selling, a minimal remodel, a large remodel, knocking the house down and building new--and decided we would do the large remodel. I contacted Robert, a friend of ours who is an architect and had designed houses for several of our friends. He came up with several ideas and then we delayed while my husband panicked (we have to borrow a huge pile of money to do this). We finally picked the basic plan we liked and for a few months I had regular meetings with Robert and we worked on the details. I was hoping to start building in September, Robert thought it would be better to wait until after the holidays. It turns out that we didn't get the plans out for bid until the middle of November.
All along Robert had given us an estimate for the remodel. The first bid came in at 40% more than his estimate. The second bid, fortunately, came in at only 25% more. We negotiated. The contractor reduced his profit, we would buy the windows and doors directly--saving us his 20% mark-up, we took out some built-ins, etc. We considered leaving the remodeling of the master bedroom and bath until later, not doing the front hardscape, etc. Finally we got the bid to only 17% over our original budget and signed the contract.
Here are pictures of the outside of the house (unfortunately by the time I took these the construction fence was already up).
