Details...Details..Details

Man.......I've forgotten the difference between residential work and commercial. If you're talking about about any type of high end work (and this does not necessarily mean expensive material but it likely does), there are TONS of details to attend to. Now...there's the mundane stuff which is simply about expediting.....as in material. We've been short on beaded ceiling and then the yellow pine flooring was late in arriving. We had a few lights that came from New Zealand....then there is the engineered pine flooring....and the pine flooring adhesive....the concrete stain...paint...and more paint...doors...hardware....speaker wire....recycled material....layout...layout...layout....tile work...refinished mantle....and then there is T2 (OK...you had to be there)....concrete...gravel...clean the stone.....this is all a partial list....I'm not kidding.

Anyhow...it's getting done and the RC team has done a great job. It's so helpful that they do so much work with their own forces. We'll be substantially complete in about a week.

Hard to find the time to BLOG with all this going on.

thanks

DP

Progress Photos

Shots from last Wednesday......Exterior flue for the relocated 20 year old Vermont Castings stove which now is in my home office/exercise area. This work was performed and completed yesterday by Brandon Smith and he did a very good job.

Above is a photo of Jeff Winters the carpenter installing insulation in our renovated ceiling plane. Notice new lighting. This work will begin to be covered on Monday with a stained bead board, which is a traditional building product often seen on porch ceilings.

And finally, the other side of the sliding door. We have an electrician (Brian who works for Tim Cunningham) , sheetmetal worker from Rock Branch Mechanical, and a finish carpenter (Cliff from RC Construction) pushing hard. By today's end, virtually all of the drywall hanging will be complete.

Never Try and Demolish a Building I Built!!

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I began in the construction industry by building homes. In my first job, the builder I worked for did most everything wrong, which included putting cinder block walls below grade against unstable soil...the result...basement walls that cracked and/or failed completely. So, when I went out on my own, I filled many of the foundation walls with pea-gravel concrete. There was really no reason to fill this wall with concrete, except I guess we over ordered.

So.....RC's superintendent, Phil Samples, is seen here on a very difficult task sawing thru the wall. It was a tough two days, but the job got done! (All to make way for a very cool sliding door).

Native Stone Wall Being Installed

This project involves capturing a few hundred square feet in the lower level (aka basement) to create an in home office. So....a large sliding door is about to be installed in the wall to the left. We dug into the hill side and then we are retaining the embankment with a native stone wall.

This wall is being installed by Steve Burdette, who interestingly worked on this house and installed the other native stone work some 20+ years ago. He's a real craftsman and RC Construction is lucky to have him.

ICE (In Case of Emergency)

I'm helping revise Bailey & Glasser's Employee Handbook. We are working with Robinson McElwee on this project and I borrow the following, which just seems to make great practical sense and I thought my readers might find it useful too. (Photo borrowed from mahardhika).

“I.C.E” Number
For those persons who have personal cellular phones, the Firm suggests that you create an entry in your address book captioned “ICE.” First responders are now trained to look for this entry on your cell phone in the event you are injured and someone needs to be notified. The “ICE” entry stands for “In Case of Emergency” and you should insert the phone number and contact information for the person who you would want contacted if you are unable to do so yourself.

Reflections of the Cycling Symposium

This weekend, as the president of the West Virginia Cycling Foundation, I helped lead a meeting of about 75 movers and shakers involved in cycling throughout the State. Friday evening, we enjoyed a dinner at the governor’s mansion. Senator Dan Foster kicked off the evening with his reflections of the health impact of a healthy life style…the personal impact on the individual and the financial impact on all citizens.

He was followed by Secretary of Transportation Paul Mattox who committed to help the State become much more cycling friendly and we were treated to an inspiring visit by Andy Clarke, the president of the League of American Cyclists http://www.bikeleague.org/.

On Saturday, we rolled up our sleeves and went to work. Symposium Champion Kim Broughton kicked off the meeting and set the stage for the day. Jeff Miller, president of The Alliance for Biking and Walking http://www.peoplepoweredmovement.org/site/ followed and shared the national perspective and his numerous experiences with other States. We broke out into task teams and discussed many topics….like:

Economic Impact of Cycling (which is major)
Legislation (Upon which we could improve…see the three foot rule…see allowing cycling on the shoulder)
Lobbying….hey…this is a great investment so show me the money
Education….safe cycling skills for riders and drivers
Access for kids and adults….more connectivity.
The trend to put cycling and pedestrian activities under the same tent
Mapping projects…so you know where to go and what to expect
The many forms of cycling….as in replacing a car to go to the store…as in mountain biking….as in children cycling…as in racing…as in family time on a rail to trail....and so much more.

