it_remodels' Journal

Color, color
The first paint of coat is now up in the playroom and we're really happy with our choices. The yellow and orange look great together and they're only going to get juicier when another coat is put on.

Terry and Jeff uncovered the entryway tile again, as it had been covered with paper for protection the past week. They'll seal it tomorrow, and it was nice to see it again.

Brandon sealed the basement floor with a concrete sealer late this afternoon. Moisture had been seeping in through a few cracks in the concrete, and so (hopefully) this will prevent our carpet from rotting away underneath us.

The bathroom tile is now grouted, although it hasn't been wiped yet so it is still a little hazy in this picture:

And finally, we got our new brown color up in the office. It is very similar to the other color we're using in there, the "rich caramel", and so with shadows and light from the windows, it is sometimes hard to tell where one color starts and the other begins. I'm pretty happy with how this looks -- and I think once we get some furniture moved in it'll look better.

Paint choices
Work continues! Of course it does. The past few days have seen some big progress in the flooring department, and some subtle (but important) progress in the trim. Most of the windows and trim have now been sanded and caulked, and we're really happy with how they look. Every window is a little different, but this is more or less how they all look:

The doors for the laundry were also hung a few days ago, and today (after six weeks!) our washer and dryer were hooked up again. We're doing laundry! The laundry doors will be painted white to match the rest of the trim.

Terry made a bunch of progress on the bathroom floor the past two days. We were initially going to have a pattern consisting of three non-white tiles in a "V" shape on the floor, but after laying things out it looked to small. So (much to Kate's delight), we went with a quincunx:

We'll have a slightly smaller matching version on the back wall of the shower. Ignore the little white spacers that are temporarily keeping the tiles in place.

The office is also close to being finished. There are still many little details to go, but the floor was finished yesterday:

We like the way it looks, but as a floating floor it's got kind of a loose, gushy feel to it. I'm sure we'll get used to it.

The paint colors also went up on the office walls today, and although we really, really like the caramel orange color, we think the faint purplish brown looks horrible next to it:

We're going to change that purple into a darker brown version of the caramel color. We were worried about making the room too dark, but with the white ceiling, windows, and white trim, I think it'll be just fine.

Terry and Jeff (and Brandon, the painter, who is also helping out in other areas) are working hard to beat the baby. There's still quite a long laundry list of things to do, but I think they're hoping to get all the major work items knocked out by the end of this week, and then hit the less important finishing trim pieces next week. Still to do:

- tile in the shower
- grout and seal all the bathroom tile
- seal the entry tile
- install toilet and sink in the bathroom
- another coat of paint everywhere, and two coats of paint for the still-unpainted playroom
- carpet (scheduled for Monday)
- electrical trim pieces (cover plates, recessed lighting trim pieces)
- tons of little carpentry trim pieces -- probably way more than I even know exist.

Tub, or at least some of it
The tub arrived today, and my worst fears came true: we couldn't get it into the basement. We'd originally wanted to get an even larger tub until I suddenly realized, in the middle of the night five weeks ago, that it wouldn't fit through the door. So we quickly scrambled to find a different one that would make it into the basement. However, nobody took into account the concrete stairwell leading into the basement, and there was just no way we could negotiate the corner to make it in. Wasn't even close.

Here's the stairwell:

and here's the tub:

To top it off, we later discovered that the ceiling was too low where our furnace ducts are, so we would have had a hell of a time lining it up to get into the bathroom if we were able to get it in to the basement in one piece.

We went through the options: we could buy a different tub which came in separate pieces. This was ruled out because it would involve another four-week wait, and the concrete had been poured around the drain hole already.

Another option was to cut out some of the concrete in the stairwell. We needed to bring the rim of stairwell down about a foot in order to get enough room. This might have worked but cutting the concrete and then repairing it sounded a little unwieldy.

The third option, which eventually won out, was to cut the tub and discard the top half. Terry and Jeff, tile masons extraordinaire, would then put tile up on the walls where the top half of the shower used to be. The upside is that we think the shower will look even nicer with a real tile top half. The downside is that it'll cost us another $500 in tile and labour, and there's a chance that the fiberglass would crack when they cut it.

Niven and his crew did the cutting:

And took this much fiberglass off:

They then spent the rest of the day installing it -- connecting the drain lines and water fittings, setting it properly level in place, etc. As a last little slap in our faces, we had to take the door jambs off in order to fit it through the doorway.

