If anyone ever needs a home inspection, I highly recommend George from Guardian Home and Building Inspections. We used him for our purchase of the home we're in now, and we just used him again for the home we're looking to purchase. Very thorough, very personable and very knowledgeable without being an annoying know-it-all.

 

George Rossmann

George@guardianhomeinspections.net

P.O. Box 611 Park Ridge, Ill 60068

Guardian Home and Building Inspections, Inc.

847-373-4663

847-373-4664

Countertops were installed on Monday, appliances came in yesterday. Final electrical should be done Saturday. Backsplash install begins Saturday. Cabinet doors go on Monday.

 

Almost to the finish line...

Has anyone installed engineered hardwood flooring or the "click-lock" engineered hardwood flooring? We're looking at a couple of different options and wanted to know how these compared with traditional hardwood and laminate.

Has anyone installed engineered hardwood flooring or the "click-lock" engineered hardwood flooring? We're looking at a couple of different options and wanted to know how these compared with traditional hardwood and laminate.

Tons. Laminate is super cheap and it floats and sounds hollow when you walk on it. If you ding it up it's nearly impossible to repair. It's junk man but it's so cheap I understand how irresistable it can be.

 

Engineered is great and absolutely required if you're installing over a slab like in the basement. One thing I'll mention, if you go to a lumber liquidators or a similar place that rips people off, take the little samples & whack the corners of the samples against the faces of the samples. This'll mimic a fork dropping and you'll be able to tell instantly which ones are junk.

This would be upstairs in our new house. What about strand bamboo flooring? Glued versus floating install?

 

We have a Mohawk laminate in our current basement, and we're very happy with it for the price, but we wouldn't be putting it in the main or upper floor of the new house. Thanks for the tip on the samples, we probably will be going with a cheaper solution at least for upstairs given our current budget.

I have engineered wood flooring in my house. We have the distressed stuff (on a concrete slab) and it has held up pretty well thus far (two little ones, etc). If you drop something heavy on it, you'll get a mark (say a pot filled with something) but even then, since the wood is distressed, it is only noticeable by us. About 2.5 years old and thus far would put it in again. I think when you install upstairs you have to be extra careful to ensure you have solid insulation (not sure what you do but I've been in some houses and you could hear a mouse walking on those wood / tile floors above and I presume it was because they didn't put sound deadening in between or went really cheap? Not even sure if it is called sound deadening or what, just using my own make believe words.

Glue that s*** for sure SS. Floating'll give that hollow sound. And like chisx said, once you find one you like find out what the manufacturer recommends as an underlayment. They'll even have stair nosing pieces that match for when you get to the edge of your landing.

How would glue-down work with an underlayment? Glue the pad down and then glue the wood to the pad?

Edited November 17, 201510 yr by StrangeSox

Do you really want to glue it down with the humidity we get?

floor glues usually have elastomers to accommodate for expansion/contraction

In the home stretch. Trying to figure out some of the finishing details we have to deal with as a result of some things I didn't anticipate as a result of the demo.

 

Happy to have all this almost over with, but stressing over some of these details.

floor glues usually have elastomers to accommodate for expansion/contraction

 

Hmm, I didn't know they made such a product.

I've learned that when a lender schedules an appraisal, it tends to appraise for the exact value they are looking for. Funny how that works.

I have a funny story about that...

 

We made an offer on our house in late 2010, right around the bottom of the market. It was a foreclosure that had been bought by an REO, and put on the market priced low to sell quick (that is literally their business model - buy for pennies at auction, make sure the structure is safe, put it on the market well below value and sell it quick to make a profit). We saw the property the day it went on the market, made an offer the next morning for list price, and beat out two other offerers by hours.

 

Lender sends out an appraiser. Appraiser values the home at - I kid you not - almost 25% more than offer price. The lender told the appraiser, no way, go back and get a larger sample of homes. Appraiser does this, comes back and says, here, same result.

 

Lender rejects that appraiser (who they chose!), and gets another.

 

Second appraiser puts it at... 22% above. They then gave up and took it. We picked up 22% pure equity before we even did any work on the house, on day 1.

 

That was a weird market in 2010.

 

Well, Ive decided as part of my reno I am going to slip in a 48 inch wolf stove with a griddle. Why the f*** not.

Well, Ive decided as part of my reno I am going to slip in a 48 inch wolf stove with a griddle. Why the f*** not.

