1. It’s important to you that the flow between old house and new is really smooth and seamless
2. You care a lot about how the outside looks – how well the new exterior blends in with existing house, how much you do or don’t see from the street, how well you like just looking at what you’ve wrought from your yard
3. You’re willing to compromise on some of your wish list and spend more $$ per square foot (on fees yes, but also on the likely more complex build) in order to accommodate #’s 1 and 2
4. You’re excited by the idea of someone taking you to some places (ideas, design elements, etc.) you wouldn’t get to on your own
5. You’re prepared to manage what can be a healthy but sometimes trying tension between architect and contractor

Picking is always tough.  We found referrals most useful.  There are also some good searching tools available at the local AIA site.  As for our specific experience….we used Old Town Alexandria architect Patrick Camus and have been very happy with the results.  Patrick was then with Adams Architects and has since gone out on his own.  Don’t think he has a website but you can find him in the Yellow Pages and/or I can pass on an email if you’re interested.  Great guy, knows this area and all the players well.  A few specific notes:

• The really good – He totally nailed the vision.  Right out of the gate we loved the central idea of his design, which created an awesome set of new spaces and made some critical changes to our existing ones in order to deliver on a great blend of old and new.  Now 2+ years later, we get a steady stream of compliments from visitors about how well all the pieces fit together and in particular on the slam dunk kitchen/eat-in/screened porch he created.
• The mixed – In some cases our plans we’re a little short on the level of detail our contractor wanted for some of the finish work.  And the communication back and forth between Patrick and the contractor was up and down, particularly in the later stages of the job.  I think these were due in part to us catching Patrick at the transition point from working for someone else to heading out on his own.  In the end neither had much of an impact on the outcome but did lead to an important learning….
• A lesson – Take the step of clarifying exactly how much involvement you want the architect and contractor to have after plans are done and you’re in to the construction.  And generally err on the side of caution when it comes to plan detail.  Better to have more not less.

Couple other quick notes on process that really helped us.  We started with Patrick doing ¼ inch drawings in order to arrive at a core design concept we liked.  Then moved to the more detailed 1/8 inch plans for fleshing out the full idea.  Not sure if that’s standard or no, but really was helpful for us to get on the same page about the vision before diving into details.

And get a lot of eyes on your plans.  We carried copies around with us for a while and walked through them with all kinds of friends and family.  You’d be surprised at the great tweaks that can come up this way from unlikely sources.  And the act of talking people through your plan also helps you uncover spots you ‘re not yet totally comfortable with.

One last thought that came up for us at multiple stages including this one – do all that you can possibly afford.  The process of planning and doing an addition is so invasive, better to do as much as you can when the patient is already opened up and on the operating table.  In our case we considered just doing a single story addition and then coming back and adding a second story later.  Thank god we listened to Patrick and others who urged us to do both stories at once.

Next up – Selecting and working with the contractor (with whom you will become scarily close, however the project goes).

And in the meantime check out this helpful post on the financial return you can expect from the dollars you put into your renovation.

Another good local resource to share is the growing collection of Alexandria/Del Ray blogs recently summarized at a good one from this blogging bunch, gwslepthere.  In addition to the ones listed here, I also like the helpful health related info at the blog from Neighborhood Pharmacy.

Lots of different topics covered, missions pursued, but in all cases helpful deposits in the community information account here in Del Ray.  Comment here if you have other good ones to highlight.

To the tale…. Recently we shifted the wrong amount between bank accounts and got into an overdraft situation on our main checking account for about 24 hours.  Not long to be exposed you’d think.  But consider how many individual transactions (many very small) we all process these days now that our check cards are the primary form of currency.  Before we could catch up to our snafu and transfer the right amount, Chevy Chase Bank had hit us with 25 (yes, twenty FIVE!) separate overdraft fees to the tune of almost $850 dollars. That’s insane.  I’d have no problem paying a small fee, penance for my clerical error, but this pile-on of fines, punching me over and over for the same issue, was just bullying.

