Back Steps

Frank and John came over last week to help me. I realized that I wasn't going to make the June 15 date unless I got some help, so the budget continues to go over...

Anyway, one of the things they did was build a new set of steps for the back patio. The old ones were pretty raunchy and narrow. And some former owner built some sort of windbreak from which to tend bar on the patio. All in all, a rather unappetizing sight from a re-sale perspective.

So Frank and John tore the steps and the windbreak apart:

And here's the finished product:

Pretty good job, eh?

Nemisis gone

The fireplace wall has been my nemesis, and my nemesis is conquered.

For some reason, a previous owner had the lovely brick wall in the living and bedroom plastered. But left big holes in the Mexican Restaurant look. I knew no potential buyer would want that, so I needed to fill them in. I spent hours and hours and hours patching the holes, 1/4 inch at a time. At the end I sanded the plaster, then put on more, then sanded, etc etc etc. I'd have white lung disease had I not been wearing my respirator.

Friday was a HUGE day: The painters painted the two walls, and you can't even tell how bad they once looked. What a relief, the ugly wall, my nemesis is no more.

Memorial Day

Spent a half day with Kathleen helping me. Last Friday I demolished the upstairs bathroom and re-wired the GFI outlet and moved the electrical connection for the lights. Oh, and I drilled the holes for the plumbing for the double vanity.

Today Kathleen cleaned up the master bedroom, master bath and downstairs north bedroom. Yech, what a job... they were filled with construction debris and dust. Lots of dust. Expecially in the carpets and pads which she removed.

Today I removed all the tile around the tub in the upstairs bathroom. And together we measured where to put the recessed lights in the master bedroom. I wanted to make sure we measured twice and cut once, as I don't get a second chance as everything has been painted.

The plan for this short week:
> Plumb the upstairs bath
> Sheetrock and mud the bathroom
> Install floor tile in the bathroom
> Install tub in the bathroom
> Install fixtures in the master and downstairs bathrooms
> Install the recessed lights for master bedroom
> Install kitchen cabinets
> Finish painting interior
> Select exterior color scheme
> Install range, microwave and dishwasher
> Install vanity in master bathroom
> Order carpet

Sounds like a bunch of work. I am shooting for completion on June 15, so I'm going to outsource more of the work to Frank.

Boycot Homelite products

Two weeks ago I bought a Homelite brand electric lawn mower at Home Depot. Yesterday Kathleen hit a hidden root and bent the blade.

After hours at Home Depot and Lowes, came to discover that no aftermarket blades fit the Homelite mowers.

The Homelite website does not recognize the model number that I bought. Their "customer service" department is open 7 till 4 Eastern time, which kinda ignores 70% of their market. And when you finally do get through to them, they don't sell replacement blades.

I wish I had never bought that mower. Do yourself a favor and tell anyone who'll listen to avoid products from that company.

Mud

Today I worked on finishing up patching the ugly brick and plaster walls in the bedroom and living room. I carefully mixed the mud (drywall compound actually, everyone just calls it mud) using my hand held Oster mixer (worked great), applied it, and sanded it. Took hours and hours and hours.

At the end of the day the fellow who was applying paint texture to the walls couldn't stand it any more. He got out his mud knife and applied some to one of the holes. In two minutes he accomplished as much as would have taken me two hours.

He then proceeded to teach me how to do it. I'm now an expert, though next time I'll hire someone who has experience!

What a difference a week makes

This is the first of two posts today.

Much progress has been made the past 10 days.

The drywall guys and the mud guys have finished the kitchen, the family room, the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms, the closet and the tan room (actually there's still a bit of sanding to do, but not much). While they looked very humorous working in stilts, they did a great job. I painted the kitchen ceiling, then the flooring guys arrived to put in the hardwood. They were ahead of me, I wanted to tear out the carpet in the dining room and living room, but they were on a mission and the next thing I knew they were nailing planks down.

The tile guys did the fireplaces, and the downstairs and master bathrooms. All went smooth, except we ran out of three types of tile. Apparantly you have to allow for a LOT more waste (or "yall" (yield allowance) to industrial engineers). Luckily the tile store still had enough to sell me.

As this was going on I fixed the big hole in the siding and primed it. That only took three trips to Depot, one to buy the stuff, a second to get the correct nails for the nailgun and a third because I didn't get enough wood for the battens. No worries, all is done.

The new floor made it impossible to open the front doors, so I had to cut off 1/4". No worries.

