Properly Appraised and Making Progress: It's Official

Mysterious activity outside the house today by a bunch of Spanish speaking guys I've not seen before. They seem to be trimming the stucco back from the exciting shiney flashing. Well...ok.

Damien the Irish Concrete Guy has been here with his crew reforming around the walkways in the front yard. They demolished the incorrect concrete yesterday and cleared up today, new rebars, new forms, touching up and tweaking. Damien spent twenty minutes with a leaf blower - no exaggeration - creating a big cloud of dust, apparently making sure that the front door step is completely clean. I now hesitate to step on it at all. Damien tells me that the concrete will be poured for sure tomorrow (unless it rains, which it is not forecast to do). By the time Hubby returns from his trip to Baltimore, there should be hard concrete upon which to walk to the front door. Whoopee doo!



Inside, the office is really starting to take shape. Two of Jim's Bunch have been working all day installing the cabinets. We have four cabinets with lateral files, the desk tops, and book cases. It's actually looking like a room at last. We also had two people over today to give quotes on the wood floor for the office and the bedroom.



At lunchtime the appraiser from our insurance company popped by to have a look. I got a call yesterday to say he was coming, so I was able to ask Site Supervisor II to make sure that the fire extinguishers were in the right places. The fence that the appraiser had asked to be erected between the front and back yards was not there, but he could clearly see the men working away on the concrete forming in exactly that place, so that did not create any issue. My only worry is that when the job is finished, the appraiser will insist on pushing our house rebuild value over the magic threshold ($1.5 million) at which the insurance company will require us to install sprinklers and an alarm system. When he came out to do the appraisal in September, before our work started, he valued the rebuild at $1.45 million.... That was before we added the kitchen remodel and a bunch of other stuff. Luckily, this figure doesn't include the pool or any of the hardscape.

Writing another check for the house remodel work today. So far we've paid just over $400,000. This time round, we even have the money in the back account already! Nice.

Our first construction error

The concrete guys were here today to finish pouring the "footings" as they seem to be called here. They poured one layer yesterday and then a second one today. Site Supervisor admitted this afternoon that the concrete guys had made a mistake in the footings: Apparently the floor joists are usually set into the concrete, but ours are somehow floating on the top, according to the plans. As you can tell, I have a deep understanding of the structural engineering. Anyway, the upshot was that the concrete guys had to take remedial action, cutting into the first layer of concrete, adding new rebars with "special epoxy bindings" and generally making sure that the floor joists will have somewhere to go. I thought it was pretty decent of Site Supervisor to confess that a mistake had been made - after all, I would have had no idea simply by looking.

When we got back to the house yesterday dinnertime, we were disturbed by the sounds of giant rats under the floorboards. Of course, it turned out to be the asbestos guys finishing their work; and they weren't done till it was dark. Now that must be a very unlovely job to do. The fact that the exterior of our house was plastered in Danger signs was equally disturbing. Today all the heating vents through the house continue to be sealed up with blue builder's tape. I'm starting to like it - a nice splash of color among the neutrality of our usual background.

Anyway.

The furnace guys were back today installing the new furnace in the garage. We chose to have a high energy efficiency model which will cost us $2,750 more but is apparently eligible for a $1,500 rebate from the State...assuming the State still has any money for such fripperies. Tomorrow the HVAC team (as Site Superviser refers to them) will tackle the new ductwork. Here's a photo of some of it sitting on our drive...
Luckily the weather has been stupendously good the past couple of days - the dashboard thermostat in Hubby's car said 80F at one point - so we are not feeling the lack of heating one bit.

We also had a visit today from our homeowners' insurance company's appraiser. He told us we need to install fire extinguishers in at least three places including the garage, also some temporary fencing along the side of the house to stop people accessing our back yard, and that if the assessed rebuilding cost for the house exceeds $1,500,000 - which it might well do, this being an expensive area for everything - we will be required to install a centrally-monitored fire alarm system. Hubby is not too thrilled about that.


(Photo of the big cement truck outside our house this afternoon.)