Appliances III

We put the 25% down on our appliances Saturday. We went with all the selections mentioned in a previous post, with the exception of a Dacor hood instead of the Ventalux and a right hinged refrigerator instead of the French doors.

The rule I heard was that you should have 100 scfm airflow from a hood for every 10,000 BTUs that the cooktop has. The sales rep said that the Dacor hood with one blower has 300 scfm but that it's "equivalent to 450 in other hoods." That sounded like a sales pitch to me - 300 scfm is 300 scfm. We got the two blower hood.

The appliances are not on the critical path.

Sandbagged

I received the quotations from the two contractors that I had bid on the electrical work. One was $5,400. and the other was $5,130. The allowance that Artisan gave me was $4,500.

I had suspected that they would sandbag on that amount and it seems like they did. I imagine that they did the same on the $3,500 plumbing allowance.

I guess I'll use their contractors.

Pow!

We agreed on our project yesterday.

I had them pull out the electrical and plumbing until I decide if we want to go with my guys or theirs. I suspect that we’ll go with my electrical and their plumber.

We were there late last night and Jill was unable to process our home equity card, so I need to stop by today to put down the deposit (50%). At that time she’ll have the amended contract.

She expects that they will start on or about august 20^th and it will take six to eight weeks. Ray, the owner, thought it would take about five. I will press them for a Gantt chart. I am hoping for our first entertaining meal on October 7^th.

Tomorrow we need to go and put some geeters down on the appliances, so that they can "release the specs” to Artisan, as though we need to keep that info out of the hands of Al Qaeda. We’ll go with the Dacor cooktop, warming drawer, oven, and oven/micro. We need to press them on the refrigerator and the dishwasher, but that shouldn’t be an issue.

I have never done anything like this before and am unsure how to feel about it. I’m pretty excited to see the final result, but my Appleton upbringing comes back to haunt me…”Gosh! Why would you spend that kind of money? Don’t your cabinets work right now?”

I will begin a web album shortly.

Electrical Subcontractor

This morning we met with an electrical contractor. I have used his company a lot professionally and, although they only do industrial and commercial work, they will do residential work for customers.

Tony checked out every thing, noted the areas of concern, and will be sending me a quotation in the next couple of days. He asked how I wanted it quoted, as a proposal from his company, or as a side-job by one of his guys. He said there would be about a 30% difference in cost. They are a union shop and side jobs are not allowed. However, a wink is as good as a nod to a blind man.

Our kitchen designer said that their electrician said that our current 100 amp service is adequate. Tony said it may or may not be. Upgrading to 200 A will be about $250. Now is the time.

Jim Krzewinski, the brother of my long time friend Joe, took over his dad's electrical business and will be coming out Friday to give me another quotation.

I called WE Energies to see what all would be involved to upgrade our service. The wait on their customer service line was 9 - 14 minutes. They have a very nice feature where you can enter a call back number and, when your turn gets close, they call you back. You don't lose your place in line. That was convenient.

I told the guy what I wanted to do and he asked my name, address, and phone. Then he said "Are you still employed with We Energies?" I told him that my spouse was.

I find it very interesting that their customer service people would have a cross referenced list of employees and customers. I hope that means we get extra special service.

Proposal Review II

I met again with our designer, Jill, and Ray, the owner of Artisan K & B. Laurie was unable to attend because of a tragic incident.

They included the omissions from before, the painting, water to the refrigerator, and estimates on the floor underlayment and baseboard repair. They hadn’t thought about the radiators and that may be problematic.

We discussed changing to cast iron sinks instead of stainless and they had the fixture they are recommending. I’m not sold on it, but it’s growing on me. That’s a detail.

They broke out the electrical ($4,500) and plumbing ($3,500), and again tried to dissuade me from using someone other than their contractors. I’ve called a couple of electrical contractors I know for an estimate and will probably call a plumber as well. We haven’t decided if we want to manage that or not, but we’ll probably save $2-3K if we do.

They did not include the front or back halls and are putting together some numbers on that. Both should be about $1,000.

The estimate rose to $43.7K w/o appliances.

The latest issue of Consumer Reports features kitchen remodeling and appliance reviews. We’ll probably go with their dishwasher recommendation (a Kenmore) but they don’t review the Dacor stuff.

They are sending out a sample of our flooring to see if it contains asbestos. If it does, well need to handle that.

Now we need to decide to pull the trigger. That’s the hard part. For me, at least. Laurie is full speed ahead!

Proposal Review

We met with our contractor yesterday. Our potential contractor, I should say.

We discussed sinks, stainless v enameled cast iron, single v double bowl, colors of granite, handles on cabinets, 1hp v 3/4hp etc, etc.

Then we went through their proposal. It was pretty comprehensive but had some things in it I didn’t like.

• Although they were no longer going to move the south wall, they still were going to remove the clothes chute. We scratched that.
• “Customer is responsible for priming and painting of repaired drywall.” What? We’re having all this work done but they’re not going to paint the walls? Jill said that some people like to do their own painting. We eaplained that we are not some of those people (have you met us?!?).
• They are subcontracting the electrical and plumbing work. I asked to have those two items listed separately. We may want to choose our own contractors. They didn’t seem too keen on this, but is worth exploring.
• They did not include water to the refrigerator
• “Does not include any underlayment materials or labor to install…” I need an estimate of this cost.
• 110V plug for the microwave. This will probably have to be hard wired.
• Nothing is proposed for either the front or back entrance.
• Nothing is proposed for the radiators in the kitchen.

We’re not really that far apart, but these details need to be worked out. We’re meeting again this Thursday to discuss further.

More On Appliances

Dacor has some promotions going on where they are offering specials on bundled products. One, a six piece package, has a refrigerator, dishwasher, cooktop, oven, microwave, and warming drawer. we will be getting all six of those pieces.

Unfortunately the cook top is one step down than the one we choose. It does not have as low simmer settings, which doesn't bother me, but it also tops out at 14kBTU/hr instead of 18kBTU/hr. I need to think about that.

Actually, I'm just guessing about those units. Burners are described as "14,000 BTU" or "18,000 BTU," but that has to be a rate and needs a time unit in the denominator. Hours seems the only reasonable choice. Perhaps other knowledgeable people can clarify.

The microwave is also a step down. It is just a microwave, no convection component.

The cost difference is $4,000 below what we picked, but only $540 below what they are originally.

We're still thinking.

Estimate

Our contractor called with an estimate - $41K w/o the appliances. That is much more in line with what we were anticipating.

We're meeting her next week Thursday, 7/12, to start working out the details. I think we'll go with this design. Hopefully we can begin the project within a few weeks.

If all this clean living pays off, we'll be done by Labor Day.

No Estimate Yet

I talked with our designer Jill today. She tells me that they have the electrical and plumbing quotations and will have our complete estimate on Thursday, 7/5.

She already had the list of appliances that we picked out (they're in cahoots! Cahoots!!) and I told her the options that we're tentatively choosing. It all depends on her estimate.