I introduced you to the H2Office floating office in a previous post.  Since then, the creative minds behind the project have continued to evolve the design concept.

Here are some of the latest renderings…

For additional information on the project, check out the H2Office website.

I’m learning at lot about the best way to work with contractors. Mainly, I’m afraid, by making every mistake in the book along the way. (Of course, a good friend of mine who used to fight martial arts competitively insists that pain is the best, most efficient educator there is. If he’s right, I think I deserve a PhD in home renovation by now.)

Anyway, I’ve decided to share some of my hard-earned wisdom. If someone were facing a significant renovation project like mine, and I was only able to give them once piece of advice, this is what it would be: Never, EVER, pay a contractor more money than what they say is the absolute minimum they need, right now, to either start or keep a project going. Let me tell you why…

Should you pay a contractor up front what they give you as the total estimated amount of the project, I pretty much guarantee that they’re going to be in a lot less hurry to finish you project (and, thus, be able to ask for the rest of the money).  Especially if they have other projects which are competing with yours on which they can collect more money if they finish.

Moreover, the costs for renovations seem to magically expand in some particularly ruthless, evil version of Parkinson’s law. Plainly stated: remodeling costs will expand to what your contractor estimates to be the total size of your wallet. Trust me, you are much better off if your contractor/builder thinks it was a real struggle to come up with the 50% up-front than that you didn’t break a sweat writing a check for the full project before it’s even started.

One final advantage to paying in increments is it lets you keep better tabs on whether or not you’re running over-budget and provides you the opportunity to make mid-course corrections rather than simply being keelhauled when a bill for the final tab shows up.

Lest you all begin admiring me for my profound depths of wisdom, let me confess that that’s so NOT how I handled the latest round of things with Kenny…

At the beginning of this phase of renovations, Kenny gave me an estimate of $10,000 to replace the windows and doors, siding, and roof panels. I wrote him a check for $10,000 thinking that would be “easier” and that it was less likely I would burn through the $5000 that was sitting in my savings account waiting for him to finish the project.

What followed was v-e-r-y slow progress on the house. Followed by Kenny breaking his leg and being unable to finish the project for several months, and me being in a position of not being able to hire someone else to finish the project because the money had already been spent.

And now that the project is finally wrapping up, I’ve received a bill for an additional $6,000. This, after months of asking if we were over-budget at all and not getting a response. Oh, and by the way, he needs the money NOW or he’s not going to be able to do any more work on my house. Never mind that I waited, reasonably patiently, after he broke his leg and couldn’t put the new roof on my house, leaving my house without a roof for two months during the rainy season.

(Can you tell I’m just a teeny, little bit cranky today?)

Anyway, I guess I know where my tax returns are going. Sigh. The check went out in the mail today and I’m going to do my best to follow my own advice in the future.

I doubt if anyone will be as excited about these as I am, but Kenny sent along some pictures of the new roof on my floating home. I’m still trying to decide if I like the green against the siding or not. I think it will help when the rest of the white trim and railing are in.

My only complaint on the pictures is that I wish he’d taken one of the full front of the house. For some strange reason, my contractor doesn’t think the same way as a blogger. Go fig.

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!  I have new siding. I am very excited! (Note all the exclamation points!!!!)

Kenny emailed me yesterday with a bunch of photos of the new siding on the house along with the skeleton of the new staircase to the rooftop deck. I haven’t had a staircase since last roughly last April. I’m not sure if anyone other than myself can relate, but this feels like major progress. I was so excited by the new round of photos that I woke up around 3:30 AM and had to check my email to confirm I hadn’t dreamed it.

Now Kenny has safe access to the roof so he can get the new roofing on. (You can see the new metal roofing sitting in piles on the deck.) After that, he needs to add the new stairway and deck railing and the outside is done.

My friends who know my decorating tastes will probably be highly amused by the generous use of beige. In my defense, I would like to point out that the roof will be green, the railing white, and I plan to bury the deck in colorful plants come spring. (Lots of purples, pinks, and greens.) Have faith.

Floating Home FAQ has just written a useful article on floating home utilities and details.  In particular, he details how the sewage system works (or sometimes doesn’t).

If you’re interested in the nitty-gritty details on how you get services to these types of homes, I encourage you to check out this article.

Moreover, I’d rather tickled to discover another floating home blogger in the area.

Along the floating/small home theme, I recently came across an article on the H2Office, which is designed as a floating office. The H2Office is the brainchild of Cardiff-based WaterSpace Developments and industrial design and marketing company.

