We are finished with Phase 1 of the big remodel. There were a lot of add ons and we hit a big snag with the new flooring. The old flooring (carpet and thick parquet) was higher than new flooring. This literally left a 1" stripe along the bottom of every wall in the house. Bigger issue was that it was impossible to cut the flooring perfectly against all of the adobe walls and around the circular fireplaces. We were able to install baseboard on the regular drywall walls.
So, we had to go along all of those walls with Cedar Tan caulk and fill the gap between flooring and irregular walls so there wouldn’t be a dust basin. Because the painter is sick the guys had to get on their bellies and paint along the bottom of every wall meticulously with a straight line against the caulk floor. And paint all the installed baseboards because we didn’t have a painter. This took almost an entire week of 2 guys. It was not cheap. I’m going to guess it added about $2,000 to flooring costs
Owner already has a list of more things to do so we will be in there next week after they leave. I’m guessing we have a lot of paint touchup because we just could not get to it before they arrived. And she wants a new front door that will require structural changes and removal of adobe on exterior.
Last week I hired a window washer $550. There are over 70 windows at this house!! Then they hired a cleaning person who I pointed to all of the Son’s bathrooms and Studio. She spent 4 hours just cleaning bathrooms and the laundry room. I don’t think those guys had ever once cleaned the shower doors. They were coated with calcium and soap scum. The studio shower, which I know was new 11 months ago, was really bad.
The budget just got out of hand. She selects very expensive stuff. Just that small amount of kitchen backsplash tile was $750!
Materials $53,000 plus $28,000 in custom cabinetry
Labor $64,000
Yikes, that is a lot of money for the following:
2,500 sq ft of flooring, baseboard
500 sq ft of tile entryway and stairs
Master Bathroom gutted and reconfigured a little bit
Added bath venting and electrical
Kitchen with all leaks repaired and move plumbing and electrical
Doors and windows painted
Door levers and entry locks
Landscape leak and sprinkler repairs
Living Room Wet Bar
Lighting throughout
Powder room paint and update
6 new countertops
Photos loaded of a clean house! Her taste in furniture does not go with the style of the house, nor the style of anything else in the same room
Circling back on the condition of the house. Parents arrived Thursday last week. Evidently they spent some time out furniture and art print shopping and most of the stuff is getting delivered this week. Let me just say there is no rhyme or reason to anything that’s coming into the house right now. It’s all over the map but mostly bling stuff that I would call Hollywood Regency mixed with driftwood tables.
I was very careful to take pictures of every room after thorough cleaning and send them to owners as we were finishing. By Wednesday last week the kids had managed to completely mess up the kitchen. I chalked it up to them ‘moving the stuff’ back in. But looking outside at the outdoor bar area I didn’t see anything cleared out
They left on Tuesday afternoon. They have a new list of things they want to finish which involves a lot of painting. But yesterday the Stepfather called me about something and then went on a rant about the mess they walked into. I guess they walked in and kitchen was a mess and Mom was very dissapointed. She evidently sat Son down over the weekend and pointed out that all of this work had been done and he needs to appreciate it and take care of it. We will see
But this morning took the cake. I don’t know why but they are all using the new master bath now. Not to mention Mom paid for a cleaner to go through the house last week and scrub the three other bathrooms. So, my guy is installing a new exterior door about 9am in bathroom, which just finished getting painted. The roommate guy walks in and asks him if he could do something else for awhile because he needed ‘space’ to take a shower. What the hey?? There’s three other showers in that house.
@coralbrook , any updates on this or your other projects? I am house-obsessed and miss these posts.
Also, did the mom and stepfather ever lay down some real consequences for the son’s treatment of the property? I can’t see that a chat would make any difference in his case.
Thanks for asking. We are still doing small projects at the house. At least once a week we find another pipe that is leaking. Luckily these are landscape pipes, hose bibs but we just had to change out the main water shut off valve for the property. It started leaking and we could not find the water meter with the main shut off. The owners had to call the water department to find out that meter was 500 ft down the street hidden in the ground behind a fire hydrant.
Ordering curtains and solar shades and putting up some shelves and painting a lot of windows. When they visited they made a list of more things to paint. And now their pool equipment is shot, so we need to replace the pump and pool vacuum
But the exciting news is we have a new project that starts next Monday. Just in the nick of time because we are out of work and I was getting very stressed about what to do with the crew. This is a very tight budget and schedule for a young couple’s first house, but the house has big issues. I’ll start a new thread later this week
