Reader question: Is this estimate too high?

Help! We got an estimate from a contractor to remodel our kitchen. The quote included gutting it to the studs, however the only appliances that would move would be the dishwasher and the fridge. This includes redoing the ceiling as well, as we have a soffit that needs to be removed to add recessed lights. New floors too. Now, the kitchen is not very big --only 13x11. We haven't decided on finishes, etc., so the quote includes granite and quality cabinets. The quote was $40k. This seemed like a lot to me, but maybe I'm out of touch.

What do you think?

I think you're going about this all wrong, that's what I think. You haven't wasted your time though. After all, you now have an estimate for a $40K kitchen redo. Without knowing anything about your project or your location, I'd say that's in a range that makes me think you're not being taken.

The best thing you can do right now is stop, catch your breath and then change course. It sounds as if you have no idea what's involved in a kitchen renovation. That's OK, most people don't. Well, the best way you can go about spending a lot of money on this renovation is to learn a couple of things about the process and thereby re-cast yourself as an informed customer rather than as a victim. Be the driver of this train, not a passenger.

It is impossible to get comparable bids on a job if all of the players are bidding on different projects. Unless you know how to write a scope of work, every contractor you talk to is going to be bidding on a different job. Far more important than getting comparable bids is to find a contractor you trust.

In the meantime, have a chat with your husband and settle on how much money you are willing to spend on this project. That number is your budget. Everyone has one and you're not showing your cards to have that number in mind and to share it with the professionals you'll need to hire in order to complete this job.

It's a better idea to slow down and talk to a kitchen designer. Ask around and interview a couple of them. When you find someone you can relate to and who demonstrates that he or she will listen to you, work with that designer to come up with a plan.

That plan is what's going to drive this whole project. In the course of designing a plan, your designer is going to be able to get accurate prices for cabinetry, counters, lighting, faucets, sinks, appliances, flooring and everything else that goes into a kitchen renovation. Don't buy anything yet though. But add up the costs of all those things. We call them finishes. Add up the estimated costs of all the finishes and subtract that number from the budget you had in mind from the beginning. The number where you end up is your budget for the contractor.

Meet with several contractors. Ask to see photos of his or her previous work. Ask for the names of previous clients and call those former clients. If he or she has anything under construction right now, tour the job site.

When you find yourself developing a level of trust with a contractor and when he or she proves him/herself to be a good listener, make an appointment to review the scope and budget of your project. Involve the kitchen designer at this point if you're not feeling particularly confident.

At that contractor meeting, show the contractor your drawings and the scope of work for your job. Then look the contractor in the eye and say, "Can you do this for $12,000 dollars?" Use whatever your construction budget number is of course. If the contractor says yes, ask for an itemized estimate. That will take a few days to a week to generate. If the contractor says no, ask why and listen to his response.  If the reasons make sense then maybe you need to adjust your construction budget. If you need to adjust your construction budget then go back to your designer and adjust your finish budget to accommodate the change.

Finish budgets are flexible, labor budgets aren't.

Repeat this budget back and forth process until all of the players, especially you, are comfortable with the final numbers. That comfort level is far, far, far more important than collecting three bids. A comfort level with a competent contractor is worth much more than the resentment you'll cause by dragging more contractors into this process. You want competence and responsibility and those two things never make it into low ball bids. Never.

The process I described will take a couple of weeks to complete. In the course of those couple of weeks you are going to learn what a quality cabinet is. You're going to learn about the relative price points of your flooring options. You'll learn about the pricing structure of granite counters. You'll learn why some appliances cost more than others. You'll learn a lot about your home too. You'll find out about how your floor and roof trusses are set up. You'll learn about your electrical service. You'll learn about any structural problems your home has. In the course of learning all this stuff, you'll become an educated customer and you'll start to feel pretty empowered. Before you know it, you'll be forming learned opinions about engineered floors and self-closing drawers.

Once your job starts, you'll understand what drives cost overruns and construction delays. More important than anything else though, you'll be in charge of what's being done in your home. You'll be the boss and that always feels good. Right?

So if I were you the first thing I'd do is call a kitchen designer. If you need help with that I'll find you someone. Good luck and let us know how you do. Keep in touch and send me some photos of your job when it's all done. OK? OK!

I need to lighten it up a little bit

I love these two. Really.




That has to be one of the best versions of one of my favorite songs I've ever seen and heard. Edith would be proud.

They do more than French standards though.




