By LOU KAMER Special to the Palisadian-Post (Editor’s note: This is the fourth installment on the Kamer family renovation saga which began in the spring of 2005.) On August 1, my family and I drove from our rented apartment in Santa Monica to our newly re-constructed house in the Alphabet streets. We had been gone from Pacific Palisades for exactly one year, a year in which our single-story, 3-bedroom, 1,800-sq.- ft. traditional house was demolished and a new two-story, 5-bedroom, 3,500-sq.-ft. “farmhouse meets Cape Cod” home sprouted in its place. In the overall scheme of things, I suppose a year isn’t very long, but the last four months felt like decades?decades filled with heat waves and construction delays. While we initially considered simply remodeling our single-story house and not adding a story, we decided that the 40 percent additional cost to rebuild dramatically increased the value of our property and allowed us to keep our large backyard and save our wonderful sycamore tree. So was I happy when the moving van pulled up? You may have heard me shriek with joy as far away as the Rec Center. In previous articles, I’ve written about the “soul” of our old house and how rebuilding reminded me very much of love relationships. In the end however, I felt bad watching the old house come down, and shared the regret some of our neighbors had expressed about all the “building up” going on. But in our case, the only two choices we had were to expand or move out of town. Given our love for the Palisades, the choice was easy. Maybe it’s because classes are now back in session or that my son just started pre-school, but after this renovation experience I now see building a house a lot like going to school?kindergarten, high school, college; it doesn’t really matter, the concepts are the same. First off, there’s the whole first day thing. Me, I hated going back to school. My mother had to basically push me out the door and bribe me with sugary treats in my lunchbox. The same was true when we loaded up the wagon and left the Palisades a year ago?I wondered if we were making the right choice in rebuilding?what was wrong with what we had? I was forced to sooth myself with biweekly won ton soup deliveries from a nearby Thai restaurant. Then there was the homework, consisting of budget reviews, plan reviews (basically reviews of reviews were reviewed), knob-and-paint choices?all with the hope of getting a good grade from the city inspectors, our builders and, most importantly, ourselves. Structure Development, our contractors, work on a fixed-cost system, which means that during the long and sometimes overwhelming pre-construction phase, all the details are worked out, a budget is drawn up, and any overages that occur during the rest of the project are their responsibility; except, of course, any upgrades (or the “I GOTTA HAVE THAT” items, as I like to call them). This took some of the worry out of the process, but our “must-haves” which included a keyless entry system, a large butcher-block island, surround sound, and an antique, belt-driven fan in the loft, to name a few?sent us eight percent over budget. Like school, our building process was split into different disciplines, and I soon found myself learning more than I would ever want to know about such subjects as concrete pouring, three-way switches, and mechanical runs. As I sat and listened to each tradesman describing the details of their problems, I often found my mind drifting in the exact same way it had when I was in school and I had to prod myself back into the present moment for fear of missing something that would be on the test. And just like with trigonometry, I had to wonder if any of this knowledge would be useful in the real world. But then there was the good side. Like school, our house construction was abuzz with activity and people we would never otherwise have met who wound up becoming our friends. Besides Bob and Mark (yes, Bob The Builder), with whom we would swap CDs and have lunches at Kay ‘n’ Dave’s, we also got to know Eric Friske, a native Palisadian finish carpenter who really cared about his work and wanted to help make our house and the Palisades a more beautiful place. And Alex P., another Structure Development client who graciously GAVE us his wood fence and plants as he was re-landscaping. And most of all, Mike Brown and the guys at Xtech Security who tutored me through the tough homework assignments, in this case, home wiring and security. Some people have said that high on the list of things that will destroy a marriage is rebuilding a house. I guess in some ways it’s like flunking out. But my wife and I made it through the process relatively unscathed. Sure, there was the occasional “C-” or “D” that had something to do with mantle colors or drapes, but after we learned our lesson, we were able to move on. Our work together was like two lab partners in chemistry class: there were times when we both had an idea of what the right answer was and other times when it was clear that neither of us knew better than the other. We made concessions and talked about what we felt was right and why, and in the case where we had no idea of the right solution, we made a choice and moved on, hoping that it didn’t result in something blowing up on us. Our rebuild ran about a month over schedule. Our builders had viable reasons for the delay, and though I’ve heard that a month is not too bad in the overall scheme of things, this fact failed to make the extra time in the apartment any easier. It was after-school detention all over again, but in this case, everyone else was grilling in their backyards, as I sat trapped in a hot apartment with a wild 2-year-old son. With one week left, the builders were cramming to get everything done and people were working overtime. Painters worked side-by-side with appliance installers and telephone people. Our insta-lawn sod arrived and was rolled out, transforming our barren dirt lot into a Vegas-like oasis (no flamingos included). Final exams came in the form of city inspections and walkthroughs with the different trades, and then, all of a sudden, it was August 1: Graduation! We hugged and thanked the people who had built our new home and watched as the moving van rolled up the driveway and dispensed stuff we forgot we had into places that had not existed before. That first night, my wife, son and I sat in our den/kitchen, looking out onto the yard and the large sycamore tree that had defined the old house and now defined our new home. “I can’t believe we live here,” said my wife, Marsha. My son, who was now used to the din of city life to help him fall asleep, asked if the crickets could stop chirping. The one word that best describes our feelings in moving from a 900-sq. ft. apartment to a house four times as large is “potential.” It’s something I heard a lot in school?as in, “He has so much potential, but we can’t figure out why he does his homework and leaves it at home.” But now that we are back in this house?our house?we feel like we can get back on with our lives. We have been here for five weeks now and the only thing we would change would be adding a lock to the laundry room door so our mechanically-inclined son will not fry the motor on our washing machine. We love our house so much that we’ve only had take-out once (the won ton soup) since it’s so nice to cook and share in the kitchen. Our son waters the vegetable garden and swings from the tree; and we fall asleep with our bedroom doors open to the upper deck. In the end, if you asked me whether rebuilding my house and going to school turned out for the best, I would answer “yes” to both, but I don’t think I would ever want to do either of them again?although picking paint and floor colors has its moments.
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