Home Renovations: Part 1 – Project Overview

Since moving into our new house in 2019, it has always been our plan to renovate the kitchen in this house. It was the worst room in the house. The last owners before us did some renovations, but it was clear that they skipped the kitchen to do other things in the house – quite possibly because they knew how big the job would be. I can’t say I blame them completely for that: after what we have been through just trying to find the right company to work with, it has been a very difficult process.

First, I will say right off that we got an excellent price for the house – the only house at the time in the neighborhood that went below market. It was certainly miraculous that we even got the house at all at just the right time. That being said, we knew it needed work when we bought it.

So, we went looking for contractors who would not only help us with designing a layout for the kitchen, but also do the general contracting work – a “design build” company. The first place we contacted was the best-known company and gave us an informal high-ball range that shocked us to no end. We found another company that we liked who also would create a whole house plan that could be implemented in phases, and we would own the design. We liked that.

We started planning with them. Then: COVID. Boom. Lockdowns, market crash, supply problems, and demand. And by demand, I mean that with everyone stuck at home looking at their boring walls, the entire country decided to do home remodels all at the same time.

We put our plans on hold.

Not only did we do that, but we did other projects in the meantime as well: master bedroom full remodel, including new floor and closet, new door and small deck removal; back yard cleanup; my office floor and repainting; new garage cabinets. All these took time and money away from our main goal of the kitchen.

A year later, we tried to pick up the pieces again only to find out how bad the situation was. We weren’t satisfied with the plan and tried to work with the designer to change it – and were less satisfied with the results. Then, their price went up higher than we had originally discussed all while the stock market had taken a dive – along with our main savings. So again, we waited. A few months later, we went to a storefront design company that helped us work through a wonderful plan. We like what we saw, and the designer was very helpful at getting everything in we wanted – except for the price which was WAY higher than the last company. We moved on again.

Finally, we remembered a local cabinet maker from the Seattle Home Expo back in 2019. We thought we’d check with them on the cabinets and see if they had suggestions on how to make it work. Of course, they did! They worked out a design along the lines of what we were happy with out of the last few attempts and then found a contractor who would help us with the build out and install – and all roughly within our original budget.

So, at the first part of the year, we signed on with them. Yes, it’s a year later now, but we had to work through several details: exact cabinet placement, accessories inside the cabinets, exact dimensions of the room (harder to nail down in an open space like our kitchen), and appliances (both new and old). Once the details were finalized, the cabinets were ordered, and demolition began.

First, I’d like to share the very nice photos from our house when it was originally listed for comparison:

A view into the kitchen

The original size of the kitchen – not using all available space. The new kitchen will remove the door and right-hand window and extend the counter a couple of feet past where the door is in this picture.

There will also be an island instead of this peninsula. The ovens will move to where the closet is on the left. The space in front of the peninsula will become the dining room and be smaller than it is in this picture since the kitchen will extend several more feet into that open area.

We have a camera in the room to take still shots for a stop-motion video of the whole remodel process. I’ve included some more photos below of the last picture before demolition of the main kitchen peninsula and one at the start of demo.

View from the video camera.

Just starting demolition.

A view to the side where we will have a new buffet area and what will be the new dining room.

I will have some more updates later. There is much going on and much to tell.

100 Airports and Counting!

Now that I’ve started the new job and am travelling a little again, I’ve been able to expand my list of airports to 100 now after visiting Nebraska and flying in and out of Omaha (OMA) and Lincoln (LNK).

Not only that, but I’ve achieved Premier 1K for the first time. My efforts at that lagged when I moved out of services into IT at Microsoft. Now that I’m not there anymore and back in the consulting field, I’m able to fly a little more. Just 5 times in the last year so far – enough with the United “COVID bonuses” (incentives) to qualify for 1K.

Now, back before the Continental/United merger, I had achieved the highest even unpublished status on Continental (Continental “Star”) after spending almost all year every week flying for at least a couple of years. That travel was brutal and was one more reason I took the Federal consulting job at Microsoft: less travel. Well, and it was Microsoft… 🙂

After almost 5 years in MSIT, though, I had to get back out into consulting and I’ve chosen a great place at West Monroe. The travel burden is low as well. I can live with travelling once per month and it’s not even been that. I have the freedom to work remote if I wish or need to. Or, even work from the beach – although that would be a distraction. Just a bit.

But – if I want to, they would be happy to let me range all over the country.

