Yellowish walls…green carpet. Yuck. Thank goodness they tossed the blue ugly valances!!
ANOTHER POOP DISASTER
Somehow I thought that this house was going to have good bones and just be a cosmetic makeover, like all those other flippers on TV who seem to transform houses for 35k. But noooooo!!! We have a new version of poop disaster
So I want you all to envision this…there are 6 guys working in the house. On Friday it was 106 in the shade on the outside thermometer. Horrendous working conditions. It was so hot that my pants were wet, and my shoes were even wet from sweating so bad. Needless to say, we are all drinking bottles of water by the hour. Even pouring them over our head. That pool is looking very inviting but it wouldn’t be very professional if I just jumped into the pool fully clothed in front of all the workers and came out looking like a Sr Citizen wet t shirt contest:)
7 of us using same toilet and, without getting too graphic, these guys all seem to line up to smell up the bathroom right after lunch. I go in about 2 pm to throw water on my face and I can see we have a big problem. We carry a plunger first day to our projects. I go out to my lead and tell him he needs to plunge the toilet and get it working. All the guys try to get it unclogged. I’m pulling the ‘boss’ position and refusing to go in there.
They are insisting it’s not the toilet…it’s the main line. So I go and check and of course!!! Sewage is backing up into shower in other bathroom. So I have sewage backup, 106 degree heat, dead calm…no breeze coming through and it’s unusually humid.
So, I call my agent and ask “did you do a drain inspection when you inspected?” Yes, they said the old cast iron lines are root clogged and we are going to have to hydro jet. What??? You didn’t think to tell me this??? Do you realize you have 6 guys flushing toilets in here? This is now an emergency. I’m going to have to call someone to clear drain lines. She says No, I need to call sewer company that did inspection and have them do Hydrojet procedure. She calls me back and tells me they cannot come until Wednesday because of holiday.
So we are in a position of having to work through the weekend because the elderly couple has to move in as soon as possible but we have to drive to nearest fast food place to use toilet and we are drinking water like there’s no tomorrow!!!
BTW…yesterday was so awful at project that I announced “I need to go back to my computer and design kitchen layouts” and I promptly escaped:)
I’ve been in heat situations like that and drunk lots of water and not needed the bathroom because it all came out as sweat. Not ideal, but useful.
So sorry about the heat and bad sewer line, ick.
DIning room fixture is Gone. I’ve got a couple of the paint workers that seem to want all these old ugly light fixtures…so they are getting re purposed
But the only way I convinced Mom to get rid of the fixture was explaining that the glass covers were facing upwards and they would just collect dust and grime and be a cleaning nightmare. That convinced her
I agree on the “entire remodel”, everything crisp clean and nice or nothing at all (except maybe key infrastructure issues such as new HVAC, etc). There is a property on a very valuable lot in my neighborhood (El Mac 92107) where the heirs just painted up kitchen cabinets and re tiled bathrooms. It’s obvious they tried to spend some money fixing it up but they didn’t fix a key problem…poor layout and there is a strong mildew smell in house. They have been asking premium price because it is “move in ready”. They wasted their money…any buyer is going to tear it all out. It’s been on the market forever
How remiss of your agent not to tell you about the sewer issue. You should have known that before you started to do any work in the house.
Many people don’t understand the key issue of providing restrooms to workers while a house is torn apart. It’s the first thing on my mind as soon as we even start plannng a project:)
So true! We have a bath in the garage that Mr. opened and left for the workers to use while they were messing with the house. I also made sure that the workers were well-watered, and when I noticed that they liked Coke, I brought in that and some Sprite and some snacks. The cooler got empty every day! 
I perfectly understand how hard it is to do physical labor on a really scorching day! I spent two days on a 12 ft-high platform paining the trim and the vaulted ceilings in the master bed when the temperatures were in the high nineties, and I sweated out every drop of water I drank. That was not good.
