Remodel highs and lows

Remodeling is an emotional endeavor. The very thing that keeps you safe and centered — your happy home — is turned into a dusty, chaotic, noisy jobsite. On top of that, you're asked to make decisions on colors and materials that you will have to live with for a long time. The combined stress is beyond belief.

What contractors know that most homeowners don't is that the peaks and valleys of a homeowner's emotional state are predictable. As you can see by this graph (click to enlarge), created by construction consultant David Lupberger, emotions are high during the design stage, low during the contract-signing stage, high through demolition ("We're finally getting started!") and framing, then take a long, long decline through drywall, plumbing and electrical. Happily, they start to rise again as the finish work begins.

Even when you know about this normal rollercoaster of emotions, it's not easy to live through. And it's not easy for your contractor to deal with emotional clients. And yet most remodelers say are in this business — rather than in more-profitable commercial or new construction — precisely because they enjoy the personal connection. Go figure.

Even when everything goes perfectly, and all the subs show up on time, and the materials show up without damage, and the inspections are timely, there are still ups and downs in emotions. One North Hollywood couple I interviewed started out so happy with their one-month kitchen remodel. And even though every single thing went right, they were stressed out and angry at the two-week mark. They were sick of having people in their house, they said, and sick of eating out.

Contractors know homeowners will be emotional. Lupberger gives seminars at contractor conferences called Managing the Emotional Homeowner, based on his book of the same name. I've been to these seminars and they are packed.

After the rollercoaster of a remodel, the best thing you can say to your contractor is this: "We love you, now get out of here."

Agree? Disagree? Send story ideas to podblog@aol.com.

It's not just a shower, it's an experience

You know what's needed during a stressful remodel? A shower experience!

This new offering from Kohler is so over-the-top decadent that, well, it demands to be tried out.

The Kohler DTV custom showering experience combines water flow and temperature, chromatherapy (colored lights), sound, and steam mist with aromatherapy to create individual showering experiences.

Let's say you've had a horrendous day followed by a tough drive home and you want to get relaxed and rejuvenated for a dinner party. Would a few minutes in a tropical rain forest help? Set the water to fall like rain, the lights to pulse greens and blues, the speakers to play bird songs and the mist to emit the scent of tropical flowers. I feel more relaxed just thinking about it.

Or, in the morning when you want to get pumped up for a sales presentation, set the water to blast out like a torrent, the lights to pulse reds and oranges, the speakers to play Aerosmith, and the mist to emit the smell of blood. Just kidding on that last one.

It's a little hard to tell how much all this costs. Like most elements of remodeling, you have to get a price for the exact configuration you want. There's the rough plumbing, the fixtures, water ports, sound panels, controls, interfaces and goodness knows what else. I saw one at the Builder's Show costing $20,000 for a totally custom shower with swanky tile. But I assume the components could run $5,000 or $10,000.

What you've got to remember is that it's therapy, and therapy is expensive.

Ask an Expert: Is entire property reassessed for taxes after an addition?

Question: Over the past few years I have remodeled every square inch of my small 1921 home near Venice Beach. During that time the property value has increased significantly. I would like to continue to improve the property by adding a garage, three more bedrooms and two more bathrooms. The home is about 1,000 square feet, so an addition would double or triple the size. My concern is that a remodel might trigger a re-assessment of the property value. How does this work? Would my assessed value increase by the cost of the construction, or would my property tax after the remodel reflect the new market value including the land? How and when are property taxes raised following major remodels? — J.F.

Answer: Here is some insight from Bonnie Oliver, Assistant Assessor, for Assessor Rick Auerbach:

Thank you for the opportunity to clarify the Los Angeles County Assessor’s new construction appraisal procedures. The question posed by your reader was: Would extensive additions or remodeling increase their property tax based on the new square footage of her addition, or would it cause a reappraisal of his or her entire property, including the land?

Under Proposition 13, the entire property will only be completely reappraised in cases of the real estate transferring ownership. So that is the good news. The Assessor will add assessed value for any new building area, bathrooms, swimming pools, patios, kitchen islands, fireplaces, and additional built-in appliances. Replacement of existing windows, floors, kitchen counters, cabinets and appliances will be excluded from reappraisal.

Recent appliance recalls . . . or, that's why you fill out warranty registration cards

When you buy new appliances, do you fill out the warranty registration cards? I don't. I get tired of spreading my information to marketers.

However . . . as I've been perusing the product recall website of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission I realized, uh oh, those cards are how I would be contacted if my purchase is recalled for a defect.

The good news first: there have been no recalls announced by the CPSC this year for any refrigerators, espresso/cappuccino machines, clothes dryers, toaster ovens, garage door openers and many other well-made items.