PS to see the old posts, just use the twisties on the list on the right ---> and double click on the title of the post. It should pull it up.

Poo

I had been holding off demolishing the small upstairs bathroom until the other two were ready for human consumption. Well, the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms are now fully tiled, as are the two fireplaces (photos in a subsequent blog). So, it was time to move the working toilet and shower to the downstairs bathroom.

Since I'll still have workmen and my dirty body with which to contend, I decided to only use temporary fixtures downstairs. I bought a cheap plastic tub sink and decided to move the avocado green toilet from upstairs. A one hour job, right?

I assembled the tub and discovered that the drain was made of 1-1/2 inch pipe, while the hole in the wall is sized for 1-1/4" pipe. Aaargh, I said.

Off to Depot. No one home there, so I left and went to Lowe's. A very nice sales guy opened package after package until we found a reducer. After reminding me that reducing a drain was contrary to code, I picked up a wax ring for the commode and left for the IP.

The plastic sink went together OK and connected to the drain with no problem. But the supply lines were missing their jam nuts (no, not something one eats). Off to the Ace hardware by the IP where I found the nuts at $1.29 each. I went back to the IP and assembled everything. Only one leak that was easy to fix.

I went upstairs and used an entire roll of quicker picker uppers to get the water out of the commode. Carried it down in two pieces, much to the amusement of the flooring installation guys.

Put the wax ring down and it's about 1/4 inch too tall. And one of the two hold-down studs is stripped. No problem, I put the commode on the wax and sat on it till it only rocked a little bit. And made a mental note to fix the stud before putting the real commode in. Then poured water in to make sure it drained. Which it didn't.

Off to Kathleen's apartment to borrow her plunger. And to pee, as not having a working commode made my bladder very anxious.

The plunger worked wonders, I must have forgotten a chunk of paper towels.

I then put on the tank. Gross, the connecting bolts were all dirty and the rubber bits all hard and crusty. And the inside of the tank had that gross black stuff that one can't help but to be reminded of poo.

So I got the tank attached and it leaked. Back to Ace to get a tank mounting kit. Put it all together and the seal was too long. It still leaked. Back to Ace to get a proper sized seal.

I put everything together and double washered the bolts to make sure they wouldn't leak, and finally they didn't.

Then I asked the flooring guys to make me a "Toilet is now downstairs" sign in Spanish.

I don't look forward to installing the shower.

Week of 5-14

A quick update before I head to the "office". The drywall guys are long gone, the plaster guys have been there about a week fairing in the mud between the new and old drywall. The kitchen is done, and I primed the ceiling to make painting easier when the floors, cabinets and appliances arrive.

I had a blonde moment- Walter asked me where the stove was going to plug into. I said that the stove is gas, so it wouldn't need an outlet. He politely reminded me about the oven light.

Off to Depot to buy another outlet box and 25' of 12 gage wire. Luckily I knew a way to hook things up so we wouldn't have to take down any of the brand new drywall.

The tile guys installed the tile in the master and downstairs bathrooms and around the fireplaces. Except we kept running out of tile... I need to do a better job of estimating what's needed!

I repaired the siding by the entryway.

The floor guys come today to begin putting in the hardwood floors.

Things are definitely coming together. I'll have pics soon.

Beauty

The neighbor lady across the fence has always been quite friendly and chatty. Yesterday she insisted on giving Kathleen and me a tour of her house. It's a different floorplan than the IP, and the counters are not granite, but what a back yard!



I digress. In the course of the conversation, she just happened to drop that she was a former beauty queen. Being the nosy guy that I am, I googled her and discovered......





...... SHE'S MISS AMERICA 1974!!!!!!!!!!!


Obviously she looks a bit different now, but her two daughters look just like she did.


Oh yeah, her hubby is also a well-know sculpture artist.

Small town, Denver is.

Step repaired

The front step is fixed.

Old step

Fixed step. It only cost $472, including sealing the cracks in the driveway in front of the garage. That's $28 below budget, a first!!!

Passed inspections

This week I had three critical inspections planned: electrical, rough plumbing and structural. Ruth the Electrical Inspector was the one I feared the most, however, she looked at all the changes I had made based on her last inspection and was very happy. She did tell me to put in a receptacle by the new wetbar. but that's easy. She signed off the precious permit and as she was walking out she said that I'd done a very good job. That's encouraging.

