Sep 30th

The carpenters are finished the siding. Looks great.

The dry-wall guys were supposed to start today, but no sign of them: until 3pm when they delivered the drywall. I will complain to Mike that I need to know when the subcontractors are coming.

The low voltage guys were also supposed to come today, but no sign of them.

The electrician came again today for a few hours. I asked him to put lights in J & Ls closets, as I can't tell one part of their school uniform from another (its all navy blue and khaki)!

I worked out the cost of the two options for under-counter Xenon lights. $900 for strip lights, and $1200 for custom track lights. Both expensive.

I'd like to get the remaining choices finalized, and so have started on the quest to get the right colour paint! Hard choices! Benjamin Moore paints have a HUGE selection. I'm thinking a green/grey colour, with cream trim.

:-)

29th of September

Pretty quiet day. No sparky; only a few carpenters working on the siding. Hopefully they will be finished all they can tomorrow (they can't do the other side because they are waiting for the window and doors to arrive.

Got a quote for the mantelpiece.. $3700. You'd think it was made of gold. But no, just cherry.

The electricians seem to have disconnected the power socket Russ' piano uses.. so he's using a power cord.

The carpenters put up the 'pony wall' that would be used to support the Island. The supports went through the floor to the subfloor. Jason climbed on it this evening, and it was rock solid :-)

An insulation contractor came.. wasn't impressed. He was quick and messy.. left fibreglass insulation tufts all over the place. I had to go through and sweep up. Our contractors workers saw, and were horrified, so they helped clean up the rest. The insulation contractor was not great.

Spent a long time pulling nails and other sundry items out of the planters along the walkway today. Looks much better now.

Our contractor didn't like the low voltage guys had not removed some unused phone and cable cables in the floor.. he called them and asked them to pull up all the old ones.

I also spoke to the contractor about a portico-like structure at the entryway for the french doors.. so if its raining you can stand under there while opening the door. Wonder what that will cost?

Also looking at cabinet pulls.. want to order them so they're here before they're needed :-)

26th of September

More electrical work. More siding.

The low voltage contractors turned up.. (cable, phone). I asked them to fix the cable upstairs (low signal on some channels), but it was still not working this evening.

I was out looking for lighting alternatives.. grim pickings.

25th of September

The siding continues. The window details are well on their way.. the house is starting to look quite tarty.

The electricians were here installing plugs and lights. I asked them to add lights to our bedroom closets and the hall closets, because its almost impossible to find stuff in there!

After loving the lights, I held them up to the walls and decided the new lights for the hallways and the dining table are WAY TOO SMALL! So I'll need to return them. Because they're special order (almost everything is), I'll have to pay a restocking fee - a certain percentage of the cost. Argh. But we can't use them.. they look like pimples on pumpkins.

We took down the old flood lights and bought new ones. I also found a paintable wooden door-bell chime (the electricians said there would only be plastic ones!).

The Inspectors from the City of San Carlos came today. All is well, which is good. They like our contractor, and apparently our carpenter lives next door to the inspector, and has known him for 20 years.

It helps getting a local builder.

24th of September

Another hot day.

The carpenters are trying to get the siding done on all the parts of the house in direct sunlight earlier in the day, so they won't fry. Understandable. The siding is looking good.

The electrician wanted me to decide the location of the heated towel rail. And the vanity lights. We put the mirror up, to work out the location for the vanity lights, only to find out on opening the box containing the mirror, that it was too small! I tell you, good thing it was here early.. enough time to exchange it for the next size up. Because the lights are so large, we need to put the light fitting a little under the swivel point for the mirror.

The contractor laid out the island on the floor, so we could see the distance between the cabinets and the island. It looked good. We ordered 3 pendant lights, but it looks like we only need two. After the contractor left, Russell looked, and thought the island position needs to move a few inches closer to the cabinets.. this is because the other side of the island will be the main thoroughfare, as well as being the position of the seating around the island. I concur.

The contractor also went over the mantlepiece with Russ.. if there is enough granite in the slab (how couldn't there be?? its 10' x 5') we will 'return' the hearth around the fireplace, so that the mantlepiece rests on the hearth fully (rather than partially which is what would have been the case).

I asked the contractor to ask the plumber to install a new toilet upstairs. I am thoroughly sick of the stupid make-do handle.. which is a wrench tightened on the flushing handle. When I pulled out the toilet from the stack of supplies), I noticed the toilet seat was the wrong shape (yes, folks, there are different shaped toilet seats). So off to the plumbing supplier to exchange it for the right shape (more circular rather than more oval).

I need to follow up on the fountain supplier, the track lighting in the living room (which the elec estimated 650 to install along with three switches), the under-cabinet lights.. the shower curtain rail (which will probably be special order because of the length).

