<p>Really true. Colorado’s nice, CB. (Hint, hint.)</p>
<p>You could have a road show around the country! An RV with the tile guy…how great would that be??</p>
<p>I get the feeling cb is drowning in Issues right now. </p>
<p>PROGRESS UPDATE</p>
<p>Once again, I cannot see any progress! But in reality we have finished the wiring throughout the home except the hallway/bath area because I am really struggling trying to figure out a design. We tore out a hall closet and the back bedroom closet and opened up a new hallway along the courtyard. My dream was that this would leave all kinds of room for an expanded bathroom, new closet for back bedroom and nice big closet for master bedroom. NOT!!! I have tried a million configurations and nothing is working in the space. The reason that this is so challenging is that I want to try hard to have two separate entrances to the bathroom, one from master and one out in hallway for guests. I have to get this done because electrician is waiting for me to finish wiring in the house.</p>
<p>Handrail guy hasn’t shown up yet with my new hand rail, although he did at least call me and tell me it is being painted and he wants to make sure it is completely dry before installing.</p>
<p>New central heater has been installed under the house and he is working on running a new gas line and electric. By code, we have to have a switch at crawlspace entrance and lighting in area around heater. And we need an outlet for the igniter. </p>
<p>I have decided that we are going with tankless water heater again on this project. I just don’t want to waste space for an old giant tank heater in the house. I would have to put it in the little laundry room connecting main house to office and I feel that buyers would appreciate a nice big storage/broom closet there rather than a water heater. So, for space reasons I’m installing a tankless. Out of sheer coincidence, I just figured out my HVAC guy is authorized to install tankless water heaters and I am so grateful… Definitely don’t want crazy shirtless guy on my project again and I was going to have to start all over again finding licensed plumber for installation (although I think shirtless guy probably lied about being licensed, I don’t remember specifically seeing his license number). Although my crew could do the plumbing, we are running out of bandwidth and have a ton of things that need to get done.</p>
<p>Our back shed is turning into the same garage nightmare as that other project in La Mesa. There will only be one wall left standing when we get done. It has already been three trips to dump in my pickup truck hauling away most of the walls and siding. We just finished all of the framing and we had to frame inside the old siding one 2 sides of the shed so we don’t get caught by the P police driving down the street. Since we are raising the roof about 12" to line up with the main house, our studs and top plates are showing above the old stucco and deteriorating siding on the outside. I am so paranoid that I am making the guys prime all of the studs that show above the wall. From the street, the white wood blends in. If anyone ever opens up these walls 50 years from now they will be scratching their heads on why someone primed just the tops of all these studs???</p>
<p>As soon as the windows arrive we will be doing some stealth weekend work. The window fairy is going to swoop down and all of the siding will get replaced and new windows installed over the weekend on the shed.</p>
<p>Basically, all I have been doing all week is driving back and forth to Home Depot getting ‘just 20 more 2 x 4s’. I’ve heard that now three days in a row 
Just once I wish they could estimate the total amount of something they need before they start the job.</p>
<p>Today I had to haul all of the heavy plywood and lumber needed to build a whole new roof structure for the shed and tiein over the weekend. Roofing guy does my jobs moonlighting on weekends. He is very experienced and I have been lucky that he is loyal to my projects for five years now.</p>
<p>Does your home depot have good lumber? I feel like at mine I have to pick through 100 2x4s to get 5 straight ones. It’s a huge waste of time.</p>
<p>I’m not an expert on lumber, but I do have to pick through a lot of wood to get good ones. Also, they are very green and wet which makes the 2 x 4s at Home Depot ridiculously heavy. But, I did some research and Home Depot purposely prices their 2 x 4s very low as kind of a ‘loss leader’. They are more expensive at all the other stores. So, I just go with the flow and waste time trying to pick good ones. I’m not really very good at it</p>
<p>I hiked up to the top of the alley this afternoon and tried to take some pictures for our Flickr group. I have pictures showing the end of the paved alley and how the city barricade is completely overgrown. In some of the pictures you will see two large drain pipes coming down, but I cannot find the tops of the drains because they have been either buried in the dirt mound or buried in the overgrown ivy at the top. Supposedly this is the ‘storm drain’ system from the City but I cannot imagine that the City threw down some white PVC and connected it all with black electrical tape. There is a big piece missing out of the middle of the drain halfway down the hill.</p>