But there have been recalls. Here's a small sample of the action in just the past few months:

• General Electric recalls 2.5 million dishwashers due to fire hazard (May 16)
• Asko Cylinda recalls 130,000 DW95 Series dishwashers due to fire hazard (June 14)
• Petters Consumer Brands recalls 300 Sunbeam Over-the-Range Microwaves for fire hazard (July 17)
• Fire hazard with 42,000 Thermador® Built-In Ovens leads to recall by BSH Home Appliances Corp. (June 29)
• 2000 Thermador Ceramic Cooktops recalled by BSH Home Appliances Corp. due to fire hazard (June 7)
• General Electric recalls 2,600 Gas ranges due to fire hazard (June 6)

Find more recalls according to product type or check out recent recalls.

Questions: Have you ever owned a recalled appliance? How did it work out for you?

More recalls you should know about . . .

Relating to my previous post on warranty registration cards as a means of being informed of recalls, sometimes a recalled product had no card to fill out. So how are you going to know if something you bought for your home or remodel is unsafe?

The cool way is to check out Recent Recalls on the website of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Here's an item that was posted just today:

Name of Product: TV Stands

Units: About 414,000

Manufacturer: Sauder Woodworking Co., of Archbold, Ohio

Hazard: The TV stand can collapse if the fasteners used to connect the metal legs to the lower shelf are not completely tightened during assembly, posing a risk that the TV set can fall onto children or adults.

Incidents/Injuries: Sauder has received 43 reports of TV stands collapsing. Most of the reported incidents involved stands that had recently been assembled. Three injuries required medical treatment including a broken arm, a torn rotator cuff with a concussion, and an injured finger. These injuries occurred when consumers attempted to prevent a TV from falling off the stand. In addition, a 6-year-old child received a bruised shoulder when the stand collapsed and a TV fell on her.

For West Hollywood actor Cyrus Deboo, a DIY kitchen brings life lessons

When he set out to renovate the kitchen of his West Hollywood condo, Cyrus Deboo discovered more than how to paint cabinets and lay a tile floor. The do-it-yourselfer also found out some things about patience and perseverance.

"The incredible lesson I learned from that kitchen rivals anything I learned in therapy," said Deboo, a part-time actor whose day job is selling shoes.

The lesson in patience started in 1998 when Deboo bought a one-bedroom, 700-square-foot condominium for $110,000. He recalls a friend saying, "Aren't you excited you have your own place? You can do whatever you want with it."

But the purchase left the then-28-year-old so drained financially that he managed little more than a thrift-store outing for a chair and coffee table.

For the most part, life in the 1950s-era unit — with its large windows, hardwood floors, crown moldings and a bathroom floor of vintage octagonal tiles — was sweet.

The kitchen, however, was a sore spot, with its tired linoleum floor and varnished knotty pine cabinets. "It was terrible," Deboo said. He came to deride it as the "log cabin kitchen."

Over the next couple of years, Deboo obsessed over home fix-it shows on TV and dreamed of a better kitchen. Then, one day in 2000, walking through Home Depot, he stumbled on a do-it-yourself clinic on installing ceramic tile. "They made it look so easy," he recalled.

With two years of delay behind him, he began to remodel his kitchen.

Read story and see pictures of Cyrus' kitchen
See more kitchens
See more real remodels

The newest trend in stuff: Freecycling

What bugs me about the unwanted stuff I have around the house is that someone, somewhere would love to have it. But who? Where? How?

I heard about The Freecycle Network on the radio, on the Clark Howard Show. Freecycle is a grassroots, entirely nonprofit movement that seeks to match the right people with the right stuff. And here's how it works:

When you want to find a new home for something — whether it's a chair, a fax machine, piano, or an old door — you simply send an e-mail offering it to members of the local Freecycle group.

Or, maybe you're looking to acquire something yourself. Simply respond to a member's offer, and you just might get it. After that, it's up to the giver to decide who receives the gift and to set up a pickup time for passing on the treasure.

Our main rule: Everything posted must be free, legal, and appropriate for all ages.

You'll find separate groups (open to all) in many areas of SoCal and across the planet. You might find remodeling stuff like old windows or doors, maybe sinks or cabinets. Here are recent postings from the Brentwood-area group:

Offer: Beautiful piece of Asian furniture

Beautiful black low chest of drawers. Very Asian black lacquer feel from the '60s. Very long, 5 to 6 feet. Needs a large room. House is being sold and has to go before Friday. In Brentwood.

And another:

Wanted: Compass

I wonder if anybody has spare decent compass with degree markings? I need it for adjusting satellite dish.