The first model is slated to be available in 2009. Planned features include:

• Enough space for 1-2 to work
• Both a private work area and a “breakout” area for (small) meetings and/or meals
• a deck
• kitchenette
• a bathroom equipment with toilet and shower
• foldaway bunks in case of the need to pull an overnighter
• built-in storage space
• a small tender “dock” which could be used to stash something like a kayak or to catch a few rays
• dimensions compatible with docking in a standard marina space

For additional information check out the designers blog.

Aside from finding this a cool idea, I’m filing this away in case I someday want to expand my “living” space by having a nearby office at the marina rather than simply using my back room. (I just wished it looked a little less like a floating airstream trailer.)

The Washington Post recently published a story about a new houseboat company that has run into problems with community resistance. To recap the article–Eric Smith and Douglass Dillard recently started a company to build houseboats intended for the Chesapeake Bay. Their prototype is a 55 foot model called the Annapolis and it isn’t exactly a minimalist shanty. The home includes clerestory windows, flat-screen TVs, a vaulted ceiling, wet bar, rooftop sun deck, and swimming platform.

Unfortunately, in many communities floating homes are perceived as “nothing more than trailer homes on the water”. In addition, Chesapeake had the unfortunate history of a millionaire with a 3-story house atop a barge having ongoing drunken parties on the bay.

When word got out that the couple hoped to establish a neighborhood of floating homes in Chesapeake Bay, the local government sprung into action and forbade any houseboat that: exceeded 46 feet in length, was intended to be used as a house/office, and is not self-propelling.

The builders are now expected to move their prototype within 30 days or they risk daily fines. The full story can be read here.

I am both sad and indignant on their behalf. I wish that mainstream America felt less threatened by innovative solutions to housing. But anything that doesn’t look like the next house they’d want to buy or that might have some remote chance of driving down the value of their property it is to be stopped at all costs.

Never mind that a segment of the U.S. population very well may need innovative housing solutions in the next few years.

The last few months have taught me that remodeling projects tend to have a freakish ability to snowball. They start as charming, easy-to-grasp little things. But then they start to tumble downhill, gathering both size and momentum, until they reach monstrous proportions that are easily capable of knocking you on your ass.

But there’s also something immensely seductive about the process that makes you forget the fact you’re very likely treading dangerously close to calamity. Before you know it, you find yourself saying crazy things like: “Well, since we’re rebuilding the back half of the house, ripping off all the siding, and replacing the roof, I suppose we might as well do all the doors and windows while we’re in there, too.”

In my defense, Kenny had broke it to me a month or so back that the seals on all my windows and doors were shot. (That would go a long way in explaining the leak my first contractor, Randy, mentioned he’d found under the flooring near my front picture window.) Most of the windows were of roughly 1970’s vintage, and I figured it probably made sense to replace them with more energy-efficient versions. Moreover, I had wanted to add a few additional ones anyway to make the center of the house feel less like a shoebox an over-ambitious six-year-old had wrapped for Christmas.

It’s weird to get so excited over windows and doors but, so far, it’s been the most fun I’ve had as far as the remodeling. I love the two 4 x 5 foot windows Kenny added to the back wall of the former boatwell. I also had him add a teeny-tiny little frosted window over to the toilet in the bathroom and a much larger window across from the sleeping nook. I have no idea how many times I’ve gone back to the bathroom to check out the little window, grinning from ear to ear. It just makes me gleefully happy to see the little window and I have no idea why.

Perhaps it’s because, to my mind it makes such a huge difference to the cramped bathroom space and it was all MY idea. I’ve owned homes before and experienced the creative satisfaction of decorating them as my heart dictated. This is the first time, however, where I’ve had creative control all the way down to the bones of a structure. I suspect my frustrated inner-architect is finally getting a chance to let her hair down and she’ digging it.

The two large 4 x 5 windows in the back are designed to open about six inches. The advantage to that is there’s nothing to obstruct the view in the center of the frame. The downside is that, in order for my house to meet fire code, I was required to add a back door, which means I’ve lost some of the sidewall on which I’d originally been planning to have a wardrobe for storage. I decided to take the opportunity to select a door with a half-pane of glass in order to let some additional light into the room. (Hey, if you’re going to live on the water, I say you might as well enjoy as much light reflecting off it as possible.)

The other change I made was to the front door. When I bought the house it had a sliding glass door. Most of the external changes I’ve made my house make it look less modern and more cottage-y. (cottage-esque?) I really had my heart set on adding a pair of white French doors in the front with internal venetian blinds for the times I want privacy. Kenny convinced me, however, that that would be a Very Bad Idea, considering my front door faces to the east. He is one of several locals now who’s mentioned the Dreaded East Wind of Winter.

