A Pause to Consider

Very, very, still-ongoing story made very, very short: we hired a friend to do the architectural drawings. She gave us a reasonable quote and we felt things would go swiftly. Do NOT - repeat - do NOT hire friends to do your drawings. They're STILL not completed many months later, and the costs have more than tripled from the original estimate. And even when we get the disk (printouts cost extra, of course), we probably won't use it as there are lingering errors. There, I've said it. You don't have to go through the blow-by-blow with me.

And we're still on a blow-up bed (third one - we have a cat ). And the 'frig and range still don't work (cooler from Sharper Image for 10" of food storage, and I use a match to light the auto-pilot range and still have hair so we're doing OK).

The Pause? Here is comes:

Now that the sketches are done, and we've planned what to do and are starting to estimate costs, a large amount of cortisol is causing heart palpitations (mostly in me - Jay has a more confident view).

• Will the renovations cost too much? (answer: of course!)
• Will they get done right? (answer: depends on the contractor)
• Will we be happier here post-renovation than pre-renovation?
• Are the choices we're making now going to please us in 2 years? 5? 10?
• Can I keep high-end finishes clean without ruining them???
• And more....

Perusing the blogosphere, I came across this article http://propertygrunt.blogspot.com/2006/04/returns-on-renovation.html
which also references a previous article on returns on renovations. Well, Jay is an architect and I trust his vision. Not going to design for the possibility of maybe adhering to some future purchaser's taste. We're designing for what meets Jay's esthetic sense and my comfort level of practicality.

Then again, neither of us is so "out there" design-wise that anything we do would offend ;-) We do expect that the renovations, once done, will make the apartment look and be more interesting....