I just got the shock of my life.. the carpenter appeared outside my window as plain as day. This is not so shocking you say... Well, I'm on the second floor above the garage.. they are replacing the siding upstairs, and he's on the roof outside my window :-)

The lights arrived. Yay! The pendants are really nice, unlike their photo in their online catalog. So are the new hallway lamps, the new chandelier, and the bathroom sconces.

Went to look for the track and under counter lights. I think I know what we are going to buy. Do I sound tired? I am!

23rd of September

Slow going on the siding. Electrician was here, working on wiring. It was a HOT day. The newly laid aggregate looks pretty close to the existing.

There were some more questions over under-counter lighting. The lights I had chosen (it was the only option I was given in the store) was not what the electrician suggested was best; these are units of N feet in length, with lights at fixed intervals. The better (?!) recommendation is tiny xenon track lights which can be used under-counter. This gives flexibility as to how many (or few) you want to have. I went to our local lighting store, and they did not know what I meant (funnily enough neither did I.. but we finally found them). The lighting store thought they would be too hot for under-counter. The electrician says they're wrong.

What to do?

22nd of September

Whew. What a day! The concrete guys filled in the holes they made last week with concrete and aggregate. It looks good!

The electrician came today. We talked about outdoor lighting, locations of switches, the sockets and lights in the bathroom; we're moving two sockets in the bedroom to be either side of the bed, rather than the middle and edge of the room as they are now. Because we're having a mini-driveway, we decided we should have some lights near the entry way.. maybe a pole light (i.e. light on a stick). This will add nice ambiance to the outdoor lighting.

Tim-the-designer specified expensive low-voltage halogen lights in the Kitchen @ $150/can. The standard line-halogen lights are $100/can. We need about 19 cans.. Which is an extra $1000 for lighting we don't need. Apparently the low voltage halogens are used in specialist locations to highlight pictures on a wall etc.. So we'll go with the standard halogens. Thanks Tim-the-electrician!

Tim-the-designer also had lights on the toe-kick for the bathroom.. lights we wouldn't really ever use. So we nixed that. Probably saved us another $300.

I think we need better lighting in the living room, as the only light which currently goes on is the one on the fan, which is nigh-on useless.. It would make sense to have 2 tracks of track lighting - one near the fireplace, one near the opposite wall.. The fan will move to the center of the room.. We can use the extra $1000 from using the cheaper cans to put good lighting in! Also, as we are already patching the living room floor, we can take out those stupid in-floor power outlets which we never use, and which stick out and annoy me, and that are not currently grounded. Yay! We'll need to add another socket near the wall closest to the fireplace, but that shouldn't be too hard right now.

The carpenters have some of the siding up!

The HVAC guy told us the heating outlet in the bathroom is trouble. The plumbing is all along one wall, and the floor supports along another. There isn't a lot of room anywhere for the outlet, unless it goes in the floor, or in the pony wall. Not sure what to do at this point.

The guy who is building our mantlepiece was here today measuring stuff. We had a bit of a hard time working out how to do the 'return' on the RHS of the fireplace, as it is a different depth (i.e. deeper) than the LHS of the fireplace. We worked it out. The colour will match the stained cherry cabinets, so I asked the kitchen cabinet supplier to get us stain to match for the mantlepiece.

18th, 19th and 20th

Things are still very busy around here. The deck outside our bedroom was demolished. We are replacing the door with a window, which will give us lots of extra usable room in our bedroom. We have to wait for the window to arrive, which will be a while (it will be ordered on Monday). The builder did suggest installing a second window in that wall to maintain symmetry, but it will use up too much space, so we're sticking with one. Russ called the Landscape designer to tell him the deck is now gone, so he doesn't need to cater for it..

The siding is progressing.. most of the old siding is down, the insulation is up, as is the sheet-rock. We're moving some power plugs, cable TV wires and phone wires while we have the siding down. The carpenters have been hacking down the bushes around the house to do the siding. Can't say I'm disappointed - those hedges bushes really were straight out of the 70s.

The concrete guys continued removing debris; they have laid supporting wire in prep for concrete and aggregate to be poured on Monday.

The carpenters fired a nail into a water pipe, so the plumber was called in to fix the leak :-)

The stone guy came by to template the fireplace. He's Australian, been here for 20+ years. Nice bloke.

The HVAC (heating/cooling) dude came by on Fri. Not too bright. Put holes in the walls to move heating ducts before actually checking the ducts could actually fit in the space under the floor. So instead of the ducts being installed int the walls, they will have to go in the floor. The idiot put a new hole in the floor right where a piece of furniture will go; even after I had told him and the contractor I was going to put furniture there. They did this while I was out for lunch. Argh! I also had to rush to the kitchen designer to pick up the specs for the Kitchen hood. The HVAC guy needed to know the specs! So I wasn't quite organized for that.