In other news, we gave up on putting in an egress window, so Terry and Jeff framed up a short wall above the bulkhead yesterday, and Lauren came in and mudded it today. Here's a boring picture:

The project is scheduled to be complete in about two weeks. All of the major work -- tile in the bathroom, laminate floors in the office, most of the trim -- should be done by the end of next week, and then it'll be a long list of little things -- more trim, door knobs, etc, etc. The painting should also be mostly done by next week, although Brandon is working around Jeff and Terry so his schedule isn't firm.

Some tile, some paint
Another week gone, more progress made. The drywall is now complete except for some minor touchups that the initial coat of primer may reveal. The painting started today; Brandon the painter put up a coat of primer on all the ceilings and most of the walls. On some of the walls we're using a tinted primer to provide a better base for our fancy colors. Those will go up tomorrow. If Kate and I can manage to really decide on some colors in time, Brandon will start putting up some colors on Monday.

Terry started laying the tile. He finished the laundry room in about two days, and will start on the entry tile next Tuesday. Here's the finished laundry room floor (this looks darker & browner than it does in real life):

Meanwhile, Jeff has been trimming the windows. Because we've added 4-5" of new wall in front of the windows, we need to add some fancy new sills and jambs and the like. It's taking him longer than I think it should, but I don't know much about sills and jambs.

Some interesting issues came up with respect to the carpet. The carpet we chose (Karastan 'Hooked on Khaki' in 'lichen moss') comes in 13' 6" rolls. The length of the playroom's carpeted area is a tad under 14'. So close! After some creative thinking, we decided we could expand the width of the entry's tiled area by about 1/2 tile (giving us a width of 4 complete tiles, and therefore requiring less tile cutting). This would let use just a single piece of carpet in the playroom and save us about $300 in carpet costs. There are a few weird little things we need to deal with, but I think this will work out just fine.

It looks like the concrete work for the egress window may be more complicated than we had planned, so we might not do it at this point. We could be opening up a very big can of worms for a payoff that isn't very clear. That final decision will need to be finally made, yet again, next week.

Mark was here on Wednesday and he dug out the old, rotten stumps of the fence posts that had broken. They were well-rotted and it was just a matter of time for the fence. Terry and Jeff put in the new posts on Thursday and put the old fence panels back in place on Friday. Man, having these guys around is quite a nice luxury.

Drywall is just about done
Not much news lately, but looking back I see there have been some big changes since my last post. Basically, all of the drywall has now been hung and plastered and patched and sanded. There is still a minor bit of touching up to do, but for the most part the drywall crews are done. It took them most of the week, with varying numbers of people and hours per day as they sanded and spackled and waited for things to dry. For a few nights they asked us to turn up the heat and had fans blowing downstairs in an attempt to dry the mud faster; our house was pretty humid for a few days.

Here's a picture of the area under the stairs which we've labelled "the hidey hole". This will be a neat little play area for Zippy. Or perhaps we'll put up bars for when she's bad. The opening actually stretches all the way under the stairs to the right, so there's tons of room to store secret things.

Here we are looking back from the office into the playroom. As you can see, we get lots of light in the playroom.

And here's inside the office. The little alcove will probably have a chair or couch or pillows of some sort. Around the corner inside the alcove, where you can't see it, is the server closet -- which we've concluded is a little on the small side, but should still be functional.

Everything downstairs is now pretty dusty, and the floor is covered in plaster droppings. We did a decent job of containing the mess to the basement, although a little bit of dust did get upstairs, and we continue to track more of it up every time we visit the basement. Next week things should get mopped up pretty well (I hope) so the dust will disappear.

We picked out some colors for the walls. We're envisioning yellow walls in the playroom with two orange accent walls, a red door, and brown stairs. The laundry/craft room is going to have light purple walls, which should be a nice contrast to the greenish-grey tile. The bathroom will be in blue, but we're still trying to get ourselves organized with the tile color in there (it'll be mostly white tile with blue and grey accents) so nothing specific has been chosen. Finally, the office will most likely continue with the orange accent color from the playroom, but we haven't nailed that down yet.

