No Turning Back

Half of my house is gone. You can see the inside of my front door in the first picture.

The second picture was taken a few days later. See those trees? They are in my BACK yard. The sidewalk in the front led to my front door.

I guess we're committed. The funny thing is that I really considered living in the house during the remodel to save money (a LOT of money), but my husband talked me out of it. He said it would be inconvenient and noisy. Neither of us realized it would be not only that, but that we would have no running water, no heat or air conditioner and that there would be no way to close off the outside.

Pretty inconvenient. And noisy.

Where's the money?

We picked the worst possible time in the history of America to get a construction loan. (Okay, right after the stock market crash that preceded the great depression may have been worse. Maybe.) The first lender to whom we applied closed down their construction lending division as soon as they got our application. The second has taken more than six weeks to do what used to take about two. They keep thinking of new things for which to ask us. First our W-2 from 2007 was adequate. Then they wanted our tax return and W-2 from 2006. Then from 2005. 2004 would be nice, too. I asked the loan broker if we should just send copies of the last ten years and be done with it. She replied seriously that she didn't think that would be necessary. Originally they wanted the most recent quarterly statements from our retirement and investment accounts. Then they wanted current statements. When I pointed out that, first, those accounts had never had a single withdrawal and, second, that those WERE the current statements (key word: quarterly), their response was sort of, "Oh, yeah. Well, okay." They wanted the corporate tax returns from my husband's firm if he owned more than 25 percent. There are five partners, each owns 20 percent. Well, okay, but . . . they want the corporate tax returns anyway. There is not a problem with our income, our credit rating, the amount of equity in our house or anything else that they can articulate. They just want more proof of . . . well, anything that can be proven. I keep wondering if they are going to finally refuse to give us the loan because they just don't feel like giving out loans right now. The broker keeps tellimg me that we are approved; they just need . . .

The Long Beginning

We bought a house in my favorite neighborhood seven years ago. Big lots, hills and windy roads, lots of mature trees, rural-feeling horse property with no sidewalks or street lights. This is very unique in southern California. The neighborhood was originally built in the 1960s with mostly 3-bedroom, 2-bathrooom ranch houses. Most of the original houses are still here, but many have been remodeled, and some have been knocked down and replaced.

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).