Michelle spent the week clearing out the front bedroom, pulling the carpeting out of the front bedroom, pulling staples and tackstrips, and cleaning up debris. On Saturday, she spent the day attaching pigtails in the outlet boxes downstairs, attaching outlets to the pigtails, and pulling some wires.

Steve finished framing in the downstairs with help from a new guy, Aldo. He needs to check his work upstairs and add a few studs in for sheet rock backing, then we’ll be ready for framing inspection.

Reuben and Orlando spent the week removing the remaining siding from the upstairs, drilling holes for me to run wiring through, and nailing on straps.

I spent Saturday moving electrical outlets upstairs so they are 18″ up instead of in the baseboards, re-wiring circuits upstairs, and wiring circuits downstairs.

Aiming for framing, shear wall, and plumbing inspections this week, and rough electrical inspection next week.

                          

The plumber came by Monday and put in the drain, waste and vent lines which go beneath the slab. He stubbed them all out. The big out is for the toilet. The blocking is for the shower drain. The plumbing work and the tied off rebar passed inspection Monday afternoon. We planned to pour on Tuesday morning, but the pumper fed us a line last week and wasn’t available until Wednesday. So we rescheduled the concrete for late Wednesday morning and took Tuesday off.

The house was crowded this morning as the regular crew plus the two floaters (the guys who smooth the surface of the concrete) plus the two pumpers and the concrete truck driver all tried to stay dry while it rained.

Steve called me Monday and asked if I’d like him to replace the curb retaining the planter which was removed some time before I bought the house. Of course I said yes.

By late afternoon, the slab was finished, nice and smooth. Michelle paged me as she was leaving, and I sent her back to scratch today’s date and our initials into the driveway. She says it looks really nice. I’m finally getting excited about the house again. Having the slab done enables the rest of the work to continue. We can put the last few internal walls in now, which lets us put in the remaining electrical and plumbing.

                          

The database hung again tonight. It looked like it hit a write lock or a file lock for some reason. Had to restart it manually. :-\

On the house front, we passed rebar inspection for the slab floor this afternoon. We’re clear to pour tomorrow.

                          

First off, here’s a picture from last weekend of the house back down, sitting on the new walls. Notice the lovely lack of steel protruding from the front of the house. The shear wall on the south (left) wall is complete, while the north wall has partial shear wall in the picture. I’m pretty sure that the north wall has full shear wall now, as should the rear wall where it has studs. We’re leaving a gap in the rear wall until we can get a Bobcat through to the backyard to remove a whole lot of dirt, which will be after the slab gets poured downstairs.

PG&E finally came by to hook up the temporary power this morning. I spoke with Michael Woods again yesterday. He tried to play the blame game by pointing the finger at the City of Berkeley. I didn’t let him off the hook. I don’t think he took it to heart at all. Very unfortunate that PG&E has no accountability nor responsibility in their service planning group. Giving credit where it is due, Mr. Woods was the only person in the entire office who actually called me back at any point in time. While his service sucked, he stands head and shoulders above the rest of the office, as far as I can tell. Very unfortunate.

I’m heading over to the house tonight to try to fix the phone line, which got soaked in a rain shower last week, and to work on the water line. I doubt I’ll have time to work on the electrical too, but I certainly will if the phone and water go well. I’ll also get a chance to look at my new full wall closet and the footing for the stairs. I’m not sure if any of the stairs will have been framed by tonight. I just spoke with Steve, and it seems that current building codes make my preferred stair design illegal. So, we’re switching to a more generic picket style design. It should still look nice and keep pretty well with the character of the house. We just won’t be able to put planters on the stairs, which could have just led to water damage anyway. Probably for the best. The picket style was the runner up, and I almost picked it from the start.

                          

My house is 10 feet in the air right now, standing on 6 piles of logs, while the remnants of a brand new but horribly wrong foundation are being jackhammered out. The foundation demolition was supposed to take about a week, but we’re closing in on two already. The horribly wrong foundation, as it turns out, was way over-poured in some areas and way under-poured in others. The garage, on one hand, had only a 2 inch slab. The perimeter foundation, on the other, was 10 inches thick, and 34-38 deep deep, standing 10-12 inches above grade and 3-6 inches above the slab. Ugh. The latest estimate is that we’re supposed to be finished with demolition by Friday. I hope this date doesn’t slip by too. Really need to get back on schedule and back on budget.