Writing Checks

Most of my blog entries have had a clear point and trajectory before I sat down to write them. This one did not. When I started this blog entry, I knew I had something to say, but I really didn’t know what. When my writing students talk to me about feeling stuck with nothing to say – and an assignment in which to say it – I tell them to just start writing. It's more productive than staring at a blank screen. So rather than continue trying to plan it all ahead, I cranked up my computer.

Carl and I in the part of the process when we are making payments on the overages and upcharges. Mike Salvador gave us a base allowance on a number of elements (flooring, lighting, appliances, etc.), and every time we want something more expensive than his specifications allow, we need to pay for the difference. Some of these expenses we worked into the Purchase and Sale Agreement, but not all.

I’ve been very focused on the cash flow, trying to anticipate extras. Our household bills and budget are part of my contribution to our partnership. It still blows my mind that I can write a check, as I did today, for more than $5500 to pay for the new appliances for our house. Refrigerator, range, microwave, dishwasher, washing machine, and dryer, in one swipe of the pen.

The only checks larger that I have written in recent years were the ones paying for the first 10% of the cost of this house, which was our down payment during construction. Bear with me while I explain the situation in a bit more detail. I say we are building a house, but that's not exactly true. Normally, when someone builds a house, they purchase the land and hire a contractor (or contract the work themselves) – usually with a construction loan. The idea of doing this work made me cringe, and I was doubtful that my marriage would survive, since Carl and I have very different processes for Getting Things Done.

Mary Rose Wells, our realtor, helped us find a different arrangement. Mike has the land, and Mike owns the house at this point. But because we have paid 10% in the early stages of construction – and signed a contract to purchase it once it is complete – he is letting us make the decisions about the house. He assumes the risk at this point, not us, and this arrangement means that he could choose to “fire” us and sell to someone else. At the same time, we don’t have to try to arrange for a construction loan, and Mike manages the subcontractors and schedule. And no divorce lawyers will be necessary.

This situation also means that we have to afford anything beyond what Mike was already planning to build. In negotiating our P&S, we included costs for “infrastructure”: extra insulation, Andersen 400 windows, CAT 6 wiring throughout the house, etc. These costs will be part of our mortgage. On the other hand, we opted to buy the appliances ourselves outright because it makes no sense to amortize the cost of appliances over 30 years when the machines certainly won’t last that long. In calculating the cost of the house, Mike gave us a credit for what he would normally spend on the appliances.

Other elements are in between. Our lighting, for example. In the P&S, there is a $2200 allowance for lighting. Based on a recommendation from our realtor, we chose to work with a different lighting vendor, and Mike is ok with this arrangement as long as the vendor gets him the fixtures when he needs them. So Mike will give us the $2200 to cover lighting expenses, and we’ll pay the remainder directly to Hansen Electrical Supply. All those lighting choices have added up, and we’ll end up paying more than $6500, less Mike’s $2200 contribution.

In other cases, we are using Mike’s vendors, so there is a base level of coverage and then we pay the overage directly to the vendor. We made some adjustments to the electrical system, for example, including a number of dimmer switches and outlets in the basement which were not in the spec. As soon as Kevin Petrie sends me his invoice, I’ll be writing a check for him – half now and half upon the installation of the fixtures.

In my writing here, I have figured out that this entry is about the change I have felt in my financial well-being. I remember a time in my life when I bought groceries on my credit card because I did not have the cash for food for my kids. I remember keeping track of partial payments for bills due a week before my next paycheck. We never didn’t eat, and I have never been in the situation where my housing was in real jeopardy, but I know the feeling of trying to ignore the ringing phone, sick to my stomach because I was sure the call was a creditor that I couldn’t afford to pay.

Today, I wrote a check for more than $5500 to Belcher's Appliance Center, and I still felt a little nervous at the time – with some residual nervousness clinging in the pit of my stomach even now. But ultimately, I am happy. We did our homework, and I believe we made the best choices for ourselves. But more than that, for the first time in my life, I can afford this. I do not know how to describe the joy and the relief that I feel at this realization.

Let There Be Light...

You knew I couldn’t pass up that cliché, right?

I haven’t blogged as much as I have wanted to partly because I have been teaching and partly because we have been making decisions. Lots and lots of decisions. And by the time I’m done with the decisions for the day, I’m too mentally tired to write about them. I did not understand “decision fatigue,” especially the avoidance flavor, until this house.

I had thought we would be able to avoid making decisions during the middle of a semester by beginning early, so we started last year – as in Summer 2013. We chose and modified the floor plan. We decided on the kitchen layout and cabinets. We picked the flooring and the appliances, and we got a fair start on the lights. Each of these has had to be revisited, at least a little. But the lights…. Oh, golly, the lights.

