Steel Beam Install

It's become more and more common for us to put steel beams into residential remodels. I used to only see this kind of thing in the commercial world. Now we drop steel beams into homes on a fairly regular basis when we're opening spaces up. I thought it might be good to post up an example of one going in.

For this remodel we planned on removing a couple walls surrounding the old kitchen to free the space up. In order to do that, we needed to support a long span that really only called for steel. If we had some space up in an attic or something then we could have used a larger wood beam of some kind, but we didn't have that situation here. One of the first things we need to do is get the thing in the house - so how? Well, it's different every time. This time we decided to cut a hole in the side of the house and slide it in. Inside there are some jacks the beam is sliding onto. These will lift the beam into place as you'll see. Here's one of the jacks for the beam. There's another one at the other end of the beam.

Here's the other jack near the exterior wall. You can also see the temporary stick framed wall that is supporting the load above until the beam is in place. Also notice the wood that is being inserted into the cavity of the I-beam. This is for other wood members to tie into.

Now the I-beam has all the lumber installed and is ready to lift into place.

These lifts are a life saver - I think this beam is about 24 feet long and weighs close to 900 pounds.

The guys check the final setting to make sure everything is ok before securing it.

There's also the unseen part of all of this in the basement. Prior to this whole scenario we had to put some concrete pads for the posts to sit on. Huge props to the guys in the field that do all of this . . . and by the way, when I say "we" in this post I really mean "them". No way would the field guys want me out there. These guys are awesome!

NARI Awards :)

NARI of Idaho recently held their annual banquet and announced the winners of the design competition. There are several different categories and each remodeler is able to enter up to four projects in separate categories. We entered four this year and took first place in each category!! Two of the projects were mine and I've included some before and after photos below.

By the way, NARI stands for the National Association of the Remodel Industry. Our local chapter was actually started by Jim Strite back in 1991 in order to "raise the bar" in the remodel community. Here's a couple links to the Idaho Chapter and the NARI website if you would like to learn more:

http://www.nari.org/
http://www.idahoremodeler.org/

Now, on to the photos . . . first up is a before shot of a kitchen. This was part of the "Residential Interior" category.

Before:After:

Before:

After:Sitting Room Before:
Sitting Room After:

And here is the second project . . . this was the "Residential Bath Under $20k".

Before: After:

I won't go into detail on what was done for each project since there's so many photos. I'll be happy to describe the design process or any other information if anyone requests it. I hope you all have a great weekend!!

Professional Photos

I know it's taken a long time, but we finally got the final photos shot last week by a professional photographer. And actually it's not just any "professional photographer", it's a woman by the name of Deborah Hardee. In my opinion she's the best in Boise. In case any of you would like to check out her work - go here: http://deborahhardee.com/

She's awesome - and great to work with too!

Anyway, the reason it took a while to get these photos is because of the furniture. As many of you might know, furniture can take forever to be delivered. But the long wait is over and I have three photos of the completed project. First I'll post the before, and then follow it with the corresponding after shot.

Before #1:

After #1:

Before #2:After #2:

Fun shot of the sink area:

Hope you all like the finished product. Huge thanks to the whole team for such a great project, and even bigger thanks to the clients. I wish all of my clients could be as great to work with as these people were!!

Vacation Over

Ok, I wasn't actually on vacation but you'd think so by how long it's been since I've posted anything. Honestly I think I just got a little burned out. I've never done a blog before so I'm not really used to the whole "writing thing". Besides that, when the project finished . . . I didn't know what to say. I was so used to describing what was going on that I didn't really think about what to write when it was all done.

To make a long story short - sorry for the delay. I'm sure that only about two people out there even notice, but that's still two people that deserve an apology.

So, what do I have to write about anyway? Well, I think I actually have a pretty dang good bit of information today. I'll be dealing with what we call the "Emotional Roller Coaster" in the biz. And as you can probably tell from the catch phrase, it sums up people's emotional state during the course of a remodel and how it corresponds to different phases of construction or design completion.

In a nutshell, when people first authorize a design agreement they're pretty excited. They've finally pushed themselves (or someone has pushed them) off the fence and decided to do something rather than just talk or think about it. It's a pretty good feeling for most people, but the emotion typically can only go one way when it's close to the top. Yep, it goes down right off the bat and continues to basically go down until the low point of authorizing the contract for construction. This is where the reality of the large investment punches the homeowner in the gut. Often times they think things like "are we really sure we want to put this kind of money into this?"