I met with the painter that Terry and Jeff like to use. Nice guy, flexible hours, professional, but also cheap (according to T&J). He estimates it'll take 8-10 days to do all the painting for the basement -- primer, two coats of color, and all the trim (which he thinks will take almost as long as the walls). The estimated total cost, including paint, will be close to $2000.

Next week Terry and Jeff will start working on the tile floors. They want to get the bathroom tile down so that Niven can come back and install all the bathroom fixtures, and then we can get final signoff on the plumbing inspection.

Windy
The windstorm that hit Seattle today blew down our back fence. For some reason I find this tremendously amusing, although I'm sure I'll be less amused when it comes time to dig out the broken stumps of the old posts.

Ready to hang the drywall
Willy finished off the rough-in of the electrical work on Thursday. He'll come back after the drywall is done and install switches, cover plates, and trim for the lights. Hopefully he'll also take care of the garage, as we'd originally discussed. It turns out that there was some miscommunication about the scope of the electrical work that we needed -- stuff like the wiring panel and cable TV hookups in every room weren't mentioned and so Willy was concerned that we were expecting him to do all these extras for free. T&J put him at rest that we were considering these things as "extras" and so he could increase the bill the accordingly.

Although, actually, I didn't think of these things as "extras" -- they should have been in the plan from the start. I guess they weren't communicated to Willy originally and in any event, I trust T&J to manage the bids and prices from the other contractors. Also, I really wouldn't know if they were screwing me so why worry about it?

On Friday the insulation went up. We're insulating most of the exterior walls except for the inside of the storage room and the end wall of the play room containing the outside door. We're not insulating the latter because to create the framing to contain the insulation would take up too much room on the stairs. We also insulated the ceiling of the office and some parts of the bathroom to try to create a noise barrier.

Here are some shots of the basement with the insulation up. The playroom:

The playroom from the other direction:

Here's the office. It's noticeably brighter in there with white "walls" of the insulation in place.

On Friday night Kate and I did some more floor shopping. We're looking at getting hardwood floors for the office. Since it's such a small room (about 130 square feet), we think it's worth spending an extra few hundred dollars to get something nice. We'll have the floor for many years, so we think it's worth it. We've been considering bamboo, and we're also thinking about a laminate floor. Of the laminates we've seen, we like Armstrong Pacific Heights Strip Colonial Oak Natural the best, although it's hard to really get a good look in person.

We're still not close to making a decision on the carpet for the playroom. We've considered going with an Interface Flor carpet-tile floor, because you can create some really nice interesting patterns with the tiles. But, we're not sure if it's worth the cost (around $5/sq ft). Also, it's hard to judge how the real product will look based on the pictures online. Our current thinking is that we'll get a fairly cheap berber carpet (but with a quality underpad) and then put a nice rug on top to define some spaces. We like this rug.

The drywall arrives
I was rudely awakened from a well-deserved afternoon nap by the arrival of the drywall. They took a look around, did some geometric gedankens, and then pulled the truck around to the alley.

Even slower
Speaking of slowing progress: today nothing is happening! Everyone has vacated the premises so that the plumbing inspector can come by and check out the rough-in work. The plumbers were here pretty late yesterday getting everything ready.

Acting on the advice of my father, father-in-law, contractors, and plumbers, Kate and I got a new water heater. The heater cost $600 (we need a direct-vent model which adds to the price), but it took two of them several hours to install it. The major problem was that the old vent hole was a bit too low for the new model, so they had to play with the sheet metal for a few hours to get everything hooked up properly.

Willy was also here yesterday, continuing to wire up the basement. His changes are fairly subtle, so I'm just looking forward to the day when I'll go down and see light switches everywhere. Until then, it's just a bunch of wires. I went over the layout of the connections we want for the non-electrical work. We need cable TV/satellite in two of the rooms, and since we have a double satellite dish we need two connectors per outlet. We need phone in every room. We need network connections in every room. And in the office, we want everything on both sides of the room so that's doubled. We'll put a nifty patch panel into the server closet so that all of the connections can be wired and patched and played with on the fly.