<p>The pictures show that the water flowing down the alley is going to hit that barricade of ivy and flow to the left. The neighbor has a nice retaining base and the dirt is below grade next to his base. It then flows right down the left of the giant mound.</p>
<p>Also note that the new dirt dumped there has actually risen above the side of the back shed and we are going to have to dig it out to get level with our base and put new siding on. </p>
<p>New photos on Flickr - plus a lovely shot of the condition of the roof!!</p>
<p>cb: Question about tankless water heater:</p>
<p>When DH and I moved into our current house, there was no hot water tank. When we wanted to take a shower, we needed to let the water run for awhile to heat up. It was very annoying, especially because the time required would vary considerably. After a few months, we had a hot water tank installed, and how we have hot water almost immediately when we turn on the shower.</p>
<p>I’m not suggesting you avoid this problem for your future buyer, but is this what a “tankless water heater” means?</p>
<p>I’m thinking about our master bath - I’d love to do some updates, but they require a babysitter. Any chance you’d like a short vacation in Seattle’s wine country? ;)</p>
<p>I have the same issue with HD’s lumber! What a waste. Mr B wanted to buy an entire fence worth of lumber there once… After a prolonged archaeological digging, we skedaddled to the local lumber yard and told the guys to load’er up! </p>
<p>Thank you all for your kind words and invitations to remodel Unfortunately, I’m just a project manager and designer. Don’t know how to swing a hammer or solder copper pipes! I would be worthless without the permanent crew and the subcontractors that I have gathered over the years. </p>
<p>Speaking of crew, yesterday I realized that we are just not moving along and my crew is not going to have time to do all of the plumbing with the thousands of other things that need to get done. So, I called up 3 plumbers out of Craigslist and did a little preliminary interview on the phone. Invited two of them over to bid the rough plumbing for just the kitchen and chose one guy who is starting on Monday with a reasonable price. In the end, I just need to pay a plumber to get it done, it’s too much time and stress on the team to try to get it done quickly.</p>
<p>So, we will see if he shows up, strips off his shirt and brings his 6 pak of beer I have a good feeling about this one.</p>
<p>If he does you should post a picture. 
</p>
<p>Handrail Debacle</p>
<p>Here’s another subcontractor nightmare. I was so excited about the new handrail and I was very impressed with how they came over and made the rail template on the staircase. Today they showed up to install and the handrail and welding were just perfect. BUT… the paint was peeling off every place that they banged it during installation. No problem… they brought paint to touch it up. But, the paint just kept peeling away and I was not happy and I pointed it out.</p>
<p>They then proceeded to go out to the truck and grab some Rustoleum spray - in Semi Gloss. The original paint was flat paint. They thought I wasn’t going to notice. Meanwhile the peeled paint edges were very visible. The paint turned into a nightmare. I guess they thought I was Suzy Homemaker or something and wasn’t going to notice. Then he repeated that “I was just going to sell the house anyway”. I wasn’t born yesterday… you have got to clean the aluminum to get the oil off it, then you have to prime really good and let it dry for days, THEN you spray on the flat rustoleum paint stuff.</p>
<p>I only paid half of what was owed and told them they need to come back on Monday with a full plan on how they are going to rectify the paint situation!!! </p>
<p>Regarding tankless water heaters…</p>
<p>There are several issues with tankless water heaters that you need to consider. It is an ‘on demand’ heater and does not start heating the water until you start drawing it down a pipe</p>
<p>1) If you live in an area with very cold ground water in the winter, there is a very large heating requirement to get it from, say, 40 degrees up to 102 degrees (standard shower temp). You need to size equipment really large(high BTU) to heat the water. Our ground water temp here is between 60-70 degrees all year so I can size the equipment smaller. </p>
<p>2) If the tankless water heater is located far away from what you are using, all of the cold water has to flow down the pipe before the hot water arrives. This is the same for a large tank or a tankless. So, where you locate it is very important</p>
