The Bogus Builder

We were so excited when we embarked on this project.  We met a builder based in the neighborhood who was very reasonable in her pricing.  We decided to have her do some concrete work in lieu of references.  (Spoiler: HUGE MISTAKE!) She did some work clearing and framing out an additional parking space, but it wasn't wide enough.  We took some time to cut down a tree and then she delayed so she could get her favorite concrete guy.  In the end, it still hasn't happened.
Last month we reached the design phase where we needed the builder to join us in meetings and give input into what could be done with the construction and what might put the project way over budget.  She missed the first meeting.  We sent an email with detailed notes and asked for a rough estimate and a meeting to discuss the price breakdown and allowances.  It literally took about 3 emails and about 4 phone calls before we could finally set a meeting time.  She kept promising the estimate to us to review ahead of time for a productive meeting, and it was finally delivered at almost midnight the night before, after lots of asking and near harassment.  When we finally received the estimate, she just threw out a number with no breakdown and no allowances.
Once we realized that the meeting wasn't going to be productive, we told the designer to stay home.  During the meeting itself the builder told us she had all the breakdown and allowances and she would send them to us.  A week later it still hadn't arrived.
Meanwhile, we asked her at the beginning of February for estimates to build a water line.  After a few weeks, we checked back in asking what was going on.  Add some huge ice storms and poor soil conditions, and it was the beginning of March before we were told the plumbers could get started.  She gave us a date for the work to begin, but she never gave us a written estimate, after repeated requests.  It closed in on the date the work was supposed to be completed and when we still hadn't heard from her, the writing was on the wall.
Because she is a huge talker and the decision had already been made, I sent her an email outlining the reasons we were no longer going with her as our builder.  We asked for an invoice for the work she did prepping the driveway.  She was unhappy with the decision and starting texting my husband (I can't tell you how much I love that she then tried to go around me.) telling him that she did a lot more work and should be compensated for more.  The problem is that we were asking her for estimates and she was doing stuff we never asked for.  He gave a 5 day window in which she could call or stop by and it never happened.  We're hoping that this gets resolved sooner rather than later so that we can all move on.
In the meantime, we're scrambling to find a new builder.  Others we met with have quoted prices twice as much as the price she gave, leaving us both confused and frustrated.  The problem with living in such a booming town is that all the contractors are busy and can raise their prices and find people willing to pay them.  As this is a purely financial play for us, we're taking some time to determine how we want to tackle this problem.  We're coming to peace with the fact that the project will not break ground on April 1 like we initially planned and will not finish by the time our lease is up at the end of August.  While I hate not knowing how things are going to turn out, I'm glad that we're being proactive in making the decisions that are best for both this project and our family.

Inches Matter

There was illness, stress, a big decision made, a road trip, and some general resistance to the project, but I'm back!  One thing I'm noticing as Scott and I pour over the plans to eek out every bit of storage we can get, is the value of a few inches.

For example, if you look directly to the left of the double doors, you'll see our laundry room.  When we measured our stackable washer/dryer at home, we learned that we needed 3 feet clear to accommodate the machine and the venting.  That wasn't quite included in the floorpan, so we needed to borrow some space from the bathroom.  We switched the toilet with the shower.  The toilet needs 15 in. from the center line on each side to be up to code.  It's tight, but it'll make it. (whew!) In speaking with a plumber for an estimate, he mentioned that plumbing can't go on an exterior wall so we would need to build a fake wall, costing about 3.5 in.  That's valuable space that we may or may not have.
We currently own a 55" television, a size my husband has come to accept is too large.  It was over 51 in. wide, taking up too much wall space between the bathroom and the bedroom.  We'll have to downsize our television to fit the space better.
We thought about the size of the kitchen, the amount of cupboards (remember that there's going to be a large window over the kitchen sink, so we won't have upper cupboards on that wall) planned, and decided that we really wanted to try to include a pantry, even if for just the cans and spices.  This is what we asked to do.

While this will give us a huge bang for our buck, it will take valuable inches from the entryway/mud room area.  Each choice we make seems to have consequences for other areas.  We're really glad that we've had time to look, and think and research different options.  I'm glad we're taking our time on this phase as it takes a while to figure out how we really use a space and what we can and can't compromise on.  If you ever plan a small space our advice is to really take your time here and think through what you really need. Inches matter.

Saving on your iPhone Cell Bill

This is Scott’s first entry, about time he start helping out a bit with the blog. 

In America, seems almost everyone from Wall Street hedge fund managers to 7 year-old children have a cell phone. It’s the new necessity it would seem. Good luck getting anyone normal to stop and help you on the side of the road if your car breaks down because they figure you’ll just call someone on your cell for help, so a cell is a nice thing to have if you don’t want to be kidnapped and murdered by a crazy person.  But this doesn’t mean you have to pay an arm and a leg for cell service!

