wow, I’m so sorry. what a needless hassle.
The sewer fix didn’t take long. My carpenter was out there shoveling the trench before the concrete truck was even at the end of the alley. Thank goodness he decided to double check the entire line.
The aggravation is having to rebuild walls for dumbwaiter error. It was just a Murphy’s Law combination of original dumbwaiter wall foundation getting poured slightly wrong, wrong measurements on plans and me changing the direction I wanted the motor mounted inside the shaft. We had to form and pour an extra 12" to existing slab today and tie it all in with drilled and epoxied rebar dowels. Luckily we found the issue before the concrete showed up so we could take advantage of the pour
I agonized a long time about dumbwaiter shaft. The framing team kept trying to come up with ways to try to keep the walls as they were. But i insisted on analyzing from the top down.
On top floor it would have shrunk master bedroom 7" in length. That 7" was at foot of bed to balcony. I felt it was going to get way too tight in bedroom. It would have stolen 7" from master bath and compromised area in front of toilet room door
On first floor we would’ve had to shrink width of laundry room. After analysis that was going to be OK because a washer and dryer would still fit. But it became a real mess in the jack and jill bathrooms. One bathroom would have to go from 36" vanity to 30" vanity. Doable, but then bathrooms would not be equal.
In the end i made the decision to spend $400-500 to fix the issue at the bottom of the shaft. I tried to analyze as much as possible but I could easily have missed something critical about doors or windows or who knows upstairs
I loaded some photos of stuff that really isn’t interesting, but costs a lot of money 
I kind of fell apart in the afternoon and forgot to take pictures as all the chaos was happening.
The entire day was spent going backwards. On top of the issues discovered yesterday and the day before… two more issues came up today.
One of them is easily fixable (plumbing venting), the other was just mind numbing. Let’s just say that the foundation guys poured the staircase foundation too high and we cannot fit a door height in there. Too hard to describe. I spent another morning crawling around out in the sun trying to take critical measurements and coming up with alternatives on how to fix the issue.
All the guys are going to work on Saturday to try to catch us up to having our garage framing completed and ceiling joists installed.
"foundation guys poured the staircase foundation too high and we cannot fit a door height in there. "
omg…
well, that is something THEY have to fix, NOT you!
Dont make it easy on them- they HAVE to tear it out and re-pour- at their expense!
Not totally their fault. They had a long discussion with me about how the grade on the west side of the garage is high and they needed to pour up to that grade height. I kept asking them why we couldn’t just have a stem wall high on the west side only and keep the remainder at garage floor level. A bunch of gobbly gook about forming, elevations, etc. that I did not understand. I should have over analyzed everything in the area. The issue is that the ceiling joists are hanging down 14" (which is very unusual… joists are usually not that deep) and causing ceiling to drop really low.
They were pouring the garage floor slab today and were definitely very aware of the issue when we found it. They scrambled around and helped work on the alternatives.
One of the alternatives was to have to cut out all the concrete but we would have compromised all of the hold downs and anchor bolts that are set into that foundation and had to start all over.
I loaded some photos and I will load future photos with the solution that the framer and I came up with. My only hope is that when we get this foundation framing exactly right, everything upstairs will go smooth and fast!
Huge learning experience… not sure I really wanted this learning experience:) But, if anyone is going to build a house I am now the armchair peanut gallery expert on building codes, structural framing, you name it!!
Any other flipper would have just handed the plans to a General Contractor and walked away washing their hands of the whole thing until it was time to stick in some tile and paint.
AGENT VISIT
There was a little glimmer of hope today. The agents who sold the house to me (who keep fishing for the listing) stopped by for a tour today. I was able to get them up the staircase to see the views, show them the big new deck and talk about some of the features. They are all over the dumbwaiter… they love it and think it is definitely worth the expense for buyers.
They kept asking me what I was going to do with the basement. I was honest and said that I will probably run out of money and not be able to do a really nice finished basement. They think that will be OK when I go to sell the house. We will see.