But not to worry I thought.  A decade of doing business at Chevy Chase with multiple accounts and nary a single issue overall those years…surely this history meant something.   Not to telephone customer support it didn’t.  In several calls we got the kind of disconnected, short (borderline annoyed), process-constrained service I’ve come to expect from big companies.    To paraphrase – “Sir, our process says we can waive one fee in very severe situations, but that’s it, no matter the circumstances, there’s no one else you can speak to here or that my process allows me to connect you with, if you want to take it up further, write a letter.”

I was fuming, full of indignation, but with no outlet.  The whole “write-a-letter” thing seemed so calculating.  As if they know perfectly well that time-starved customers are going to fold before taking the time to pen a letter, then wait for the snail mail process to play out over many months if it plays out at all.  Do companies even have mail rooms anymore?  This against the backdrop of our electronic world in which there are all manner of fast, easy ways to get a new account, but precious view such avenues for voicing displeasure with the  account you already have.  The final indignity?  I go to the web site to lodge a complaint while mulling my options.  After pecking out a paragraph to describe the situation, the web form times out and my feedback is lost, form reset.  How fitting.  As if to say, “take all the time you want writing a letter to nowhere, but spare us the detail on anything we might have to respond to in the near term.”

Time to break up with Chevy Chase.  I researched all my other options – online only banks, the local community banks, you name it.  Stoked the fire of my discontent with reading on the anti-big bank movement (like at moveyourmoney.info, check out the community bank finder, the video is cool too).  Convinced myself the hassle of a rip and replace on all my online bill payment was required by the injustice at hand.  I HAD to vote with my feet.

A quick aside, in my wild searching I came across a number of resources that might be helpful to any who are looking around.  Here are a couple:

• Mintlife – the blog at online personal finance tool Mint (also very useful btw).  Check out relevant posts like The Pros and Cons of Online Banks, How Customers are Sticking it to the Big Banks, and 6 Innovative Banks that Change Online Banking
• Kiplinger’s Personal Finance – like this piece on 7 Great Online Banking Deals
• The comments on a lot of these are also revealing, plenty of horror stories to go around on customer service.

But before doing so, I opted for one last move with Chevy Chase, one involving a real person who works in my community, one that ended up turning this whole sad tale around and restoring my faith in the possibility of companies empowering people to act on behalf of, not at the expense of, their customers.

In I marched to the Washington Street branch one recent Monday morning, closed one of my accounts to demonstrate my resolve, and asked to see the manager.  [I should note that I’ve always found the staff here very friendly and helpful, part of the last bit of question I had about switching to an online only bank.]  Out came Casundra, the branch chief.  We proceeded to have a very reasonable, efficient conversation.  She was attentive, listened carefully, promised a quick review from her and the area manager and assured me I’d hear from her soon.  And would you believe it, I did actually hear, from her and the area manager, quickly.  With the end result that they chose to waive all but a very small portion of the fees in light of my long relationship with the bank and otherwise clean rap sheet.

My takeways?  A mix of good and bad.  First the bad.  In most cases, no matter who you use, support for the masses over the phone is constructed to, and eventually will, disappoint you.  It’s inherently all about metrics, process, call routes, avoiding interpretation, limiting improvisation, working to the mean.  So be prepared before you go online-only, certainly for all of your accounts.  You may be fine most of the time, but in those moments where the system for the masses is likely to let you down, you have no other move.

Now the good.  People matter.  People in your community matter more.  I’m still looking at other banking options than Chevy Chase.  But I’ve put the brakes on the immediate switch and may well stay.  I’m considering the value of having people right down the street with the power and willingness to help me, to come out from behind the counter to engage.

For me it might just be that a good blend is the right fit.  Big enough to have some of the tools I want (good online bill pay tools, downloads for Mint, lots of ATM coverage, other things you sometimes miss or aren’t as well developed at small community banks etc.), but small/local/brick-and-mortar enough to have folks nearby who think of themselves as being accountable to the locals.