Until recently, we were paying $152/month total for our two cell phone plans. Through AT&T we got 550 minutes, unlimited text and about 3Gig of data per month. And that’s even  AFTER the 22% discount I get through my work for the plans! $15 of this total for TAXES! There are car leases you can get for less than $150/month! After discovering a whole world of cheaper cell phone providers mentioned on sites such as Mr. Money Moustache (a web forum aimed at frugality and achieving early financial independence) and Howard Forums (a web forum devoted to all things cell phone), I decided to give another provider a try. I also decided to significantly decrease my data usage because that’s the most expensive part of a cell phone plan for smartphone users. It’s hard to make this $10 plan make sense if you don’t because of the steep data charge per mb.

After doing some research I found a company called AirVoice (this is a GSM provider, there are CDMA like Verizon/Sprint and GSM like AT&T (with GSM you can easily swap SIM cards, CDMA you can't so it's good to know what kind of service/phone you presently have) . In the industry, there are smaller cell phone service providers who lease existing cell tower bandwidth from larger providers. This company uses AT&T towers so since I was happy with the reception I’m currently getting from AT&T, I went with them. They also have good customer service reviews. I am not endorsing this company in any way, there are many others you can choose from if you do your research (Howard Forums is a great resource for this). They are also a GSM provider which makes it easy to just swap their SIM card into my existing iPhone and use their economical plans.

In our case, we had signed a two-year contract with AT&T about a year ago. 24 months, $150/month, total cost $3,600! We are only a year into it and there’s a charge to cancel your contract that equates to about $195 per phone at this point-OUCH. But with 11 months left that comes out to $18/mo so I figured if I can save enough it would be worth it to cancel. I also only cancelled my phone because I feel like it’s easier for me to cut my usage than my dear wife because I am sitting at a desk 5 days a week with an office phone and WIFI at my disposable, whereas she’s out and about usually away from WIFI and uses data to navigate around town, etc. (which speaking of, there are inexpensive navigation programs that are saved to your phone so you use zero data to navigate which is probably what I’ll get for my phone).

So you can go directly to the cell provider and order a new nano size SIM card, but if you go on ebay or amazon you can find them for only 99 cents shipped. They are so cheap because if you use their provided agent number when you sign up they’ll get a commission on the backend. So I ordered my 99 cent SIM card and it showed up in three days. Got on the AirVoice website and used their online form to “port” (basically transfer your phone number from your old carrier to new). No contract so no social security number required! I got a $10 total /month plan which gives me $10 to use (no additional tax!), and your use goes against this balance. No fees to port my number. When you port AT&T automatically cancels your cell plan with them.

The AirVoice plan I signed up for is basically a monthly prepaid plan that I set up for automatic renewal every month. Their prices are $0.04 per minute of talk (250 minutes), $0.02 per text (500 texts) and $.066 per mb of data used. (there is 1,024 mb of data in 1GB, a good thing to know to compare cost). This means you are charged whatever applicable fee for each “type” of service until your $10 is used up.

So a couple of things:  iPhones technically use an app called iMessage to “text” (it actually uses data or wifi to send messages to other users who have imessage on their phone as well). So I have my Cellular Data settings in my iphone turned to Off to avoid data charges completely (you can also select specifically which apps use data, if the phone will update apps or programs while on data, etc). There is also a counter you can reset to monitor data usage which is handy. Under this AirVoice plan, 1GB of data would cost you $67. EXPENSIVE! So if you cannot commit to using wifi for most of your data needs then another plan is better for you (AirVoice also has plans with more data included starting at $30 but I have not tested these).

Halfway into the month (15 days) I’ve used $5 of my plan. About 125 minutes of talk mainly with a few texts thrown in there to/from people without an iphone.  No data usage, I only use wifi where it’s available. If you’re a single person then this plan might not be for you, I have the luxury of using my wife’s unlimited plan on her phone if needed because we are often together when I’m not at work. (I will eventually change her phone over as well but the savings wasn’t as great since I won’t significantly downgrade her plan at this time compared to the $195 early termination fee.

The way I figured the math is I was basically spending $75/month with AT&T to talk an average of 250 minutes and 250 texts (my normal usage) plus my data usage. At the Airvoice pricing this would cost me .04/min talk ($10) plus .02/text ($5) for a total of $15 for talk and text, which ($75 minus $15=$60) means I was basically spending $60 for the data portion of my plan-which is just too much considering I have access to wifi for free (or already paid for at home). This is $120 for two phones which is a decent chunk of budget just to be able to use data on the go I think. I just bring up pages I might want to read while in wifi and keep them to read if I need to while out, and my next plan is to get a mapping app that sits in the phone memory so I don’t have to use data to find my way around town. I’ve also significantly decreased my text message charges because they basically go through iMessage for free when I’m connected to wifi, which is why I’ve only spent $5 on my cell service 15 days into the month!!  Hope you find this helpful!

