Destruction!!!

We had an extremely tiring weekend. But it was the good kind of tired, the kind when your muscles twitch and you can barely hold your head up, when you have a smile on your face and a deep sense of accomplishment in your heart. At least that's what I think. Throw in a sore wrist and multiple bruises and you have a sense of how I felt come Monday evening.

My brother and his roommate came out for the long weekend to help us begin our demolition of the living/dining room. In preparation, my spouse and I went up into the attic space at about 6pm and didn't come down again until 10pm. We got out the rest of the boards on the old log roof and shoveled the insulation out so that we could tear out the ceiling when the boys arrived. It took a while, but it didn't take as long as we thought it would. We got the topside of the ceiling nice and clean. The boys showed up around 11:30, and we all pretty much hit the hay, since it had been a long drive for them.

Saturday we ran a few errands, including a Home Depot stop to get some better safety gear for the fellas. We have full-on respirators and whatnot, but we wanted some better stuff than just a plain ol' dust mask for the guys. We got the fancy fiberglass dust masks with the valve in the front, goggles for all, and a few other little things. Saturday afternoon we cut the carpet, rolled it up, disconnected the pellet stove, and moved the stove into the carport. Bye-bye, heat. We had a play to go to on Saturday night, so we sent the boys to a movie. We all fell asleep fairly early that night, too.

Sunday was the big day. We ripped out the wood paneling (we had done some of this on Saturday, too, but the majority of it was done on Sunday), ripped out the wood BEHIND the wood paneling (the stuff with wallpaper on it), and drywall where applicable. We also took out the brick behind the pellet stove, which had drywall behind it, and then the wood slats behind that. We found a newspaper from 1939, which was really cool, but other than that it was just tiring and messy. But the boys were GOOD at ripping stuff out. They could do it pretty much with their bare hands. One of the benefits of having very tall, very strong young people destroy your house, I guess.

Then the ceiling came down. This is where the tall guys really came in handy. Once everything was stripped down to the studs, we realized that those big beams that ran across the room didn't actually go ALL the way across the room. No, they're supported by 2x4s. Great. And they're really only supporting the old log roof in the ceiling. Very interesting. Some of the studs need to be replaced, and it's all sort of strange. We're having someone come to consult with us either this week or next. We need to know what we can move, and what moving things will entail. If the log roof isn't supporting anything, it would be great to get rid of it.

Monday we slept in, watched some anime, and ate lunch before tackling the pole in the backyard. This is the 20 foot light pole in our backyard that served some unknown purpose at one point in time. Now it's just rusty and strange. We borrowed a jackhammer from a friend and let the boys have at it. My spouse and the roommate hammered at the base while my brother tugged on the rope that was supposed to guide the pole's fall away from the house. After a couple of hours later and about 18 inches into the dirt, it just wasn't panning out. So we got out the sawzall and just cut the sucker down. Took a few minutes, and my brother just pulled it down. It was pretty amazing. So now the pole is out as well. Mostly- there are still a few feet sticking above ground. But you can hardly see it through the jungle of our backyard.

And that was the weekend. We pulled up the carpet pad yesterday and mopped the floor so we don't track crap all over the rest of the house, and now we just wait to hear what the consultant says. Depending on his feedback, we might need to get structural engineers involved. Hopefully we can just go ahead, get a permit, and do some structural work. Once that's done, we'll do the wiring, close up the walls, and put down hardwood floors. And one room will be done, with only 7 to go!

My spouse will post a series of pictures illustrating the grand events as soon as he can. Hooray!

Finally, the Electrical Trench Comes and Goes

The ground work contractor who did the water line showed up on Thursday (5/25/06) to dig the electrical trench. The trench ended up messing up the driveway a bit, but we were able to put conduit in for not only electrical, but for phone and cable as well.

Here are pictures of the trench at the house.

Here's a picture down the driveway.

Here's a photo of the trench from the driveway to the pole. Now we need to get the utility easement recorded. (You can see the new water line exposed in this picture!)

Here are the conduits on either end of the driveway. The yellow rope coming out of the 2" conduit is the pull-string for the cable. The phone wire has already been run through the conduit.

And here is the trench all filled in, except of the work pit where the conduit needs to be exposed.

