Two out of three: Final inspections

Today is a big day for the Casa de Roo remodel. From Friday through Monday, we made a push not unlike cramming for finals—final inspections.

Preparations for this day actually began well over a year ago. Matt dropped off the permit application on June 6, 2008. It was approved on July 17 and we picked it up on July 18.

Since then, we have proudly displayed the permit in our window. Well, first our non-closing, bang-your-head-as-you-walk-by bay window (there was one facing the old deck, too) and now our beautiful, energy-efficient Anderson window.

A new roof not only provides what curb appeal you can get with a below-street-level house, it keeps out the rain and reflects away the heat of the sun.

When Dennis from the township arrived before 11 a.m., the shower door installer was already hard at work. We got approval for the building—with one verbal warning: fix the furnace flue pipe before winter. Dennis was the person who told our contractor to ground the metal roof against lightning strikes—something that hadn’t occurred to any of us, including both so-called architects.

Dennis inspected—and really liked—our new deck. It is quite an improvement over what we had before.

Next came the electrical inspection. We failed one element. Willie the electrician did not put in a GFI switch to protect the hot tub. Matt believes the ground fault interrupter, designed to protect against electrical shock by interrupting a household circuit, is actually within the hot tub control box, which the inspector did not open. If it is not, this is an error so insanely stupid even the shower door installer was shocked. In either case, we’ve asked the inspector to return on Friday.

And finally, the plumbing inspection. We passed, despite a poorly formed shower pan that doesn’t drain. We discovered this issue on Monday, so I made a Target run for a squeegee on Tuesday. I vowed we’d use the squeegee every time we showered.

The plumbing inspector complimented the home improvements, particularly our choice to modernize the house while remaining true to its ranch style.

Embracing the ranch house vernacular

“This is just a ranch house,” I had whined. Now I am embracing the ranch house vernacular. Why? In December 2007, my husband purchased Ranch House by Alan Hess for me while we were in Sarasota.

In January, we had a play date in NYC with design-savvy David and Barry. As I told them my tale of dream house woes, these modern-house-dwelling, important-furniture-owning friends said nice things about ranch houses. I thought they were simply being supportive until David said, “I had to stop subscribing to Atomic Ranch because I was getting ranch house envy.”

“Huh²,” I thought? Yes, huh squared because I was not only surprised to learn that there was a publication dedicated to all things ranch, I was amazed to hear the words “ranch house” and “envy” so close together in a sentence.

Until I knew more about this mid-century marvel, I saw the ranch as a ubiquitous suburban standard. In the book Atomic Ranch, Michelle Gringeri-Brown gives voice to my previous opinion, calling the style “architecture’s underdog” and “America’s architectural stepchild” (page 6). Per Hess, “There are few other examples in twentieth-century history where modern technology has been applied so directly in order to provide decent mass housing, and so the ranch house represents a victory for modernism” (page 79).

After perusing David’s collection of magazines and reading my books, I began to replace images from the so-called “Manifesto” with a vision of my own house—tweaked, but intact. By Hess’ definition, a ranch is informal, has an open-plan interior and a general horizontal emphasis (page 17)—check, check and check. It occurred to me it might not have been The Fates but my own home that had been exerting its will all along. “Let me be me,” it demanded!

So the time has come for me to embrace the ranch house vernacular not just intellectually, but emotionally. And if you’re among the people who say you like our home the way it is now, you’re in luck—and just wait until we start fixing this baby up!

Once upon a time…

…Now, in fact… There lived a Fair Prince and his little wife. They toiled valiantly in business. The Money Changers surreptitiously checked their credit and saw that it was good. They relentlessly tempted the couple with bags and barrels and cart-loads of coins.

In hamlets near and far, hillsides were denuded and cottages destroyed, replaced by McMansions and faux châteaus. The wifette looked up at her Prince and said, “I’d like to transform my dwelling now.” He secured a HELOC that was just the right size to meet their desires without putting them too deeply into hock.

Armed with this badge of credit—and with visions of $6.5 million dollar castles dancing in her head—she scurried off to find a draftsman, discussing the dream house project with candidates including an up-and-coming Starchitect, a Provincial Poser and Ivy League Man. Charmed by his tall tales and higher education, the lady of the house soon began trading checks for Snake Oil, a process that took more than a year and yielded no cure for their leaky roof.