I did a bit of my own plumbing work yesterday. I had ordered a new kitchen faucet online to replace our old one. We have a wall-mounted faucet with the pipes coming out of the wall horizontally above the sink (instead of vertically up through the counter) so most faucets won't work for us. Our old faucet had a very short spout so it was a bit of a pain to work with. Anyway, I found a new one which is very similar to the old one but has a longer spout -- and, as an added bonus, a soap dish mounted above it! I did a few tries to get it on but couldn't get rid of one small leak, so called the plumbers up from downstairs to take a look. They fiddled with it some more and got it all tight (although this morning it's leaking again). Anyway, the leak is minor and over the sink so no worries. We'll fix it later.

Apparent progress is slowing
After what seemed like a furious pace at the beginning, the apparent speed of the renovations has slowed down. People are working just as hard, and there are just as many -- in fact, we'll have T&J, the plumbers, AND the electricians all crammed into the basement tomorrow. The problem is that now they're working on the less impressive, but very important details. New walls are cool. New wires where the old wires used to be are not as interesting.

Willy and Jim, the electricians, were here all day on Friday and most of Saturday. They're removing all the old knob-and-tube from the basement, but they are leaving the old wires in the walls going up to the main floor. They've also installed most of the recessed lighting and done a bit of work on the wiring panel. There's still a bunch of wiring to go, though -- more lights, all the light switches, plus cable TV, phone, and computer wiring. They're hoping to be finished by the end of this week, but I'm a little skeptical.

Here you can see the new lights in the office. This was taken without using a flash, so you can see how nice and bright the new room will be.

The plumbers were here all day today, filling the house with the smell of PVC cement. They had a ton of pipes to fit into the one wall between the bathroom and laundry closet -- including in, out, and vent connections for toilet, washing machine, and sink -- not to mention dryer vents and electrical connections. Here's how it looks all put together:

Here's the view from the other side. You can see there are quick-connect-style connections for our washing machine. In the background is the much-maligned hot water heater.

The hot water heater has a tiny little leak and they had trouble re-lighting it a while ago and whenever I ask what the problem is, they just say, "it's old". It is 18 years old, which is apparently something like 150 in hot-water-heater years. So, Kate and I are finally convinced that we should get a new hot water heater (in particular before this one pops and spills rusty water all over our pretty new floors.)

Speaking of floors, Kate and I picked out tiles for entryway and craft room. The dark-brown on the left is for the entryway -- a 3x10-ish section of tile just inside the basement door. It is a lot more lustrous in real life. On the right is the worn gray-green we picked for the craft room. Yes, that brownish color is actually pretty green in real life.

Terry and Jeff are also still plunking away at little projects while the other contractors do their thing. We asked them to build a bookcase for the area under the stairs, which we're turning into either a storage area or a cool little playhouse, complete with secret storage shelf for secret things which need to be stored.

Terry took the ceiling off the stairwell going down the stairs. We want to replace it with something that looks not crappy, such as, oh, drywall or something. Anyway, most of it is fairly straightforward but some of the construction methods for the stairs are a little unorthodox, so they'll need to put in some extra reinforcement so that they can make the ceiling line smooth. Not too much a problem, I hope, but something to keep Terry entertained for a while.

The current hope is that the drywallers can start work on Monday. I suspect that the electricians will be back this weekend to finish things up in time.

Bathroom tile will go in towards the end of the drywalling, and then all the bathroom fixtures will go in. About two weeks from now, Terry and Jeff will work on the entry way and craft tile. Then it'll be all the trim for doors and windows... then flooring... then paint. Then we can move in! I'm sure I'm forgetting something, such as, oh, the front porch or the egress window...

Picking the faucets
Willy the electrician was supposed to come by this morning at 8:30, but got tied up and didn't make it until early afternoon guy. He's an interesting guy -- kinda short, and full of very agreeable energy. According to T&J he's a very fast worker. Once he arrived we went over the locations for all the light fixtures again and then I went shopping.

I stopped at Lowe's first and then went to Home Depot. I needed to make some decisions about the bathroom faucets (sink and shower/bath) so that the plumbing could be roughed in on monday. I ended up choosing American Standard's "Colony" line because I liked the look and they were on the cheap end of the scale.

Here's the sink faucet. I prefer separate hot/cold taps, but Kate is pretty keen on the single lever design. Marriage is all about compromise.

Here's the corresponding shower setup. I really like having three handles, and Kate doesn't care so much about having a single lever in the shower.

I also tried to figure out something for the tile -- we want to have tile in the bathroom, craft room, and entryway -- but Lowe's and Home Depot had rather thin selections.