In the end, we paid half of the cost for the conduit and trenching labor. The front lot owner is paying the other half plus the hook-up fee ($725) for moving the overhead to underground. I suppose I could have fought more, but then the contractor wouldn't have been paid. In addition, this chapter is just about over and that's such a relief.

Above, yet inside, the Rat-Hole

Last weekend we went up into the attic space to remove some of the old roof. Armed with a reciprocating saw, a pry bar, a ladder, and a trash bin, (as well as lights, gloves and respirators), we methodically cut out the old planks that spanned from one log truss to the next. We were only able to do the roof above the kitchen. Now we have to do the old roof above the living room.

New Plans... Now with Pictures!

A repost of the existing floor plan might make this post make a little more sense (so here's the original floor plan on the left).

My spouse mentioned earlier that we had come up with a new plan. We haven't been quite 100% on board with the previous plan(s) and took another shot at coming up with a solution. We broke it down into two approaches. First, we rethought our solution for remodeling without doing any additions. Below is our solution. Bear in mind that we haven’t put in all the exterior windows and doors, yet. We are really happy with the new entry! Plus, we came up with a new concept for the current master bathroom. We’ve cut into the second bedroom to make the master bathroom a full bath which makes us really want to use it (currently we only brush our teeth in it).

These new ideas take into account the possibility of future additions (see plan below). The reconfigured old master bathroom allows us to demo the old second bathroom to make room for a washer/dryer/hallway. The carport becomes the new master bathroom, closet, and office/den/library/guestroom.

The best thing about the new plans is that we feel like we’re really going to make the best use of the space in the house, even if we don’t do the additions!

More Big Plans

This weekend we got a lot accomplished, for not spending much time at the house. Kenmore had its semi-annual recycling event, and so we took the fridge out of the front yard (hooray!) and loaded up the dishwasher (which we never used- it was rusted inside, and we were only using it to put our microwave on top of). So we got rid of our trashy appliances in one afternoon, which was glorious. Now the house, while definitely not looking nice, doesn't look QUITE as stereotypically trashy. It looks its own brand of trashy now. *grin*

The second thing we did was put a gate at the end of our driveway. It's just a couple of T-posts with a cable and a padlock, but it should do the trick. We both felt weird about actually using it and locking it, though. It just seemed to be bitter and agressive. So we put up a sign right next to it that says, "No Parking in Driveway." That, so far, has done the trick. I'm looking forward to having less garbage in our driveway, not to mention room to actually park our cars, or get out of our driveway, or not get the driveway torn up by humongous pieces of machinery.

Additionally, we spent most of the day Saturday and Sunday chasing around to various stores. We bought a great book on how to renovate a house, and bought the cheapest microwave stand we could find to replace the dishwasher in functionality. We also looked at fencing materials and windows. Soooo many windows. We're going to price out Andersen windows- we like them the best so far, and we think they're really nice. We can get low-E windows that are wood on the inside and vinyl-clad on the outside, with a variety of grid patterns. Plus they're double-hung tilt. So we'll see how many kajillions of dollars that will end up being. We're trying to figure out what size windows we need where to get a good quote.

Which brings me to my last, and to me the most exciting, point. We redid our floor plan. We're SUPER excited about it- it'll allow the house to be much more salable if we don't do any additions, and yet it will be even easier than before to actually make the additions. It's going to be nice, and has actually relieved a bit of our anxiety about undertaking this project. So hooray. I'll try to get my spouse to post the drawings later this week.

Stumps and Lines

The earthmoving contractor installed our new water line. The meter was moved in front of our drivway (off-center). The new line is 1" 200 lb. polyline. The blue wire you see in the first picture is so the water line can be located in the future. We had the contractor install a frost-free hose-bib for us, too. He offered to do it for the cost of parts so it was hard to say no. He complained about the owner of the front lot, too, which makes him a great guy in our opinion.

You can see the original lines in the second picture. The bottom line (in the picture) is the abandoned steel line from forever ago. The black line right next to it is the 3/4" polyline that was feeding our house until Tuesday (5-9-06). We used to think that the faucet (seen in the bottom picture) was stubbed right off the main line, but it actually comes off some other location under the house.

The same contractor had to remove the redwood and cedar stumps. These are some pictures of the process. He excavated around the redwood stump and clawed at it for a long time. It looked as though his back-hoe was going to fall into the hole sometimes. Finally, he just kept slamming the shovel on top of the stump and broke it into pieces. He asked for pictures of the stump if any of them turned out. He couldn't believe he was able to extricate the stump!