The couple brought in builders who quaked at the sight of the site and cited great sums to erect the vision as drawn. As the seasons marched on, the deck became ever more flaccid.

Meanwhile, the usury that had enticed the lusty masses to live beyond their means resulted in a market correction. Bears began mauling the Money Changers, who panicked and began reneging on their promises of financing. On February 1, they lopped off a third of the dollars the Prince thought he had secured for Casa de Roo.

In the light of the crescent moon and through dawn’s early rays, the couple pondered what to do. Ponder, ponder, ponder… The consort’s reaction swung from heavy sighs of resolve to random manic cackling. Ponder, ponder, ponder…

The Fates, it seems, have spun a destiny for the couple that doesn’t involve an addition.

A clean start

We moved into this house on June 30, 2000. Our dishwasher and clothes dryer moved in soon thereafter. It took several days for the stove and washing machine to be delivered. Which is why Karl’s Appliances is, as Stephen Colbert would say, “dead to me.” As dead as three of those four Maytag Appliances.

The dishwasher suffered several recalls and began making the glasses increasingly opaque. The dryer selected its own heat setting. The washing machine began losing interested in the spin-dry cycle. The Maytag Repair Man? Also dead to me. So is the Maytag brand, given the perfect timing of their planned obsolescence.

So on New Year’s Day we headed to Sears. We knew a store featuring the décor of despair wouldn’t provide a great shopping experience. We were unprepared for how bad it actually was. (Don’t get me started!) Nonetheless, we are the proud owners of three new high efficiency appliances, a Kenmore dishwasher and two LGs for clothes. It is nice to have clean things again. The photo shows just one of the hurdles workers must traverse before bringing heavy items into our home.

It seems we also need a clean start with the design of our home renovation. We met with “Local Guy,” the builder we thought we were going to hire, on January 11. His new estimate for our scaled-back design was tens of thousands of dollars over budget. While this is an improvement, given the project had been hundreds of thousands over budget, this number didn’t include some key line items, like carpeting, flooring, lighting and other finishes we haven’t yet selected. And he wanted to downgrade our siding to vinyl, our decking to pressure treated, and called everything near-and-dear to our hearts, “cost accelerators.” So we’d be basically living in a plastic box, in the dark, on bare sub-flooring, with a crappy deck. And we’d still be over budget.

A Plan B, um, a Plan W, was in order. So I called Steve Wasko, the guy who provided the concrete pad for our shed. On January 19, he arrived with Alex, his building partner. Turns out, it was Steve’s third trip to the house for this project.

Our architect, Jimmy, consulted with him on the foundation. He didn’t listen to Steve’s concerns about digging full footings and underpinning the existing house. Instead of conforming the drawings to the conditions of the site, Jimmy wanted it the other way around. Then Local Guy brought Steve in to figure out the cost of the foundation, trying to find a way to do it for less, while still sticking with the directions provided by the architect. Our site poses a double dilemma. We cannot get the needed heavy equipment down into the back yard. If we could, there would still be no way to get the broken concrete and rock up out of the site.

A roofing specialist I spoke with expressed concern over the pitch of the addition. Could be done, of course, but it would cost more to keep the rain out because the slope wasn’t sufficiently steep. He added that, from what he could tell, the architect hadn’t specified any additional waterproofing steps to make up for the roof design. Alex said basically the same thing.

So, let me get this straight… the foundation to hold up the house is designed in a way that is complicated, not cost-effective. And our main reason for doing the project—keeping the rain out—wasn’t ensured given the roof design. Perhaps it is time the architect was dead to me, too.

We can no longer rethink the existing design. We need to erase it from our minds and start with a clean slate.

Epilogue to the deadline drama

This chapter of the deadline drama which began on Friday ended about 21.5 hours later.

Jimmy called yesterday while I was showering; he’d be here in five-plus minutes. I decided to shampoo slowly and let Matt and Jimmy meet mano-a-mano. He hadn’t yet heard Matt’s voicemail, so my husband gave him a heads-up.

The drawings he delivered followed our direction and, thus, are very close-to-final. And the shell-only estimate was closer to our idea of an appropriate budget.

Relieved, we headed off to our 10 a.m. play date at Rockaway Lanes with Karen and George. And I’d never before knocked over so many pins! Could it be due to the relief of making progress on our project?

