I often feel like a hypocrite writing this mostly happy little blog about all of the wonderful experiences that we've had since we began building Doug's fantasy house. Now I know full well that I have been a participant in this venture, and in spite of the fact that I never ever thought it was realistic, it is as much my house as it is his and so it is as much my problem as it is his. It always has been.
I know that Doug believes with all of his heart that he wanted to do this for me and for us, or so he says, but the truth is I didn't want to do it this way for a number of really important and practical reasons. It has always made me feel uncomfortable. The fancy things in this house are inappropriate for our income level, especially considering the fact that Doug's insistence that we do it ourselves has enormously reduced both of our incomes. I've been absolutely miserable not being able to work the kinds of gigs I used to do. I loved my life before this house fiasco began. I feel like I've been sentenced to hard labor for three years - so far.
When we were deciding what to do way back in the fall of 2005, I wanted to have the insurance company do the normal thing, which would be to restore our house - that's what they were going to do. They said it would take six months. Our house was nearly completely paid for so we could have used a home equity loan to cover the additional costs of bringing the basement up to code and to get our addition finished in a minimal and affordable kind of way. And by hiring professionals to do the work, however sloppy that might have ended up being, as least we could get back on track as quickly as possible. It seemed to me to be the most reasonable way to deal with the aftermath of the fire.
We had a very nice life together before the fire. We both had gigs doing what we loved most - playing nearly every night and travelling. But we disagreed about what should be done about the house. I felt very uneasy about Doug's plan. I didn't want my old house to go away - I wanted it to be repaired, which the insurance company expected to do. His plan involved a lot of work for him, I mean us. I had just finished painting the exterior of our house a couple of months before the fire. It was not as much work as the first time I did it, but it was still pretty exhausting. I wasn't in the mood to do more, and why should I be? I'd rather live in an apartment than paint another house. I knew from years of experience how Doug's projects never seemed to get finished for one reason or another. And I knew that ultimately Doug would never be satisfied with anyone else's work.
I found myself not really trusting that it would work out with the two builders we attempted to use and I'm quite unhappy to say that I was right. I didn't enjoy thinking we were headed for financial disaster as we planned, well mostly I planned, this absurdly lavish house full of all kinds of ridiculous and amazing things that neither of us had ever had or needed before.
Doug, not surprisingly, was completely overwhelmed on a daily basis by all of the unnecessary complexities of being tour manager, a job we had mutually decided would be unwise for him to do again considering everything else we were suddenly having to deal with. It was impossible to talk sense into him when he made the decision after that, while I was away for several months, to be tour manager again after all.
So you can probably imagine how it went whenever I tried to suggest a more conservative plan for our house while we were out on the road that fall. He was so stressed out once again by all of his various duties that he wasn't able to seriously consider that it might be better in this particular situation to be practical and unambitious for once. He basically told me that what I wanted was not an option. "That's just how it is - we have no other choice." Nice.
So I gave up and went along with him and his fancy ideas. I hated myself for feeling so negative about "our" dream house. On the other hand I didn't feel like it was appropriate for us to have a dream house. Just a plain old house would have been fine with me. One that we could live in sooner rather than later.
I've always been completely happy living in a hotel or a cruise ship cabin. But since it seemed that I apparently had no idea that we could afford all this, or even how little time it would take, I decided that I would attempt to disguise my feelings of negativity as much as I possibly could and just devote myself to this lovely project known as Foam Core Fantasy until it drives itself into the ground. And I guess that is what this little blog is all about.
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Friday, April 7, 2006
The March Meeting and the Spring Tour
The architect's three different versions had three different price categories, and at our meetings in March the builder apologized profusely for the fact that all of three of them them were out of our price range. We'd been waiting since December to receive this wonderful news.
Doug had been planning to add on to the front of the addition after the house was torn down, leaving the planned stairwell where it was. If we didn’t add a section for the music studio in the front, and instead put it in the much smaller stairwell area, and then moved the stairs back into the main section we would be able to afford it, they said. So we said okay, and they quickly came up with three alternate plans. We chose the one we liked the best and the nitty-gritty stage of the planning process began.
MORE TOURING, MORE DELAYS
Our month long break after the winter segment of the tour was now over, and the next stage involved a lot of planning and communication with the architect while we were on the road for two months. We spent nearly all of our free time wandering around various Lowes and Home Depots across the country trying to imagine what kind of countertops, cabinets, toilets, bathtubs, sinks, and lighting we would want to have in our new house. The reason we had to decide on all of these things so soon was so that the builder could continue with his pricing process. These details would significantly affect the final cost.
DECISIONS, DECISIONS
So there were numerous debates about toilets, bathtubs, flooring, kitchen cabinets, and countertops, etc,etc,etc. Here’s an example:
Cyndy initially thought that formica countertops would be perfectly acceptable, since she hadn’t ever had anything else and it was inexpensive and easy to maintain.