And then we talked about how to create success.

I’m not sure exactly what will happen next….except to say I think we are on the path that will one day lead West Virginia from being the 50th on the League’s List:

Bottom 5
46. North Dakota
47. Mississippi
48. Alabama
49. Georgia
50. West Virginia

To the cracking the top 5! Look out Minnesota…we’re on the way.
Top 5
1. Washington
2. Wisconsin
3. Arizona
4. Oregon
5. Minnesota

Stay in touch through my BLOG (http://209capitolstreet.blogspot.com/) or following me on Twitter (@davidpray).

thanks

Dave

And Ground is Broken!

The job fires up in a big way on April 27, but I elected to sneak in a few "little" pieces of work prior to the offical kickoff. Gerald "Bubby" Haynes and his Dad put in a strong day's work on Monday with a combination of a small excavator and a skid steer loader on tracks. Beating the rain, they excavavated the lower level which exposes a wall into which a slaiding glass door will soon be installed.

To Bid or Not to Bid...that is the Question

A construction project is a compilation of a long list of various items...primarily products and services...i.e. labor and material(s). I've written a lot about the materials piece which amounts to making an informed choice (choice of the product within the context of the whole budget) on a product before construction begins.

So...I've purchased new engineered flooring (about 3 months ago as it was really on sale), bookshelf speakers, fabricated millwork, light fixtures, windows sliding doors and more.

In almost every case, I've been rewarded by competing the purchase. As an example, I went to a company that has supplied a lot of product on various projects throughout my career...assuming of course that I would be rewarded on my own house. Just to keep the record straight, I solicited pricing from a friend of mine (Lewis Weisberg) at State Electric and they proceeded to blow the doors off the competitors not only with pricing...thanks!!!...but also with service...i.e. answering my repetitive questions. I saved the owner (me!) about $1,500 on a $3,000 purchase.

More on all of this as we go on......but line item bidding....such as I would administer as an owner's representative (or be sure the construction manager was doing) is generally worth the time and effort.

Tougher Than it Seems

A brief post....OK...so I think you get the general way I mean to deal the cards...i.e. with the deck stacked so to speak. And, the way you do that is to plan, plan, plan and what that looks like is a ton of material handy...ready for installation.

So......over the past month we have sorted through the many choices involved with the three (!) windows and one sliding door we had to order. Guessing...this took 5-7 hours of my time. Finally....we got what we wanted for the best price I could haggle.

Next....architectural woodwork....OK...say another 10 hours of bidding and then sorting thru 4 versions of shop drawings. Cabinets are being built now.

We bought some of the flooring on sale and it is now...thankfuly...sitting in a warehouse.

The design anticipates some audio visual stuff...so bookcase speakers were selected and ordered.

Now onto light fixtures....done...say 10 hours later.

Anyway.....I'm guessing we will actually start on April 20.

There.....wow...that wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be...The Blog post that is.

Thanks

Getting Ready for Moving Pool Equipment

The photo on the bottom illustrates a storage bin in our driveway/parking area. The photo on the top is where all this "stuff" came from (an area underneath our back porch and adjacent to one area that is about to be renovated). It is also the new home of the pool equipment, which is currently located in the lower level of our house.

Pool Equipment consists of a pump which is needed to circulate the water through a filter and strain out the small particulates. We use a sand filter. Along the way, the water is ionized which allows us to utilize a very small amount of chlorine. So...filtering and sanitizing is the function that is being relocated. Placing the equipment outside means we will have to be a bit more mindful in the winter...as this equipment will all need to be drained down and not allowed to freeze, but we gain a ton of inside conditioned space.

The schedule anticipates relocating the pool equipment beginning in a couple of weeks. This is a task that will likely take a couple of days for the plumber.

By the way...Dave and Laura did all the moving of the stuff...so we had a good workout today too!

Great off topic trivia from Joe Friel's BLOG

This really has zero to do with the subject of this BLOG, but I thought the "coming into form" comment might be of interest to one reader or two!

From Friel's BLOG

4. Fitness and fatigue trend similarly. You may not have thought about this before, but it is important to understand. There is a strong link between fitness and fatigue. If you are fatigued from training then you stressed the body adequately enough to create the potential for fitness. If the workout did not cause any fatigue at all then it also did not produce the potential for fitness. So, when fatigue is rising you can expect the same thing from fitness.

5. In order to race well one must reduce fatigue. This is what tapering before a big race is all about – reducing fatigue. You don’t want to go into important races tired. There is no benefit from doing that. Racing when tired most assuredly will produce less-than-stellar performances.