I have been to Hansen Electric in Framingham at least five times, four of them in the last two months. Rose, our Hansen-sponsored guide, has also been to our house-in-process once. And I can finally say that we are down to about half-a-dozen decisions: three color choices; one model choice; one room that I don’t think is working right yet; and a lighting fixture I forgot to tell Rose about until Carl and I were at the house yesterday.

Keeping Track

I developed a spreadsheet to keep track, complete with brands, models, model numbers, quantities, links to websites, weights, and notes. I’ve also needed a marked up copy of the floor plan and a handful of handwritten notes to keep track. Lighting requires coordination among the lighting vendor, the electrician, the low-voltage vendor, and the builder. Sometimes, I don’t even know who to ask.

Sea Gull Windgate Two-Light Pendant

But the choices themselves are ours. Carl and I tend toward simple, with minimal fussiness and extra doodads. Once we decided that we wanted mostly bronze lighting fixtures, some of the choices were easy. Sea Gull’sWindgate works well for our basic ceiling lights, and we opted for the hanging version of the same collection (pictured at left) for the staircase to the second floor.

Sea Gull Holman Mini-Pendant

Pendants in the kitchen were a bit more taxing. I don’t like glass that flares too much (project for another day, define “too much”), and neither Carl nor I like odd-shaped metal on the tops. We were able to point at a few mini-pendants mounted over the desk at Hansen’s that we thought were ok, telling Rose what was not-so-ok about them. She led us to Sea Gull again, but this time the Holman collection. So we have our pendants for the kitchen.

Kichler Hendrik Casual Chandelier

A chandelier for the dining room caused a moderate amount of difficulty. The original one we chose last summer was discontinued, and our second choice was actually too small for our dining room table – apparently your dining room chandelier should be at least half the width of your table (who knew?). I think this is where true fatigue began to set in. There are so many chandeliers from so many companies. I started with the brands that Rose kept recommending: Murray-Feiss and Kichler. Kichler’s Hendrik Casual became the winner. Carl may have said “yes” to this one out of sheer exhaustion.

Murray-Feiss Sullivan 2-Light Vanity

Fixtures for the upstairs and half-bath – the bathrooms, I keep saying, that I don’t really care much about – were simply a matter of finding something inexpensive that would be in keeping with the style we’re fostering. Murray-Feiss’s Sullivan collection works here, with the bonus that the single light version has a tight enough clearance to serve as the light at the top of the stairs to the basement. My alternative there was something that looks like it belongs in my grandparent’s house.

Kichler Lindstrom Collection

Outside lights also weren’t terribly difficult, once I decided that I really did want consistency among the pendant, post, and wall-mounted lights, and that Carl and I both liked cylindrical glass inside a squarish frame. Kichler’s Lindstrom does this, though I’m not 100% convinced on the way that the bottoms are wider than the tops. I think my exhaustion is showing here.

The lighting decision that gave me the most trouble was the foyer. We aren’t having a chandelier there because we are putting in a ceiling fan where an entry chandelier would normally go. Rose thought that wall sconces would work. We have a small angled wall that points toward the front door and a larger wall beside the front door where a larger sconce would fit. Now for the challenge: find matching sconces. We found a small one we liked quickly: Murray-Feiss Vista. But there is no matching wider version. I could find half-moons, but they had different glass. Or the kind of doodads that Carl really hates. I heard “Bleah!” from him lots of times as I showed him yet-another sconce. I guess I gave him too much time to recover after the chandelier.

Livex Brookside Larger Sconce

Finally, I found a vendor that looked promising; the problem was that it wasn’t on Hansen’s list online. “Livex,” said Rose, “Hey! We just started carrying them!” We found a pair in the Brookside collection that might work…but they have a rather large embellishment on the bottom. Fortunately, that part of the light doesn’t have to go up, though I am hoping that Carl will consider it once he sees it outside of a catalog. Maybe I’ll still like it in person, too. If not, I’ll stash those pieces away to put up later when Carl’s not looking. He’ll never notice.

Hanging around Hansen’s, I heard people say several times that they “fell in love” with a particular fixture. I thought that language rather odd since none of our lighting choices were moving me to wax poetic. Until I found the pendant that will be going over our bathtub.

We have a perfectly decadent master bathroom space, including a tub in an alcove with windows on three sides (well insulated, of course). The ceiling over the tub is raised. And from that raised ceiling, we will be hanging a star. A purple one.

Meyda 18" Moravian Star Pendant

Rose was trying to talk me out of the star because of some issues with bulbs getting too hot in the enclosed glass – until she saw the purple one. She exclaimed to her co-workers that they needed to get one to hang in the store. Rose called Meyda, the company that sells the star, because the website says that they are custom items. Normal lead time is 6-10 months. But we caught a bit of a break: someone had ordered five of them and then bailed on the order. The color is a little darker than the picture, but would that be ok? Oh, yes. And, again, I say, yes.