Comparable
There is another comparable property that went into escrow this week. I personally feel that this property is not as desirable, but slightly superior location (in the hot pocket)
1431 Froude
4/3 2240 sq ft
It has a really small lot, no back yard
House is right up on the street
One car garage (usually the kiss of death)
Views only from 2nd story bedroom or rooftop deck
Excellent new condition
Listed at $1,675,000 and went into escrow in 3 weeks
@coralbrook, that comp sounds great. You’re going to hit the jackpot on this one!
That said, if I ever needed convincing that flipping is not for me, this thread has surely convinced me.
That garage floor slab is pretty!
Sure do hope you only had steps forward today!
Today I had 3 smart contractors, framers and engineers come over. Bottom line is i have made the decision to tear out 5.5 ft x 3.5 ft by 14" deep of the raised concrete foundation in staircase area. And we have to jackhammer out the step and landing that was poured inside garage area just 2 days ago.
I have negotiated that a portion of the cost will be reduced from future cost of driveway work that the concrete guys are responsible for.
Spent most of the afternoon calling every concrete cutter in San Diego, trying to explain the issue and begging if they can cut out asap. Got one guy coming on Monday. He couldn’t give me a quote over phone because he needed to see the project. At this point I just need to go with whomever will show up with the fancy saw cutter as soon as possible. This guy was extremely knowledgeable and talked through several alternatives.
This is going to cost about 2 days of work, more hauling to the dump and hold us up with finishing garage walls. Luckily, the guys went right at it with our jackhammer the minute I made the decision and already have landing and step torn out
I won’t go into gory details but it was the right decision. We had 2 other alternatives we could have done. But they would have potentially compromised structural and most definitely compromised garage space and minimum code for garage width. Have to do the right thing even though buyers will never notice.
Don’t have an exact cost of mistake yet. Need to see how much concrete cutting is going to cost. We have our own huge concrete cutter but it only goes down 4"
I will say that my carpenter kept his nose down and finished all the copper water line plumbing for powder room and kitchen during the midst of all the chaos. I guess that could be considered a step forward!
He is a gem.
Yes, he is a gem. I spent some time taking him down to garage area and explaining the whole issue to him. He analyzed it but told me the decision was up to me. He did not let himself get caught up in hours of analyzing and second guessing and researching like I did and like the framing lead did. The framing lead got nothing done over the last couple of days because we were in such flux on what to do next. My carpenter just went back up to kitchen and kept working and stayed out of the whole mess. Lucky him
We made great progress yesterday going backwards. The garage step/landing has been jackhammered out and walls are down. These steps are necessary so that the concrete cutter can get into the raised foundation area in the staircase and cut down 14" to get that area back down to the garage floor elevation. Bottom line, raising the foundation along the west side of the garage created a situation where we could not even get a door set at standard height. There was only about 75" between top of step and entry into staircase because the ceiling joists needed to go across the entire garage for structural reasons. Too hard to explain.
I found a guy with a really big concrete saw and he is coming Monday morning to cut it out. We will see how much that costs
I loaded a couple of photos
I have to admit that when you start talking about shear walls and strapping and more technical structural things, my eyes glaze over. Not that it isn’t interesting, but I don’t understand it, and I’m not motivated to do the necessary research. My takeaway is that it takes a LOT more building knowledge to remodel houses than I ever imagined! My hat’s off to you! Maybe it’s part of being in an earthquake zone?
It’s all about having a structural engineer that is 1) known around town for being overly conservative and cautious (his liability is on the line) and 2) is scared to death of the 1937 house that was built without today’s structural requirements. My opinion is … Hey this house has been standing solid for over 80 years!! But, I know that it is difficult to tie old to new together so we have ended up with posts/beams/versa lam/shear walls/ expensive metal straps all over the freaking place. It is beyond comprehension.
For example, we have a set of 8 x 8 posts carrying a 7x14 versalam engineered beam that were set into new footings in the middle of the old garage. Each of these posts can carry a 30,000 lb load. So, just those two posts/beam alone can hold a 60,000 load (I probably have the actual load wrong, not my specialty). Really??? and that’s just one of the sets of posts/shear walls/beams that we have put into this house so far on the bottom floor.
^ thats because you went up, and that couldnt be done safely with the existing sheer walls designed 80 years ago for a 2 story structure.
Be glad you didnt have to tear it all down and start over…