Hi Breeps:
Before the good stuff I’m going to rant a little: I’m coming to the end of construction at the moment, remodeling my kitchen and we are hemorrhaging money fast. Renovating is NOT cheap and can be quite the headache. So I thought I’d share some things with you that I’ve learnt over the past four months. When remodeling remember that EVERYTHING has to be approved by the city and EVERYTHING has to be built to code – including having plug sockets every 10” around your countertops – the bottom line is even if you own YOUR property you still can’t do what you want.
And beware: when dealing with architects, contractors and designers, it’s very easy for your vision to be pushed and pulled into all different directions, because in this town opinions are like bellybuttons (or choose another part of the anatomy); everyone has one. When they say it will be done in six weeks, what they really mean is four months. When something goes wrong they all like to blame each other and not take responsibility. And it’s always best to do color samples on the walls and live with them for a few days before deciding, because it’s expensive and time consuming to have to repaint a whole room all over again. Another tip: chose hardware and light fixtures early on – as it can hold things up during the construction waiting for items to be delivered or the ones you really liked are no longer in stock or have been sold. Also try to work out how you want cabinets to open – might sound simple but if you aren’t clear at the beginning your carpenter could hang the cabinet doors the wrong way – have a walk around the space and feel what feels most natural – in this instance we had two doors hung that where difficult to open right to left – and much easier the other way. But yet again takes more time fixing a mistake than preventing it. When your appliances arrive, make sure you check the contents. Two instances for us where we didn’t do this resulted in the following: the pot filler was broken when the plumber came to install it and then the hood had a big scratch on the front – now we have to wait a couple of weeks for them to be delivered – See where the headaches come in? So by reading this hopefully if you are planning to remodel I may have saved you a little time a few dollars and peace of mind!
The best way to relieve stress is by driving a new Aston Martin DB9 convertible around the streets of Beverly Hills. After Eileen and I attended the unveiling of the new Vanquish at Timothy Oulton’s showroom earlier in the week, British-born manager Paul Radford invited us to test drive one of the latest at their dealership (Aston Martin of Beverly Hills 125 S Robertson Blvd, Beverly Hills. Tel: 310/659-4050). Have to say it, this picture now sits proudly on my vision board along with an Oscar statuette and will be for sure included in this year’s letter to Santa!
It’s Labor day on Monday, a perfect day to go out and do something different. IMHO you simply can’t do better than visit Ojai for the day. The smell of lavender fields and lines of Orange groves overwhelm you upon arrival of this peaceful, quaint little town – To read my full blog about Ojai, you can check here – http://britsinla.blogspot.com/2010/10/out-in-ojai.html
This and every Tuesday Brits in LA hosts the Breakfast club at The Pikey gastropub on Sunset Boulevard – sponsored by Next Stop LAX (www.nextstoplax.com). Last Tuesday the place was packed and it’s so nice to see so many creative connections being made – people are off writing songs together, making movies and content. Speaking of songs… congrats to our member of the week Emrhys Cooper on the release of his first single ‘Hypnotized’ also written by my good friend Elaine Macaluso. Available on iTunes.
Have a great Labor Day weekend from all of us at Brits in LA and you’ll see us next week!
Craig
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