Electrician due on Mon. Need to make sure I have all the things I want him to do listed before then, including the location of the new lights outside.

While we were out at the FAAN walk on Sat, the carpenters came and removed the siding from the front upstairs. Cool. Looking forward to the siding being all consistent.

17th of September

OH MY GOD. The NOISE! The DUST. We have a jackhammer in the back yard breaking up the aggregate that had concrete all over it from the disabled ramp. All windows closed.

The carpenters are here pulling off the siding. I fear we will have chilly night tonight.. especially as the temp has dropped so much recently anyway. I told Russ we'd need to sleep upstairs tonight but he pooh-poohed me. I think the kids and I will be sleeping upstairs in the queen size bed, and Russ will be downstairs, freezing his nads off.

The kitchen designer came at the request of the contractor today. They walked over the layout of the cupboards, to make sure everything would fit; the contractor measured each cupboard and marked the location on the floor (for the floor cupboards), or on the wall joists (for the wall cabinets). Apparently the kitchen design software made an error, overlapping two cupboards by 3". So the designer ordered a replacement cupboard 3" shorter so it would all fit. Except during the walk through the contractor measured (twice) and worked out the original size would fit after-all. The additional cabinet was paid for by the kitchen designer!

I asked the contractor to add some detailing to the top of the windows (in addition to a sil we agreed on). It would currently look something like this.


What I had asked for is something like this.

And apparently it is all extremely expensive or time consuming. You wouldn't think, would you? Well, he just called me over. It is an additional $7,000 to put a fancy header on the windows. Yup. I don't believe it myself. I kinda though maybe $3,000? But $7,000??

And its only 9.30 in the morning.

11.30 Things are worrisome. The bathtub's been uncovered, and its not what I expected. That's the problem when buying from catalogs. I had found one I liked, but the designer and builder convinced me they wouldn't warranty the tub because it didn't have a factory-installed flange. Now I've got something I don't like. Actually its not that bad. Just not as nice as the one I had initially chosen.

I asked the plumber to insulate the tub by stuffing insulation around the outside before fitting it (the bath tub with factory-installed insulation was $500 more). I had asked the contractor weeks ago, but he had forgotten to tell the plumber. Thank goodness we were re-siding the house, as the insulation turned up today :-)

The plumber also replaced the water shutoff handle and valve today. Cool. Now we'll have a handle we can actually reach. The water came on at 4.25pm.

So.. alls quiet (apart from the kids getting ready for soccer).

L wanted to know why they took the side off the house.

Inspecting the hole left after concrete removal.. with a spray nozzle in hand.

Brother arrives to help investigate

16th September

Plumbers @ work again.. Some rather nasty smells wafting from the floorboards. No more said.

I asked the plumber to change all the outside faucets as they leak badly. He's cool with that.

The landscape contractor came out yesterday. We went over the yard to tell him what we wanted (generally speaking). It costs $850 to do a plan. If we then use him the money goes towards the cost of landscaping. Lets see what he comes up with.

15th of September

Plumbing dude and two helpers arrived today to do the rough plumbing. Lots of noise, and the permeating smell of glue. AND the plumbing fittings were delivered today! We have this HUGE box standing in the living room floor which is the bathtub; all plumbing related fixtures - including the kitchen sink. Literally.

Russ found Luke peeing in a small hole in the floor this evening.. He has a thing for peeing in strange places. Boys. Go figure.

12th of September

.. and then they rested.

Well, they didn't turn up. Not sure what they were up to! It was kinda nice, actually. After so much noise, a day of quiet and privacy.

11th of September

I've never heard so much noise so close-by in my life! The demo guys are back to cut out some of the brick surrounding the fireplace, so that the brick surround is symmetric around the actual opening. It had been lopsided with more bricks on the left than on the right; and the bricks also extended another five bricks out! Which I assume was a design feature?? Love those designers. You can also see the narrow cupboard that had been there has been demo'd.

Anyway, the number of bricks to the left and right of the fireplace will soon be the same, without any weird stick out. In the mean time, it's b!#%dy noisy! And dusty.


Our contractor called. The quote for the siding came in a little less than expected.. it was $29k (including new insulation and replacing the plywood, the new siding and labour). I think it will give the house a really great facelift. The contractor worked on a house nearby, and suggested we take a peek at the siding.. I got to admit it looks great. Take a look.



11.30am. Its all gone quiet. I sneak down to have a look.. You can see the fireplace is now a 'normal' shape, and the semicircular brick hearth is gone. All the wood 'facing' has been taken down.




And the pocket door (which listed to the right) is also gone. Note to self.. need to make sure we shove the cable-line up through the floor while the plasterboard is off!!





And here is the deck for the bath.. it looks enormous!

