House update
I haven’t said anything about the house since PG&E hooked up the power in early November. Not much changed there during that time. Michelle and I decided in mid-November to find a contractor to finish up the work. We had six contractors come by to look at the remaining work. Of those six, two expressed a limited interest in helping out on an as-available, time and materials basis. Sorry. Not interested. A small company around the corner from us was willing to do it full time, but also on time and materials. Again, not interested. Two other promised to send bids, but never did. One of those went so far as to take our spare set of plans, which he sat on for a month until I called and asked that they be returned.
Montclair Construction of Oakland gave us a good bid, and we entered into contract right around the new year. They started at the end of January, and are making good progress. The contrast between their work and the guys we had previously is impressive.
The previous guys left us 4 tons of debris and garbage in the front yard, which we loaded into a dumpster last weekend. The Montclair guys haul away debris every day. The house is cleaner each day than it was the day before. The previous guys worked on the front stairs from November through January, and still didn’t finish them. The guys from Monclair produce noticeable results each day. The dining room and both bedrooms have been stripped of plaster, sheet rocked, and taped. They uninstalled the old dining room hutch, and are in the process of extending the wainscoting. So far, we are quite pleased.
Painted stairs
Our only qualm so far was their bids on the bathrooms and kitchen seemed high. We have been working with Home Depot to provide bids for each, and that process has been tedious at best, frequently transitioning into frustrating. We might ask Montclair to re-bid the kitchen based upon more specific requirements depending upon Home Depot’s bid or HD’s continued delays. We’ll see.
We decided to go ahead and finish the bathrooms ourselves, per original plan. Michelle started working on tiling the downstairs bathroom this afternoon. After cleaning the room well, she laid out the floor tiles to figure out what we need to cut.
I forgot to take pictures inside the house today. However, I did take one of the stairs, after seven days/nights of painting (primer, 2 coats on the posts, 2 coats on the steps, and 2 times touching up of the steps). The railings are assembled in sections and stowed with the remaining posts inside the garage until the inside construction is complete and/or the gas line gets hooked up making us ready for inspection.
