The MacDeskBlog

Three and a half walls are packed with insulation so far.
Only the south wall still has some to go.

Michelle met me at the house after work last night, and we were pleased to see the progress the guys made Tuesday and Wednesday.

When I spoke with the plumber yesterday morning to get the cost estimates, I instead was told that he’s delayed on another project and won’t be able to do mine until Monday. I’m a bit disappointed, but there’s nothing to do about it. I was probably going to have the plumber install the downstairs water line because I didn’t have enough time last weekend (due to some needed sleeping and lollygagging on Monday) to finish it. I wanted to try take care of it last night if possible, so I rode the vanpool to Berkeley last night.

The north wall has completed shearwall, Tyvek,
and the siding is already going up.

That’s when everything started to go awry. I forgot that we pressurized the water line over the weekend, so when I cut on of the caps in order to continue the line down into the bathroom, water went spraying mightily. D’oh! No worries. I moved stuff out of the way before it all got soaked, and then opened the shutoff valve for the (not yet installed) hot water heater to dump out the rest of the water. Shortly thereafter, I discovered that I didn’t have most of the copper fittings I needed to finish the job. I drew up a schematic of what I’ll be putting in, and went upstairs to help Michelle with wiring before we went to Home Depot.

Meanwhile, Michelle was trying to wire some outlets and not faring any better than I was. One of the wires was resisting staying in its wire nut, and she spent a lot of time fighting it. She had moved onto another outlet by the time I got upstairs to help. I managed to get her unruly wire into place, only to realize that she had bought 20 amp outlets instead of 15 amp outlets. I hadn’t specified on my shopping list, nor over the phone when she was at Home Depot earlier in the day, and they looked almost the same. D’oh!

Off to Home Depot we went. Michelle returned the outlets and found the correct ones while I went to the plumbing aisle with my schematic and laid out fittings on the floor 6 minutes before closing, figuring out what I needed where. Mission accomplished.

The evening wasn’t a total bust. We had a nice dinner at Cha Am on Shattuck before we started working, and we ended the evening with the right supplies. The house itself, though, didn’t really see much improvement for our efforts.

Tonight, we’re going to see Mambo Kings at the Golden Gate Theatre thanks to a couple of my mom’s friends bailing out at the last minute. I hope they feel better.

Framing and shear wall inspections are scheduled for Friday.

Since the plumber won’t be there until next week, I’ll just finish the plumbing this weekend.

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.

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.