wow, glad you’re OK CB, and Marilyn! Crazy weather! Hope everything goes well today, CB, and that there’s no damage at the new house.
My day has been rather stressful. I was standing at bank when they opened at 9am. Wire was approved and submitted by 9:13am. Confirmation from escrow that they received it by 9:25am. But then… the wire that an investor submitted after hours on Friday did not come in. He called into his bank to discover that wires that are submitted after cutoff prior day are ‘batched’ up about 10am and then submitted for processing. Interesting… he submits his on Friday and it takes forever and I stand there at 9am and mine goes through immediately.
Either way, his wire did not arrive into escrow until 11:20am. There is now E Recording at San Diego County Recorder, so title company then scans docs into their system (after confirmation from escrow that funds are released) and then it gets submitted electronically to Recorder. I know the docs were submitted about 12 noon and it is supposed to only take an hour to get ‘confirmation’ back through system from Recorder. Of course, there is some kind of slowness today and we haven’t received confirmation back by 2pm yet.
I have the keys, they were given to me at 12pm. But we are being very careful about not doing any work on the property. So far we have loaded up trucks with stuff and unloaded into driveway over at the property. But, I am paying guys to stand around right now.
Recorded and legal!! Can proceed with the demolition! Our first priorities are:
Changing door knobs/exterior locks
Locking and securing the old sliding garage door for security
Boarding up windows that are not secure
Cleaning and scrubbing wood floors in living room
Putting down Ram Board floor protection in Living Room
and setting up the company’s National Headquarters (which consists of a card table and two folding chairs)
Building a dirt berm in SW corner of yard to re direct any rains
And… most important!!! pulling out old toilet in hall bathroom, changing angle valve and hose and putting in our clean project toilet. Always the biggest concern to me… we’ve got to have a restroom available 
Oh jeez. This is exactly what you were trying to avoid.
And taking good ore-demolition pictures for all of us to see!!!
Great…now the wild rumpus begins!
Point Loma porta potties!!
Glad to hear there will be a restroom available if I happen to walk up to the overlook 
.
Cleaning and scrubbing wood floors in living room>>>>>>>
Are you keeping those?
Were those the white oak floors??
Whee! Excited to see the new pics. Hope the rains aren’t causing too much of a problem.
I took a lot of pictures. But the bad news is that I just spent quite a long time transferring them off of my cell phone and onto my computer and now Flickr will not load them. I don’t know what the issue is, it keeps saying “Timed Out”. It may be that they are too high resolution and take too long to load into Flickr. I don’t know what is going wrong.
I’m so sorry, I had quite a lot of pictures. So many pictures that my cell phone went dead and I kept having to go out to the truck and try to recharge my phone.
Today was absolutely overwhelming. Going to share our major issue today…
As you know, the first priority is getting a clean new toilet installed in some bathroom somewhere so that we (well, really me) can use a restroom. First issue is that my lead carpenter gets under the house and discovers that the pipes are old school steel pipes. Then he goes to close the angle valve to old toilet and the steel pipe coming out of wall crumbles in his hand.
He goes outside to turn off the water coming into house. We have never been able to find the main water meter for this house. When we were doing inspections we went up and down the alley and crawled all over in the cul de sac below the house. Every house nearby has a water meter clearly marked with blue spray paint by the Water Company. Water meter for this house is nowhere to be found. So I asked Sellers to disclose where water meter is. They return an answer that is actually the gas meter located under one one of the back staircases. I realize that they have no idea so I just give up.
We found a shut off valve located on the South side of the yard off the bedroom wing. He goes to shut off the water at that valve and, of course, he sees that the line coming into the house that is just below the valve is cheap plastic pipe. As soon as he turns the shut off valve, the plastic pipe below the valve cracks and ruptures. We now have a huge geyser of water shooting up from right outside the house in the front yard. Thank goodness, it is not gushing inside the house.
Panic… panic everywhere… yelling to find the main water meter. I run to all the neighbors up in the cul de sac asking them if they know where the water meter is. They show me where their water meters are, but they have no idea where water meter is for this house. I am running all over looking for water meter and my lead is starting to panic, nowhere to be found.
Meanwhile, I call the Water Company and tell them we have an emergency and could they please tell me the location of water meter. No, they are not allowed to tell me because I am not supposed to touch the shut off valve at the meter, only City employees are allowed to shut off the main water line. They will send out a crew. Crew to arrive within 20 minutes to 2 hours. What!!! Are you kidding me?? You cannot tell me where my water meter is???
My lead is worth his weight in gold… he literally did a visual between the water meters at top of the street and water meters at bottom of street and started climbing down the dirt hillside. By sheer luck his foot hit a piece of concrete. The water meter was under 2 feet of dirt and debris and he found it and got the main line shut off. I have no idea how in the world the Water Company could have possibly been reading a meter for water usage at this house. He was able to get the water shut off.
Ten minutes later the City guy shows up and starts asking me where the water meter is. I have no idea… you are supposed to tell me!!! I explain that we found it by luck buried in the hillside and tell him that we had no choice but to turn the valve (even though we were not supposed to). I explain that I need permission to turn it back on and he finally agreed to let us turn it back on when needed.
And, unfortunately, my lead carpenter discovers that the main water line installed by previous owner at some point is cheap PVC plastic pipe running up the hillside to the house. This is totally unacceptable and we are going to have to dig a new line and run thick copper pipe. Not to mention that we need a pressure regulator really quick!
Just another day in paradise Still don’t have a running toilet and now we have no water to house for at least another day while he fixes this whole situation. Think I’m going to have to order a Porta Potti real quick
WOW! have a glass of wine, which is well deserved, and we will ALL raise a glass to your next project and our seeing the new pictures -when they are available!
in the mean time- get some sleep! and order the porta potti in the morning.
Thank goodness for portapotties. There is a reason they remain in business!
Incredible, Coralbrook! What a day - this certainly promises to be an exciting remodel. I agree, get some rest and hope for an uneventful but productive day tomorrow.
And on the bright side…at least you got to meet your new neighbors…
I think this one is going to be the most fun of all.
Not that what you went through was fun –
How were they billing for water when the water meter was buried? Make sure you don’t get stuck with the last two years of bills since they can finally read the meter now. I hope they read it yesterday and used that as your new number going forward.
I have complete confidence that cb will handle the water bill appropriately.
I have the same question about how in the world they are billing this house. I am assuming that it is one of the newer electronic reading meters.
Never a dull moment!
Your lead is a pearl among men, I must say.
Pictures are up!