And if that weren't enough, they can rock and or roll with the best of them.







Check out Grandma getting in on this one. Fantastic!

Wow these two are talented. They are Pomplamoose and consist of Nataly Dawn and Jack Conte. Check them out and show them some love.

Smart carbon and stupid people

I love my Brita pitcher. I've sung its praises in this space repeatedly and I'll say it again: I love my Brita pitcher.

Britas, like most gravity-fed water filtration systems, use gravity to pull water through a disc of activated carbon. Activated carbon is pretty much charcoal, it's just a pure form of it that's been treated in order to increase the amount of space between the carbon atoms it's made from.

Traditionally, charcoal is made through a process called pyrolization. In pyrolization, organic (carbon-based) material like wood or agricultural waste is superheated in an environment devoid of oxygen. In the absence of oxygen, the material can't catch fire and instead its volatile compounds evaporate and leave behind the carbon they were once bonded to. There are a variety of chemical and physical processes available in order to bring about this pyrolytic reaction but all of them yield the same result, a highly porous form of carbon.  Its value as a filter comes from two things: the purity of the carbon and the surface area made possible by all of its pores. Get this, a gram of activated carbon can have a surface area that ranges between 300 and 2,000 square meters according to my pals at How Stuff Works.

Carbon filters work through a process called adsorption. That's adsorption with a D and not a B. As water passes through the microscopic pores in the activated carbon filter, specific organic and inorganic chemicals and elements stick to the surface of the carbon. Think of the difference between adsorption and absorption this way. In absorption, material A gets sucked into the volume of material B. In adsorption, material A sticks to the surface of material B. An even simpler way to think of this that's more or less still accurate is when you wipe up a spill with a paper towel, the paper towel absorbs the spill. When you have a dusty floor and you wipe up the dust with a Swiffer, the Swiffer adsorbs the dust. Make sense?

Carbon filters work terrifically and they remove all manner of organic and inorganic stuff from tap water. Over time though, all of the surface area in the filter available for adsorption gets covered over and they stop being effective. You can't really clean a spent carbon filter, so you just replace them every couple of months. Simple and effective, and once again chemistry is your friend.

Well, a well-meaning but highly suggestible internet pal sent me a link to a solution to a problem that I didn't know I had. Apparently, my disposal of spent carbon filters every couple of months is an environmental crime on par with driving a Hummer or burning coal. Please. Anyhow, she sent me to a link to something called Sort of Coal. I don't really want to provide a link back to them but I suppose I owe them that much since I'm about to use a bunch of their images.

Sort of Coal sells pseudo scientific crap and snake oil and they do it in the form of something they call "white charcoal." The charcoal's still black of course, but in a world where reality doesn't matter, a consistent vocabulary must not be too important either.

My well-meaning internet pal sent me a link to this product:

It's what Sort of Coal calls Bottle and Kinshu Binchotan. It costs €68 plus Denmark's 25% VAT. That's €85 ($122.45 US) plus shipping. Oh yeah, carbon filtration doesn't happen by osmosis so it's pretty much ineffective as a filter. Sort of Coal doesn't mention how big the bottle is so I can't figure out the cost per serving. So despite the omission of the bottle size it does tell me this:

Serving and drinking local tap water becomes a pure and beautiful daily experience – with Bottle and Kishu Binchotan, each product is given its perfect complement.

Kishu Binchotan soaks up chlorine from tap water while releasing natural minerals into it. Kishu Binchotan softens the water and improves the overall taste.

What a load of BS. Tap water as a "pure and beautiful" daily experience? It's a frickin' glass of water, not an orgasm. It's not even a filtered glass of water at that.

Sort of Coal goes on to ascribe all manner of nonsense to its pyrolized wood. Here's what's called a Hakutan Tray and it's made from charcoal and plastic.

I have no idea how big it is, but Sort of Coal tells me this:

A decorative, purifying tray, made from cross-sections of White Charcoal set with compressed charcoal powder and resin. White Charcoal is produced by hand and is naturally activated during a controlled burning process. Use a Hakutan tray in the kitchen or living room. Fruit will remain fresh longer when placed on the Hakutan tray. Wipe it clean with a damp cloth. Do not use soap. It remains active for years if exposed to direct sunlight occasionally.

This product is organic and C02 friendly.

