Sheetrockers

So, we are about a week behind schedule, but that's ok. It's looking like we'll be down here in the studio with the cupcake for about a month before we can move back upstairs. Not bad at all, eh?

Update:
- rough electrical and plumbing are done
- sheetrocking and taping/mudding are done
- the tilers started today on both upstairs bathrooms
- 2 coats of primer throughout the house starts tomorrow

We had one of those late night last minute fix-it situations last evening. We decided last week that we wanted to add extra plywood and padding to the floor upstairs to improve the sound-proofing in addition to putting in new hardwood flooring. This, in turn, messed up a lot of what the plumber had done with the toilet flanges. I have no idea how to spell flange. So, Josh made a late night run to HD Pro for more pipe and an extendo-flange thing. He and Jonathan re-jiggered the 500 pound cast iron tub so that it was a touch lower. Josh extendoed the curb to the shower this morning and finished it about 60 seconds before the tilers arrived this morning. Pretty amazing and such a relief that we didn't have to sheepishly tell the tilers that we weren't ready for them....

A Sea of Beautiful White Pickups

I never fully appreciated how anyone who is a contractor of any sort drives a white pickup. Never red, never blue, always white. Sorry not to include any demo pics yet, but my computer isn't up and running yet, so I've been unable to download them. This pic cracked me up. The amazing Chinese guys that are currently tiling our downstairs bathroom had an extension cord running outside to their pickup truck with two rice cookers cookin' away at lunch time. Here is my brief update:

Saturday - Demolition

Monday - Demolition. We discover that when they added the kitchen to this house, they never built an exterior wall. They simply framed directly up against the house next to ours. The floor is also on a wacky slope which we knew about previously, but will definitely require some fixing. 

Tuesday - Demolition continues & Pat arrives to start working on getting things ready to frame.

Wednesday - Demolition is complete & Pat and his boys are hard at work on framing

Thursday - 

- Cesar arrives to take over the operation downstairs. He begins to sand, redo a lot of the previous taping and puddying and finish various things in preparation for painting. 

- Pat and the boys make amazing progress on the framing. 

- The tilers get started on the bathroom downstairs. 

Friday-

- Cesar continues to prep the downstairs.

- Pat and his boys continue to make lighting progress on the framing. 

- The tilers continue to work on the bathroom downstairs. I am very relieved that we never tried to tile ourselves. It's much more complicated than I realized. The tile for the base of the shower is set. 

- The window guy comes out to help asses the proper sizes for various rooms. We've decided to go with Marvin Integrity which is their new cheaper line. It also arrives in 2-3 weeks! We'll be ordering those on Monday. 

All in all, the amount of progress that we've made in 7 days is rather stunning. We crashed at Jonathan and Arminda's for a few nights and then moved over to Cristina's family room with Miss Lucy on Monday. We can't survive without our girl. Josh continues to be at work until the wee hours of the morning. We head over to the house aka the job site around 7am. Josh checks in with everybody for an hour or two and then heads off to work. Then I run around doing whatever needs doing for the various contractors during the day. In the evenings, I return to Cristina's for dinner and take the canines for a nice walk at the beach. Then, I sleep! 

Up and Out

Last week I finally managed to get the rest of the house packed up and shipped out. This was a tricky situation because our stuff is going in about four different directions. I have nothing but great things to say about the Public Storage pods- even the charming ex-cons that came by to pack them. When we're ready for them, we just call them up and they deliver the pods back to our front driveway. Love it. The house was completely vacated by Friday and the demolition derby started Saturday morning. The only thing that will remain upstairs is the framing and the windows. Otherwise, all the drywall, ceilings, and flooring is coming up and out. I only poked my nose in the front door and it's crazy in there. I'll hopefully post some pics later. We've been waiting for years to get to this part in the renovations! It's very exciting. The framing will begin this Saturday and should take no more than three days.

T still hasn't finished taping and sanding the downstairs. The painting of the downstairs must begin as soon as the demo is done upstairs. He is so close to being finished. Hopefully, when I go back to the house in a moment, he will be there hard at work. It is now week six since he started the drywall.

We're staying at various amazing friends' houses while the renovations continue. Now that we're out, I need to work on finalizing any framing decisions for this weekend.

Operation Cupcake

The boys had a busy Saturday fixing the car and moving our washer/dryer over to our friends' house. The new plan upstairs only allows for a stackable, so we sadly had to part with this set that we bought a few years ago. T managed to puddy and tape the bathroom and kitchen on Saturday. He puddied and taped one more wall on Monday. He did the ceiling today. I really need him to be done with the sanding by this weekend. It will have been a month since he started sheetrocking downstairs on Friday.

