that brown house

more estimates! more waiting! more contractors!

electrical work:

we’ve gotten more electrical quotes back and we’re really stewing about what approach we want to take to doing the electrical work. before we started talking to electricians, eric was very gung-ho to have all the knob and tube removed and the whole house rewired (in addition to getting the new service, which we’re definitely doing). some of the professionals we’ve talked to have adamantly agreed that is the right thing to do, some have proposed a hybrid system where we leave what’s in the walls, add a junction box and then run new, and one has said to leave all the existing, but put it on circuits, and just add some grounded outlets, the 220, etc. where we want additional receptacles. i think we should go with option one (all new, also more expensive) or three (keep all the old as-is and add to it, less expensive now, possibly more in the long run).

further complicating the decision is that one of the electricians is related to a friend of ours. i liked him during the walk through because he asked good questions and was the only electrical contractor we talked to who seemed to have thought out our needs more than we had (probably from having been debriefed before arriving), however his estimate is over 20% higher than any of the others. it’s also hard to compare the estimates because they are all written with different levels of detail. one has the equivalent of a full out schedule of values while another is a very generalized summary of the scope of work… plus, the scope of work varies depending on if the approach is for an all-new, a hybrid, or a vintage plus system.

heat:

we knew what we wanted. we had people give us estimates for comparable systems (different brands). we hired kazen heating & air. they came back to the house yesterday so i could talk to them about register locations and they are going to start work on monday.

bathroom:

we were unhappy with the first estimate and haven’t gotten the second one back yet. the soonest opening for the person we had the best recommendations for isn’t for three or four months, so he’s off the list. i do have an appointment to walk someone through on thursday and there is one additional person i’ve been playing phone tag with. i wish i knew how to hurry this up, since i think the bathroom project is going to take the longest to complete…we did order a new toilet and lav…and we’re going to look at faucets and whatnot tomorrow. yea, fun stuff!