Recently, my wife Faith and I decided to add on a little apartment in back of our house so her mother could move in with us. We added a master bedroom suite about ten years ago, and were happy with that builder, so we decided to go with them again. We spent a lot of time discussing plans with the builder, and they did a better job of drawing blueprints than they did the first time. But we knew that a lot of details would get changed as we went along.
Building has been going on for two months, and there is at least another month to go. The builders don't come every day because they are working on several houses at once. When they come, they make progress rapidly. Faith likes making progress, but she doesn't mind when they are not here, because then she can do other things. Being the Onsite Customer keeps her very busy.
Faith constantly inspects their work. She noticed when a screen in the foundation was put in backwards. She complained about the bad drainage around an outside drain, and they have worked on it several times, though it is not yet up to her satisfaction. She changed the location of one door, changed the width of another, and changed the location of some windows. This all happened after they had started construction of these items, but before they finished.
The heating and air-conditioning people did their work without talking to her, and they put the thermostats in bad locations. "Anybody knows that they should not go in the center of the wall!" said Faith. "They put this thermostat right under a picture. Thermostats should go by the light switches in one corner of the room." The thermostats moved.
Because she complains early and often, it doesn't cost the builders much to change their plans. But they make it clear to her that their goal is to make her happy, and they want to know as soon as possible if something is not right. Her complaints often lead to an explanation that convinces her that things should stay the way they are, but in any case, she knows that if she talks to the builders, they will make her happy.
She has a long list of questions she must decide. What will the countertops in the new breakfast nook be like? She has to choose carpeting, bathroom fixtures, and light fixtures. She decided the location of every electrical outlet, light, and switch. She spends a lot of time visiting dealers to look at samples, and we have a pile of them at home, where she looks at them every day and constantly asks me whether the expensive one that she likes is really worth the extra cost. She has long price lists. She is looking at changes to the kitchen, which is right next to the addition, and we are thinking about landscaping after the building is over. Some things we will postpone, but others we are adding to the list for the builders.
Although I talk with Faith about the addition every day, she is the one who makes most of the decisions. After all, as I tell her, the customer should speak with one voice. It is easier for the builders if there is one person to talk to. And she is better at this than I am. She has more opinions about houses than I do.
This is worrying. The new apartment is for her mother, not her, yet her mother doesn't seem to be involved in making any of the decisions.
I wonder whether she has considered how the light switches should be wired. If you decide later to add a second switch for some light, you will find doing so is quite expensive and awkward because the wiring to the existing switch has to be changed. That can be mitigated by wiring for more than one switch at the outset. This doesn't affect the cost much.
A thermostat in a corner doesn't sound right. By the way, what type of heating system requires more than one thermostat in a room, or even in a whole apartment?
Hopefully, Faith is familiar with her mother's tastes. I'm intrigued, however, regarding her observation about the screen in the foundation. Why does a foundation have a screen? What is being screened from what? Since foundations are not normally left open to view, why does it matter which way round the screen is, and how did she know which way was correct?
Concur. How does Faith know what the correct choices for her mother are? Who is the actual customer here, your mom-in-law or your wife?
As a side note, is this business of having all these decisions about the addition dropped in Faith's lap possibly a bit of a cop-out? "But honey, that was your decision. I didn't have anything to do with it." Oops.
Don't forget: if anything displeases your mother-in-law you will suffer. It's not right, it's not proper, it makes no sense -- but it's the net result. Oh, well.
She makes these decisions instead of me because she is better at it than I am. She also designs my wardrobe. She considers the advice I give her, but we each know our strengths.
She makes these decisions instead of her mother because her mother lives in another city and is not well enough to travel here frequently. Also, her mother is 85 and we will probably live with the addition much longer than she will. Faith talks to her mother on the phone, but she knows her mother pretty well and can predict what she will like. She doesn't always go with what her mother will like, however. -Ralph Johnson
Final update. Faith decided to change the kitchen cabinets to make them like the ones being put in the breakfast nook. This caused a delay of a month on the project completion. But they finally completed it, my mother-in-law moved in, and she is delighted with the apartment.
A thermostat in a corner doesn't sound right. By the way, what type of heating system requires more than one thermostat in a room, or even in a whole apartment?
A good question, and one that bears thinking about. We live in a single-story house. It sprawls a bit by virtue of an add-on some 20 years after the original construction.
The original thermostat is near the far end of the original hallway ('60s ranch style, with 3 bedrooms and bath in the hall). Because of its placement, there are no vents near it. This means that by the time the air near that thermostat reaches the temperature setting, the air in all the other rooms (especially the living room) will have already passed that point and will be noticeably warmer or colder depending on whether the system is set to heat or cool. This is not terribly uncommon in houses of this kind.
Some 20 years after the original construction, the owner decided to add a new master suite and game-room/dining-extension to the East side of the house (away from the original hallway). This is the better part of 900 or so square feet, which adds about 50% more space to the house. They added another furnace unit, air conditioner, and water heater for this new suite rather than trying to re-route all the original plumbing and ducting. The new thermostat is in the game/dining room near the master bedroom door. Until this summer, there were two vents in that room, with the rest of the vents in the various rooms of the master suite. After the summer remodel (see: How-I-spent-my-summer-vacation) there is only one vent in that room; the other was covered when the whole-East-wall bookcase went in.
We now have two thermostats in poorly ventilated spots at approximately opposite ends of the house. The occupants of the West wing (teenagers) prefer one temperature, while the person whose office is in the East wing prefers about 4 or 5 degrees cooler. As a consequence we occasionally find ourselves with the West wing heat on and the East wing A/C running at the same time. This exacerbates the already extant cultural differences, but that's a different story.
Ceiling fans have been added, and this helps, but the real problem is that the bloody thermostats are poorly placed and do not really measure the temperature of the rooms they control.
I've since actually made a point, when visiting friends' homes, of looking to see where their thermostats are placed.
This has given rise to some thoughts on thermostat sensors.
We have a cheap Radio Shack wireless thermometer. It gives us the external temperature out back by our North wall. It's reliable and easy to use.
I can easily imagine a wireless (and therefore portable) thermostat sensor. You'd place the gizmo in the space where you actually want the temperature fixed instead of on a wall around a corner 30 feet away behind a closed door. Of course, now that I've said that, and since the solution is so pathetically obvious, I'll probably find that there's just such a gadget for less than $100 USD.
Well, not $100, but from about $200. And it took me about 2 minutes to find. So where the hell was my brain when we made that change? I guess it wasn't "pathetically obvious" enough at the time.
(See, cf: ourworld.compuserve.com 
)
An alternative solution would be a wired remote sensor (although the cosmetics would be messy) so that the control can be placed for convenience/aesthetics while still measuring the temp from an optimum location.
I would agree that "in a corner" is probably not the best place for such a thing, cuz the airflow would be poor there.
And, of course, for the connoisseur, there's the multi-sensor-and-motorized-vent system that guarantees a variance of no more than one degree from from control setting. I'm sure they're cheap and available everywhere.
See original on c2.com