Later we were dining al fresco on the deck, sitting on furniture they helped us assemble seven years ago. Taking in our view, I spied something odd in the lake. A deer—swimming! Another quirky reminder why we love it here, and why this home is worth preserving and improving.

20 hours past the deadline

My husband just left Jimmy a message. A clear message. A message of frustration. Why was this necessary?

Jimmy called me at work just before 5 p.m. to say he isn't bringing the plans to my office, but dropping then instead at our home.

At 7:30 p.m., the sliding glass door to the deck (one of two) decided to never open again. Not with jiggling, brute force nor with the skillful application of a screwdriver. The house continues to decompose right before our eyes.

Given we were expecting a visitor, I didn't dare get out of my stiff work clothes and into my cozy Lanz of Salzburg until 10 p.m. At midnight, two hours past my bedtime and 12 hours past deadline, we did lights off.

Up until this time, I spent the night looking out the kitchen window and up towards street level, hoping to see a shiny red pick-up truck pull in. Every time I heard a car, I looked up with the same nervous twitch that made me check my e-mail over and over again, hoping Jimmy would live up to his word. At 3 a.m., I peaked out the front door and, seeing nothing, turned off the exterior lights. At 5 a.m., my husband woke up and checked, finding exactly what I found: nothing. It was not a restful night.

So, either A) Jimmy is playing us, or B) at some point after 4:45 p.m., Jimmy was kidnapped by aliens. Now B may seem plausible to some, although this crowd tends to wear aluminum foil hats so that Homeland Security cannot read their thoughts... Trust me, you would not want to bug my brain right now...

Yes, I do feel let down, even swindled. All I was thinking about Friday—hell, all I've been thinking about since our last face-to-face meeting here at Casa de Roo on September 18—was to see a list of costs and a set of drawings for a house we can afford to build. A house much like the one we sketched in these lower-level floor plans. (By the way, here is how the previous plans looked.)

It is now past noon on Friday…

Jimmy missed the noon deadline. At eight minutes past the hour, he called to say he will give us drawings later today, including the architectural rendering of the upper-level floor plan we redrew on my laptop (above).

All I can say is that he is luckly he at least reached out to me... I have been hitting the “refresh” button on my personal e-mail account every quarter hour since 8:15 a.m. in hope that I would hear from him. I kept wondering, “What happened to the Jimmy I knew and loved in September 2006?”

Last night, as torrential rain tapered off to relentless rain and a wind that kept Smilin’ Mike’s un-neighborly wind bell from hell a-clangin’, the real soundtrack to my dreams was “MacArthur Park.”

But instead of “all the sweet, green icing flowing down,” I envisioned the further deterioration of the dry wall surrounding our leaky skylights.

An thus begins month 13 of the alleged modern dream house project—a project that becomes more necessary with each passing storm.

We cannot continue to leave the cake out in the rain...

Getting bids from builders

In July, we thought the drawings were finally at the point where we could put the job out for bid. Even though the bid set wasn’t 100 percent complete, we were beyond ready to experience some progress on this project.

Would there still be time to get the house ready for Thanksgiving 2007, our original completion deadline?

July 26 — We met with Local Guy. We see his truck and his signs everywhere. He’s the neighborhood builder and his worksites always look pristine. His projects seem to get completed at a reasonable pace. He left me with a strongly positive impression. He epitomized the mental image I had of a competent contractor.

July 27 — Tall Guy, who looks Dutch to me, is another local with a design/build firm. We’d observed his work, too. A tad pompous, he seemed to know his stuff.

July 31 — Steve-O’s Guy was builder number three. Steve-O is an electrician extraordinaire. We figured that if anyone knew a good builder, he would. And his guy was a viable candidate.

August 4 — Jimmy and Guy #1 met with us. Unlike the other three builders, John seemed unfazed by the site. He’d built in places like Colorado. He showed me pictures of his wife and of his beautiful daughter, who works with him. We bonded. I thought he was also a good candidate for our project.

September 18 — Jimmy and Guy #2 met with us. Why was there a #2? Well, it seems that #1 disappeared. Poof. Gone. Never to be heard from again. Weird, huh? But Paul seemed OK, even though we didn’t get a good sense of his background.