6. Reducing fatigue is called “coming into form.” The term “form” came from late-nineteenth-century horse racing. Before placing a bet you would check the form (sheet of paper) provided by the bookie which showed how each horse had been racing recently. When a horse was racing well it was said to be “on form.” Bike racing which started in the late nineteenth century adopted this term early on. In recent years other endurance sports have begun using it.

Planning the Project

There are three general areas of focus on concern in a project that hoover around the areas of (1) Time (2) Quality and (3) Money. The above tool is a so-called MindMap. I'm an amateur as far as this program goes, but I've found this program...even at the most basic level, to be very helpful.

This map addresses the issue of (1) time. Again...the idea here is to make the actual installation process as smooth and as quick as is possible. By focusing on time, one logically will make a good impact on money and quality.

Sonos for Distributed Audio

I know just enough about residential audio/visual (a/v) systems to be dangerous. Just how dangerous, I guess the next few months will tell. Our project involves the renovation to our living room where we now have a CD player and a pile of CD's. Both this device (the CD player) and this media source (CDs) are about to be history.

Over the past years, I've migrated all of our audio sources so they are now on our in home server which most notably manages all our e-mail, serves up the prayworks (www.prayworks.com) webpage and is where all our business files live. So, I have our music on the server and it is about to be managed by Sonos. So, I can play music in our living room and access any of the music we own, play different music in our new library and different music while cleaning up in our bath room.

Nice...we'll see how it goes, but the order has been placed and the bundle is on the way, so I'll be setting up the system soon. Too, you can control the Sonos system with one's iPhone. It seems to be easy enough to set up. We'll see...stay tuned.

Of interest...I'm on Twitter and I made a post that I had bought the Sonos system. Within minutes, I was being followed by Sono's marketing and I following them...as they supplied hints and helpful links. Wild.

New Tenant on Floor Three-209 Capitol

I am pleased to announce a substantial portion of the third floor at 209 Capitol Street has been leased by the law firm Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith LLP . The firm is headquartered in Los Angeles, California and employs about 600 lawyers.

Thanks are in order to Melanie at Real Estate Resources who surfaced this client as well as Kent George and his team (Chuck Saffer) at Robinson and McElwee who worked with me through the lease negotiations.

They will begin moving in this weekend.

Think we're in a recession?

A good friend of mine for the last 30 or so years works and lives around Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He works for a high end millwork fabricator and has traditionally had a large backlog...like 4-6 months worth...and a job like ours...well it would never really even be considered.

I called him yesterday and had 2 return calls today. We talked and hell yes he'd like to price this job. Now..mind you, I've got what amounts to seven pieces to build, finish and ship....not a big deal...but he was all over it. Business sucks for them.

Anyway..it's a buyer's market, which is good for this project and others I'm working on. And, it's good to have a large network to tap into.

And the new BLOG is......

OK…..I’m not quite THAT big of an egotist. Or maybe. I’ve decided to morph this BLOG over to a BLOG that mostly has to do with upcoming renovations to our house. We'll still have some stuff on 209, but for the next few months, it's about substantial renovations to our house.

And here is the slant on this new project.

I have always theorized that a residential construction project would really proceed with a much higher probability of success if (1) virtually all of the design decisions were made prior to proceeding with construction and (2) and this is the big point…that most of the “stuff” was already sitting in town in a warehouse prior to construction proceeding; carpet; woodwork; custom casework; hardware; light fixtures; windows; door hardware; tile etc.

So…that’s what we plan on doing….getting incredibly well organized BEFORE firing the starting pistol and then smoke this job.

And the outcomes from this might be:

A project constructed for less $$.
Fewer distractions throughout the construction process.
A faster installation.
Higher Quality.

That’s a lot of good outcomes and I’ll write more about this in the future.

Stay tuned.

Photo Worth Sharing

The boat is called Change Order and the Dingy is Original Contract. Not really relevant to this project but I thought it was worth sharing.

Reflections on Facebook

Last June. I received an invitation to join Facebook from a friend I knew through an organization I have done a lot of work for and with. I really knew nothing about Facebook but pulled the trigger and signed up on July 21. (No…I did not have that date committed to memory…you have a history of all of your updates…click on Profile…scroll to the end of the page and continue to click on show me more updates…the first one will be the date you joined. This is likely an exercise worth performing…not so much to remind you of the date you joined but for you to understand what the “record” reveals about you and for you to understand the picture that you are painting about yourself).

So….I gradually and in spurts added friends which were an interesting group of family, folks I would introduce to you as a friend, and then acquaintances who I really did not know but heck….they asked me to be their friend…how could I say no?