We took a swing at these hassles by signing up for milk delivery from South Mountain Creamery when they first started delivering to Del Ray and we’re hooked.  Pretty simple.  Sign up online, they deliver yummy milk on Mondays in sturdy glass bottles and pick up your empties from the week before.  In the summer you leave a cooler outside on the morning of delivery to keep your new supply chilly until you can grab it.

It’s $3.25 a half gallon, compared to $3.89 a half gallon for organic – which is what we buy from the store.  We buy 4 a week, so the lower price almost covers the 3.75 delivery charge, but for me the extra dollar is a small price to pay for the convenience, the good product and the little throwback pleasure of delivery from the man in the truck painted like a cow. The farm isn’t certified organic, but they don’t do growth hormones and they don’t do antibiotics as a matter of course.  The milk tastes like real milk from real live cows and I love that we’re both supporting a local farm, and not throwing away 200 plus cardboard cartons a year.

Plus we get coffee, butter yogurt, cheese, bread, and locally raised meats occasionally.   They even offer prepared foods, though we haven’t ventured there yet.  So far their blog is a largely missed opportunity (some  interesting stuff, very sporadic…write more SMC!) but that’s a small gripe.

Combine milk delivery with our Soda water maker (I’ll write about that some day too… awesome) and we’ve pretty much eliminated lots of trips, bag lugging and disposable containers for the two beverages we drink most before 6pm.

Now if we could just figure out beer delivery or an instant wine machine.

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Sometimes finding high quality help on a smaller, ‘tweener size project like this can be really tough. So let me share a word on the project type and the lokal resource I used.

4-5 years ago I tackled the outsized task of redoing our basement. Took 5 months of near constant night and weekend labor but turned out pretty well. And there was a good dose of satisfaction in it, knowing I’d done most of the work to remake the space from cold concrete box to a set of nicely finished rooms we sorely needed. But that was two kids and a lot of life ago. The tools and knowledge are still there, but the will and time are not. So when I wanted to divide one of these basement rooms with a new wall, I picked up the phone instead of a hammer.

Through a referral I came across Juan Paredes who had done some basement work for another Del Rayer. 3 weeks after first chatting with him I had a nicely completed project at a reasonable cost. Juan and his crew showed up on time, worked quickly, kept a clean site and did nice, thorough work. They added a 12 ft wall with an L turn in it, hung a new door, ran some electric, matched all the trim, and painted it up for me. Along the way I added a few wrinkles (finally realizing the man-dream of hanging the flat panel on a wall with no wires showing) which they integrated nicely. I was particularly pleased that they did such a nice job splicing the new walls in with my new-old ones from a few years prior.

All in all a very successful outcome. A few notes. Juan’s conversant in English but range is limited so I found in person meetings easier than over the phone. In terms of jobs he can handle, I can only speak to ours. But the work he did for the other Del Rayer sounded more like a full basement redo with some cabinetry. He doesn’t have a web site I’m aware of but happy to provide his number to those interested.

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When we were doing our addition (two story job with new kitchen and master) a while back, oh how I wished for some credible context on the blizzard of decisions we were making, the big chunks of dough we were committing, the long term relationships we were entering into. So now that we’re done and happily ensconced in the new digs, I’m getting around to sharing some of my takes so that the next poor sod who undertakes this year long life muddler will have just a bit more information at hand than I did.

Not sure quite how many parts in this series I’ll deliver. Some of it I don’t care to recount or is just too detailed to be of use. Basic pieces I can see being valuable right now (wherever relevant I’ll profile the local resource we used) include:

• Must haves – identifying what you MOST want because you’ll end up wishing for more… knowing what you can’t live without will really help.
• Architect/contractors - Quick take on our selection process, the ones we used, lessons learned.
• Move? – Some real world input on why I think the answer should most often be OUT.
• You need that? – Ideas on things like designers, landscapers, and other items I wished we’d thought of up front.

