a week later...

The crew has been working on the roofs all week, so the house doesn't really look any different - still the wooden plywood box that will become the bedroom and bath, and still the open trusses over the garage. There's a lot of cutting and nailing and more cutting and more nailing of those flanges, and the upright pieces and the board that the gutters get attached to, and..

The electrician has been looking things over - where to put the new circuit breaker box, where to install the switches after the new front door is installed, and, oh yeah, the rats have eaten your wiring and it needs to be replaced. Eww. It's a wonder the house hasn't caught on fire before - it seems the original (or maybe the last owner's remodel) wiring wasn't up to code - like a major hot wire across the top of the front entrance, and one just under the frame of the old bedroom door, where the (metal) latch struck against it every time.

And we have to put in strong walls and shear walls that require tearing out parts of the house that we did not realize needed work.

We're learning how to live with a constant train of craftsmen wanting in to measure something that that they are tearing out next week. For instance, the heating guy was in and out of the attic all day one day, looking over where the heating pipes will go, what needs to be insulated, where the vents will go. Turns out they have to move the furnace 90 degrees and put in a new door for it, because where it is now is where the new wall will join into the old part of the house. That will entail hanging plastic sheeting across the front entrance way, one, cutting off our egress, and two, even more restricting the space we can move around in. Sometimes, it feels like we will be down to living under a plastic tarp in Gary's office and using the portable toilet that is in the middle of the front yard.

Every day they work the imaginary big digital sign over the door counts off dollars. Every person I see is more money out.

And, of course, the big finale to the week - Saturday night at 12:15 (to be exact) it started to rain - again!! The barometer had dropped earlier in the day, but we didn't think much of it - no rain in the forecast, supposedly. We heard dripping in the garage, and around the front, where the new part will be attached to the old part. Mad dash to find buckets and pots, and called Bill. He and the crew showed up and in the rain, climbed all over the roof and tacked down yet another set of plastic tarps. And then, of course, the rain stopped. So we are sealed in once again, with a wet garage and a big fan blowing and probably extra parts of the walls that have to come down and be replaced as they got soaked through.

Weather forecast calls for gale force winds. The plastic has come loose and is flapping all over. Another call to Bill! See the video below.

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and then, there was a new room!

Boy, what a busy week. We went from a very wet slab and muddy garage to what the neighbors are now stopping to look at - a house!

In the interim, we had a discussion about windows and header beams, and learned a lot about tile and vanity counters and bathroom floors and shower accessories, and spent an afternoon at Ferguson's picking out faucets and shower heads (did you know the Germans now market a shower head that infuses air into the nozzle, so you think you're getting a full lush waterfall type shower, but it uses much less water, thus being "green?") And also vanity bowls and toilets and a regular shower for the euphemistically called guest bath in the hall.
But we are too late to put in graywater drains, which I had mentioned to Bill at the very beginning, and even bought the Green Goods book on how to install a system and given it to him, but then forgot to nag him about. Can't have everything. Probably couldn't have afforded it anyway!
Tuesday it rained again, and leaked again, only in different places this time, and the huge noisy fan is still blowing for as many hours as we can stand it to try to dry out under everything in the garage. The roof, needless to say, got re-sealed and re-tarped again - major preventive work. But, of course it hasn't rained since.
Thursday, the pile of lumber and nails got delivered and piled up along the side of the garage and the front door - "that's our house in its native state," says Gary. The crew worked all day measuring and cutting and nailing the framing for the walls, and by Friday afternoon, the pile of lumber and nails had been transformed into a framed room, connected to the old room, with the window and door cutouts in place, the shower walls up. Hopefully you can see some of that in the video. To get to that point, they tore out the old bathroom (saving the fixtures for ReStore) and the walls, and pieces of the roof/ceiling, because they have to put in new uprights to tie in the new and the old part and the roof etc.
So now the old room has big holes in it - biggest being the entire door and frame. The crew is storing their tools and equipment in our bedroom!









On both sides of the new shower are specially designed beams for earthquakes (see pics). so we'll be prepared for the next earthquake - everyone gets in the shower!

Next week the roof trusses come!

gratuitous art shots:











the crew had worked so hard all week, we bought them pizzas at lunch. Note the expensive, thick, special header beam they're using as a table!

and then the rains came

We should have known better. SLO has a Mediterranean climate which means wet winter, dry summer, but the rains are usually over by March and the hills are turning brown by now. But it does sometimes rain in May in SLO. Actually, the average rainfall for May is about 1/2 inch, but it has rained as much at 3.75 inches, and in fact, 2 of the years we have lived here are 2 of the highest recorded rainfalls in May. That, plus the fact that this year we had a very rainy December and also a very rainy April might have alerted us that this was not a typical 1/2 inch year. Usually it's one or the other, but hardly ever both. Maybe it's part of the global climate change. Anyway, we should have known, but the construction guys should have known too, since they have been taking roofs off houses for over 20 years, in May at least some of the time. In fact, the head guy told Gary it is an axiom in his business - take the roof off a customer's house and it will rain.