No matter who we picked, we’d need to check references and get a full understanding of how the builder worked with his trades (for example, did his subs get paid on time?) and how long he worked with the members of his crew. We’d want to visit a live work site (was it neat? Or a disaster area?). We’d need to know his insurance checked out. And all the other issues we learned about by being devotees of Mike Holmes’ show, Holmes on Homes.

The main thing was that we were making progress. Or so we thought.

Still more than double

Since I hadn’t added to this site for 111 days, I began rereading this blog… and it seems our current situation is, as Yogi Berra says, “déjà vu all over again.”

On March 9, we learned that the house the architecture firm had sketched for us was more than double the stated budget. So we scaled back from the original vision. A lot. And it was making me feel both stupid and cheated.

On September 11, we “celebrated” the first anniversary of sending a retainer check to the architecture firm. The day before this, we got the cost estimate from Jimmy. It was $150,000 over budget. Interestingly, all three of the other builders came in higher—at double our budget. Which seems to indicate that the original design was more than triple our budget.

Tall Guy had lambasted the drawings as being impractical and idiotic; that the glazing was out of control and that the structure made no sense. Steve-O’s guy said he really wanted his estimate to come in on budget, but it wouldn’t be possible because of the windows and the way the engineering had been established.

Local Guy was more specific. He had some observations and some theories:

• All of the windows were custom sizes; the architect priced this at $37,500 for windows alone. All Pella. We’ve heard terrible things about Pella quality. Two of the builders we interviewed called the brand crap.
• And Jimmy had estimated another $37,000 for the operable glass wall to open up the hot tub room. I went online and found several competitors to the NanaWall. Using the specs the architects had on the drawing, the La Cantina version was $16,866. By choosing a standard versus a custom size, the price became $10,331. I learned this via two e-mails after looking up an advertiser in dwell magazine. Just like that, I saved $26,669.
• The siding was a mystery to him. Later, we investigated. Parklex® is from Finland. Swisspearl Rainscreen is, you guessed it, Swiss. And a rainscreen façade system wasn’t something the local builder was familiar with. So, from a carbon footprint perspective, these two products—which we never approved—were an environmentally burdensome choice due to shipping. From a weak U.S. dollar perspective, they were a costly choice. And from a how-the-hell-do-you-install-it perspective, they were an unworkable choice.
• He assumed the guy with his name on the door wasn’t managing his subordinate.
  Postscript: The underling is off our project. Jimmy says he is now taking charge.
• Noting there was a ridiculous amount of steel being specified, he thought the engineering was better suited for commercial than residential.
  Funny story #1: When we mentioned to Jimmy that the other three builders cited the structure as being overblown for the use, he quipped that we must be talking to residential builders. To which we replied: This is a residence!
  Funny story #2: The underling specialized in footings for buildings in Manhattan. So skyscraper infrastructure is his background. No wonder we could build the Freedom Tower on our site.

East elevation

It was clear we needed to take matters into our own hands. Matt reconceived the project to ensure we would finally be on budget. I provided Jimmy with our drawings, done in Photoshop, on September 25 and 30. Jimmy promised to get back to us with revised elevation and floor plan drawings by noon on Friday, October 12 (13 months into the project). Above is the lake side of the house.

• The four-season porch becomes a screen porch. The operable glass wall now separates the expanded dining area from the porch.


• The windows in the enlarged great room are no longer 14 foot high walls of glass. I never understood the scale of the drawings until Matt took out his tape measure and showed me. Yikes! These extra-tall windows facing the sun will not solve the glare problem this room currently suffers from.


• The lake-view bedroom doesn’t change in size; it just gets a door to the deck.


• The hot tub room is eliminated. The hot tub moves up to the deck and sits outside the lake-view bedroom.


• What I’m calling a lanai—because I like the word—now sits outside the expanded flex space, which will be designed for yoga and partying.


• The downstairs bedroom grows from a space without a closet and barely big enough for a nursery into a proper master bedroom.


• Here’s how it looked before.

West elevation

This is the front of the house.

• Dormer is removed. Local Guy explained to us the damage this structure would do to parts of the house we never planned to change, namely the bathroom and the kitchen.
• Unwanted new window in the bathroom is eliminated; the existing skylight is replaced.
• Location of the door is moved to the left of what it is on the existing house.
• Glass awning over door replaces the structure Jimmy’s subordinate had championed.
• Kitchen window is replaced from a bay style to something we won’t brain ourselves on when we walk by.
• Once and for all, we eliminate any reference to asphalt shingles.

