Did the inspector come back and pass you??
Yes. It was very interesting. He pulled up in his car in the alley and asked one of the guys “Is the check ready? Just bring the check out and I’ll sign you off” So I quickly wrote his check ($150) and ran it down. But then he did get out of the car and come into basement and old garage and look at the holes drilled and the rods waiting. I have the magic form now that I need to give to the City inspector when he comes to do the rough framing inspection next week.
The other side of the new garage foundation is all formed and rebar will be set on Friday. We have to run some 3" drain lines up from the main sewer line that we replaced in the driveway area. The exact placement of these is critical because the drains from all the new bathrooms and the washer upstairs have to come down through the walls and then across the ceiling area of the garage. They have to run east/west and we do not want to cut through the ceiling joists. So, we did a ton of drain line analysis and measuring today to make sure that those drain lines are coming up out of the stem wall in a perfect location.
The arch, the gorgeous ceiling, the spectacular view…spectacular, CB. I have a hunch that the 4th of July fireworks will be much more subdued than the excitement and interest generated when this home hits the market.
It has been really exciting this week to FINALLY see the vision realized from the first day I walked into that living room. I have been waiting 3 months to see if the vision/design was what I imagined. It is even more beautiful than I had hoped.
Try to take some pictures of the fireworks for potential buyers!
Even if you don’t put them in the listing site, you can have them in the house where the brochures/sign in stuff is.
Could you lay a strand of holiday lights around the edge of the deck to create some definition so you and your guests can watch the display without worrying that you’re going to step off the edge and plummet to the ground below? I’m kind of nervous about heights, so maybe this is a silly suggestion, but I’d feel more relaxed being able to see the “edge” while enjoying the fireworks.
I could bring a string of lights. But anyone scared of the deck can sit inside the living room. View will be fine in living room. I am just going to have to do a lot of cleaning up!! Carpenter is a mess with his tools and everything. Just something I’ve learned to ignore after many years.
Maybe you should string up those (*)^$Q)#(^#%( county Zoning engineers instead of lights.
The arches and cove ceiling are really coming along nicely! And hooray for your carpenter. 
Flyer with today’s paper shows Pacific Sales is having a big sale including clearance items. Through July 6.
Today was another exciting and exhausting day!
The concrete guys finished forming up the new foundation for the western side of the new garage. Lots of concrete going to be poured there for a solid foundation under the staircase up from garage.
Then my carpenter got out and trenched up the new main sewer line and laid new plumbing into the foundation walls that will go up in the walls to support the washer and the new bathrooms.
Meanwhile we received a huge delivery of all the materials needed to build the internal staircase up to new 2nd story and the garage.
Then the concrete truck pulled up into the alley and a ton of guys worked on filling the retaining wall with concrete, setting the anchor bolts and hold down bolts and setting the fence posts for a future fence that will go around the back yard.
But the most exciting thing is that I hired a staircase expert who started building the internal staircase up to 2nd story. The engineer explained that this is going to be the ‘center of the universe’ and we need to build it first and lay everything around it. Today I had to make the critical decision on exactly where the 2nd floor will be (where feet will be standing) so that the walls of the staircase could get built. I had analyzed it carefully, but so far I only had a chance to shimmy up the steep mossy roof tiles and ‘guess’ where I wanted the floor to be.
Staircase guy literally got on a ladder and cut a giant hole on the roof! Then he set a ladder inside the old bathroom. Crawled up to the ceiling joist/attic area. He set a 2nd ladder on a set of thick plywood and measured that the 3rd rung on that ladder matched the building plans from my design. I was very worried that the design would be too low and I would have to fudge a couple of inches higher and hope noone noticed that the final roof height wasn’t exactly to plans. For that reason I was very careful to keep total height of house to 25’ above our highest grade, which is 5’ below the coastal area legal max height of 30’. I didn’t want any issues with neighbors calling the City or City inspector requiring an expensive ‘topographical survey’.
Moment of truth… drumroll… Nailed It!!! Our floor is set 11’ 4" above the 1st floor and it is perfect. I purposely cut the hole in the middle of the 2nd floor family room area so that I was seeing the views from inside the future family room, not just out on the deck. I was so excited… I made everyone on the project come up the ladder system and check out the views. All agreed, perfect height. By coincidence, my agent stopped by today and she got up on the ladder system and took some photos, but it was a cloudy day and the photos don’t do justice to the views.
I loaded some photos (that dang Dish thing is still sticking up pretty ugly)
Whose Dish is it?
I was wondering if you could find out if the are still using that Dish or not. There might be a slight chance they’ve gone to cable and just left the dish up there. Probably just wishful thinking but if that were the case you could offer to take it down and dispose of it for them;-)
This is fantastic! CB, I hope it’s all downhill from here!
“I hope it’s all downhill from here!”
Oh no, don’t say that! She’s on a steep slope! 
(Just kidding.)
CB, everything is looking fantastic!
It is actually a trend in the neighborhood to move to Direct TV (dish) because everyone wants to leave Cox Cable in the area. The dish is on the neighbor’s house on top of their roof and is kind of an eyesore in our new view, but nothing we can do about it.
Wow!! half our staircase got built today after a lot of math calculations. Staircase is nice and wide, but we don’t have enough length of run to have deep stair treads. Unfortunately we had to make the treads very close to the minimum 10". We needed 18 stairs to get up to the height of the 2nd floor and there just wasn’t enough room to try to get 19 stairs into the space to allow for deeper treads.
Another surprise today was that when I arrived about 10am after a morning at the bank… the guys had all pitched in and cleaned the living room and dining room thoroughly, knowing that we were going to have visitors this weekend. I was flabbergasted… all the tools and what not were removed.
Photos loaded
How exciting! The room looks so inviting, despite the temporary nature of many elements. Clearly, your respect for and appreciation of your crew have created a great deal of loyalty on their part – a symbiotic relationship, for sure!
Looks spectacular! You have some great guys working for you, what a surprise.