Rock, we went with all Wolf/Sub-Zero for our kitchen reno. We didn't have gas so I didn't get the pleasure of getting the beast that you are getting, but this stuff is pretty awesome.

 

We got two built-in ovens, one is an M-series single oven and the other is the M-series convection steam oven. The regular oven is incredible...you basically tell it what you are cooking, and it will automatically select the temperature and time and oven position, etc. The steam oven is supposed to be incredible for cooking more healthy dishes, but is also amazing for leftovers. Haven't had much of a chance to use them yet, but they are pretty badass.

 

Also got a magnetic induction cooktop and a 42-inch Sub-Zero fridge.

 

An Asko dishwasher to top it off.

 

Yes, we splurged, but I am happy to buy something made in the US. You have a problem? You talk to someone in Wisconsin, not someone in Bangladesh who knows nothing about the product.

 

I would highly recommend it.

I'm guessing your budget is pushing six figures? Those are not cheap appliances. I'm hesitant to buy the $2500 set for our new house.

I'm guessing your budget is pushing six figures? Those are not cheap appliances. I'm hesitant to buy the $2500 set for our new house.

I think we're going to end up a shade over $70k.

 

That was to completely gut the kitchen, as well as the floors in our dining room and laundry room and 1/2 bath. I think we ended up having about 650 sq ft of flooring installed. Porcelain tile floors (we had little choice because of our dogs).

 

We had to upgrade all the electrical, move ventilation and install some additional ventilation for the new downdraft vent. Had stainless steel floor registers fabricated because we had to live with floor vents.

 

Custom cabinets in the kitchen and laundry room, as well as one in the dining room. Sugatsune stainless steel pulls.

 

Quartz countertops. Kohler sink and Grohe faucet.

 

Inhabit architectural concrete tiles for the backsplash (the jury is still out a bit on how bright a choice this was).

 

New kitchen table and chairs from Restoration Hardware.

 

I busted my butt to find the best pricing on everything without compromising. But to keep things on a reasonable timeline, I am sure I overpaid some contractors due to not being able to get several quotes or because I had to select them based on their availability on not always price. All in all, we'll end up about 10% over budget but that was almost all driven by a huge overage caused by what we found when we started tearing up the floors.

 

The appliances were the big splurge. Something I talked my wife into. She loves to cook and bake, and I wanted her to have the best we could afford. The last two years have included us buying our home, paying for a good portion of our wedding, having a child, moving my parents here (to a house which I purchased), and now this renovation. We haven't had time to take any vacations other than our honeymoon, and a lot of things have been sort of pushed to the back burner to accomplish these goals in a short matter of time. So I really wanted her to have something she could really enjoy.

 

The other consideration was our property and location. As I mentioned a few weeks back, for the long-term value of our property, we felt we had to put in a "top of the line" type of kitchen. I understand that appliances don't necessarily add value to a property in and of themselves, but I do believe they help sell properties. We both work for a company which offers many opportunities elsewhere (Berkshire Hathaway), and so we always have to be on the ready in case something comes up. Having our house in order (literally) so we can maximize the value and minimize the time on the market is important to us retaining flexibility in our careers. Additionally, the type of buyer our property would cater to sort of demands these sort of upgrades.

 

So...in the end, yes, we could have gone with GE Monogram, or even something like Thermadore, but I convinced her to splurge and so we did.

 

And damn, are they nice

 

 

I'm guessing your budget is pushing six figures? Those are not cheap appliances. I'm hesitant to buy the $2500 set for our new house.

 

Ha, I'm with you. My wife and I cook, but not gourmet style meals. So long as the temp stays constant and the unit looks ok, that's all I care about.

I think we're going to end up a shade over $70k.

 

That was to completely gut the kitchen, as well as the floors in our dining room and laundry room and 1/2 bath. I think we ended up having about 650 sq ft of flooring installed. Porcelain tile floors (we had little choice because of our dogs).

 

We had to upgrade all the electrical, move ventilation and install some additional ventilation for the new downdraft vent. Had stainless steel floor registers fabricated because we had to live with floor vents.

 

Custom cabinets in the kitchen and laundry room, as well as one in the dining room. Sugatsune stainless steel pulls.

 

Quartz countertops. Kohler sink and Grohe faucet.

 

Inhabit architectural concrete tiles for the backsplash (the jury is still out a bit on how bright a choice this was).