Apparently, in the summer, the wind along the Columbia River blows from west to east. It’s a balmy, friendly wind coming off the Pacific. In the winter, however, it’s a whole ‘nother story. Then the wind comes from the east and, for anyone not familiar with Portland geography, that means it’s coming off the snow-clad peaks of Mt. Hood. We’re talking a cold, wet, unfriendly wind that drops the temperature more than 15 degrees lower than a half-mile inland. It finds its way into any gap or crevice in a structure you haven’t successfully managed to seal and it’s perfectly happy to soak everything it can reach to the bone.

The East Wind has a lot to do with why my marina is more than half-empty come winter. It’s only the strong and the stubbornly die-hard who choose to remain.

Anyway, I digress. Long story short, Kenny made it bluntly clear to me that he’d put a French door in my house if I insisted but I wasn’t to come whining to him when enterprising penguins started up an ice rink in my front room come December. I was just about to relent and stick with the glass Arcadia door when he mentioned this was another option. Apparently there is an Arcadia-style door that looks like a French door but the doors are on tracks and are able to slide sideways as well as one side can swing inward. Don’t ask me exactly how this all works, but the advantage is there’s a solid center seal between the two side of the door that prevents water from blasting in. So I get my faux French door and Kenny can stop worrying about my welfare my first winter on the river.

My front door actually was delivered the morning I was scheduled to head back to New Mexico, which was neat. I didn’t get to stay for the full install. But I arrived in the early morning mist of rain to discover my old door gone and a good third of the front wall of my house open to the river while Gene worked on the new framing. It was pretty surreal. I’ll certainly not ever have that exact view from the kitchen again any time soon.

I’m eagerly awaiting pictures from Kenny on the finished front of the house including my spiffy new door. (Editor’s note: actually, you can see a shot of the new front door that arrived yesterday via email included in the entry on siding below.)

Well, so much for my good intentions to at least have an entry every Friday. My work-life got insanely crazy–working with banks right now will do that to you–and I am more than a little behind on updates on the house. Please bear with me while I try to catch back up…

Three weeks ago I spent the week up in Oregon so that I could meet with Kenny and discuss siding,windows, roofing, and colors. Kenny very wisely insisted that I come up and eyeball what he thought I’d probably want in the way of colors for the new roof and siding.

I had picked out a color scheme a few months back and sent Kenny the make/model numbers for the siding and roof colors I’d selected. Naturally, since nothing about my remodel can go as simply as initially planned, I had picked out a different brand of siding than what Kenny actually wanted to use.

Kenny did his best to match the colors, but they didn’t exactly sync up. And then I exercised my womanly prerogative and changed my mind which complicated matters further. (Hey, at least I changed my mind before we bought materials or started putting them on the house.)

I’m using vinyl siding that is meant to look like cedar shake in a color called “cedar sunset”. The shake-style siding is considerably more expensive than regular siding. However, one of the advantages of having a tiny place is the impact of using higher-end materials in not nearly as dramatic to the total costs as it would be in a larger home.

One can argue that vinyl isn’t all that “high end”, but there’s no way I’m going with traditional shakes when wood rots as quickly as it does on the water. I’ve taken a good look at some of my neighbors’ places that are covered with actual cedar shake and I’ve got a sneaking suspicion I know where my former flying squatters may have relocated to.

Since I was already ripping the siding and walls off the house, I got into the spirit of things and decided to replace the battered metal roof as well. The roof will remain green, but is going to be a slightly darker shade than what is on there now. The manufacturer has very creatively named the color “forest green”.

Trim along the edge of the roof and the new railing on the rooftop deck will be done in white. We’ll have to see how it turns out, but I’m thinking it should be nice.

I have to say I was excited when I received photos from Kenny of the siding in progress. The place is starting to actually look and feel somewhat house-like again.

Early on after the purchase of my floating home, I posted an accounting of the estimated total costs of the purchase and renovations. Of course, that was written during the cheerful afterglow period of new home ownership before reality whacked me over the head with a 2 x 4. In other words, before the discovery of minor items like the fact that everything in the house was below code and that I had a colony of bats living beneath my siding.

So that no one goes into renovating an older floating home blindly bouyed on optimism by anything I’ve written, I plan on posting a series of updated accountings as the renovations progress.

Please don’t be too discouraged by my renovations costs, however. I’d like to point out that the same time my place was on the market, there was another house in the marina of about the same size, that had recently been restored, and was for sale for $65,000.

My home simply had what I felt was a much better view along the river, a rooftop deck, and a floor plan that I preferred. I fell in love with my little place, warts and all. If I’d chosen to operate from my head rather than my heart, I’d have been in a place several months ago for about half of what my place will eventually cost me.

Anyway, below is an updated accounting. As you will probably notice, there are several items on the list for which I have not yet gathered estimates. But here’s where things stand as of today.