CO2 friendly? How can something made from partially burned wood and plastic be CO2 friendly? What does CO2 friendly mean anyway? How can a company make a claim like "Fruit will remain fresh longer when placed on the Hakutan Tray" and get away with it? Can they be held responsible for bananas that rot at the same rate that they would on a tray not made from "white charcoal?" If anybody wants to part with €160 ($230.50 US) to find out, let me know how it goes.

The unproven assertions just keep on coming with these people. Check out this:

Welcome to the Hakutan Large. The Hakutan Large is described thus:

Korean White Charcoal stems. White charcoal is made by hand and is naturally activated through a controlled burning process. Hakutan absorbs gases, pollution and odors from the air. It can be placed in your bathroom to regulate humidity, in the living room and kitchen to absorb cooking steam and odours. For generations people in Asia have used it to freshen air and create a better indoor environment. Charcoal is also used in spaces where there is intensive computer use, because it creates natural anions and thus has a positive effect on mental well-being. Keep free from dust. If you refresh it once in a while by placing it in direct sunlight, you can keep the Hakutan active for years. Charcoal should be recycled. White charcoal has a positive effect on the environment even when you dispose of it.

When the time comes to get a new Hakutan, crush it and mix it with soil so plants can benefit from it. This makes Hakutan CO2 friendly

So using this €120 ($172.87) stick of charcoal will have a positive effect on my mental well-being because it releases natural anions. I love how they pair their absurd claims with they mystery of the Orient. I'm not Asian but I think I'd be insulted if I were. But at least they explain how they get CO2 friendly from this.

Some day soon, I promise, we'll have a chat about ions and anions but I think I may have exhausted you guys by now.

Part of me admires the gall of these people to make the claims they do and charge what they do for this useless garbage. A bigger part of me is appalled at how this sort of new-agey clap trap can be lapped up so readily by an uncritical public.

The world faces a host of serious environmental problems that need to be addressed if it's to remain a planet fit for human life. The solutions to those problems will come from the fields of chemistry, biology, physics and their allied scientific disciplines. The mechanisms that underlie the physical world can be understood and that understanding only increases their wonder. Really.

Brrrr!

This is the screen capture of my home page's weather gadget from a minute ago.

It didn't hit 40 degrees today. It's more than 30 degrees below normal for today here and this is without a doubt the coldest I can remember in nearly 20 years of living in Florida. It snowed about 40 miles north of here last night and tonight's due to be even colder. There's a frost warning in St. Pete for tonight and we haven't had a frost in ten years. It's bizarre and I don't like it one bit.

Everyone looks shell-shocked and cold. A lot of the buildings here have no heat and it shows up in the pained faces of my fellow St. Petersburgians. I get it that it's one degree in Fargo and six in Minneapolis. They're used to it and they live in homes with furnaces.

This photo is just wrong. I just found it on the internet. It doesn't look like this around here yet but at this stage of the game nothing would surprise me. All is woe. All is woe!

New year, new stuff from Room and Board

The gang at Room and Board released a number of new items this week and I like to take a moment to fawn over four of them. Room and Board's furniture, carpets, lighting and accessories have a clean and modern aesthetic I like a great deal. There's a bit of Mid Century Modern in all of these pieces but they never cross the line into camp. Their stuff's exceptionally well made and sold at a price point that makes my head spin sometimes.

If you're in the market for new furniture, please don't buy junk. Buy good quality furniture and buy it once. Do your research and I can't think of a better place to start that research than at Room and Board.

This is the Louis Chair and Ottoman.

The Louis comes in five fabrics or can be customized with any of the hundreds of fabrics in Room and Board's collection. The Louis chair sells for $899 and the ottoman $399.

This is the Ventura table.

The Ventura is available in solid cherry, solid maple, and solid walnut. It comes in four lengths and its prices range from $1399 to $1899.

This is the Spill carpet.

The Spill is made from handmade wool felt and is available in the color and pattern shown. Other colors and patterns have other names. Imagine. Out of all of them though, I like the Spill the best. Nothing like a jolt of orange to start the day, right? Anyhow, the Spill comes in two sizes and ranges in price from $2160 to $3,600.

And finally, this is the Adams table.

In the Adams table, Room and Board managed to inject some Mid Century Modern sensibilities into a traditional Shaker form and I love the effect.

Again, if you're in the market for furniture, don't buy junk. Research like crazy and then buy the best you can afford and buy it once. If you have to buy something on impulse, but a pack of gum at the check out. Furniture purchases should be agonized over for months. Or in my case, years.