<p>3) There are actually some low flow shower heads and sink faucets that don’t draw enough to ‘trigger’ the tankless water heater. So, if it happens a lot at a certain faucet or shower, turn something else on to create more draw on the system.</p>
<p>4) If you locate the tankless water heater more than 25-30ft from the main gas meter, you have to put in a special 1" gas line to get enough juice over to the equipment.</p>
<p>5) And some brands of tankless do not control temp fluctuations and flow very well. You have to make sure you buy one that has internal temp control.</p>
<p>I have loaded some new pictures of the complex metal bolting, hold downs and strapping we have done to the shed structure. Saturday the new roof goes on!!! I’m just frustrated because it took 5 full work days to build that stupid office structure and the tie in to the main house. That’s a lot of time and money!! I sure hope it is worth it</p>
<p>Also pictures of the new hand rail</p>
<p>The hand rail looks good. I’m sure it’s a pain to realize they are going to have to deal with the paint quality, but at least you know it will look good when the problem is resolved.</p>
<p>“Really true. Colorado’s nice, CB. (Hint, hint.)” - Too bad you don’t have CO contractors, CB. We could use your talents at our house too </p>
<p>Thanks for the info on the tankless hot water heater. Here in CT, where the ground water temp is probably more like 40 degrees, it took forever – well, maybe a good 10 minutes – to get the water temp to where it needed to be. It was really annoying.</p>
<p>The handrail looks nice in the photos you posted. The lines are very clean, modern and elegant. It also looks a hell of a lot safer than it did before, with that dinky chain. Good luck with the painting. </p>
<p>Basically, when the hand rail guy said, “You’re just going to sell the house anyway,” he was saying, I don’t care about my product and neither should you. That’s kinda outrageous. Guess you won’t be using him again or recommending him to anyone else, even if he fixes the paint to your satisfaction. </p>
<p>Just as an FYI, the handrail cost was $1,200. That was for about 32ft of rail. When we get the front done with new stucco, new paint, new siding and new windows it should all fit together nicely (who knows what century that will happen). I just needed the hand rail done because the top rail was rusted out of the bottom bolts, unsafe, and the long curving side rail was rusted and unstable. That left the posts with the weird chain as our only safety going up and down. Trying to hang onto the chain was a disaster waiting to happen. </p>
<p>Knowing my luck, we will finally get some paint on that rail and then it was get completely scratched up trying to get a stove and refrigerator up those stairs!!</p>
<p>BUDGET UPDATE</p>
<p>I am just bleeding money and I am very scared that I am going to run out of cash. At that point I will have to go out begging for a short term loan of cash and it’s not going to be pretty. The reason is that I already borrowed private funds for some of the purchase and then another private loan for the remodel money. If I calculated wrong and have to go back for more cash, it does not look good in my business. I’m just sharing the full reality of the situation, got into this position because this is the highest amount that I have ever paid for a house at purchase. And, it will probably end up being about the highest amount I have paid for renovation.</p>
<p>ORIGINAL ESTIMATE $86,500</p>
<p>Spent to Date $38,500 after 5 weeks. Although the main construction team has been on board for only 3 1/2 weeks. It took us 1 1/2 weeks just to clear the house</p>
<p>Plumbing and Electrical running high (again!!!). For some reason my electrician is not moving as fast as he has on previous jobs and I’m bleeding from the house rewire. To date $4,400 electrical and $1,500 plumbing (and I cannot figure out where all that plumbing cost went… although I have a garage full of ABS black stuff in every shape and size ready to go. There are still two major rooms that need wiring and plumbing… back office and bath and the main bath. This is my major concern for going over budget.</p>
<p>Office and 2nd bathroom - I did not really have the cost of building the office and 2nd bathroom in my original budget. This has probably added about $5,000 to original budget but I think it will be worth it in the future sale, adding approximately 200 square feet to the livable space. We still have an expensive issue to pour self-leveling cement across the floor of this room. </p>
<p>At this point I don’t even know how to estimate the regrading, drainage and landscape work that will be required for this project.</p>
<p>So, for now I am looking at a NEW BUDGET $95,000 and rising.</p>
<p>The railing looks great. Can you wait to fix the paint until later in the project to avoid scraping it, or do you think it would just be too difficult to get the guy to perform at that point?</p>
<p>Can you save some $$ by just stuccoing over the fireplace surround? I honestly think it would look great with just that and the existing brick.</p>