Here’s how it looked before.

South elevation

The right side of the house (when facing the front)

• There is no longer a flat roof over the front door.


• The useless parapet is removed from the area above the dining room. This feature was meant to make the house look more “modern” when the neighbors view it from their deck. The other purpose it presumably served was to trap leaves.


• The screen porch becomes a more useful size, as does the flex / yoga / party space.


• The stairs are completely replaced, not repaired the way the subordinate specified. They are barely salvageable now; imagine how trashed they’ll be as a result of the construction process—which will utilize this side of our house as the main point of access to the back yard.


• The hot tub room becomes the lanai (yes, I do love to use that word and no, I do not care that we’re nowhere near Hawaii).


• Here’s how it looked before.

North elevation

The left side of the house (when facing the front)

• The front bedroom continues to remain unchanged.


• Steps are added to make access better for the oil delivery guy.


• A downstairs bathroom is added, using existing storage space.


• Master bedroom “holds up” the deck where the hot tub will go.


• Instead of an “art screen” the subordinate designed to delight our next door neighbors, who would be the only ones who can see it, we’re simply adding a privacy wall.


• Here’s how it looked before.

Location, location, location

Upon hearing about our remodel/addition plans, some people are inspired to ask, either gently or incredulously: Why did you move into such a stupid house? Responding to the problems I whine about in this blog, they offer such inquiries as: Didn’t you have a house inspection before agreeing to buy this dump? And: Why didn’t you simply invest in a better house initially instead of going through all this hassle and expense now?

My long-winded response spells out our strategy to buy an affordable “view with a roof” and fix the structure later. Blah-blah-blah-modern-dream-house-blah-blah. While my goal is to be descriptive rather than defensive, it doesn’t always sound that way. Frankly, this all seemed pretty brilliant in 1998 when we started planning and in 1999 when we were house hunting. As we get gradually closer to bidding the job, I get increasingly nervous.

So, this morning, I took the photo above from our deck to remind myself that in real estate, three words matter most: location, location, location. Our view dates back more than a century. The lake was created in the 1890s for the exclusive 50-member White Meadow Fish and Game Club, which built the dam. The White Meadow Lake Property Owners Association was formed in 1948 and our population has grown from 25 families to more than 9,000 people.

The house as it stands today

Yesterday, our reward for a glorious morning of gardening was touring the lake in the pride of our fleet: Spacey P. The photo above shows the shore view of the house, which helps provide an orientation for the desired south elevation.

From here you can see the 20 leaky skylights over the great room, as well as the structure struggling to hold up our deck. The white house above is that of our across-the-street neighbor, whose view we won’t be blocking with our design because we are adding onto the back rather then building higher.

East elevation

Given that the front side of the house is below street level, the lake side is where we get curb, um, shore appeal.

As we swung the cleaver to cut off cool but costly features, we worried: would the end result look butchered? The initial look-and-feel was dwell Magazine worthy. Would the redesign be better suited for dull Monthly (Just imagine the headlines: “Debate resolved: square footage trumps taste and style every time,” “10 reasons why moving to a McMansion is worth the potential foreclosure,” “From trailer trash to gated community goddess: one woman’s story,” “Al Gore is a bore,” “Taupe is the ‘new’ beige”)?

Well, since we approved the drawing, we certainly hope not. Here’s what our architect, Anthony, came up with for us (click image above to enlarge):

1. Four-season porch (click image and see #6 for a side view), which will open up to expand the dining area of the great room.

2. Living area of the great room (click image to see #10 for the floor plans).

3. Deck, which sits two steps below the great room and one step below the master bedroom to enhance the lake view.

4. Master bedroom.

5. Privacy screening (click image and see #9 for a side view).

6. Exterior steps uniting the front and back of the property.

7. Hot tub room (click image for floor plan, see #9).

8. “Hanging out” steps that make the transition from hot tub room to yard.

9. Covered exit to the back yard.

10. Guest bedroom.

So, what do you think: dwell or dull? Other feedback or advice? Feel free to comment (just click the link below; you can post anonymously).