 

New kitchen table and chairs from Restoration Hardware.

 

I busted my butt to find the best pricing on everything without compromising. But to keep things on a reasonable timeline, I am sure I overpaid some contractors due to not being able to get several quotes or because I had to select them based on their availability on not always price. All in all, we'll end up about 10% over budget but that was almost all driven by a huge overage caused by what we found when we started tearing up the floors.

 

The appliances were the big splurge. Something I talked my wife into. She loves to cook and bake, and I wanted her to have the best we could afford. The last two years have included us buying our home, paying for a good portion of our wedding, having a child, moving my parents here (to a house which I purchased), and now this renovation. We haven't had time to take any vacations other than our honeymoon, and a lot of things have been sort of pushed to the back burner to accomplish these goals in a short matter of time. So I really wanted her to have something she could really enjoy.

 

The other consideration was our property and location. As I mentioned a few weeks back, for the long-term value of our property, we felt we had to put in a "top of the line" type of kitchen. I understand that appliances don't necessarily add value to a property in and of themselves, but I do believe they help sell properties. We both work for a company which offers many opportunities elsewhere (Berkshire Hathaway), and so we always have to be on the ready in case something comes up. Having our house in order (literally) so we can maximize the value and minimize the time on the market is important to us retaining flexibility in our careers. Additionally, the type of buyer our property would cater to sort of demands these sort of upgrades.

 

So...in the end, yes, we could have gone with GE Monogram, or even something like Thermadore, but I convinced her to splurge and so we did.

 

And damn, are they nice

Yeah, there's a reason why our house had 13 showings in 3 days and had an offer for almost full asking price (which we thought was way too high!) with minimal contingencies in less than 5 days.

 

Plus, you'll get to enjoy what I'm sure is a beautiful kitchen in the mean time.

 

edit: it also sounds like you got some pretty good prices for having all of that work done. Custom cabinets, the electrical, flooring, appliances etc.

 

Sugatsune stainless steel pulls

 

You know, when we re-did our kitchen, we were looking at some more expensive SS hardware from a couple of kitchen places. We ended up getting SS hardware that looked nearly identical and has held up perfectly fine for four years now for about 10% of the price from Ikea.

Edited November 19, 201510 yr by StrangeSox

Ha, I'm with you. My wife and I cook, but not gourmet style meals. So long as the temp stays constant and the unit looks ok, that's all I care about.

Yeah but you're also okay with pink showers or toilets or whatever so...

 

Yeah but you're also okay with pink showers or toilets or whatever so...

 

 

No, no, I would have updated those if we had them. It's only the slightly outdated looks that i'm ok with. And an oven from 1974 (that still works just fine!).

Yeah, there's a reason why our house had 13 showings in 3 days and had an offer for almost full asking price (which we thought was way too high!) with minimal contingencies in less than 5 days.

 

Plus, you'll get to enjoy what I'm sure is a beautiful kitchen in the mean time.

Agreed.

 

I'm anxious to get an informal appraisal from my realtor.

 

As for Jenks and his pink bathrooms, I have those too. Pink tile to about elbow height, with mirrors up the rest of the wall AND covering the ceilings.

 

That is a project for next year

 

Edit: Yeah, the Sugatsune pulls was just about me being anal. They actually tried to sell me something that was stainless steel plated (the Sugatsune pulls are all stainless steel) because in our climate you don't experience issues with the stainless plated hardware. For the amount of money we spent on the cabinets, it just seemed silly to cheap out on the pulls. But in retrospect, after handling them a bit, I am sure it wouldn't have mattered.

Edited November 19, 201510 yr by iamshack

I think we're going to end up a shade over $70k.

 

That's about how much my entire house is worth. Now I'm sad.

I'm guessing your budget is pushing six figures? Those are not cheap appliances. I'm hesitant to buy the $2500 set for our new house.

Ours is into the six figures for reno but we are changing the entire room line and whatnot so its a big project. This just adds a line item.

 

I just want a flat top in the kitchen somewhere real bad.

Ours is into the six figures for reno but we are changing the entire room line and whatnot so its a big project. This just adds a line item.

 

I just want a flat top in the kitchen somewhere real bad.

Rock, what are you looking at per sq/ft?

 

I'm curious because next year we may have to make a decision between remodeling bathrooms or just adding on and reconfiguring the existing bathrooms.