So…..I’m 50 plus years old and my peer group thinks I’m quite tech savvy. I suppose what that means is I know almost as much as the AVERAGE middle class 14 year old, although that might be too strong. They likely know more. So, when I asked my real, lifelong friends to join, they trusted my judgment and signed up. This post is for them.

Facebook is a social networking site. So, when you log onto Facebook, you are in a virtual room with all of your “friends”. Now…you can lurk around and watch and listen. Quite a few folks do this. And why is this their chosen response? (1) Facebook can take a lot of time, particularly if you don’t keep it in its place. So….no time for yet another distraction….makes some sense. (2) Just like the real analog world, people are individuals…some are introverted and some are extroverted. Some are good listeners and some just can’t wait to talk….and you see that reflected in Facebook. (3) Some folks are more conscious than others about “the record”. I have a lot of friends that are lawyers…they…understandably…have a heightened sense of how the “record” can be used. It seems to me like to get the most out of Facebook, you likely want to do some participation….i.e. make a status update entry with some regularity…….and that can be once a week. If you want to paint a more complete picture, perhaps more often is warranted….but I do think some participation only makes sense…..sort of along the line of give what you want to receive…..but be mindful of the “record”.

Most of my immediate family does not live in Charleston…..so I know my nephew is in Puerto Rico, my son is studying some sort of math I don’t have any clue about, and I see my granddaughter on her new bike.

Some of my friends make a habit of posting great articles about national/international events or WVU sports. I read most of them….you get a sense after a while about friends whose perspective you might find interesting or even occasionally compelling……even if you don’t agree with the perspective.

You are building your network in a reasonably cheap manner. This might be good for business or in some way satisfy your need to be connected.

Here’s an interesting link for beginners.

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/facebook.htm

There’s way more about all of this I could reflect upon but I think BLOG entries need to be quick reads. I have thoughts about mobile devices and Facebook, Twitter, the topic of “unfriending”, (I think this might become a legitimate verb), the topic of not having your friend request acknowledged but for right now, I think I need to clean up the house…that’s today’s status update.

What the hell has happened with Pray’s BLOG?

Fundamentally, the renovation of 209 Capitol is complete. There are still a few issues going on…..the art work piece is still in design….we are about to aggressively begin leasing the third floor…the part 3 submission to the Department of Interior needs to be submitted…there’s probably a few more reflections I can dig around for….but the bottom line is the topic of this BLOG is winding down.

So….I’m all over starting the new one and would be interested if there is any energy around the following topics that have been rolling around……

1) I am preparing to execute a significant renovation at my house. I get tons of questions every year from folks anticipating or in the middle of (or maybe involved in a law suit over)residential work…..so I thought I’d tell it all in a BLOG about my residential renovation project? Daily or multiple daily entries.

2) Mid Life Transition. This is a little different concept. 10 years ago I began on a life adventure….a real shaking up the deck if you will….and decided to sell my company. There’s a lot going on with that topic in my life particularly as I begin to explore other uses for my time beyond the traditional type time applications of what constructive development psychologists would call “meaning making systems”. Change Baby! BLOG it???

3) Getting Super Fit. A few years ago, I won the 50 and over State Road Race Championship….several years and several accidents later, I’m 10 pounds heavier and in way worse shape. This is a way too self centered BLOG (but aren’t they all), but I thought I’d throw that out there.

I’m leaning towards # 1 but thinking # 2 would be more of an adventure.

Let me know......

Happy New Year!

Dave

Torturing the property manager and guys over 50??

OK...I admit it. I thought having a urinal 18" from the floor was a challenge...I mean it's a challenge for me with my 56 year old prostate! (I know too much information). Anyway....I was thinking it was put this low for the occasional 5 year old that might show up once every year or so.

Wrong....and I thank Tony Yunker with GBBN for changing my paradigm. The reason the urinal is like this is it accommodates someone in a wheelchair....and I honestly had just not thought about that. In 2002, I was in a bad bike wreck and drove my femur thru my pelvis. This was a BIG DEAL and after it was miraculously repaired by the best orthopedic trauma surgeon in West Virginia (Dave Hubbard...Ruby Memorial), I was confined to a wheel chair for a month or so.

I really learned what barrier free means and committed to always have my projects respond to folks with disabilities. It might be a very small percentage of the population...but if it's you, it's a big deal.

I'm glad this project was built to be responsive and I'm glad GBBN kept us on track. The American with Disabilties Act might seem like a pain sometimes, but one needs to get out of their own skin from time to time and take a view from the other side of the street, so to speak. This is a law we should all embrace.