South elevation

Here is how the side of our house should look following our upgrade (click image to enlarge):

1. Overhang over the front door.

2. A set of windows now obscured by a permanently lowered shade will be removed to make way for storage, art or both. The current view is under the neighbor’s deck. Not a pretty sight, I assure you.

3. Dormer.

4. Window for the great room (click image for an inside view, see #10).

5. Although the roof appears flat, this is just a modern façade. The real roof has a pitch appropriate for New Jersey weather.

6. The four-season porch.

7. An overhang will provide sun protection, reducing our dependence on air conditioning.

8. The main deck.

9. The hot tub room.

10. Flex space that can be used for a library or simply to party (click image for an inside view, see #4).

11. The homegrown masonry steps are great for chipmunks, but a bit random for human footfalls. The rise and run will become uniform.

West elevation

Our house has little curb appeal. What did we expect? We live below the curb (click image)!

We’re actually cool with keeping our home somewhat anonymous, hence the new design doesn’t go crazy in terms of a fanciful front façade. Here are highlights (click image above to enlarge):

1. This “blank” space indicates where we descend to the front door. During the home inspection, a self-satisfied Captain Stupid exclaimed: “I used more concrete than the Hoover Dam!” The inspector rolled his eyes. As for us, his paving of paradise means we get to spend extra money to increase our permeable surfaces, but that is another discussion for a future blog.

2. We’re moving the front door to the left to provide a better view of the lake upon entry (click image for an inside view).

3. Shelter over the front door.

4. Dormer over the bathroom will also help with curb appeal.

5. Existing window for guest bedroom remains.

6. New window in bathroom (which the firm seems pretty insistant on, although I'm not sure it makes sense).

7. Replacement window for the kitchen. To close the current window, my husband needs to go outside and apply brute force. Captain Stupid asks: “Level and plumb? What does that have to do with installing windows?”

North elevation

Unless you are the oil delivery guy or our maintenance-phobic neighbors, this is the least important view of the house (click on image to enlarge). We just use this side to access the only remaining working outdoor faucet, as the cold winter burst the ones on the deck and in the back. (Captain Stupid* says: “Insulating exterior waterpipes is over-rated.”)

Here is a quick rundown of what this image represents:

1. The terraced garden, which we’ve now filled with bamboo and a few other plants. We’d tried making this a vegetable garden; it ended up being a salad bar for deer. Not the best use of our money or time. (It only took us seven years to learn this lesson.)

2. An overhang will protect us while we enter the front door.

3. This new dormer provides some curb appeal and sunlight for the upstairs bathroom (click image, also #3).

4. Existing guest bedroom; used as my husband’s dressing room.

5. New downstairs bathroom (click image, also #5), which retains an existing window.

6. New guest bedroom.

7. Slope of the hill from lower level to upper level.

8. Main deck.

9. Master deck, with much-needed visual protection from the neighbors. (They probably feel the same way about us.)

10. Chimney. The house remains at its original height.

* Captain Stupid is our nick-name for the previous owner of this house, a do-it-yourself wronger.

Upper level layout

As I sit baking in the solar heat on a cool spring morning, I console myself: we’ll soon jettison Captain Stupid’s 20 skylights as part of transforming this leaky lake house into a modern dream home. In fact, since moving in on June 30, 2000, we’ve been undoing a lot of what the previous owner, a do-it-yourself-wronger, wrought upon this poor domicile.

Now that we have approved the floor plans (click on image to enlarge), there should be less glare in our future. Here’s a quick tour:

1. The front door is moved to the right so instead of a view down the stairs, you get a sweep of the great room and out to the lake.

2. As part of our “don’t fix what isn’t broken” philosophy, we plan to leave the kitchen largely “as is.”

3. Bathroom gets a window and an appropriately-sized soaking tub.

4. Guest bedroom remains unchanged.

5. I get a bigger walk-in closet. (I may even share it with my husband.)

6. Master bedroom becomes a tad larger as we bump the house out towards the lake.

7. We’re adding a door to the deck from the bedroom.

8. Main section of the deck sits upon the lower level, rather than on rotting posts.

9. Two steps up into the four-season porch.

10. Great room should now have plenty of room for dinner guests and an L-shaped couch.

Even though we had to scale back our plans in order to afford the project, we believe this new design will meet our needs. What do you think?