Epic Change

… and a new blog platform as well.

Or more precisely, the new blog platform is necessitated by the change. That change is:

A new job.

That’s right, and not only a new job, a new company. I have decided to hang up my Microsoft FTE spurs and take up with a new (to me) company and go back out in the field as a consultant to help companies recover from ransomware attacks.

It will be a challenging new job, but I’m much more hopeful about my future opportunities with this new company. Plus, the “stress” of the new job can in no way compete with the demoralization I’ve been subjected to in the last couple of years at Microsoft. It once was a great company to work for, and likely still is in other organizations, but the one I was most lately in had become toxic and hostile.

I start the new job in a couple of days. Which, of course, leads me to my next topic: platform!

Because as a MS employee I had a full MSDN subscription, I also had a free Azure subscription and I used it to host this blog and to test out other technologies as well. Now that I am leaving, I have migrated off Azure and moved the blog to WordPress.com to be hosted. This should provide me with an even more stable, updated environment, but it comes with the loss of my favorite theme. You will notice the stark appearance of this one.

It will take time for me to find the right template and graphics to make the site “mine” again.

And with this new job, perhaps I will begin to write more again. Perhaps I will have some more mental bandwidth again.

Perhaps, even, some happy thoughts and pictures.

50 in 50: Done.

I started writing this post in mid-September, but the days have conspired to keep me busy and sap my energy. Today, since I’m now 51, I will finish this post:

Last week [early September], in my 50th year of life, Laura and I visited my 50th state: North Dakota. The desire to visit all 50 eventually has been on my mind for a few decades, but the idea of getting my last state in my 50th year (before I turn 51) came to me on the day before my birthday last year when we visited Maine (48) a week before, followed by New Hampshire (49) the day before I turned 50. I thought: “Hey – I just did the 49th state in my 49th year, so maybe I can do one more this year.”

Sure enough, that last state was North Dakota. I’ve now completed my state travel map which now shows as all red. I’ve been to every state and some island territories, such as Guam, St. Thomas, and St. John, as well as DC which doesn’t really count as a state. In the course of that visit, I’ve added yet another airport to my list. It’s a very nice airport with a beautiful sky painted on the ceiling.

Fitting since it’s certainly one of the “big sky” states. Fairly flat with very few trees. Sort of like this:

Many said, or rather asked sarcastically, “What is there to do in North Dakota? There’s nothing there…” We discovered, to our great benefit, that there is quite a lot to do – at least, there is in summer. I cannot speak to winter in the Dakotas – I can only imagine that it’s rather bleak and brutal. During the summer months (or month? – I imagine that it’s not quite as long as in the more temperate zones) there is much outdoor activity to be had.

Theodore Roosevelt spent much of his time recovering from the death of his wife and his mother in the western wilderness of this state developing an appreciation of the wild landscape. This appreciation led him to create many new national parks later in his terms as president. In the western part of the state, Theodore Roosevelt National Park is broken into two “units” one in the north and one in the south. Separated by the high plains, these two different sections of badlands are like mini “grand canyons” carved into the flowing grasslands. Each one was different in feel and had unique charms.

The north unit was smaller, but we felt more interesting. We drove through the entire length of the park and were able to see most of it in a few hours. A more thorough experience could be had by camping and hiking through the various trails (we only hiked one – we are novices when it comes to hiking). At one point, we were able to see the “concretions”, or strange spherical rock formations mixed in to the landscape.

While examining these, we came across a lone bison wandering the nearby grass. It was a big, old, mangy bull and it had cornered an older couple just by wandering by. It seemed to be looking for a boulder to scratch its belly.

Later that day, we ventured to the edge of the state to see the Fairview Lift Bridge. Long decommissioned, it’s now open to walk across and into the tunnel behind it. It was a unique experience and I have to give credit to my cousin Matt Phillips for suggesting a visit.

We then headed across the border into Montana for dinner, and then headed back to our hotel through dark empty roads. Empty, that is, except for deer. We counted over 50 deer we had to slow down for and avoid. That made the trip take a bit longer than it should have.

Next, we visited the south unit where there was the Painted Canyon, through which we hiked, and then took the trail to the Petrified Forest on the western edge of the park. That trail took the most time since there was so much to see. The terrain changed so much between desert valley, hilly cliff trail, high plains grasslands, and painted desert canyon with petrified wood scattered throughout the area.

