Flip This House Grandma House

Parent Cafe
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I’ve loaded some more pictures of some progress.

Every day I think we are finally done with fixing drywall, mudding, taping and painting. Then my lead carpenter busts out another window and somehow manages to damage the stucco outside or damage some drywall inside. This is because some of the big windows and sliding doors have to be taken out completely, we cannot retrofit them into the existing frames.

But, the absolutely most annoying thing on earth is the Electrician. He knows his scope of work. But, he just does things in his own order, no matter how many times you tell him that we cannot have any more holes in the wall. He just gets into some part of the house and busts open holes to pull wire, without any warning. You walk in and there’s a brand new hole somewhere that has to be patched, mudded and repainted. Sometimes you have to spend a day trying to match the texture on the rest of the ceiling or wall. Mostly, this is because he gets to a bathroom to install the new bath exhaust fan and finds that the existing wiring is not working or not beefy enough for the new light/fan/heat combo that the owner wants, etc.

But!!! the worst happened yesterday. For weeks he keeps saying that he has to install a brand new sub panel to support the circuits required for the kitchen. The old kitchen didn’t have enough circuits for all the appliances that were running. Especially because we are going to have a 220 electric oven and 220 electric stove/downdraft combo. Of course these things were in the kitchen before, but prior code allowed multiple heavy appliances on the same circuit. Now they have to be separated out. Old panel didn’t even have enough juice or circuits.

We also know that there is an old main panel on the house that the owner wants to replace. But, we cannot replace the main panel because owner is going to install solar in the future and that solar company will pull a permit for the install and new main panel. So, this means we cannot mess with the old main panel on the ou tside of the house because solar company needs to mess with it, and it will possibly be inspected. There is a sub panel inside the house that he is replacing to code.

Of course… does he do that last week when he finally finished rewiring the whole kitchen and family room area? No… he announces it’s too hot to go into attic and he needs to come early sometime next week. Fast forward to next week and it’s now Thursday. Just yesterday, after we did everything to finish up laundry and hall area he gets into the hall closet and busts out all the drywall to replace the sub panel. He doesn’t just cut out the thick plaster in the wall, he manages to mangle all the plaster in a haphazard way of the closet ceiling. This is going to take days to repair all the plaster/drywall. What a mess… two steps forward and one step back.

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OMG, Cb. When my Mr. plays Electrician, I pull out my handy plastic tub filled with drywall patching tools and supplies. Sigh. Then it is a trek to the paint store to find some matching paint…

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CB…have to say…I wondered why wall painting happened first…and not last. Or was this just in areas where you aren’t doing significant work…like the bathrooms (where you should be doing more) and bedrooms?

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The owner hired a painting crew before the project started. It all started with the issue of having to scrape the ceilings and remove wallpaper. I advised him that it would be more efficient if he hired experts in this area because my crew does not have a ton of experience and we don’t have good tools (giant steamer, etc) to remove wallpaper. My last experience was it took days and days to remove from a couple of rooms. So, he hired a crew.

Without my knowledge, they were hired to paint ‘interior of house’. This is how they showed up one day with the supposed ‘white’ paint that the owner specified for the entire interior and started going to town painting every single thing with the dingy yellow color (Cottage White). Owner gave him 2 weeks to get the job done. So, we have been working around these poor guys trying to get their job done. It’s especially contentious because I immediately barfed over the ‘paint everything same color’ theory and made them go out and get White Semi Gloss for all the trim and doors , after I carefully wasted a bunch of time painting up samples of trim in different color schemes to convince them that trim should not be arbitrarily painted the same color as all the walls. Owners took one look and said White Trim please.

This is the group who ‘borrowed’ the plumbing box out of the locked garage.

The objective was to get everything painted up before the flooring went in so that we were not trying to paint ceilings over brand new floors. Flooring is starting to go in this weekend and I am dealing with holes getting punched all over the place that we have to get patched up and sanded before floors go in. If it doesn’t get done, we will just have to cover floors carefully to finish the job.

Meanwhile, we ended up having to remove all the ceilings and walls from the dining room and kitchen area because the final design of cabinetry runs the entire length of the back wall. This meant we had to rewire everywhere in the area so we just gave up and pulled off all the old plaster. Now we have a big drywall job and I had to hire the painting team to do the drywall install and texture. I have noticed over the last few weeks that they flunk at painting skills but they are excellent at drywall skills. I thought it would speed up getting ready for cabinet install. It was a great idea until they suddenly dissappeared the last 4 days and haven’t finished their drywall job. I finally called and gently reminded him there would be no future work from me (not that I am a big player, but he doesn’t know that) if they didn’t get back in and finish this job by Thursday night.

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A New Poop Disaster

Well, the old cast iron sewer line backed up again today. This time it wasn’t a clogged toilet, the guys were just trying to empty a bucket of water down the big laundry sink. Toilet backs up and it backs up into the shower again. This is only 2 weeks after the owner paid for someone to come do a full hydrojet on the main sewer line. Same company that they paid to do a camera inspection during home inspection. I am livid because my lead told me he felt they didn’t do a thorough job.

I called the owner directly, no answer. I call the main phone line and she promises she will get someone out and will call me back. I wait an hour and the owner calls back and tells me that they are too busy and cannot come until next week. And, it’s our fault because he was sure it was construction debris and the house is vacant and water wasn’t running through the lines consistently. Really??? You’re telling me that people cannot take a 2 week vacation?