The plumbing guy was easy, he liked what he saw (moving the kitchen plumbing 12 inches north, adding a second set of connections for the master bathroom vanity, adding wetbar connections and the jacuzzi connection. He blanched at the P-trap that Frank had built and asked that it be changed. And he wanted to see the moved gas line be pressure tested.

Today he came back for the re-inspection and I passed. The good news was that pressure testing the gas line meant that I finally had to take my new air compressor out of the box and fire it up. It works, thank goodness, I doubt Sears would take it back if there was a problem after all this time.

The structural guy looked bored. He signed off on the joists I put in for the kitchen ceiling, but ordered me to change the screws from drywall screws to ones specifically for joist hangers. Lowes didn't have them, but Depot did so I got to work. Let's see... two ends per joist, 4 screws per end and nine joists makes 72 screws to unscrew and rescrew.

Know the difference between a screw and a bolt? By definition, a bolt has a nut on it. Once you take the nut off it becomes a screw. I learned that from my old mechanical engineering days.

Today I put up the insulation for the kitchen ceiling. Walter Torres and his crew start with the new drywall on Thursday. I will continue to report progress.

Week of May 7th

(This is the first of three stories I posted on Sunday, May 6th)

This week should show some long-awaited progress. The electrical and plumbing inspectors come Monday, and I don't anticipate any big problems. The structural inspector comes Tuesday to buy off on the rafters for the kitchen ceiling. Again, I've so over-designed it I don't anticipate problems, though he could be a stickler and get me on some technicality that I don't know.

Walter and his crew will be in during the middle of the week to put up drywall in the kitchen and family rooms (assuming the inspections go OK). I'll throw some paint on the kitchen, then the flooring guys can begin with the hardwood floors.

The cabinets are supposed to arrive on Wednesday, and Monday I'll order the appliances.

So far I estimate that I', 2 weeks behind schedule. And very over budget. In a future posting I'll explain the budget situation. We'll call this first one a learning experience....

Master bathroom

I'm making progress in the master bathroom. It was pretty ugly to start with- lots of black.

I tore everything out, and I mean everything. Even the floor under the tile.

I then built a new deck for the new jetted tub. It's so stout, the entire house could collapse and it'll still be standing. Too bad for the next guy who wants to remodel!

I then put 5/8th OSB (oriented strand board) over the frame, and wonderboard over the OSB. I had never heard of wonderboard, but supposedly it makes the tile job better. I hope it works, at $10 for a 3x5 sheet it's pretty pricey. And on Friday the 4th Frank and I installed the tub.

The only challenge I had was connecting the safety ground. It's a very heavy duty copper wire about 1/8 inch in diameter which is attached to the cold water pipe and to the motor chassis. Of course we forgot to attach it while the tub was out so I did it when the tub had been installed. That required laying on my belly for an hour and stretching as far as my stubby arms would allow. Very uncomfortable, let me tell you.

I was so thankful for the massage Kathleen got for me that day!

Failed electrical inspection

Well, Ruth was the inspector for the electrical and she didn't buy off. She didn't like the fact that the kitchen recessed lights were not secured within 12 inches of the cans, she didn't like that the wires in the attic blocked access to one of the junction boxes, and she didn't like the circuit that I had used for the master bathroom outlet. Never mind that I never intended to do anything with the master bath outlet, but during her first visit she told me that it needed to be away from the tub. So I tore up the wall to move it and install a GFI outlet.

The good news is that she showed me ways to fix all the problems in ways that I had not thought of. So everything has been changed and I have another inspection scheduled for Monday.

Birds

Came home from an errand today and found a bird flying around in the living room. As we entered, it promptly flew into a window and knocked itself senseless. As I went searching for a container in which to move the critter outside, another bird flew past me right into the sliding glass door in the dining room. Klunk, and it too was walking around stunned.

I opened the door and the dining room bird staggered outside. I found a box and put the living room bird in it and let it free on the patio. It flew away, though it reminded me of an AmericaWest pilot (ie: drunk).

Last time I promised a picture of the rafters and recessed light cans:





Yesterday I discovered that one of them didn't work. Took me only an hour to figure out which one, and I took it back to Lowe's. I was all ready for a fight with them, so I explained the situation and asked what to do. The lady told me to go back to lighting and get myself a new one. That took all the wind out of my sails!

Anyway, tomorrow is inspection day. Let's see what happens... hopefully it won't be Ruth.