What @thumper1 said! :))
We had to reframe the whole master shower because he wants a bench that he can sit sideways and relax in the steam shower for 40 minutes. And, yes, we have the fancy wall toilet with extra plumbing and electricity built in for the bidet type toilet seat.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t quite realize that each thing that arrives or gets added adds another 2-3 days to the plumbing and electrical work on the project. We now have recessed TV boxes with HDMI cables hanging from 2 walls in the living room (because he cannot make up his mind which wall will have the TV so he will cover one with art later) and every single bedroom. I’m pretty sure our new panel is going to max out at any moment!
My key issue is that the City shuts down inspections the last week of the year and I have to get through this inspection or schedule will be blown by 2 weeks at least. And now he has found renters for his downtown condo and he wants to know when he can move in!!! I keep him updated on his expanding budget but he is very unrealistic about the schedule.
As long as he’s still OK with how much he’s spending . . . .
Tell him that each newly added goodie will require him to rent an Airbnb and store his stuff for 3-4 days.
Whatever you are charging him it’s not enough.
@emilybee Amen
cb: Are you looking for your next flip? Because one day this project will end, God willing.
The San Diego market (and I expect other overheated markets) is very slow right now. I think it is a combination of historically slow winter months and a general slow down in the market. We have a declining market and most properties over $1.5 million are just lingering with constant price drops. So, it’s a dangerous market to try to buy something and predict what the future sale price will be:) However, properties priced under $1 million are still selling fast in the neighborhood (Point Loma).
I got out of the La Mesa house just in the nick of time. The buyers of that house have been trying to sell their prior home for months now and finally went into escrow.
That flip was a jewel, CB. And you priced it perfectly.
Definitely a slowdown here. Ugly flips that used to trigger bidding wars are sitting on the market for weeks. However, thoughtfully restored homes with a good layout still sell quickly. And some still go over what I thought would be reasonable price.
Here you go, vintage MCM. Close to shopping ;). https://www.sdlookup.com/MLS-180067626-3626_Leland_St_San_Diego_CA_92106
Ugh. Well, the yard is nice.
Also, “former glory”? No, this is what those places really looked like. There was no glory.
SIgned,
MCM my #$$
B-)
Original shag carpet and all!!
Unfortunately, on a really busy undesirable street. But some young couple will buy it for the architecture
Tomorrow is our main bldg inspection for plumbing, electrical and framing. We are really under the gun trying to get the speakers, transformers, lights and controls into the shower. After hours trying to get Steamist on the phone I finally got through yesterday morning. After a long discussion about every possible alternative, the owner is not going to get his Auto Flush system in the steam shower. It has to be plumbed to an indirect floor drain. The guy kept telling me to run it to basement. We don’t have basements!! The only alternative was to run a large copper pipe down exterior wall and drain 3 gal of water to front patio by front door. Have no idea how he is going to manually flush the generator, if ever, from the attic above shower.
Other big issue is we have had a comedy of errors with one of our retrofit replacement windows. They arrived last week in the nick of time. Unfortunately one was wrong. It was supposed to be obscure on bottom and clear glass on top. Came all obscure. Had to decline delivery of window. After a mess of phone calls Milgard said to put in window and they would change glass out later. OK, bring window back please
Friday comes and I call shipping directly. They run around and find out that the night crew dropped window and broke it!! So I have to cancel inspection to wait for window. Call again yesterday to go pick it up and they have decided they need to make a whole new window and it will be another 5 days!! I’m going ahead with inspection and hope I can beg for mercy. Reason I have to hurry up is because City doesn’t do inspections next week and. I have to get through insulation inspection before they shut down or we will slip weeks behind schedule
Passed our giant plumbing, electrical and framing inspection today!! The inspector didn’t even notice one of the new windows was missing:). He was more interested in all our venting. Each inspector seems to have a specialty they are interested in. At the CC Remodel that inspector was all over the electrical. This one didn’t even glance at the complex Circuit Card that I worked on for days!
We are hot mopping, insulating and waterproofing the showers the rest of the week. Ohh, and figuring out what to do with speakers, Bluetooth transformer and controls in the shower!! We might be dry walling starting next week. I promise I will post photos soon.
Glad you passed the inspection!
How is the mold remediation going? That sounded like a huge mess!
We spent a lot of time blowing air through the walls. Then we sprayed everything with bleach and the weird coral reef stuff turned to dust and fell off the walls. We got that all cleaned up and then tested for mold. It wasn’t mold, it was weird stuff growing in the wall board of exterior stuff.