After the contract for construction is authorized emotion climbs as they see work being accomplished in their home. It tends to plateau on a high note until the construction seems to get a little old . . . and then falls like a rock until it bottoms out at drywall sanding. Everything looks kind of dirty and vanilla. Very bland.

Once the finish work like cabinets, tile, painting, etc. start going in - emotions go up again until finally reaching a high when the project is completed and people get the heck out of their house!

For a little more info or in-depth research I can send you to a couple places. First is the book by David Lupberger called "Managing the Emotional Homeowner". Here's a link to it on Amazon for you: http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Emotional-Homeowner-Remodelers-Customers/dp/0867185198

Here's a scan of the chart in the book that I find very interesting:

Another great article you might look into is from the Washington Post by Dina ElBoghdady - here's the link to that one: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/25/AR2007052500775.html

Now I think it's pretty obvious that this exact same scenario isn't going to apply to every person out there. Heck some of our clients breeze through the remodel process like it's nothing while others can have a really difficult time. The reason I chose to post about this though is to just get some information out there so people might be able to make more informed decisions and be prepared if they decided to remodel their home.

Another thing that may or may not be obvious is that the emotions can be significantly impacted based on the competency of the remodeler. A remodeler that has great systems and works with you when problems arise will easily reduce the stress level vs. a one man show that has limited resources and is difficult to work with.

Under Cabinet Lights

Today they'll be putting in the under cabinet lighting so I went up to the house to check everything out and verify all the locations. The lighting we're using in this kitchen is pretty new stuff and is really cool. It's all LED lighting mounted to an adhesive tape. The tape is only about 1/2" wide so it can go just about anywhere - extremely cool! As usual, the pictures don't do it justice but I'll post them anyway :)

Here's what the light strip looks like as we're holding it up near the counter top area:

Like I said . . . not the best picture. I couldn't get the dang camera to focus on this thing very well so this is the best you're going to get from me today. You can see the transformer sitting on the counter top in the background - it's the little white hockey puck thing. It's only about 3" in diameter and about 1.25" in height. It will fit perfectly to the underside of the cabinets behind the light shield we'll be installing. Here's what it looks like up closer:

Now how exciting is that?! I wish I could have gotten a focused picture of the LEDs turned on but those photos looked horrible - I mean really bad. So you'll just have to use your imagination until we get them installed and I can get a better shot of it. Sorry :)

Backsplash!!

Very cool - I went up to the house today and it turns out the backsplash is in! It looks awesome - the pictures don't do it justice. Here's what it looks like:

Here's another angle over by the sink. I love that faucet :) By the way, the blue strips you see at the top left of the glass backsplash are painters tape to keep it in place while the silicone sets up and dries.And here's another close up. These materials look really nice together. Can't wait for the LED under cabinet lighting to go in next!!

As a side note, I will say that we're having a few issues with the countertop material. As you may remember it's a quartz material made by Caesarstone. Now typically quartz is the ideal material . . . however, since this is in the honed finish it seems to show just about everything. Not what we were expecting and we're in the process of investigating a solution. Anyway, just wanted to pass that info on to anyone considering this same material. I'll let you all know what we find out.

The Latest

Well I hope everyone had a great 4th of July weekend. I know I sure did! So I went up to the house today and took a few pictures. Things are getting pretty close to being done at this point. I was hoping everything would wrap up last week but it didn't happen. The glass backsplash was supposed to go in Thursday but won't go in until tomorrow. I hope. We really can't do the undercabinet lights until that's in so we'll just have to wait.

So, . . . here's what it looks like today:

Some of the pendant lights are installed over the peninsula and the others will be in by the end of the day. You can also see how the cork floor looks. Well, a little. These pictures don't show the greatest detail but I think you get the idea. The patterning and look of the cork are gorgeous in person.

Here's a closer view of the cabinets with the drawer hardware installed. Actually this first picture is from last week when I went up to the house to look at where to install them.

And here's the finished look:

You can see the flooring a little better in that picture. We also got the wenge wood veneer put on the door to the garage as well as the door hardware. I think it looks great - here's a close up shot of the door hardware:

That's about it for now. I really can't wait to see that glass backsplash go in. I think that will clean things up so much. I'll post pictures of it as soon as I can.