The Final Schematic Drawings Are Back!

Ok all, bear with me here.  Between the ice, clearing out the garage, the lack of school, preparing a LOT of stuff for consignment sales, and a tummy bug, it's been crazy town over here.  In the midst of all that, we did have a meeting with the designers.  They took all the ideas we talked about and combined them into one final drawing for this plan.  Warning:  there are a lot of drawings and this post will be long.

Just to catch you up, Scott and I settled on Option 3 after seeing our choices.  We then sat down with some trace paper and changed it up to reflect what we thought would be ideal for our family.

At the start of the meeting, we were handed a stack of drawings.  The first shows our new floor plan.

This is what the first floor will look like.  You can see that our 'front door' off the alley will be on the far right of the building.  There's room for an official entry way and mudroom.  They actually said this will feel like a nice sized space.  The rest of the bump out will include the kitchen.  There will be the fridge, stove and some cabinets.  We will have an L-shaped kitchen and they were also able to give me an island for extra space.  What will be unique about this island, is that a table will pop out from the back.  In discussing whether the table should be counter height or not, I mentioned that I wanted counter height for big baking projects or cookie exchanges, table height for everyday life, and little kid height so our daughter could have a table her size for art projects and the like.  They're going  to figure out how to make that happen.  But, we're going to have an island! And seating for four! The main space will also have a sofa and that's a tv on the left wall between the bedroom and the bathroom outlined in red.
From the back doors, as you immediately enter on your right will be the laundry room.  We already have stackables, there will also be room for a roll-out cart that will be able to accommodate a laundry basked while we're washing, and store all our cleaning supplies.  The back of the door will have shelving added onto it for additional storage. Just beyond that will be the bathroom, which is pretty self explanatory.  Because we're going to have multiple people sharing one bathroom, we asked for the toilet to be in its own area so the occupant can have some privacy.  (That's one thing we've learned from being in this apartment:) The master bedroom will be large enough to accommodate a king size bed, have a small built in shelf behind to also act as a headboard, and have room for a dresser.
Let's talk about the built-in storage in the bathroom/bedroom/tv area.  Essentially, the television will be on the wall on a pivoting arm.  That's fine for us as we rarely watch television anyway.  Below the television will be some built in shelving for our A/V equipment and other storage.  That shelving will be inset into the wall.  Now, put on your tetris hat.  Above that shelving for the living room, will be a linen closet for the bathroom and extra storage in the bedroom.  The main space will have open ceilings, but the bathroom and bedroom will have 7 ft ceilings as that's what codes requires.
If you follow the plan around, you'll see 2 ft allowed for floor-to-ceiling shelving, and a staircase, with our main closet underneath the stairs. (I promise this will become clearer in future photos).  The circle in the closet represents the hot water heater.  The sofa will rest in front of that wall with another built-in storage/surface area behind it.

The upstairs floor plan is much simpler.

Most of the space will be open to give the illusion of more space.  You can see a storage area at the top left of the space, with our daughter's bedroom adjoining it.  The stairway will lead to a landing straight into her room.  She'll have a double closet and space in her room for a trundle bed.

The designers next gave us cross sections so we could get a better idea of what was happening at each vantage point.  Section A cuts through the double doors and gives you a view looking towards the kitchen.

You can see the side of the kitchen cabinets on the wall facing the yard and the rest of the kitchen.  After the refrigerator will be the entryway and then you can get an idea of the closet with the stairs and built-ins above.  There will be a row of windows added above the kitchen to give us added light.

Section B cuts through the kitchen window above the sink and looks towards the bathroom/bedroom, etc.

You can see the storage, the stairs (complete with storage inside the actual steps) the side of the couch, and the doors.  There are two large rectangles above the bathroom/laundry room which would represent a way to access the storage we're going to have above that space.  You can also see my idea to have a pulley clothesline inside because Scott wants the drying racks gone and I need to get my clothes dry in the wintertime.

Section C is cut through the bathroom and shows the view towards the yard.

Here you can see where the designers proposed that the storage doors would swing out and where we axed that idea.  You see the sink , the doors and a better look at the proposed windows.

Section D was taken in front of the sofa and faces the couch and alley side of the building.

This is where you get the best understanding of what's happening with the wall of built-ins.  Running along-side the staircase will be a 2 ft deep wall of shelving.  Depending on how in-depth/expensive we want to get we can add cupboard doors, make the shelving all adjustable, have a place to display pretties, etc.  You can see how the couch will rest in front of the staircase with a door to the closet below the stairs.  There's the master bedroom downstairs with our daughter's room above.

They gave us some exterior elevations, but I'm not going to get into that here.  They finally left us with some 3D images of the space.  Mad that I waited until the end to help you visualize the space better?  Hey, they made us work for it- I'm just passing along the favor.

Thoughts, comments and opinions are always appreciated.  The more input we get, the better the space becomes.