CB you will appreciate this. Yesterday I walked upstairs and smelled a faint smell of natural gas (or shall I say the additives that give the gas this rotten egg smell. ) I summoned Mr. to confirm that I was not imagining things. He got alarmed because we do have a second furnace upstairs… and the smell got stronger closer to the furnace access door… which happens to be next to the second bath we did not use at all this summer other than me periodically flushing the toilet to make sure it was not dried out. Boom! I realized what happened. The p-traps in the sinks must have dried out because it was so darn hot lately! A couple of minutes of running water solved the smell issue. Yeah, the gas was natural… very natural sewer gas. :))
Bingo… how fortunate that you understood the value of the P traps and knew to get water down into the p traps to stop the sewer fumes from coming back up the pipe! Before I started this business I had no knowledge that p traps are used to create a water block to stop sewer gases from coming back up the sink drain. In fact, I was oblivious to the power of sewer gases!
Every time we pull out a toilet or a sink or anything, it leaves the drain pipes exposed into the house. Oh boy!!! it immediately starts to stink. We have to run around and plug all the open pipes with wadded up plastic bags or anything on hand. I’m always worried that those wadded up plastic bags will fall down into the main drain line, but they never do.
I’ve always assumed you keep water in the traps to keep insects from climbing up into the tub.
Shower/tub traps will do that as well. Our guest bathroom gets used occasionally as a powder room when we are upstairs, but once we had the same problem…nobody had run the shower in about 6 months.
Progress
All of the ceilings have been scraped and mudded smooth
Bedrooms and main bathrooms have been painted (ceilings, walls, baseboard, closets, trim… all the same color!) I hope they are going to look OK with bright white new windows
The dropped ceiling in entry area has been torn out and we are going to vault the entry area. Need to move some gas and water lines and a couple of wires to get it done
Kitchen wall removed and it is braced up waiting for the giant beam (which, of course, is now on back order)
Most windows and sliding doors have been removed so we can get them into the dumpster before it leaves
More carpet and linoleum getting removed
Having a hard time scraping thick original flooring out of family room area. Normally we would just install the new flooring over it, but it is not evenly installed across the floor and the glue stuff smells! Don’t want to leave anything in the house that smells, even if it is going to be covered up
The heat has broken, we are back to cloudy days and lower temperatures. That’s the good news. Unfortunately we STILL DO NOT HAVE A FUNCTIONING TOILET!!! This is my worst nightmare. The bathroom is starting to smell up the whole house.
And, this weekend, my lead’s big Plumbing Box (with about $200 worth of tools in it) went missing because the other painting crew forgot to lock up the garage correctly. So, I have my team mad and accusing the other painting team (who we do not know) of stealing/borrowing the plumbing box. I’m trying to mediate. I didn’t know whether to tell the owner or not but decided that I had to. I told him these things happen but I wanted to explain why we were not going to allow his painting team to have access to the securely locked garage because tools are missing. He volunteered to pay for what went missing. Unfortunately we don’t really know because it was his ‘catchall’ box. He will know when he goes to grab a big wrench or something and realizes it was in the box.
I loaded up some pictures with descriptions into the Flickr photo group.
Did they test for asbestos before scraping the popcorn off the ceilings?
There is a separate painting crew working on the ceilings. I didn’t hire them, the owner did. So, I have no idea what they did. It looks to me like they just did a minimal scrape and then troweled on drywall mud to smooth it out. But, it is all encapsulated and in big hefty bags, so I know there is no remaining dust or debris in the house from the ceilings
CB! I know you think that “off white” paint looks awful…but really…it’s fine.
The pink bathroom tile is FAR worse!
Yes, the pink tile is awful. Paint is OK, not awful. Glad you won the battle over the paint in the living room!
I think the problem is the complete lack of contrast and visual interest. Painting the moldings the same shade and sheen of off-white is just boring! And off-white ceilings! Ugh.
And it looks cheap. I would expect a paint job like this in a $500/month apartment after a bad tenant moved out, not a million dollar house. I imagine the owner went with this scheme because it was the cheapest by a lot, well, you get what you pay for.
I don’t like spraying either. I think the texture a roller adds makes a big difference, and hides a lot of flaws.
Agree about the ceilings. In a box-like room, it would have made sense to paint the ceiling a different shade. It is not too late to repaint the mouldings… bright white will look really good. Tile… hope they keep it hidden behind a curtain!