Brothers,

I’ve been more than a little lax in updating everyone about what’s going on with the new house. Things have been progressing very slowly due to some issues I’ll get into below but we’ve started to ramp things up over the last couple of months and we’re starting to make some progress.

After we reached the lease settlement with Case I engaged an architect who seemed to be exactly the type of professional we were looking for. Lots of old house experience, small office so no massive overhead, project scope right in his sweet spot and enthusiastic about the project. We had a number of meetings and site visits but things just weren’t moving forward at what I considered a reasonable pace. After being more patient than I probably should have I finally had to fire him and search for a new architect. We lost close to three months due to this issue.

I found another architect who is very similar to the first one but actually gets things done. Slightly bigger office and much bigger name locally so he’s more expensive but he actually does what he says he’s going to do when he says it will be done. He’s not running at light speed but progress is being made. We had a specialized site measuring firm come in to create a set of scale drawings of the existing conditions. With those the new architect has come up with his first pass at suggested renovations to get us to the number of bedrooms and full baths we need to be able to occupy the house.  He also worked out a couple of different configurations for the kitchen, bathrooms and some of the basement rooms. We’ve gone through one set of minor revisions at this point and more will be coming.

I’ve also engaged a general contractor, an interior decorator, a roofer, a commercial kitchen designer, a fire alarm specialist, an access control system company and one of our own who does network design for exactly this type of building. Along with all of them I have one of the undergrad brothers cutting the grass so I don’t have to do that anymore.

The next step is to review the plans with the general contractor to see if there are any things he thinks might be too difficult or expensive to execute. My biggest concern is that some of the new bathrooms are in locations that might lack reasonable access to plumbing connections. We may have to open up some walls and ceilings to actually determine this so it remains something we may have to revisit with the architect after some exploration behind the plaster. I have a similar issue with what appears to be a blind attic space above the third floor. After meeting with the roofing contractor we decided that the only way to know what we’re up against is to open up the ceiling and see what’s hidden up there. Maybe we’ll find Jimmy Hoffa! Old person joke, if you know, you know. The size and condition of the attic space has ramifications for the roof repairs and modifications we need to make as well as possible options for the HVAC system changes, insulation upgrades and the plumbing vents for the new bathrooms. 

In a nut shell there are still a lot of unknowns at this point but we’re getting closer to launching the project. At my last meeting with the GC he felt we had enough time to get the important things done to be able to move in next May so it’s not time to panic yet.

As always let me know if you have any questions.

DV