So on to must haves…. short story, before you get started on what invariably will be a yearlong process (minimum), think very hard about what exactly you’re trying to achieve, about the most critical items. Then make a list you can refer back to. Because there will be tons of opportunities (with your architect, your contractor, your mother, your friend, your therapist, etc.) to add new stuff in the early going, then to reduce stuff once you’re into it and start realizing you have to throw a bunch of items overboard in order to keep your little addition balloon aloft. Picking the right things to toss over, and safeguarding those must haves that you can’t live without – these are the ingredients for a successful project you don’t have to give back to the bank once it’s done.

For example… here were the top 5 priorities we juggled along the way, modifying/give up other things to make them happen, with varying degrees of success:

1. Smooth integration between old and new – I’m the son of a restoration architect… so wired to care a lot about how the new part jibes with the original. We didn’t want the addition to change the view of the house from the street and we wanted something really nice to look at from the back yard. Meant some tradeoffs in the size and shape of interior spaces.
2. Screen porch – Given Del Ray’s man-eating mosquitoes, a space where we could be outside with the kids without risking life and limb was a big priority we resolved to preserve at all costs.
3. First floor bathroom – Like many houses in this hood, ours had no bathroom on the main floor. We pledged to have a high tolerance for plumbing gymnastics and lower priority trade-offs to get this accomplished.
4. Big open kitchen – we wanted a big cooking space that opened right on to where we eat. For easy kid cooking/serving, but also so that we could socialize with guests while preparing dinner, something we love to do.
5. Master suite with laundry – We wanted our own bathroom, and an upstairs laundry, and a master closet too. All within the 2nd story footprint that made the whole design work for us and would stay true to #1 above. With some creativity and flex we got them all, albeit in smaller sizes than we’d hoped for. But we also made our biggest mistake thanks to a priority miss up front. We didn’t put a tub on the critical list, dropped it when the planning pressure was on and have lived to regret it.

Moral of the story, know the items that will make you the most happy. Write them down. Say them out loud. Tattoo them on your arm. Whatever will make it easy for you to keep them in mind as you weather the barrage of choices and concessions you’ll make between start and finish of this crazy process. You’ll end up with more of what you wanted, less of what you don’t and an acceptable dollop of all that’s in between.

Next up: #2 – Plans/Architects

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Windsor Avenue Nog

• 12 eggs – pasteurized if you want to remove the thrilling risk of Salmonella, though the sprits in these quantities will likely do that for you too.
• 6oz (3/4 cup) sugar
• 1 pint of Bourbon
• 4 oz. brandy
• 4 oz. rum
• 1pt. milk
• 8 oz. heavy/whipping cream
• Nutmeg for grating over finished product

Set up – Ideally Holiday Party or Christmas Eve.  Get yourself a nice open space cleared, ideally with seating for your co-conspirators.  Hand mixer at the ready.  3 big mixing bowls out, few wooden spoons, plus big punch bowl and ladle to receive your final creation.  Tasty beverage in hand.  Xmas music playing.  Some scrap of red in your outfit somewhere.  And a few guest/family helpers around to pitch in and gab during construction.

Steps –

1. Separate egg yolks and whites into two separate bowls  (yolks in the biggest one since everything goes back in there for mixing)…..
   1. Taking great care and attempting to adhere to family myth that even one molecule of egg yolk will prevent egg whites from whisking stiffly (however proceed even if terrible comingling occurs because somehow it still works).
2. Beat the yolks with sugar until light yellow
3. Pour all booze (trickled slowly) over the yellows to “cook” them
4. Whip heavy cream in separate bowl until you get peaks when you pull the mixer blades out
5. Wash mixing blades to within inch of life…..
   1. Taking great care and attempting to adhere to family myth that even one molecule of any foreign substance will prevent egg whites from whisking stiffly (however proceed even if terrible comingling occurs because somehow it still works)
6. Whip egg whites in a separate bowl until they too peak
7. Add milk and whipped cream to yolks, stir, smoothing out most cream lumps but all not necessary
8. Gently fold in fluffy egg whites and stir
9. Grate nutmeg and sprinkle over top
10. Set aside in fridge for a couple of hours to come into full bloom
11. Then prepare to be delighted (great thing about this nog in addition to the first taste?  Just stick it in fridge between sips and it will just get better over the holidays), and possibly sauced if you have more than a cup or two.