Finally, I needed to pick out the lighting for the bathroom. We're going to have one recessed light in the ceiling, but we also need some lights near the mirror. We don't have much room, so small is good. I picked up some simple globe fixtures that might work, just to try things out. We might just put "vanity" bulbs in two plain (chrome?) sockets.

More adventures in plumbing
The plumbing crew came back again today to fix up a few issues here and there. Terry and Jeff continued working on the framing, but mostly they're tweaking bits and pieces and adding blocks for the drywall to nail to, so really that part isn't very interesting. We did do a quick once-over for where we want light switches and how the various lights should be controlled. The electrician is coming tomorrow so we'll get everything worked out in more detail then.

The plumbers repaired the leak in the kitchen pipes. This involved cutting up the wall below the sink (inside the cupboard, where it isn't visible) and replacing a section of pipe between the basement and the main floor with copper.

Here you can see where they had to cut the lines coming up from the basement:

The next big work item for today was to replace our main floor toilet. We undertook this for a couple of reasons: first of all, it leaked. Secondly, the fitting in the basement that attached it to the stack was old and needed to be replaced. Thirdly, the old toilet was placed 3" away from the wall and took up a bunch of unnecessary space in an already-cramped bathroom. Finally, it had been clogging up more and more frequently lately.

Once they took out the old toilet, I saw that the tile underneath was in pretty good shape. This meant that instead of getting Kohler's "Santa Rosa" toilet, which is a compact model with a big footprint (to cover up any unsightly holes), we could get the American Standard "Hamilton" model -- whose shape I preferred. So, I got Terry to get the plumbers to change the order (both were in stock at the warehouse) and got the toilet I wanted.

Here you can see where the old toilet was:

And here you can see where the new toilet's outlet hole will be. The previous outlet was in a very strange position which was probably why the old toilet was so far away from the wall.

And finally, here's the shiny new toilet:

The final thing that was done today was to move the hot water tank away from the basement wall about 4 inches. This was necessary because we need to put a drain line for the new laundry sink along the wall behind it. The plumbers were encouraging me to get a new hot water heater --their reason: the current one is "old". Also, the "thermocouple" is failing which is why we didn't have hot water yesterday and why they were having trouble getting it re-lit today. But I was not about to embark on yet another major purchase for downstairs, so I told them to make do.

All the jostling of the hot water tank dislodged about 20 years of sediment, so we had very brown water. I turned on the bathtub faucet and let it run for about half an hour until things cleared up; the water is still a little yellow-ish but I think I could stand to shower in it.

Tomorrow: lots and lots of decisions about lighting!

Walls! Pipes! Decisions!
It's been a very busy few days in both my remodeling and non-remodeling worlds. So, without further delay, here's what's new downstairs:

Walls! Almost all of the walls, both interior and exterior, are now up. We're putting up real 2x4 walls all the way around most of the basement. These will make the walls plumb and straight (which they aren't right now, not by a long shot) and also give us a place to put insulation, plumbing, and electricity. In a few places we're affixing the drywall directly onto concrete so that we can save a few precious inches in tight spaces.

Here are some new exterior walls. You can see how curved the little foundation wall is in the office -- Terry and Jeff have had to leave a lot of little gaps here and there to make everything plumb and square.

As you can see, we'll have nice deep window wells around all our windows:

And here are some interior walls. The first picture is in the playroom looking towards the new bathroom wall. The craft area is to the right of the bathroom (you can see the dryer under a plastic sheet in the background). The short little wall to the right of the bathroom is going to contain our laundry closet.

Next we have a shot from the playroom towards the office. The office door is right in the middle. Underneath the stairs on the right we'll be building some bookshelves and creating a little play house/storage area. The door to the storage room is the big white door to the left. We've decided to replace that with one of our old doors, which will make it a bit shorter. That's okay -- it'll give us more room for trim, match the proportions of the room better, and still be plenty big enough to get our junk in and out.

Finally, here's a look into the bathroom from just inside the office door. The big discussion today was centered around a little cupboard we want to build to the left of the sink, inside the top half of that short 12" wall that is right in the middle of the picture. Is there room for a proper door? Curtain? Sliding door? Rolling garage door? No door at all? In the end, we decided that there is room for a proper door about 9" wide.

