The MacDeskBlog

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.

downstairs bathroom cabinet

Downstairs Bathroom: The waste line needs to be moved to the left and the hot water line slightly to the right. Frame in door further to accommodate cabinet. Install Corian countertop and sink.

downstairs bath

Downstairs Bathroom: Connect bathroom tub drain (there is an access panel in the utility room). Tile the floor and walls.

downstairs bedroom

Downstairs Bedroom: Trims on windows and doors throughout. Baseboards throughout.

downstairs bedroom closet

Downstairs Bedroom: Louvered folding doors on the bedroom closet.

family room

Downstairs Family Room: Install fire door to garage. Install pre-hung doors for office, utility room, bathroom and bedroom. Install louvered door to stereo closet in family room.

spiral stair

Spiral Stairs: Install spiral stairs. Need to special order one additional step from Ashby Lumber.

kitchen

Kitche: Cover, replace or repair plaster with sheet rock. Texture. Move waste line under window (it’s currently just to the right of the window). Install additional cabinets and new Corian countertop.

upstairs bathroom

Upstairs Bathroom: Tile the floor. Tile floor to ceiling around the bathtub. Wainscoting in rest of bathroom. Install linen closet next to door. Install sealing pre-hung door to code.

living and dining room

Living Room and Dining Room: Cover, replace or repair plaster with sheet rock. Texture.

hutch

Dining Room: Remove hutch and match wainscoting and picture rail to corner.

living room

Living Room: Cover, replace or repair plaster with sheet rock. Create matching pillar in previous picture which is missing in this one. Strip remaining finish at and above head level on wainscoting and wood trims. Replace two panels of mismatched (too dark) wainscoting. Stain to match and finish.

second bedroom

Upstairs Bedroom: Cover, replace or repair plaster with sheet rock. Texture. Install pre-hung door to closet.

front bedroom

Upstairs Front Bedroom: Cover, replace or repair plaster with sheet rock, as needed. Texture.

front bedroom closet

Upstairs Front Bedroom: Install louvered folding doors on closet. End picture rail even with top of closet, run trim from picture rail down to top of closet and across top of closet. Replace hatch to attic.

flooring

Throughout: Install underlayment and tongue and groove bamboo flooring upstairs and downstairs (approximately 1700 square feet). The flooring, underlayment and adhesive have already been purchased.

exterior

ADDITIONAL ITEMS:
1. The interior gas line is currently under test. A new gas main is needed from the sidewalk to the side of the house.
2. Install exterior window trims on upstairs windows.
3. Paint exterior of house
4. Pour pathway from sidewalk to front stair landing, continuing down side of house to side door and to rear yard.

NOTES:
1. remaining original upstairs windows will be replaced and installed by Pella.
2. kitchen cabinets can be delivered and installed by Home Depot.

palladian and philipsburg blue master bedroom

We had a painting party on Saturday. Karen, Justin, and Boar showed up to help Michelle and me. Michelle and I hit up the paint store in the morning and picked out the remaining colors. We put an accent wall in the master bedroom. Despite painting a four square foot sample on the wall last week, the main color turned out to be much greener than we expected. It complements the accent color well, so we’re pleased even with the surprise.

avon green office

Karen arrived first with beer and food in hand. She also brought along considerable experience painting houses and great enthusiasm. Michelle had started rolling the bedroom while I masked off the ceiling. Karen immediately grabbed a brush and started cutting ahead of Michelle’s roller. Justin and Dave arrived a bit later, and jumped right in as well. We knocked out two coats in each room downstairs, plus I sprayed two coats in the upstairs closets.

butte rock family room with door

On Sunday, Dave arrived early so we could hang the exterior door downstairs. We remembered a whole lot about hanging doors as we went (as opposed to before we started), and essentially hung it twice. In the end, we were quite please with the results. Then we tackled installing the bathtub, only to discover that it was damaged (bent and chipped corner). Even so, we took care of all of the prep work for the tub, which is huge. After Dave left for home, I installed the knobs and deadbolt into the new door. Michelle and I returned the damaged tub to Home Depot in the evening, picking up a replacement and checking the replacement for damage before we left. One corner of the box was a bit crumpled, so we borrowed a knife from one of the staff and cut open the corner of the box to make sure the corner wasn’t bent. When we got home and cut open the rest of the box, we discovered that though the rear corners were fine (one of which we cut open), both front corners were bent and missing porcelain like the previous tub.