Although Doug has also never had anything but formica, he somehow thought that something a little more upscale was in order and he had the impression that Corian was the way to go. It definitely had certain advantages. But Cyndy didn’t like the extremely plasticized look of it and all of the sales reps were acting like Corian was sort of passé anyway. Who knew?
Granite was the same price and looked more natural and was supposedly more durable than Corian. But it also had some maintenance issues. Doug didn’t like the clattery sound that dishes make on granite.
Then Silestone came into the picture. It seems like the most durable option and is probably what we will use, if we can find a pattern that we both actually like.
Cyndy began to notice that all of the speckled granites that are used in hotel bathrooms these days had been starting to remind her of throw up. And most of the Silestone things were either very similar to the vomit patterns, or they had these silly looking sparkles in them, or they were totally boring. She's still not convinced that the countertops need to be fancier than good old tried and true formica.
It has been very difficult to decide on something just for the sake of pricing when so much unattractive stuff has had to be sifted through in our very limited time. It has been that way for toilets, bathtubs, sinks, and medicine cabinets so far - probably because we are so limited as to where we can go to look at things.
Doug had been planning to add on to the front of the addition after the house was torn down, leaving the planned stairwell where it was. If we didn’t add a section for the music studio in the front, and instead put it in the much smaller stairwell area, and then moved the stairs back into the main section we would be able to afford it, they said. So we said okay, and they quickly came up with three alternate plans. We chose the one we liked the best and the nitty-gritty stage of the planning process began.
MORE TOURING, MORE DELAYS
Our month long break after the winter segment of the tour was now over, and the next stage involved a lot of planning and communication with the architect while we were on the road for two months. We spent nearly all of our free time wandering around various Lowes and Home Depots across the country trying to imagine what kind of countertops, cabinets, toilets, bathtubs, sinks, and lighting we would want to have in our new house. The reason we had to decide on all of these things so soon was so that the builder could continue with his pricing process. These details would significantly affect the final cost.
DECISIONS, DECISIONS
So there were numerous debates about toilets, bathtubs, flooring, kitchen cabinets, and countertops, etc,etc,etc. Here’s an example:
Cyndy initially thought that formica countertops would be perfectly acceptable, since she hadn’t ever had anything else and it was inexpensive and easy to maintain.
Although Doug has also never had anything but formica, he somehow thought that something a little more upscale was in order and he had the impression that Corian was the way to go. It definitely had certain advantages. But Cyndy didn’t like the extremely plasticized look of it and all of the sales reps were acting like Corian was sort of passé anyway. Who knew?
Granite was the same price and looked more natural and was supposedly more durable than Corian. But it also had some maintenance issues. Doug didn’t like the clattery sound that dishes make on granite.
Then Silestone came into the picture. It seems like the most durable option and is probably what we will use, if we can find a pattern that we both actually like.
Cyndy began to notice that all of the speckled granites that are used in hotel bathrooms these days had been starting to remind her of throw up. And most of the Silestone things were either very similar to the vomit patterns, or they had these silly looking sparkles in them, or they were totally boring. She's still not convinced that the countertops need to be fancier than good old tried and true formica.
It has been very difficult to decide on something just for the sake of pricing when so much unattractive stuff has had to be sifted through in our very limited time. It has been that way for toilets, bathtubs, sinks, and medicine cabinets so far - probably because we are so limited as to where we can go to look at things.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Delay Number Two: The Tour
We hadn’t completely arrived at the final decision regarding what to do about the house when the tour that we have been doing for the past three years began again in September. We desperately needed the paycheck from this gig because we had to make all kinds of purchases and had not been reimbursed by the insurance company for anything yet. Our credit cards were uncomfortably close to being maxed out for a while there. And doing the tour again seemed like a good way for us to prove to ourselves that we could keep the fire from upsetting other aspects of our existence. Boy were we wrong about that!
Doug convinced me that we would be able to use the long bus rides to plan whatever it was that we were going to do next with our house. There was no way to predict how other people would react, or not react, to our situation and eventually we both realized that we should have just stayed home to deal with everything. We could have easily earned the same amount of money from the mouthpiece business if we'd thrown ourselves into that. But we had previously gotten so much pleasure from doing this tour together and we just weren’t ready to quit. So we did what we could with the small amount of time that we had. There were many distractions and we didn't really get going on the plans until we returned home, just before Thanksgiving.
Doug convinced me that we would be able to use the long bus rides to plan whatever it was that we were going to do next with our house. There was no way to predict how other people would react, or not react, to our situation and eventually we both realized that we should have just stayed home to deal with everything. We could have easily earned the same amount of money from the mouthpiece business if we'd thrown ourselves into that. But we had previously gotten so much pleasure from doing this tour together and we just weren’t ready to quit. So we did what we could with the small amount of time that we had. There were many distractions and we didn't really get going on the plans until we returned home, just before Thanksgiving.
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