Pipes! The old plumbing is gone and we now have a shiny, neat set of copper pipes running along one wall of the house. This was done on Monday while I was in California and mostly went without a hitch. The old steel pipes running up to the main floor were left in place since we didn't want to tear up the walls, and these all seem to be holding up well EXCEPT for one, in the kitchen, which is leaking. This could be bad news. The plumbers are coming back tomorrow to take a look. Also, we no longer have hot water -- for some reason, the hot water heater seems to be no longer working. Again, the plumbers will take a look at it tomorrow. Finally, the toilet won't stop refilling and so we have to turn the water to it off and on. Tomorrow, the plumbers will bring us a brand new toilet for our main floor!

Thousands of tiny decisions are being made all over the place. How many shelves, how wide, what kinds of doors? Where do we want the bathroom lights? How many? How many switches? The fan? How tall should the doors be? The old doors will make short doorways, but new doors will cost $300 more. Still, I'm enjoying going downstairs every few hours and seeing the progress that's being made, picturing how things are going to look, and tweaking the direction of the project ever so slightly.

There's still a big question mark surrounding whether or not to put in an egress window. The overall consensus at this point is to finish everything else in this project and then do the egress window last, or as part of the porch project.

Kate and I still have many big decisions left to make, and some of them are pretty intimidating. The biggest of all these: what colors do we want? Breaking this one down: what do we want for walls, entry tile, craft room tile, bathroom tile, carpet, wall art, rugs, accent pillows... We need to have the tile delivered in about 3 weeks, so we need to get going on these decisions pronto.

One wall goes down, one wall goes up
I suspect that today was a more typical day in renovation land: Terry and Jeff showed up around 9am, we talked over a few issues for about 20 minutes, and then I left them alone to do the work. I stopped by a few times during the day, talking about any new issues or things that I'd thought about, but mostly they just did their thing.

Today they finished demolition by taking out half of one wall of the office, where we're putting in a new alcove. Kate liked the plan I came up with yesterday to increase our office space by eating up part of the storage room.

Terry and Jeff also replaced the adjoining wall and put down a few sill plates. Finally, they poured concrete around the new bathroom pipes. This is the first of two (or maybe three) layers:

In this picture, you can see where the new wall was put up (on the left), and where the new alcove will be in the office. We'll be putting a closet into the alcove with sides pretty much where the white shelves, the concrete block wall, and the original office wall are.

There were two big issues that came up today.

First, the main door. The plan was to replace this door because it was ugly, had a crack in it, was hard to lock properly, and didn't have a window. However, the price for a new door with the windows that we like came in around $430, and we're not sure that it's worth it. There are already plenty of windows in that particular room. Terry and Jeff think they can use the existing door and fix it up to look good and work properly -- we'll discuss this more tomorrow.

Secondly, an egress window for the office. The long-term vision for the basement is for it to be a rentable suite. Note that this is a fairly long-term plan, and not anything we're planning to do in the near future, but we don't want to build ourselves into any corners. So, in order for the office to be useable as a bedrooom it needs to have an egress window, and an official egress window has all kinds of size and location requirements that are very difficult for us to meet. The cost to put it in could hit a few thousand dollars -- we'd need to make some serious cuts in the concrete wall and dig out a window well on the other side of the house. But on the plus side, we'd get a lot more light into the office... T&J are going to brainstorm our options for this tonight and see if what they can come up with, and then we'll discuss tomorrow. Kate and I are leaning towards making the investment, as we think it'll give us a pretty hefty increase in the value of our house.

Demolished!
Today was demolition day. Terry, Jeff, and Mark showed up around 9am and quickly got to work tearing out the old walls and carpet. They managed to get almost everything out in just one day, and it's great! It's getting easier to visualize what the new space will look like. Also, with the old walls down it's easier to see new options for the room configurations. I've already got one idea percolating that I'll discuss with Kate tonight -- basically, to expand part of the office into the storage room, giving us a bit more useful space where we think it'll be sorely needed.

All the support beams and posts that we exposed look good -- we didn't see any rot or anything. Terry and Jeff will be using better wood (ie., pressure treated) for the sill plates of the new walls and actually nailing them in place (the old walls were apparently just wedged in without being nailed to the ground!)