This picture does not do it justice, but it’s the best sample of a few varieties of the petrified wood (foreground) scattered around looking like wood chips and the carved out walls of the canyon.

We visited Minot and toured the Scandinavian Heritage Park and visited local restaurants. All in all, a great time was had by all. We are certainly well pleased that we chose to travel there and spend more than a week galivanting across the “empty” state. Now we know that we have to go back.

And we certainly won’t think there’s “nothing” to do there.

Done Gone and Moved Again

In the spirit of writing a blog post at least once a year (yes – I know that’s not enough), I wanted to let all 3 of my blog followers know that we have moved from our rental house in Sammamish finally into our own purchased house in the same neighborhood.

We received a notice from the landlord that the owners of our previous house were intending to occupy their house at the end of our lease – which was June 30th. Fortunately, they gave us about 60 days notice which set off a flurry of house hunting, budget planning, packing, and general sense of panic.

I had earlier been casually looking around to see what was available, and decided to stop looking and just renew the lease. But, of course that idea didn’t last. So now the search was on in earnest.

We started with what I felt was a reasonable budget for this area (which is still quite unreasonable when compared to Texas and even Virginia). After discovering that there were no properties at the desired price in our near area, we began looking further out. Yes, there are good properties for our budget, but they are so far away. The best house we found was over an hour commute each way to work and had a super small yard and tiny garage – two car, but SMALL cars.

After driving that distance several times to look at houses, we almost decided to buy in Monroe. On the last drive home, it began to hit me just how much more time I’d be spending in the car just driving to and from work. At this point, I decided it just wasn’t worth it to lose two hours a day more to driving.

We went home in sadness and with no prospects for a home in mind.

While we were getting out of the car, one of our neighbors stopped to talk to us and suggested we go look at one house down the street. This house was way outside the budget I had set for our house, but we went anyway. Once we got inside to look, we just felt at home – peaceful despite the price. While sitting there thinking about the possibility, it became clear that if we made some adjustments to our savings and other expenses, we could actually bump up our budget and possibly afford to stay in the same area.

So we made an offer and it was accepted.

But there were more hurdles to overcome.

The inspection revealed quite a few issues that needed to be addressed. We began to start making appointments for quotes and additional inspections. The owners responded with anger. At that point, we rescinded our offer and prepared to move on. We continued to look at houses, but this time with a higher budget in mind. There were many more options, but nothing out there that caught our eye.

After pulling the offer, the owner’s listing agent contacted us to ask for the inspection report. We gladly provided it to them – this meant they were serious and also could not claim ignorance on any seller disclosures. They immediately dropped the price, followed by a second price drop a week later. Soon, service vehicles were showing up at the house. We then began to think: “well, if they are actually going to fix things like we were going to ask, then maybe they will entertain a new more fair offer…”

So, we reached out through our agent to ask about what was going to be done to the house. Eventually, we reached a fair price – well below our originally agreed to price, and that included some of the more critical repair work already done.

So, now we were able to move ahead and close on the house in two weeks.

We are now moved into the new house, with boxes stacked all around. The most important part of this story is that we felt no peace anywhere else – we felt that God had placed us here in this area when we first moved in, and every time we attempted to find a place outside, we were just not able to find the peace to move on it. Once we made the decision for this house, the burdens we had felt for finding a place were just lifted off our shoulders – it was most certainly a “peace that passes understanding”. It made no sense to our minds that spending so much money would cause a peaceful reaction, therefore it must only be a divine gift that we are able to be here.

We are determined to make this house a place of peace and hospitality – to have friends and family visitors, and to use the house to make new friends and serve others. This will challenge us as introverts, but we will make every effort to share the blessing of this house with others.

Updates and News

You may notice that the web site is missing a few things… like all of the pictures. Well, apparently, this was a planned change that I somehow missed in my flurry of emails. The backend database that serves this web site on Azure was migrated off the service and onto a standalone hosting platform and then disconnected. They were kind enough to provide my the backup of the file, so I still have all of my archived data. What is missing, though, are my pictures which are still in the old directory structure, but not linked to the new location and posts. I’ll have to go through the links and download them… Lots of work to do … again.

And Now For Real News

Maybe not terribly exciting to you, but I’ve added yet another airport to my list: OGG, or the main Maui airport which we visited for a vacation a couple of weeks ago. I’ve updated the list and now have 95 airports on it that I’ve visited over the years.

Maybe I should add some pictures of Maui? Probably.