Obviously, for the sake of ecology, you don't want to drive across the state to pick up some free stuff. So it's good to hook up with a local group. Find a Freecycle group near you.

Anyone tried this with any success?

Q&A: Advice needed on greening up Las Vegas home

Question: My husband and I moved to Las Vegas a year ago and are now buying a fixer upper in an early 1980s tract home development. We love the floor plan, but it needs to be updated for looks and energy efficiency. We're already planning to remove the popcorn ceiling and the shag carpet (replace with bamboo). But it needs storage, new windows, etc. It's a small house and we plan to do most of the work ourselves. And we'd like to "green" it up as much as we can afford. Are there any books or other blogs you would recommend? — Stephanie T.

Answer: Stephanie, you're on the right track replacing the shag carpeting with bamboo floors. You will find your indoor air quality going up immediately. However, make sure the bamboo comes from a sustainable source (ideally FSC certified) and is not processed with toxic adhesives. I realized during a recent trip to Home Depot that finding truly green products is not simple. There is not aisle where you find the good green stuff. You have to do your own research and detective work. With the Internet, that is more possible than ever before.

For a book, I'd like to suggest Green Remodeling: Changing the World One Room at a Time by David Johnston and Kim Master. The two authors, especially David Johnston, are highly known and respected in the green building arena. It's not a colorful design-type book, so don't expect that. But it does give you a green perspective on all areas of your house: roof, floors, heating, insulation, windows, etc. I also suggest the Not So Big House series by Sarah Susanka. The idea is to build smaller houses of very high quality. As I heard Sarah say recently, the houses she advocates are 30 percent smaller but will cost just as much. But her books will give you great ideas to update the space you have, whereas other design books might show enormous spaces that you can't relate to. And Sarah is way into green building and green remodeling.

For a green remodeling blog, check out Get With Green, which we discovered here thanks to a eco-reader on this blog.

Any other suggestions for Stephanie?

See more green remodeling • • Got a remodeling question?

Q&A: When remodeling a kitchen, who ya gonna call?

Question: Help! We plan on remodeling our kitchen and opening it up to the family room, which will require removing a wall. My question is where do I start? Do I contact the architect, the contractor or the kitchen designer first? We are in the $90,000 to $100,000 budget range. — Karla

Answer: Good question, Karla. I’m going to answer it, and then ask readers here if they agree or disagree with my take on it.

If you asked this question of each of those these professionals, they would likely say they should be the first one contacted. And they would be right. You could do well to start with any one of these people and, if they are competent, they would bring in the other professionals, and your project would turn out well.

If it was my project, I’d start with a design/build firm who had an architect or a Certified Kitchen Designer (CKD) on staff. The latter are certified by the National Kitchen and Bath Association. In a design/build firm, you’ll find the designers and builders all in the company, and all on the same team. This will help you avoid the contentious environment that can ensue when designers and builders who don’t know each other, and may not trust each other, come together on a job.

I still recall the couple who started with an architect for a $60,000 kitchen remodel. They got a gorgeous design for about $5,000, but when they got bids on it, the bids were in the $150,000 range. And the couple were mad at the contractors! It's very painful to fall in love with a design you can't afford to build.

The truth is, while architects can be extremely gifted, they get virtually no building education in college. They can draw lines on paper without any real understanding of the financial implication to you. The best situation is to have the creativity of the architect tempered by the pragmatism of the contractor. If the two can work together from the very beginning, you will get that amazing blend of talents. So if you happened to find a contractor or architect you really like, ask them to recommend a counterpart they work with often. And let them begin the design process together.

You can also start with a high-quality kitchen shop, again looking for employees with the CKD designation, and then hire the builders they work with on a consistent basis. Either way, the services of a structural engineer will likely needed to make sure the house stays sound when the extra wall is removed.

Good luck with your project.

Any more insight for Karla? She and I would love to read your comments.

(Photo: Dave Fazio, architect)

How to find a contractor . . . tips from an industry insider

Reader John Beaty has a lot of experience in the building industry, working with contractors and subcontractors in many parts of the country. Now living in Pasadena (with a remodeled kitchen I hope he will share with us), John did not have a positive reaction to my recent post on Contractor Red Flags.

In fact, John suggested I stop writing immediately and go work for a remodeling company for at least six months. Gee, that sounds like an awful lot of work. And I'd probably have to get up early. So it seemed easier to invite John to submit his tips on hiring a contractor for the benefit of readers here. What we got is an insightful guide to finding a quality contractor. It's a long essay, but I encourage you to read it through.

At the end, I offer a defense of my own posting (which I remain fond of), as well as a question for John. I'm sure he will entertain all questions you care to ask.

Click here to read what John has to say on Hiring a Contractor.