I felt really bad about all the wood we tore out to throw away. There were many good (to my eye) 2x4s that Terry and Jeff won't use because old, dry wood is too difficult to work with. I had them set aside a stack good-looking 1x6s for some random projects in the future, and they saved some of the other pieces for doing a bit of grunt work here and there, but most of it is just going to the dump.

Here are some rather clumsy panorama shots of the wide-open basement, taken from the corners on either side of the stairs.

The heat is on!
After a chilly weekend, the heat is finally back on. We hit lows of 53 degrees in the living room, but the temperature actually wasn't too difficult to deal with. Not having a shower or being able to run the dishwasher were much more annoying. We spent Sunday rearranging the furniture in our living room and bedroom, and with the help of a rather smokey fire (the Christmas wreath was a little damp) and a small electric heater we managed to stay warm.

Today was a relatively quiet day, but it still had its share of drama. The plan for today: put some minor finishing touches on the gas and plumbing work, get an inspection, and then get the gas turned back on.

The gas line was finished first thing, and then the inspector turned up early, before the plumbing was done. The gas inspection passed, but the gas workers hadn't left me their permit so they couldn't sign off. There was a bit of worry that another inspection wouldn't happen today, meaning we wouldn't get a sign off on the permit, meaning we wouln't get the heat turned on. But the plumber managed to arrange for a separate inspection of his work and THAT inspector signed off on the gas inspection.

The plumbing inspection went fine and now we're done with inspections until the next round of plumbing, I think.

Terry called in the utility to remove the lock on the meter and hook up the gas for real. They arrived a few hours later and did the work. I asked the guy if he was connecting everything to the house and he said he was. A few minutes later I turned on the heat, but nothing. I checked out the furnace, turned it off and on a few times, but nothing. Eventually I went outside and saw that the gas meter was not hooked up to the house. The gas contractor had said this might happen, so I called him and he sent his crew out to make the final connection and light up the hot water heater.

Finally, heat! And even better, I'm running the dishwasher! Clean spoons!

Tomorrow the remodeling work starts in earnest. Terry and Jeff will move their tools in and this week we'll demolish the old walls, pour concrete, and start framing the new walls. By early next week, we should be able to walk around a skeleton of the new space and see how it all feels.

Mr. Fixit
This morning, in preparation for a trip to the hardware store, I took apart the faucet on the rusted-out sink in our old bathroom. I'd already resigned myself to having to lose the current spout, which arches perfectly over the top of our on-tap water filter. The currently available models just don't fit the same way.

Anyway, when I took the cold water stopper out I found the little copper shaving that was the source of the previous day's leak. I figured the rusted out apparatus had been there for years before, so why replace it now? It was still sturdy enough to hold the taps in place. So, I put everything back together (it took me a few tries to get everything leak-free) and eventually, got everything back together and fixed.

Not only did I save us somewhere between $40 and $100, but we get to keep the nicely arched faucet spout! Hurray for me.

Mid-day
I couldn't sleep last night due to the flapping of the tarp outside. While tossing and turning, I suddenly realized that the really cool trapezoidal tub/shower we wanted to install was too wide to fit through our doors. ACK! It's 40" wide at it's widest point, and with door openings maxing out at 35" (with the frame removed!) there's no way it would come in.

So this morning, it was panic time! It looks like every morning of remodeling will start with an hour of coordinating and decision making. The plumbers needed to know where to put the bathtub drain. We needed to pick a new bathtub. We want a 54" long bathtub so that we'll have a bit of space for that cupboard (standard bathtubs are 60" long), so Terry and I hopped on the internet and desperately picked something out. I got Kate on the phone for approval, and now we're ready to go. But then the plumbers left anyway. They'll come back on Monday.

Other must-make-immediately decisions today were the location of a gas line junction for the barbeque. I'd forgotten all about this. The plan is to extend the gas line through to the back of the house so that I can hook up a barbeque (eventually) -- it's worth doing this work now while the ceiling is open. I didn't really care where the box went so waved in general at the back porch and let them take care of it.

Also last night, the water in the bathroom sink wouldn't turn off. It also started dripping down onto the floor. See what I mean about stressed-out pipes? This morning I took the top of the faucet off and this is what I found:

Good god, what a mess. Looks like I'll be heading down to the plumbing store to pick out a new fixture for the bathroom sink today.