8th, 9th and 10th of September

and we're still framing. On Monday and Tuesday the opening between the living room and dining room was enlarged (see the huge new beam? It replaced the huge old beam, but is longer by about 3'. The old bathroom window has been replaced with framing.


The old kitchen window shrunk in size. The frame for the new kitchen window was added. They put-in temporary windows for light (rather than boarding up the holes). But the sizes are right.

The french door framing is also done (not shown).

The contractor suggested we move the wall for the bathtub to make it larger as we had 4"-6" of extra floor space not being used. This picture is the bathroom, with me standing the bathroom doorway. To the immediate right will be the vanity, following that the bog, and after that in the large area (nearly double the width of the rest of the room, will live the bathtub.

You can also see the framing for the bathroom window which lives above the bathtub. The window will be 3'x2'.


There were also some questions with the exact sizes of the cupboards - the drawing supplied by the kitchen designer were a little confusing. I think the CAD software screwed up and moved some of the sizes to the right. He also needs to double check some measurements with her (depth of the vanity, depth of the bookshelf cabinet).

The carpenter doesn't think he can patch the siding on the outside of the house where the window was removed to replace it with the french door.. there isn't enough siding. Can't understand how, as the door is larger than the window. I think he just doesn't like patching; I agree it isn't nice. Our contractor said 'I did tell you we'd have a problem with the siding'. To which my reply was 'I'm not paying $50k (his original quote) for new siding just because we're missing a few feet - we'll patch it and then add shutters to cover up the difference. Anyway, our contractor then said it wouldn't be $50k - that his quote had originally been for the entire house. So he asked the carpenter for an estimate for new siding, which is on its way to me. Sometime. I suspect instead of the original $50k it will probably only be $35k. If I'm lucky.

When we remove the siding, the carpenter also suggested we replace the exterior chipboard because he was worried about hitting electrics or plumbing while residing. Which will obviously cost more; he estimated 5 more days work. The benefit is we can add insulation to the outside walls, and the new chip board/sheet rock (or whatever it is) also adds strength to the house, too.

So now we're probably replacing the siding, we can get rid of the horrible frames around the windows.. and replace them with a window frame that includes a window sil...

We also decided to replace the sheetrock inside the living room, because we couldn't match the lovely wood paneling; we needed matching paneling because we need to patch part of the wall where fireplace brickwork is being removed.... And as we're having to sheet rock the living room, we can also get rid of the narrow cupboards in the corner - the only reason we hadn't done this before was because we couldn't have matched the wood paneling, which, now, of course.. is being removed!

At the same time, the pocket door between the living room and kitchen which is wonky can also be replaced (we wanted to, but couldn't due to the wood panelling).

Basically we're rebuilding the house (exterior, kitchen, living-room, bathroom). Lovely. Well, it will be when we're done. I suspect the price is going up and up.

Our contractor reminded me we have to choose the granite for the fire place surround. He said we needed an entire slab.. which is around 50 square feet (10x5). The simple black honed granite I liked is only $22/square foot. I can't work out why a fireplace surround and hearth will require 50 square feet of granite. So maybe I can have them make something from the remainder. Maybe a table top for an outdoor table? Or a top for a rolling pastry table for our tiny kitchen? Something. I hate the idea I'm spending money on something I won't use most of.

The plumber also arrived as the carpenters left; to work out what parts he needs.

Am off to choose the slab now. Hopefully I'll have time to take some snaps and upload later today.

5th of September

The framing dudes came again today. Lots of banging and clattering. The studs separating the rooms have been removed, and the roof shored up. Actually, I think it was the other way round.. the roof was shored up then the studs separating the rooms were removed :-) At least I hope.

Slightly (?) worrying was the engineering plans the framing dude had didn't include the dimensions/locations for the walls he was creating; and the head contractor hadn't given him the floor plan.

So I gave him the floor plan and told him the wall dimensions included the sheet rock (usually they don't). I also asked him to measure the room dimensions now the sheet rock and studs were removed to be sure the sizes in the plans were ok (!!)

The guys look like they do a clean job. Nice.

2nd, 3rd and 4th of September

Demolishing the kitchen continued. The outside deck went today.. there are steps underneath!! And the ramp leading from the deck is also gone. It makes a big difference. See?

The plumber came and removed the old plumbing (cut a hole in the floor to access the pipes). Similarly the electrician came to remove the rather innovative (!) electrics which graced our kitchen. Our plumber thinks the pressure valve at the mains is broken, which is why we've had such poor pressure these last 10 years..



Then back to more removal of structures..

The dodgy picket fence is gone..

As is the ramp leading off from the deck from our bedroom...







It is soo great to see this work started.



The framer arrived and began shoring up the sub-floor, to accommodate the loss of the interior wall supports. Even less framing visible inside now..