Rethinking the Rear Yard Access

With such a narrow lot, my driveway to the back yard has had to fight with the width of the house and the local building codes to hold it's own. Code requires the house to be 5 ft off the propertly line, and the floorplan I came up with uses 35 ft of width. That's left me with a 10 ft driveway.



But that 10 ft isn't really a full 10 ft of useable space. The chain wall takes up 8 inches of it, and by the time I install posts on both sides for a gate, I wind up with around 8-1/2 ft. This measurement is pretty small compared to other driveways I've seen. This might be okay if the garage door would be straight back from the driveway, but it's not. To get in and out of the garage, you'll need to make a quick S-turn once you get to the backyard (see shaded path on the graphic).



So my mom & I went to the lot this week to measure out this part of the yard and do a test. We measured out where the garage would be and marked it with stakes. Then we measured where the back corner of the house and the width of the driveway would be. I test-drove it with my small Toyota RAV4. We didn't have perfect test conditions because the lot is still all sand, and I can't drive too close to the chain wall. (The sand is too soft & I started to get stuck!) That, and it's hard to see the corners you have to avoid from inside the car. You'd really need full-height walls (or taller stakes) to show you where the borders are.



Getting in was no problem. I'd hate to have to do that all the time with a huge vehicle, but it would probably still work. When trying to back out, I thought I might be able to do a 3-point turn and come out forward instead of backing out, but it's too tight. I didn't actually do a test back out because of the difficulty in seeing the boundaries and the danger of getting stuck in the sand.



But the test showed me that I needed to make some adjustments. I'm shortening the depth of the garage by 18 inches and widening it by 2 ft. I'm also shaving 6 inches off the width of the house and adding it to the driveway. These aren't major changes (I don't have room to make major ones), but I think I'll be happy that I made these minor ones!

Rest Before the Battle

While the blueprints are being worked on, and I can't do anything yet with permits or lining up subcontractor bids, it was a good time to go on vacation. Friends of mine have a timeshare in Orlando, and this year I had the chance to spend a week with them there. It was a good time to get the R&R in before the bulk of my planning and work begins with the house.



One really cool thing I got to do was to ride a Segway device. You might have seen these two-wheeled personal transporters that look like a pogo stick with wheels. They are electrically powered, and a computer uses gyros to keep you balanced. We signed up for the Segway tour at Epcot Center in Disneyworld. They train you indoors for up to an hour and then lead you outside around the countries in the World Showcase for the rest of the 2-hour tour.



The Segways are really neat to ride. To move forward or backward, you simply shift your weight. The computer senses the change in your center of gravity and moves you in the direction you want to go. To turn left or right, you lean the steering column to the left or right. The first couple of minutes are weird because your brain is adjusting to the new method of motion. But it all feels quite natural once you get the hang of it. The whole trip was a great diversion before the challenge ahead of me

Never Too Early to Sweat the Details

Home Depot really stinks! I'm talking mostly about their customer service, or lack thereof. Lowe's seems to do a much better job of recognizing that you play a vital role in their receiving a paycheck.

Now that the blueprints are being created, I recognize that there are details I need to think about now that I thought could wait until further down the road. Maybe it's not vital that I settle them now, but it will give me a greater comfort factor. My kitchen is one of those areas where I decided to work out more details before the blueprints are finalized. To that end, I decided to take advantage of the service offered by both Home Depot and Lowe's to design a kitchen on a computer by selecting cabinet modules. Then they print 3D views for you.

This is going to give me a better idea of the spacing of the appliances and the overall size of the room. I want to have a window in one wall of the kitchen, and an archway pass-through in the other wall that will be an opening into the family room. I wanted to be sure that I could arrange cabinets around these openings using the stock sizes available. The resulting sketch from Lowe's is shown here.

If you go to one of these home improvement stores for this purpose, be sure to bring accurate dimensions of your kitchen. I made the mistake of printing a portion of the blueprints showing my kitchen without preserving the exact scale of the drawing. So it wasn't exactly 1/4 inch or 1/8 inch scale. This forced us to guesstimate on the exact dimensions. I was still able to learn enough to space things correctly, but it's not exact. Then again, the blueprints could change before they finalize, so it wouldn't have been exact anyway. If you go to have this done, a close-up view is better, such as 1/4 inch scale, because it lets them get more precise.

My complaint about Home Depot comes from the shocking attitude I got from the employee who I got stuck with. (But then again, this is New Orleans. Maybe I shouldn't have been too shocked!) I called ahead to make an appointment, just as they ask you to do. They said no customers were there right now, and I could just come in. Well, I wasn't planning to drop everything and go (that's why I was making the appointment), but I wrapped up a few things and went in anyway.