In other news, there was some hefty miscommunication between Terry, the gas subcontractors, and the gas company. Basically what happens is that the gas meter moving company is required to lock the meter until an inspection occurs. The gas subcontractors can't ask for an inspection until they're done their work. And they can't do their work until the gas line is moved. The end result is that there's a built-in delay of at least a day while the gas meter must be locked. And unfortunately for us, today's Friday. So, it looks like showers at the in-laws this weekend!

Terry felt really bad about this and even offered to put us up in a hotel for the weekend, but it's not such a big deal for Kate and I. We can bundle up and be stinky for a weekend.

More plumbing work
The plumbers were back today to put together the rest of the drain lines for the bathroom. They did a great job -- the new stack is moved over about a foot, which gives us room for a small cupboard that I've now added to the bathroom plans.

The job itself was probably a little tricky -- our sewer line isn't very deep, and I think they're fairly close to proper tolerances in getting the slope right. But hey, that's why they get paid the big bucks.

I was expecting Mark the digger to show up for some more digging today, but he wasn't around at 10:30 so I called Terry and they brought him over. It was raining and he'd been trying to find some rain gear. In the meantime I'd set up a tarp so that he's stay fairly dry anyway. He finally got started around 11:30 and managed to knock out a 6' x 2' x 18" hole in about two hours. He was actually a bit pissed that he went so fast and only got in two hours of work today.

Oh, this new hole is for the gas line and gas meter -- the meter is being moved from the front of the house to the side so that we can (in a more-or-less separate project, but done at the same time by the same people) extend the front porch. The porch has a soft spot on it that is about to eat someone's leg, and we want more room to sit on the stoop and watch our neighbors walk by.

The basement floors are neither flat nor level. Terry had to do some quick calculations to figure out the eventual height of the bathroom floor (once it is leveled) so that the toilet flange would go in the right spot. The ceiling height is just under 7 feet and I want to maintain as much of that as possible, so we'll need to strike a delicate balance between getting the floors flat and level and keeping them low.

Here's what the plumbing now looks like. All the drains are in for toilet, sink, and washing machine, and there's backflow doohickeys and cleanouts for same. The section of pipe that ends in a small green device is a temporary pump setup to keep the hole drier.

All the plumbers eventually left but one. There was a leak in our old water lines, and he spent about two hours trying to fix it. Every time he tried to attach something to the old pipe, it would crumble. That stuff is scary old. We're only planning to re-do the pipes in the basement, and not change the pipes that lead up to the fixtures on the main floor (since that would mean digging into the walls). But if those pipes don't take the stress of the remodel, we could end up with a much more costly project on our hands.

Eventually the last plumber had to give up, leaving us with no kitchen water for the evening. Not a big deal. As long as I can shower and poo, I'm happy.

It begins
Remodeling started today. These people don't ease into projects -- when they're ready to go, they get going. The initial plan was to do some digging for a new waterline today, and to start the plumbing on Monday. But the plumbing team was available, the jack hammer was in the truck, and so it was time to get started!

Task #1 was to dig a trench from the house to the street to install a new 1" waterline. The old line was 1/2" steel, and if it was like anything inside the house it was due to be replaced. De-sodding, digging, re-filling, and re-sodding the trench took most of the day for myself and a hired hand.

Meanwhile, the plumbers were in the basement breaking up the concrete. The new plumbing in the floor is all in a fairly contained area, so there wasn't too much to do. As soon as the concrete came up, we could see why the drain field (perforated PVC pipes under the concrete) were installed in the basement a few years before we bought the house: water immediately seeped into the hole that was created. This then flowed right into the sewer lines, thanks to the drain field.

In addition to jackhammering, Niven (the plumber) and his crew cut out a big section of our old iron stack. This beast runs the entire height of the house and is due for a good thrashing. Unfortunately, the middle section will have to stay put as it's probably fastened to the walls of the main floor. But the bottom section is now gone!

Pictures for today:

This room will become the playroom. Stairs are on the right; storage is through the door on the left; new bathroom will be visible through the door on the right. The wall to the left of the right door is coming out completely.

Here's the fresh new hole in our floor that the plumbers will soon fill with pipelike apparati. The bottom half of the stack has been (temporarily) replaced with a PVC pipe.

Finally, here's a picture in the room that will be the office. The new waterline comes in the middle of the wall and attaches (temporarily) into the old plumbing.

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