The Remodel: Week Two

We've made it through the first two weeks, and hopefully those were the worst two weeks. I say 'worst' because it was so very noisy, and the dust from demolition, and new drywall is horrendous even with precautions taken by putting up plastic over the doorway. The odor from the mud and taping of the drywall as well as the dust has irritated my throat terribly, Nick's too! The sound of the jack-hammer removing the tile for a couple days was pretty intense, the upstairs floors were even vibrating - our poor kitties were in a rough spot and having a tough time.

Here are the photos from the past week:

concrete slab - it has a thin, known crack which isn't obvious here but runs along the wall; we learned of it when we had the previous tile placed

Our new 5' sliding door. It never made sense to me that there was no exit from the kitchen to the patio where the grill and table are; instead, one would have to carry supplies and foods from the kitchen, down the hallway, through the 'library' to the sliding door there to access the patio - I often had to wipe up unobserved spills from whomever was carrying food out. This is where there was an 8' wide window.  At first I thought the 5' was too narrow and wished I'd gone for a 6' but I'm now thinking this is perfect.

Some rewiring needed to be done to fix some circuit issues as well as put in place for the new range, range hood and add new plugs for above the counter...some additional costs were involved.

Ruh, roh. We spied a small leak in the copper pipe that had been installed in a whole-house repipe about 22 years ago. The pipe was also too close to the wall board so it was cut, moved and repaired...at additional cost of course.

Some of the wiring, gas lines, old water lines, old hood vent...and NO insulation. The entire house has NO insulation anywhere (except the bathroom walls that were remodeled seven years ago, and now this wall has some that the contractor added.).

New drywall added and the new outlet for the microwave. Why so high? The cabinet will now have to have holes made through the bottom, the shelf, and the back. When I asked the contractor, it has something to do with code/legal positioning of plugs. Go figure. It would probably help if I explain that there will be a 2-shelf cabinet with door here, with a built-in shelf below it for the microwave rather than the microwave sitting directly on the counter.

Drywall patching in place. For the cost of this process all of the old should have come down and all new gone up!

This side did get a little more all new.

A thin strip of drywall was removed in order to fish the new electrical through for the outlets for the cabinetry and counter going in along this wall. Nope, no insulation there, and none going in. I should have had that included in my original plan - remove all drywall and install insulation! That solid wall is a west wall, and it takes the full brunt of afternoon southern California summer sun; hoping that the cabinetry will act as a little bit of insulation. The dining room/kitchen does have the best A/C-furnace vent in the house! Intentionally!

Mudded and taped, looking nice.

This is that end wall where the copper pipe leak was, it separated the kitchen from a bathroom and is where the old built-in oven was before the bathroom remodel seven years ago. When the worker left on Friday, he said to me that he didn't realize until he was ready to leave that there is no cabinetry going there, so he will have to do some re-work on the wall to make it look uniform and 'pretty'.

A wider view of that area. At left, behind the door, can be seen the second pantry area, and the gas line that feeds the furnace up on our roof.

And here's our Escher-style conundrum. I suppose in a house that was built in 1966, between land settling and going through two major earthquakes (Sylmar & Northridge quakes), and that it's a tract home where attention to detail was less of a concern than deadlines, some oddity is to be expected. Looking at the soffit area that needs to remain because a heating duct runs through it down the hall ceiling to the bathroom and the library, it's easy to see that the left side is deeper and the right is shallower. However, if you look at the pantry doorway, it's pretty close - with measuring it's only about 1/4" difference at the door - over an inch at the edge. Moving along to the next photo...

Looking head on from this direction, it's squared up pretty well above the hall doorway. So the question is, what is out of alignment? The doors? The ceiling? The floor? And an even bigger question, how on earth to fix it so it isn't so obvious? The contractor hasn't yet seen this for himself, but has heard about it. And the frustrating part, the duct really only takes up about a one-foot square in the back left side of this soffit - so, tear out the soffit completely except that one-foot square? That would look rather odd. Take it back to just a foot in front of the door? I'm sure we'll be charged more for that too! As we would if making it diagonal from the left edge of the pantry door to the right wall of the hall door.

Looking into that new pantry space. It will have 'matching' shelves to the existing pantry, while working around the gas line, that I'd hoped they'd be able to 'enclose' in some manner. An opening needs to remain though for the shut-off valve at the bottom near the bend. That'll probably add more cost too, as it would have to have had them relocate it. Sometimes it feels like "nickel and dime" with adding several zeros behind the 5's and 10's.

 Now to try to look at things a little more positively rather than the seemingly constant of added costs:

These beautiful daffodils are giving a good showing this year. And with that new sliding door, it's so much easier to see them and get out to them. I really need to hone in on my gardening, it's been seriously lacking in recent years. These bulbs came from my Mom a very long time ago, before her passing in 2014. The squirrels devoured the tulip bulbs, but there is a hyacinth mixed in there but it's only just showing it's head above the soil level at this point. I hope it's the yellow one, but I truly do not know or remember.

These arrived today: the new refrigerator, dishwasher, range, range hood, and respective attachment lines for the three main items.

This goes back to our getting ready, we had to make a path for the workers to get through the garage. There was a path there, just not wide enough to accommodate a wheel barrow which they use to haul all the debris out. The mish-mash of boxes include everything I packed up from the kitchen seven years ago as well as currently, some boxes of stuff to determine what to do with - whether to store, donate, sell - and some stuff clearly headed to charity.

The contractor's 'dumpster'...good-bye old, crummy dishwasher :)

With all of this going on, some very chilly and wet weather for SoCal, our furnace decided to go on the fritz, AGAIN! We just put $1400 into it in November. I called the furnace guy first thing this morning, and he's 'hoping' he can get someone out this afternoon. In the meantime, I'm sequestered in my Creation Station with a space heater, and one of the two cats who is currently curled up in a box after being a real pesky pain all morning. All three of us were in our respective separate room areas yesterday with individual space heaters running and managed to trip the breakers...not good! So now I have a question in to our contractor and his wiring guy as to why it would also have taken down the breakers for the downstairs which he "re-circuited" in order for us to not have to worry about running the microwave and toaster oven at the same time which would previously throw the breaker too. Indoors outside of these rooms it's been dropping to about 55º when it's mid-30s out.  I am thankful I'm not living in a colder climate.

Until next week, praying for a smoother week, and for a furnace fix that doesn't cost another small fortune!