Welcome to Week 18

Week 18 of the remodel. The sheetrock guys were here the whole of Saturday putting the walls up in the kitchen, laundry and office. They are here this morning putting the sheet rock up in the bedroom/bathroom/family room. Lots of drilling. Here are a couple of photos of the bedroom with blown-in cellulose insulation on the walls and ceiling, pre-sheetrock; and the laundry post-sheetrock. You can see the new electricity subpanel at the right in the laundry.




Work continues in the kitchen. The countertop guy is here this morning. We've just had "one of those conversations" about the location of the main sink, where I'm being asked to say if I want the sink two inches to the right or the left on the basis of something I can't see. I'm sure it'll be fine....

Here is a photo of the kitchen as it stood on Sunday, and also the office. Kinda looks like a room now, doesn't it?




The electricians are whirring away behind me as I speak. I think they're trying to fix the outlet that has never worked in the dining room. Maybe they'll even get to fixing the outlet boxes in the living room floor today - Deep Thought bruised her foot on one last week, so we're keen to see them put right.

Finally, the landscaping crew is outside in their digger removing the final bit of concrete in the area where the outdoor kitchen will be. What a job, digging holes for a living.

Zzzzzzzzz

Lots of rain overnight. Quagmire back yard. The sounds of gentle drilling from the kitchen, despite it being a Saturday. I think the schedule may have slipped another day - the countertops didn't make it into the house yesterday - so the workers may be here trying to play catch up.

No more trenches

At least not in the back yard. I went out and came back two hours later; and by the time I did, the dissipator, the gravel and the massive trench had all disappeared. The smaller trenches in the back yard are also filled and compacted. We still have a small trench open in the front, but I think that'll be gone by the end of the day. The rain monsooned down yesterday afternoon/evening, so it was lucky that the drainage guys were able to make such good progress beforehand.

In other news, the office/laundry addition walls have been insulated and the sheet rock (that's similar to plaster board, for our British readers)has been delivered. It may be that the bedroom/bathroom addition is in a similar state of insulation, but I can't get into that area when the workers are there (because of Elf and Safety), and I can't get in there when they aren't (because it is all closed up), so I can't report definitively one way or the other.

The kitchen walls have been primed. The cabinets have all been installed except for the one which takes the microwave oven (there was some drywall patching that needed to dry), and the supporting plywood has been installed for the countertop. Site Supervisor II and I went over some final points about the countertop corners this morning.

All the sliding doors have been delivered. The guys have run out of places to put stuff, so I said they could store them in our half of the family room; with the result that when we watched TV last night, the sofa was pushed forward and we were sitting rather close to the screen! But we'll live....

Heavy rain is forecast for the weekend and into next week. It's dry today so there is the usual level of frantic activity around the Cardboard Box.

Return to Gravel Mountain

That's the most significant thing that happened today: The arrival of a very large pile of gravel on the drive. I guess it must be going into, or perhaps around, the dissipator. There's so much of it that I now have doubts about it going inside...

I also had some discussion about the countertop, in particular the shape of the upper counter that doubles as a breakfast bar. In the end I printed off a photo of the old kitchen and told Site Supervisor II to make it just like that.

No rain, lots of sun today. Work going well, I think.

We Almost Passed the Inspection

We had the All Trades inspection this afternoon, and we almost passed. The two things we need to do to pass the inspection actually have nothing to do with the work that all the construction guys have been busily doing!

First of all the inspector says that we need to upgrade our gas meter - that it is undersized for the house with our current appliance load, never mind when we add the extra items in the outdoor kitchen. Since this will involve the City, I can only imagine how expensive it's going to be.

Secondly the inspector wants us to remove a piece of asbestos waste pipe from the front yard. Site Supervisor II says this is really pretty silly, since it is a waste (i.e. attaches to sewer) pipe, the asbestos is the "good" sort with no damage, and it's two feet undergroud. But if that's what the inspector wants, that's what he gets. So the Site Supervisor has asked the hardscaping company to dig yet another trench through the front yard in order to remove this pipe (about 15 feet). I fear it might spell the demise of our cherry tree, which is ironic in a city that is so keen on trees.

