All Forum Posts by: Valerie Hiscoe

There's a website called Homewyse.Com that could be helpful.

I am so sorry for your experience but, rest assured, many of us have paid more for our education. 

Be very careful with your payment plan - make sure there's enough money left on the table for them to finish the job - it's not worth hurrying back for a mere $800 if there's even $500 work to be done. To guarantee that the last $500 worth gets done, they should still be waiting on at least $2000 payment. I screwed up my last contract by not doing a good job of specifying the time frame. Still learning. One thing I did put in this time that I did like was a 'Payment Log' as part of the contract. It was a separate page reiterating the pre-arranged payment milestones with a place for the contractor to sign and date which I kept along with the receipts. I liked having it all on one page. But signing the Lien Waiver came before the last payment.

Best of luck moving forward. 

I'm on a phone so @ doesn't work but a vote makes sure you get my message. 

The two window approach like your mock-up is probably the best.  It also serves the purpose of balancing the window above it nicely. Make sure the bedroom windows are the same size and shape, balancing the distance between them as much as possible. If you could replace the teeny window on the other with a matching one, that would be ideal.

With your sidewalks and landscaping, make everything lead to the front door and let everything else be boring. You could, as suggested above, get an estimate for a slight roof adjustment over the door. Your ideas sound right on the money. Looks like an awesome project to me.

Love your design program. What are you using?

I'm on a phone so @ doesn't work but a vote makes sure you get my message. 

The two window approach like your mock-up is probably the best.  It also serves the purpose of balancing the window above it nicely. Make sure the bedroom windows are the same size and shape, balancing the distance between them as much as possible. If you could replace the teeny window on the other with a matching one, that would be ideal.

With your sidewalks and landscaping, make everything lead to the front door and let everything else be boring. Your ideas sound right on the money. Looks like an awesome project to me.

Make sure your next contract includes a timeframe, hold off a large chunk of money until the very end (as was mentioned earlier - you're the one paying for the materials) and get a Lien Waiver signed before putting that final cheque in anybodys hand because you'll probably need it with escrow documents.

Do not work with him whether he is willing to abide by your terms or not - he has already proven very clearly that your 'terms' mean nothing to him whether they were on paper or not.

@Jimmy Seaboard above is absolutely correct - the focus of all design and landscaping is to lead people to the front door. In your house, if it's an option, the answer is obvious - put the front door under the gable roof where you've got the three-paned window mock-up and the windows become much less important. You would still want to aim to bring some balance and symmetry by having the same 'weight' on the left as you do on the right. That's where you would focus your landscaping if enlarging windows and such is impractical. You have differing size windows which is very distracting on the right - bigger or smaller doesn't matter - just make them the same size.

If you can NOT move the front door then the only tool you can use is repetition. All three windows need to be the same size and as close to the same distance apart as possible -none more important than the other - you need to sort of 'bore' the eye, so you can do something to draw attention to the main event - the front door.

You might have to fiddle with the details a bit but try to keep the principles in mind - focus, balance, symmetry and/or repetition - and you'll be fine.

The website 'Homewyse' is great.

I was dealing with a house that was only from the 50's and you just have no idea how much I regret not just ripping off all the drywall in kitchen and bathroom and arranged for the SOW and budget to incorporate the plumbing and electrical (I might have guessed about the sub-floor but not really the rotten and unsupporting studs). Better to know what you're dealing with beforehand than find out and have to bac track later.

Best of luck!

You'll have to be careful about calculating your ARV I think. The property prices might fall across the board, dragged down by the low cost of flooded homes, or might go sky high because of the demand for homes untouched by Harvey.

I'm thinking of going myself  (my brother lives there) but there's a lot of things to weigh.

Good luck.