So, why did they not do a better job rain-proofing our house? Who knows, but it did leak - major! Around midnight, after 2 hours rain, there was a 1/2 inch of water on the floor of the bathroom where the outer wall is held together only by plywood and plastic sheeting. This AM we got up the courage to look at the garage, where a pool of water had spread out the whole width - under and into everything in its path. And, there was a steady line of water dripping down from the ceiling along the center of line of the garage. We put buckets under the bigger drips and called Bill at home.
To his credit, he came right over with a crew and moved our stuff to higher ground (fold out tables), squeegeed out the garage, installed a big fan, and then got back on the roof (now, of course it is no longer raining) and (hopefully) did a better job securing the plastic sheeting around the unprotected parts of the house. There's another storm system scheduled to hit tomorrow, and then one after that, next weekend. So there's a little delay til things dry out.

And, of course, the place on the slab for the shower, is now a small pool - maybe we should get some koi!

week three

As the footings' cement dried, the crew worked on marking out the plumbing for the shower and bathtub. Only glitch was in mis-reading the measurements for the shower! Big Glitch! But I caught it in time for the crew to put in some "tight nineties" (sounds kind of racy) and move the pipes over and out enough to make it the correct size. Whew! Would have been a drag to have this great new house and only the tiny shower we already have!


Then they laid on sand, and gravel, and more sand, and rebars and more pipe markers, and, another inspection, and then on Friday AM, another cement truck pulled up and a full crew spent the next several hours pouring the slab, smoothing and evening the slab, checking all the pipes and tubes sticking up above the slab, smoothing some more, and finally left for the week. The first picture is "before" and the second and third ones are "during." There's also an "after" video (I hope) at the end.


















We have also had a consult with the door and window guy: tempered windows near the doors (so they don't break if someone falls into them?), double paned to keep out noise and keep in cool; and the 'piece de resistance' - the new French doors at the far end of the new bedroom! Of course, they're going to cost more than all the other windows and doors together - but...

This weekend we're shopping for bathroom tiles - your input is welcome!

cement gets poured!

It was kind of like Christmas Eve - "the stockings were laid by the chimney with care" - all the markers and rebars and tags were in place around the trench for the footings - "in the hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there" - we had to wait for the city inspector to show up to sign the permission slip to pour. The city inspector came by yesterday and gave the final ok. Minutes later, amidst "the clattering of 8 tiny reindeer", the cement truck arrived









(only the noise was a great deal louder), and - voila! the footings are laid. Here's some shots of the actual cement being poured - and a video!

our "new" digs

After days of ripping and tearing, pounding and running noisy generators, the crew took a day off. Here's what our house looks like now! Except they did take the trash out of the driveway and clean up a little. They have to wait for the city to approve the change in plans (that will, hopefully, save us bunches of money) before they can pour any cement for the footings or the slab..

So, the next day, still no plans, but optimistic, they decided to help us move out of the "old" bedroom and bath. We moved a lot of living room furniture into the POD, and then moved the bedroom furniture into the living room - our new home away from (or within) home for the next 3 months. It's kind of like a big Holiday Inn suite! Hopefully the weirdness of it comes through in the pictures.

Then, after years of total natural privacy (trees and hedges and rose covered trellises, etc, outside all the way around, so no need for curtains) it's strange to have people be able to see in from the street. For instance, the newspaper delivery person who drops off the papers right outside the door (benefit of being disabled), and who had a clear shot of the scene, so I went rummaging this morning for old curtains from previous incarnations (even as far back as SF in the 60's!).

We heard at the end of the day Friday, the city had approved the plans! Yeah! That means they'll pour this coming week, and, hopefully, frame the next and then up goes the roof and then... So the crew will be here every day for quite a while. I'm sure we'll find additional ways to help us keep a sense of privacy.

As Gary remarked, why are we paying more money than we have to live in a fishbowl for 3 months?

progress

It may not seem like much, but there is progress. They're working on both the garage and the new roof for the addition, kind of at the same time, making lots of noise and exposing all the dry rot and underpinnings of the structure!

We went "browsing" for a soaking tub -
so they know where to put the plumbing etc when they pour the new slab. Here's what I want:

week two

this week we will get a new garage roof, hopefully. The crew is busy taking the old roof off as I write. And they promise to drill the rest of the rebars along the front of the house - a good time for us to be out looking at bathroom fixtures!