Photos attached from today:
1) the current state of the kitchen - don't the cabinets look fine;
2) a big, big trench in the back yard, waiting for the dissipator to be installed tomorrow - rain permitting - and also a photo of the plug that goes in the end of the pipe (I thought this was just funny, whoever expects to see an 18 inch plug?)






One of the families in Deep Thought's class heard that we have no kitchen, and brought dinner round to us this evening. Aren't people nice?

Still no rain, lots of activity

The rain in holding off, so we have teams of guys around the house again today. The hardscaping crew are still in the back yard trenching and adding drainage pipes. I had a discussion with the Hardscaping Boss and the Landscape Designer today about adding an additional 200 feet long trench alongside the pool in order to allow the power, water etc to run from the house to Hubby's blessed outdoor kitchen. This trench will have to be dug by hand and will take two men three days to complete. Does that sound expensive to you?

Here's a photo of the dissipator pipe, and also of the man digging a hole for it in the lawn area. (Look for his head and a long stick in his hands at the center of the photo.)


The house wrapping continues and is nearing completion.


The central vacuum man was here scoping out the work and prepping to make an estimate for the vacuum to be extended into the bedroom/bathroom addition. Turns out that the regular pipe for use with the vacuum is so long we don't need to add attachment vents in the office or laundry.

The lights in the dining room and hall that were out over the weekend are back in action. Apparently the outage was caused by a short in the kitchen. We still don't have a doorbell, but that's hardly an issue since no one ventures over the front yard any more.


This is how the kitchen looked at the end of Sunday. The dry-wallers have now completed their work, the walls have been primed, and the cabinet company is busily completing the installation of the cabinets. Site Supervisor II reckons we lost a day with the dry-wallers taking too long.


Finally, the concrete guys are back, pouring additional concrete around the foundation of the bedroom. You remember the not-perpendicular-house problem from a few weeks back? After the additional foundation material has been poured, it will no longer look like our addition experienced an earthquake.

Activity Before the Rain

It poured on Friday night. The weekend was dry and fine, but the sky is darkening now. The Cardboard Box is surrounded on all sides by people working away, trying to get things finished before rain starts up again. We are forecast to have rain tomorrow and all through the rest of the week, peaking on Friday with another monsoon.

In the back yard, the hardscaping guys with the CAT have been digging trenches, back-filling and compacting all morning. They've just finally ripped out the remnants of the lawn in preparation for puttin gthe disipator into the ground. At this moment the digger is getting tangled up in the gopher-resisting net that our gardener installed under the lawn a couple of years ago. The guys look a bit surprised.

Out front, the men from Jim's Bunch are busily wrapping a 15 lb felt moisture barrier around the exterior of the additions. Site Supervisor II explains that this is the final frontier for penetrating damp coming in from the outside. The additions will be pleasingly black and shiney when they have finished.

The roofing people were out this morning too, replacing all our remaining old gutters with new galvanised steel ones. None of them are painted though. I expect that painting them will turn out to require yet another "change order" and an additional expense. Presumably the activity can be picked up when the house exterior is painted. The forthcoming rain will be a good test of their weather-worthiness.

In the kitchen, not much happening today. The dry wallers are there again. That may be putting a stop to the cabinet installation. I shall go and have a nose later on.

Noisy drilling on the outside of the house outside the kids' bathroom resulting in the removal of a strip of stucco and the peeling back of the chicken wire underneath. Hmm. Can't quite see what that is for, though Azmir worked away at it with a will for over an hour.

Over the weekend we chose paint colors for the kitchen and the office/laundry addition. Honeywheat for the office and Golden Labrador (can you believe it) for the kitchen and laundry. Swiss coffee for the ceilings (that's off-white to you). We also went back to Artistic Tile to make yet another selection of tile for our kitchen floor. We went for something that is similar to the last one, but a little colder in tone. The main thing was that it wouldn't take weeks to arrive, as the tiler reckons he'll be ready to start at the end of this week.