But, spent a lot of time and money getting roofers up top to seal up as much of the cracked stucco as possible, seal all the roof vents with proper flashing and put a temporary new roof on the top window bump out where most of the water was pouring in. We sprayed a lot of water up there and I think we have temporarily fixed the main water problems. So, we are as good as we can get at this point. The HOA knows they have to tear off the exteriors, replace a lot of rotted studs and repair roofs next Spring.
Good. Let the HOA deal with their turf. Happy to hear the inspection went well!
We have passed all our inspections in a whirlwind since the first rough inspection. We have insulated every single open wall, hot mopped the shower pans, waterproofed shower and bathtub walls and gone through our drywall inspection.
The Milgard window keeps going through a hilarious chain of events. Somehow the building inspector did not even notice that we had not replaced one of the windows. This is the window that arrived wrong so I sent it back. Then they dropped it and broke it at the factory. They said they would get it back within 2 days. Then they realized it was a ‘painted’ window with the dark bronze exterior so it would not arrive until Dec 27. It arrived Dec 27 and was still wrong in the exact same way. It is supposed to have obscure glass on bottom of the single hung and clear glass on top. It came with obscure in both panels. This time I just grabbed it, installed it and told them they had to come change the glass on site.
We have fixed the mold p roblem, covered the interior side of the walls with thick black roofing paper and the Roofer came and spent an entire day trying to repair as many of the leaks as possible. Unfortunately, even though they are on roofs every single day, the clay tiles on the roof just break when you look at them. So, we have a lot of tiles that have to be replaced again. He was smart and stole all the tiles off the front door overhang to do the repairs and he only has to come back and put tiles on the small overhang.
We had a custom galvanized chimney cap built to cover the top of the chimney since the fireplace is being cancelled. Unfortunately it just did not fit right so it is being redone and should get onto the top of the roof soon. Meanwhile, I think rain is pouring down in there!
We have spent the last 4 weeks just plumbing, wiring, plumbing, wiring, repeat. Basically the whole house has been replumbed, re vented and rewired. Not to mention all the details the owner wants everywhere. We have outlets all over the place for stuff. He wants in-drawer lighting in all the kitchen drawers and shelves, charging drawers, tons o f outlets for stereo equipment, we pulled out all the telephone lines and ran only a single line to one wall, pulled out all the cable and re-routed the cable line through the garage to where he is going to have the equipment. You name it, we had to run it through the walls. All of our walls look like swiss cheese because of rewiring everything.
The drywall crew came enmasse the minute we finished the insulation inspection. They worked over the Christmas weekend and Christmas Eve until 3:30pm. I did not ask them to do this, I guess they took advantage of the fact that we had work during the Christmas holiday and there have been 6 people a day. The owner is having the whole house retextured from the horrid orange peel to a new smooth texture.
My crew spent days trying to test all of the water lines, drain lines and wiring very quickly before everything got covered up with drywall. We needed to get the steam shower and all of it’s accessories hooked up and tested. It was hilarious because there are 2 speakers, a bluetooth transformer, lighting transformer, steam output, digital control pad and a disco light that changes colors. Hooked it all up and the guys connected with their Mexican disco music full blast. It was quite a party in the master bathroom as they all laughed hysterically at what people with too much money will buy. Then there was a large discussion between them (in Spanish) about whether they would even want this steam shower contraption if they won the lottery.
I’ve loaded a lot of pictures to Flickr but most of them are of all the plumbing and venting in the walls. On every project I carefully take pictures of everything that is behind the walls in case we ever need to go back and open something up. On this project I have a big fear that the owner will add more things and we need to be careful how we open up the walls after they are covered. Just the other day he noticed that there was not a niche in the downstairs shower and he wanted us to add one after the Denshield and Red Guard were already done. I had to get out the pictures and show him that there was only one place we could add a niche because of pipes and vent lines.
Our goal this coming week is to build the new bump out wall for the 6 ft fireplace insert.
Laughing so hard at the shower install you described! Only up from here! Happy New Year to you and your team.
Read the shower install saga to Mr. His response? Is it a home or a bordello wannabe? ?
The lighting is puzzling. It is marketed as ‘Chromasense’. Evidently you change the light color when the shower is all full of steam, to light up the steam and it creates some kind of ‘mood’. But, you have to go to the control panel and ‘select’ a color you want the light to be. It doesn’t change colors randomly. There are over eight colors available. The boys thought the purple was hilarious and that was their favorite during their disco party.
Meanwhile, there is a large window and I’m pretty sure the neighbors are going to wonder what the heck is going on over in that bathroom?? Blazing colored lighting is hard to miss.