The dining room and dinette had coved ceilings, but the kitchen, laundry room, bathrooms, and bedrooms were boxes without arches, coving, niches, crown molding, or any character you'd expect in an old home. To add insult to injury, the previous owners had covered the 82-year-old quarter-sawn oak floors with large, cheap, white ceramic tile.
The floor plan was also problematic:
The 28' long hallway had nine doors, a phone altar, and a linen closet. One door accessed the 8-by-12' California basement which housed one working hot water heater, one dead one, and a dead furnace.
The two largest bedrooms had no direct access to a bathroom. Between them was one large, dilapidated, pink and white tiled bathroom.
The smallest bedroom was only 8 by 12' but it did have its own tiny bathroom – with access to a large laundry room.
The 8 by 12' kitchen was terribly small for a 2300 square foot home. Worse yet, the original kitchen was replaced in the 1950s with the worst cabinets possible. The shelving sagged; the doors wouldn't close properly; the counters were cracked and chipped; the layout afforded only 10' of counter. It was a nonfunctional and ugly space to make a meal.
The dinette was larger than the kitchen. The bay window and lovely 9' high coved ceiling were beautiful, but didn't relate at all to the kitchen.
The dining room was large with a 9' high coved ceiling, but an added den adjoined and darkened the living room. The 7' wide opening between the two rooms made it feel like one odd room – difficult to furnish and define.
It's no wonder that at each open house, prospective buyers fled within five minutes. As time went on and the house's asking price plummeted, I became ready to take the plunge. Having identified what I didn't like about this house, now it was time to fix the faults:
Curb appeal is now complete. A small roof protects an antique Indian door that leads you into the walled courtyard. The splash of a wall fountain is as pleasing to the ear as the eye. The two-story turret entry brings you to the living room. The dining room is no longer dark with the addition of 7' wide French doors that give light and access to the courtyard.
The long hallway has been divided with an oversized frosted-glass door that separates the master suite from the rest of the rooms. There are now only five doors in the front hallway. The coat closet has been divided – half to the kitchen to house the refrigerator. The other half increased the phone altar to become the tech room for security, scanner, printer, etc.
The large bathroom has been divided. A powder room for guests is accessed from the hallway. The shower has been reassigned to the guest room, where the original closet has been turned into a bath. The rest of the original bath has been redesigned as a master bath which includes a bathing alcove, complete with a custom soaking tub. The small bedroom closet has been added to the master closet to create a large walk-in closet.
The small bed and bath have undergone a huge transformation. The small bathroom has been demolished to make possible a nice 12 x 14½' sitting room. The original access to the basement has been closed off and is now the closet for this room. An addition next to the driveway offers room for a fourth bathroom.
The kitchen has been made much larger by incorporating the laundry room and by bumping out. Half of the original laundry room is now a pantry with a floor that folds up to access the new basement wine room. By orienting the descent along the 12' basement wall, the steep basement ladder has been replaced by a real set of stairs. A laundry closet for a stacked washer/dryer adjoins the pantry. The entry to the dinette has been enlarged to make this one big space.
The dinette is now more of a den with a built-in cushioned couch, a coffee table, and antiques. But it is also part of the kitchen, with built-in shelving, seven feet of counter over an antique Tibetan cabinet, and a pine cupboard that probably lived in someone's kitchen more than a hundred years ago.
I knew exactly what I wanted, so I sketched out my designs.
However, I needed engineered architectural plans and appropriate building permits to get this renovation off the ground. So I hired an architect (based on a neighbor's recommendation) and handed over my sketches. Over the next four months, my ideas were translated into blueprints. All was well, or so I thought. Unfortunately, because I didn't know how to read the plans, I couldn't properly evaluate them.
But every licensed professional subcontractor from foundation and framing to plumbing and roofing found fault with the plans – errors, inconsistencies, or just plain problems. One example: the flat roof was to be rebuilt and resloped to take rain runoff to the new storm drain in the driveway. The framing page called for 2x10' roof rafters at a 2% slope – but the roofing page listed 2x8' roof rafters at a 2.5% slope. The problem was that the existing 2x6' roof rafters already touched the ceiling in two places; larger roof rafters would have pierced the ceiling.
Many more problems became apparent as the building process progressed... and many of the fixes required redrawing of plan pages and resubmitting them to the city's Plan Check Engineer for reapproval. The architect eventually made all the required corrections... but then invoiced me for additional fees, claiming that the revisions were "changes" and not corrections. Suffice it to say that the dispute was resolved somewhat less than amicably...
The moral of my story: if you need architectural plans, learn how to read them and evaluate them. You can't scrutinize them unless you can understand them. If you've hired a general contractor, have him or her throughly examine the plans even before they are submitted for city approval. And if you're going to be the general contractor yourself, you'd better have an intimate knowledge of the building process.
In any case, be assertive. You'll have to live with the results, so be sure to get what you want. If the architect isn't responsive or accommodating, don't be afraid to sever ties and look elsewhere. Trust me: paying extra for a good set of plans in the beginning will prove cost-effective in the long run.
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