When I got there, a customer was with one of the kitchen designers. The supervisor on duty lead me to the second guy at the next desk. The first words out of his mouth were "well, somebody else (another employee) was supposed to come in today, but I guess I can help him". So I knew the general direction this was going to take. He asked if I was interested in stock cabinets or custom cabinets. In my mind, anything you order out of a catalog is stock inventory, so I said I was here about stock cabinets. He asked another question I didn't understand, and I said I was interested in using KraftMaid stuff. "Oh, well that's custom cabinets," he said with an irritated tone. "You got a drawing or something?"

I showed him my paper with the kitchen blueprint. He complained because it was too small. Then when we determined it wasn't to a scale he and his ready-made scale ruler could decipher, he was more frustrated. He asked me more questions about my preferences and showed frustration when I told him I was here to learn about my options. For example, when I didn't know the exact model of refrigerator I plan to buy 8 months from now, he asked me how he was supposed to draw the opening for it? After all, every model has different dimensions. Using all the strength I could muster to hold back a slew of sarcastic and angry remarks, I said, "Why don't we just assume we need a generous sized opening for a full sized unit then?"

After an hour or so (that's how long it takes for one of these appointments, I'm finding out), I left with some 3D sketches, and I had learned some things. Mostly, I learned how to get a customer to leave and chose to go elsewhere. So I went home and scheduled an appointment with Lowe's. The woman on the phone actually gave me an appointment, and I asked if I would be meeting with her personally. I prefer to have a woman's input in designing the kitchen anyway. The next day, I went for my appointment, and it went much better. I could tell the woman was busy and being stretched in several directions, but she was still courteous and helpful.

Click on the sketch shown above for a larger version. Yeah, it's a pretty big kitchen! It seems like so much activity in a home centers around the kitchen these days. I wanted lots of cabinet space, and I guess I've got it! :) The opening in the wall on the right is the pass-through into the family room. The window would go on the left wall, between the stove and the corner. However, the architect tells me that parish code won't allow a window close to a stove, so I might need to do without this.

The space to the left of the fridge is a computer desk. In the corner, I've got an appliance garage. That's the little garage-door looking thing on the counter. I'll have electrical outlets inside there, and I can keep appliances plugged in, like a toaster, blender, etc. I can keep them plugged in and just pull them out when I want to use them. On the right, that's a cabinet that comes all the way down to the counter. It has a space for the microwave. I like the symmetry of it: the fridge forms a column on the left. The microwave cabinet has the same weight on the right, and the appliance garage balances out the center.

Originally, I had the stove by the archway opening to the next room, but the idea of having a wall between the rooms is to keep noise from spilling into the room with the TV. If the stove was by the opening, noise from the boiling pots and the exhaust fan would defeat the purpose. So I moved the sink & dishwasher to the island and put the stove where the sink used to be. This may mean I need to give up the window, but I have a lot of windows nearby in the breakfast area that will bring light into the kitchen.

Today, I plan to visit a window store to get a better idea of window sizes for the different rooms. More on these details later...

Management Styles

One of the most important things you're going to need if you're going to act as your own general contractor is solid management skills. You'll be drawing on the talents and experience of a variety of people. Each person you manage will be different, and they will each perform in their own way. In order to get what you need from them, you need to recognize different personality types and figure out how to treat them to get the most from them.

For example, I've given over all my information to my architect (actually a residential designer). I haven't been comfortable with the amount of communication I've had with him since my first meeting where I gave him my drawings & written room-by-room requirements and we talked everything over. Now he's given me his first draft of the blueprints, and there are some things that were changed from my original drawing. At first, I was concerned I was not going to wind up with everything the way I wanted.

I had been concerned because he hadn't sought me out with any questions or to talk over any of the changes he had made. But then I sat down with him again with all of my comments on his first draft. He was very open and receptive. He expected that I would have a lot of feedback, and he commented that "this kind of discussion is what we need to do". And he explained the reasons he had made the changes he did. He had logical approaches for all his ideas. I decided to keep some of them, but changed most of them back to what I wanted.

The bottom line here is that this guy seems to like working alone without actively seeking guidance along the way, and then he fully expects me to come and provide feedback and critical input. I suppose I expected it to be a constant cooperative effort. When I didn't hear from him for weeks, I thought maybe he was a loner that wanted to do it his own way. But I understand now that I'm going to be able to get it all just like I want. I just need to approach him with comments and guidance.

I'm sure I'll run into people along the way who need to be constantly managed, and others that listen to me the first time and do it all on their own according to plan. Others will fall in between. Some construction workers might be motivated by constant site visits. Others might respond better to the occasional pizza for lunch or just a word of appreciation. Different strokes for different folks!