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I’ll spare you the recovery details (the blood-purple TOES were a little much), but did want to share a good Dr. resource I came across along the way.  Ben Kittredge, one of the Docs at Commonwealth Orthopedics which has offices on Duke Street in Alexandria and out in the wilds of Springfield.   He was recommended to me by a trainer friend who called him one of the best in the area (as did Washingtonian back in Top Docs ‘08).

I’ve seen him a few times to good result.   He’s got a no-nonsense, rapid fire manner that seems to come with the territory of staccato pop medical care these days.   So if you’re looking for a lot of chit-chat and hand holding, maybe not your bag.  But when he’s in with you, you feel like you’re getting his full attention on your issues.  He has the bearing of an athlete and brings a common sense, pragmatic perspective to thinking about your recovery or repair options.  In my case, beyond my ankle, I also have a bum shoulder from tennis.  He helped me think through the investment/return equation of any invasive procedure and how high the discomfort bar should before going this kind of route.

Thankfully I’ve not needed his surgical skills.  Though a friend has and spoke well of the rebuilt shoulder Dr. Kittredge whipped up for him.  But based on my consult-only experience so far, a recommendation worth passing along once more.

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Haven’t figured out how to regularly recreate these rituals in today’s mad world, but does my soul plenty of good when we do. So it’s worth the investment to keep the fireplace safe and functioning well. Helps first to understand the basics of your fireplace. Good post on that at local blog GWSlept here. For professional care and feeding of our little flame holder, we use Del Ray’s own Rooftop Chimney Sweeps. When we moved in a ways back they did some work for us to get the chimney operating and have been our source for regular clean ups ever since. Last year we had a little incident with the old damper a couple days before a big party for which a fire was a must. They responded immediately to our last minute call for help (despite the heavy early winter work load) and put us back to rights just before the holiday revelers arrived.

Now if I could just find a reliable firewood provider. Anyone?

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The good – just like when I ate there in person, the chow was just as tasty.  Simply better than most Chinese grub I’ve found in the smaller little outposts sprinkled around strip malls in the area.  Which means that we’ll add Chinese to our takeout regimen for a meal that the whole crew (including our 3 picky princesses) will eat and that holds up well on the leftover front. We ordered pretty straightforward stuff which meant a very ample Sunday night meal for 5 for about $40.  Good value, particularly given the leftover trail.  For when we’re feeling a little more extravagant, Peking Duck is a specialty which we had when we went for dinner the first time and lived up to billing.  I figured that was off the good-idea list for takeout but noticed a bunch of people taking it home in the take queue.  Will definitely try that next time.

The mixed – From Del Ray it’s a little bit of a hoof (bout 15-20 minutes) to get there.  And the place is very popular so was jammed when we got there, both in the dining rooms and at the take out counter operation.  Which looks like a pretty efficient machine but we still had to hang out for 10 minutes or so waiting for all the pieces of our order to be put together.

Conclusion…. given the distance probably not as frequent a regular in our takeout rotation as a close place like Taqueria Poblano (where I think they’ve started to deliver our mail we go there so often) .  But absolutely a strong new player for the occasional Sunday night when we’re up for a little drive and only really tasty Chinese with all the fun little kid elements (egg rolls, those crunchy things you drop into the Won ton soup, making your own little moo shoo pork burritos, fortune cookies, etc.) will do.

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