Backyard Flowers

Here are some pictures of the flowers that are in our backyard. All of the pansies were saved from the front lot (which has been bulldozed). The pansies all seem to be doing quite well.

There are several clumps of poppies here and there that just came up on their own, too. All the poppies are yellow except one.

There are also forget-me-nots, blue-bells, buttercups, and a couple of others that I don't know the names of.

I've included a picture of the big happy rhubarb next to the driveway just because it's so big and happy! There is some more rhubarb growing in a tire elsewhere in the backyard. People keep telling us to harvest it, but it's so pretty just the way it is! Maybe we'll just take a couple of stalks from the around the edge.

Can you dig it?

I'm sure many of you have waited for almost an entire week with bated breath to hear what has been going on with the developer/builder guy (who we really should think of a clever name for). Okay, so we're the only ones that have been waiting to hear, but that's because we have been forced to live and breathe this stuff. UGH!

Anyway, what it boiled down to was this: pay $350 for half of the water line move, or wait until he breaks our line on "accident" while building his house and pay for the damage and sue him to get our money back. We also could have just refused and started legal action. Considering the lawyer costs $250/hr, it was actually cheaper just to suck it up and pay the $350. The good news is that the contractor's billing us directly, so we're not getting billed extra by homey. We actually convinced homey to sign a document stating that we had only agreed to pay for half the water line move, and not for any other utilities, and that the agreement should not be construed as a future promise to pay for half the move of other utilities. And it was notarized. So now we have proof that we had not agreed to split anything else with homey. The next thing we have to worry about is the electrical- he's already starting to make a stink about that. So, we have to go back to the lawyer and figure out what our plan of action should be. He was the one that advised us to just pay the $350 because it was the cheapest option. We got a bill for $100 from the lawyer already. Joy.

Now to the juicy details.

Luckily, the contractor that homey hired to do the work is an outstanding fella. He had to deal with a lot of crap because of us fighting with homey, and he was very professional. He worked with el esposo (since I'm not the one home during the day) to figure out where the new water line should go (which el esposo and I had agreed upon). The trenches were dug today, the lines routed, and he even installed a new hose bib for us for the cost of parts. All we need to do now is wait for the moving of the water meter and we'll be done with this horrible part of our saga.

Here's the fun part: el esposo was out on the island yesterday at work, so he didn't answer his cell phone. Contractor guy called him and left a message. Apparently he had broken our water line while doing some initial exploratory work in preparation for today and had shut off the water, but he was trying to find out if anyone was home so that they could turn off the water heater to keep it from burning up. Hooray! No one was home! So we were a bit miffed that our line had been cut. Contractor guy called el esposo back a little later, when el esposo was on his way home. He had fixed our line, turned on the water, and explained that the reason he broke the line was that it was mere inches beneath the surface. Oh, okay. All was well.

So last night, mi marido and I are out digging up plants likely to get damaged in the moving of the line, since the trencher was going to need some room. We dug up snapdragons, poppies, and irises. It was great fun to play in the dirt, and the weather was amazing. Anyway, we were poking around near the old hose bib, and lo and behold, there was the water line, maybe three inches below the surface. It's old galvanized horror, too. No wonder he plowed right through the line! We almost broke it with a shovel. Anyway, we got our plants moved and even attacked some of the blackberry trying to worm its way into our driveway. It was a fairly productive night.

And that's where things stand. In the next few days we'll get our new water meter, and then we'll have our water line on our property, safe from homey. We're thinking about getting our septic tank and drainfield located, just to make sure it's not on homey's property. Oy, what a mess THAT would be! In the meantime, we're just going to prep for the electrical crapola the best we can. We just want it to be over.

Here's something else interesting, that we wished we would have known beforehand: contractor guy was really surprised that homey was allowed to take down the redwood, since it's an endangered species. He says that he always has to cordon off redwoods when he works, because they're protected. Damn! If we would have known that beforehand, maybe we could have prevented its death. Oh well. Just something interesting to keep in our back pockets. Drat.

If mi marido can think of anything else to add later, I'll have him do so, since he was the man on the ground throughout most of this drama. Maybe we'll post some pictures this weekend of poppies, pansies, gigantic rhubarb, and other lovely things living on our lot to take our minds off of other, anger-inspiring things.