Furnace

The new furnace has been installed in an alcove in the garage.

Family Room Soffit

Some of the ducting needed to go through the family room, so Steve framed in a soffit for it.

Bedroom Soffit

Similarly, the ducting to heat the upstairs had to run into the bedroom slightly, so it needed to be soffited in as well. Some of the unfilled space will turn into a shelf at either end of the wall.

Chase

The ducting from downstairs passes up through the kitchen into the attic and then feeds the ceilings vents in each room. With furnace and ducting in, we were finally ready for rough inspections of the electrical, plumbing, mechanical (i.e. furnace), framing and shear wall on Wednesday. I took the day off from work to be there for the inspection, since the electrical and water lines were my work. It turned out to be just the right thing to do. The inspector pointed out a few things which he wanted corrected, but signed off all of the rough inspections except for insulation, which we are now cleared to finish installing.

Family Room Windows

The crew finished installing the fire rated exterior sheet rock on the south wall today, which means we’re ready for the last exterior inspection. All that will remain after that are the insulation and final inspections, though we have quite a bit of work to do before we’ll be ready for finals.

Office window

We were greeted with a pleasant surprise when we arrived at the house Sunday around noon. The windows which arrived on Thursday were already installed downstairs!
One of my dearest friends was in town for the weekend with his lovely wife and their three children (8 months, 3.5 years and 8 years), so Michelle and I blew off working on the house in order to spend Saturday with them. It was great to see them again. I miss the days when we used to play Mexican Rat Screw for hours. Ah, memories.

Side windows

The windows are really nice, and I am so psyched that they’re already installed. They do have some minor scratches on the paint, which is a bit disappointing. I contacted my Pella sales rep and he’s sending me some touch-up paint. Hopefully, that and some rubbing will take care of the scratches. If not, I’ll have to talk to him about a discount. We’ll see.

Rear windows

So, Michelle and I did spent Sunday afternoon working, after sleeping in a bit. I felt pretty ineffectual in my efforts to cut holes for the new outlets over the kitchen counter (damn that building code!). Eventually, I did succeed in cutting the holes, but couldn’t reach them from the outside to run the Romex (note both of the tall ladders laden with scaffolding in the picture of the side windows above … on the opposite side of the building). I did manage to run the new dedicated circuit for the new furnace, which gets installed Wednesday through Friday this week. I’ll take my wins where I can.

Baseboards are gone

Meanwhile, Michelle worked diligently prying the baseboards off the bedroom walls. They were tough suckers. They were also really nice, 1″x10″ 100 year old rough cut redwood, and I’m really sorry to see them go. Alas, they had outlet holes cut into them (some my doing, and some pre-existing) and need to be replaced. So, out they came with much prying and much forcing and a bit of splitting. She managed to clear them out of the front bedroom entirely plus two of the walls in the second bedroom. A good afternoon’s work.

Lumber arrived mid to late morning on Friday. By the time we got there Saturday morning, the office wall and the bathroom/utility room wall were both finished. This was great news for me, since it meant I could run wiring throughout. Michelle had already nailed up most of the outlet and switch boxes, and had run some of the wires between the boxes. I nailed up the outlet boxes which go into the new walls, and pulled the remaining wiring through to connect up the boxes.

Then I ran the wires to connect each circuit to the new service panel which isn’t mounted yet. The hard part of that turned out to be Sunday morning, when I discovered that the 1″ holes I asked the crew to drill through all of the studs at 18″ high are only large enough to handle about 3 pieces of 12-2 w/ground Romex. Great for most places, but insufficient in the north wall, where I had to run circuits for the office, the family room, the utility room & bathroom, the master bedroom, and a dedicated 10-3 w/ground for the dryer outlet. I had to drill additional holes through the floor joists most of the way. Fishing cables through holes in the corners was also not really in the fun column, but everything came through okay ultimately.

The closet walls didn’t go up though, as Steve underestimated the number of studs he needed. They should go in Monday afternoon or Tuesday at the latest. Since they’re still laying on the floor or not built yet, I couldn’t finish the garage circuit nor the family room circuit, but the last few strands will go in quickly once the walls go up.