There are moments in this process when I feel overwhelmed, but in addition to a bit of luck like the availability of the star, there are also little moments of magic. When Carl and I were doing the walk-through with Rose on-site, she suggested a pendant over the tub that would match whatever we chose to put over our vanity. I shook my head, saying maybe something contrasting instead, something colorful. In my head, I was thinking “Tiffany,” but it felt silly and frivolous to think about putting a Tiffany light in the bathroom. Carl looked at me and said with complete seriousness, “Tiffany.” Magic. And, once again, I know I am married to the right guy.

I Got a Rock.

In the 1966 Halloween television special, It’s the GreatPumpkin, Charlie Brown, the gang collects trick-or-treat candy and compares notes. “I got a rock,” becomes Charlie Brown’s refrain.

The day after Halloween this year, we got a rock. Several of them, in fact. November 1st is the day that we went to pick out our granite.

While there are environmental concerns with granite – and I am not unaware of them – we decided to go with granite primarily because of its longevity and durability and because of our proximity to quarries of the stuff. We’re trying to be environmentally responsible, and in this choice, I feel some ambivalence. But only about the environmental concerns. And if we didn’t live in Massachusetts, I probably wouldn’t have even considered it. Not that everything we chose is from New England, but sometimes my ethics can be compromised.

Once I saw the pieces, though, I was taken. Our kitchen designer, Patty at Country Craftsmen, had suggested (and priced) honed Jet Mist for our kitchen. To be honest, I thought that she had chosen an “economical” granite that we would later have to resist upgrading for more money. I was completely wrong. What she had done, I think, was listen to our description of our flooring, looked at our choice of cabinet wood and style, and decided that this variety of granite would fit the style we are developing in the house.

Our style seems to be a combination of – or, perhaps more accurately, a kind of slip and slide between – old-fashioned and contemporary. We like wood that looks like wood, hence the choice of hickory for the floors and cabinets. But we also like the high ceilings and contemporary fans that we’re going to put up there (more on that in a future post). Honed granite has a matte finish. It’s prone to show oils and liquids more, but otherwise, it appears to be no more difficult to maintain than polished granite. But stylistically, it’s softer. And it looks more like the stone that it is.

Honed Jet Mist isn’t in the “affordable” range, which is what Terry at Discover Marble & Granite called the least expensive stone. In fact, it is actually more expensive than any of the others except the “exotics,” which neither Carl nor I found interesting. I think they look too much like modern art to belong in our house.

From Discover Marble & Granite's Website

In order to choose our counters, we had to make an appointment. I didn’t understand this until we arrived at Discover. Writing this now, I am struggling to determine what to call the place because “store” isn’t accurate, but I don’t think “showroom” is either. After we handed over copies of our kitchen and bathroom plans for our file there, we were led into an area with rows of granite stacked on edge so that the colors and patterns were visible. Terry told us that we would walk around to make some preliminary selections, and we would have the time we needed to narrow our choices.

Our slabs of honed Jet Mist

So we walked down about five aisles of granite. Carl and I followed our usually pattern of quickly narrowing down the choices. I was surprised to find that the one I immediately liked best was the honed Jet Mist. Really? Yes, really. It looks like dark gray sand in dunes or waves, but flat. I kept touching it to be sure there weren’t ridges. I found myself captivated – ok, only as much as I get captivated by anything that isn’t yarn. This was the right stuff. I was sure.

The same slab, up close. It's smooth! Really!

Carl actually had a different first choice, a black with more distinct marbling – I forget what it is called. However, when he visualized the piece cut down to countertop width, he decided it would lose precisely the qualities he liked best. The Jet Mist was his second choice. I have to wonder how much of that stone being his first choice was because the marbled colors were more distinct for him.

For our other counters – our bathroom and the upstairs bath – we decided to go with remnants if at all possible. Using leftovers is preferable to cutting new stone, presuming we could find usable pieces that we liked. We were shown into another area where the granite was stacked more haphazardly, and where machinery was required to pull pieces out for our inspection. Our measurements in Terry’s hand, we found two more pieces, each very different from the other.

Colonial White Remnant for
the Master Bathroom

Colonial White, up close. Yes, there's some purple there!

For our bathroom, we found a piece of granite called Colonial White. I wasn’t expecting to like a light colored stone, but our bathroom will have some blue in the flooring that (we think) will work with this stone well.

Hollinsbrook Quartz for the Upstairs Bathroom

For the upstairs bathroom, we chose a distinctive piece of man-made quartz from Cambria called Hollinsbrook, which stays within with the brown and black theme we have going (mostly).

Choosing the countertops was more fun than I thought it would be. I honestly expected something like flooring, where I would be trying to imagine the same material over a largish space based on a 2” x 2” square. Instead, I could see my choices and my real job was imagining them in our spaces.

So we got a rock. Three different kinds. And I’m smiling now as I think about them.