I'm not worrying about it because I now have Operation Cupcake in full effect. We are now scheduled to demolish the upstairs the weekend of May 8th. I decided that we can't wait to finish the downstairs in order to tackle the upstairs. So, we will be sofa-hopping until then and staying close by so that we can regularly be here and check on everything. I have a tight itinerary from now until the beginning of August and my teams in place. I really am determined to finish the whole house by then and I really think it's possible. No more snail's pace for this operation!

Nailing Inspection

We passed our sheetrock nailing inspection yesterday! In case you're wondering, the green walls are greenboard which is what you put in areas like a shower or laundry area. The boys have taken the last two days off and are coming in tomorrow to start the puddy and taping. The tiler comes on Monday to build the shower pan. Giddyup.

Saying "No" to Blowtorching at 1AM

The sheetrocking is comin' along. The boys have made good progress on the ceiling. We are calling today to see if we can schedule the nailing inspection for Tuesday. My fantasy is to have it taped and sanded by the end of next week.

In order to completely finish the sheetrocking, two pipes need to be capped off and the gas line currently feeding the upstairs dryer needs to be capped off. It currently is also feeding the upstairs stove. I can live without a washer and dryer, but I need a stove. So, my superman, J, finally agreed to call the plumber and have him come out for a few hours this week to take care of these things. He's quite capable of doing these things himself, but challenging because he has been getting home from work at midnight. So, this would mean that he would be downstairs blowtorching past midnight. Me no likey. Our lovely plumber has promised to come out by tomorrow at the latest to take care of it for us. Thank God. It was a big deal for my superman to agree to this. I'm very proud of him.

Slow and Steady

A little bit of progress was made on the sheetrock today. I found myself frustrated by the rate of progress this morning so I tried to stay away from the house so as not to vent my frustration. Let's just say I have my teams ready for every last step of this operation as soon as this sheetrock is taped, sanded and smoothed. I am a little fearful about how long that part of the process is going to take. It's a tiny little studio. It really shouldn't take more than a few days. We shall see, won't we?

The slow progress downstairs has already made me decide that we will move down there without painting, doing the floors or any of the other finishing work. We'll just finish the bathroom and kitchen and move down. We have to make the main house a priority. When we move back upstairs, we can finish the downstairs.

And yes, it is totally bizarre that they come and inspect the nailed sheetrock before you tape and sand it. I think it's all about making sure it's done properly for fire-proofing reasons.

On a brighter note, I went back to Young's Custom Cabinets today and made more progress. We discussed all of the cabinetry in greater detail today. She was still unable to come up with prices on the spot, so I decided to make a list for her and see what she would come up with on her own. I remain hopeful. I am also unclear as to how they possibly sell enough cabinets to stay in business. As I entered Young's today, the smell reminded me of the fabric cutting warehouse that I used to use when I did Kept. It must be the rice cooker. I was not able to verify this assumption, but why else would a cabinet factory and a fabric cutter's warehouse smell the same?

Dangling Roofers

Our neighbors decided to redo their roof yesterday. The trickiest part is that decorative bit at the very front. The crazy thing is that one of those guys that you see up there had hopped over to the front where he had about 2 feet to squeeze his body in order to grab at the roof. It was crazy to watch. Kind of of one of those trainwreck moments. No harness. No nothing. Nothing but certain death if you fell. Anyhoo, all went well and the new roof is coming along swimmingly.

Some progress on the sheetrock yesterday. He estimates that it will be done by Wednesday and then we can schedule the nailing inspection. We are afraid to schedule the inspection before he's done because his timing is usually a little off (read: slow). Our tile guy is lined up and ready for action as soon as the rock is. Then we will really see this place start to come to life!

Josh added another electrical outlet to the area where the dryer will be that we didn't realize we'd need because we were hoping for a gas dryer. But Bosch doesn't make the Axxis series in gas anymore for some reason.

Sheetrock

We are making slow but steady progress on the sheetrock. There has been so much in the news about that horrible Chinese sheetrock that was giving everyone respiratory problems and destroying their plumbing and electrical. Of course, this is something that we don't want to experience -- especially with the bambina cooking in my belly. I've had a really difficult time finding out which brands of sheetrock are OK. In the end, we're going with USG which is supposedly all made in the US. It's great that the news likes to report on all this stuff, but how about a little more information on what's safe?!