I have 8 guys working tomorrow…we need a working toilet!!!

Do not ever deal with Sewer Pros…I’m just throwing it out on the Internet because Customer Service and responding is horrible for that company. I turned around and called Rescue Rooter and they are going to be out 8am tomorrow.

But that leads me to the Poop Disaster. We have one of the owner’s new fancy toilets installed in the hall bathroom. I don’t want ANYONE using it. I wrapped seat shut with bright orange tape and wrote Do Not Use on it. Turned off the angle valve.

OK…so, of course, as soon as this female brain realizes there is no functioning toilet available my bladder starts to explode. It’s a commonly recognized natural phenomena:). 10 min earlier I was just fine. I decide that I am going to have to use Hall bathroom. Unfortunately all the doors are off because we are starting to install flooring. The bathroom is wide open to the whole house. So out to garage and I select a door and try to get inside the bathroom and wedge the door in somehow.

I take tape off, open top and someone has pooped into the empty toilet!!! What??? And then they obviously couldn’t get it to flush because angle valve for water line is closed. so they just close the lid, replace tape and pretend like nothing happened. What a freaking mess.

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Back to why are holes getting punched into walls after painting. My electrician is unrealistic about how long things take to get done. The owner has added a huge amount of extra work above the couple of days work in original plan. And, I’m at the mercy of when he is available. Unfortunately we are running way ahead of him and he’s still trying to rewire

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Holy crap!

We had what we call the $500 poop incident. Our house is empty and all sorts of stuff is going on. 3 working toilets inside, free to all. 1 non-working toilet in a nasty old garage, that we warned people not to use. Still, I didn’t realize the apparent caste divisions between the inside painters and the outside painters because the outside painters felt like they couldn’t come inside the house for any reason. The poop left in the outside toilet swirled around for a week before anyone noticed.

So, we had the toilet removed. And someone peed down the pipe beneath it. They took the cap off to do it. Yikes! I would never have imagined such a thing.

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@greenwitch

That is one of the worst stories ever!!! I’ve found that it is always a giant mis communication. And it’s always the other guys that did it ( because there are always multiple teams)

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It would have been a heck of a lot easier to just find a damn bush.

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Yikes on these stories. After 20 years, the vanity shown (for now) in my profile has gone to the county landfill. Good riddance. I’ve told the crew doing the work that they are free to use the hall bath while they are here, and was fretting last night that we seem to be going through TP at an alarming rate since the work started. After cb’s posts, I’ve decided to consider that a blessing and let it go.

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Oh boy poop stories. I really liked that the siding crew brought in a honeybucket. Of course I let them use the powder room, but they were very shy and did not use it. The gorilla troop that did the structural work on the inside left me a poop present in a toilet that barely worked. Thank goodness I discovered it before it got much worse! After that, I gave their boss an earful, and they were banned from using the indoor toilets, just the garage one (that bathroom has sink with hot water, so it was not the end of the world for them).

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Gosh. My contractor brings a porta potty to job sites.

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I always tell people working on the house that they are welcome to come inside and use the bathroom, but few of them do.

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One year we were having major work done on an addition, so the crew did not have access to any bathrooms while we were out of the house, so they had a porta potty in the driveway. Through late December. At one point I put pine roping and ornaments on it.

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I’d rather not pay for a honeybucket when the workers can use a regular toilet without crapping up the place. :slight_smile:

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My problem is that they drop the porta potty somewhere in the hottest part of the yard. They immediately turn into poop saunas. I consider it cruel and inhumane punishment…especially when I have to hold my nose and rush in there.

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We had a guy working on repairing a floor recently, his start had been delayed by illness. When he did show up, he left about every hour or two to drive to his house to use the bathroom :open_mouth:
I appreciated his thoughtfulness, but was not sure I wanted his germs in my house at all!

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PROGRESS

Sorry it has been awhile reporting on the project. This weekend was a whirlwind of activity and we have turned the corner from a disaster zone. Kitchen cabinets, paint and patch touchup and flooring install were all going on over the last 3 days.

A lot of this came as an unpleasant surprise. As you know, the owners decided to purchase cabinets at a retail store. This store will not just sell the cabinets, you have to pay for their installation. Oh well, I figured everything would go faster if the cabinets got installed by a separate team. I had a suspicion that the cabinets were the Chinese Ready to Assemble type of cabinets.

These cabinets are made well, out of real wood and drawer joints. BUT, there are a bunch of limitations that drive me crazy. First, they only have a limited selection of sizes and shapes. So, you have a spend a lot of time modifying the cabinets for things such as an under cabinet microwave, dishwasher returns, etc. But the thing that I don’t like most is that they are a ‘face frame’ design. This is standard for lower cost cabinets. But the issue is you lose a lot of space. Let’s say a cabinet is 30" wide. Well, the face frame sticks out a 1/2 inch on each side that butts up to the next cabinet. So, now you are down to really a 29" wide cabinet. Then subtract 1/2" for each side panel of the cabinet and now you are down to a 28" wide cabinet. But the worst part of it is that there is another 1" lost for the inside frame and then they install big sliders on the side and, by the time it is all said and done, you have about a 26" drawer available for actual storage. Lots of wasted space in the design.

So… when we purchased the store promised they could start installation on Friday, September 29. OK, we get everything ready. 10am comes and we get a call that installation team arriving between 12 and 2pm. OK, 2:30 comes and no one. Finally the store calls at 3pm and says “On their way”. At this point I realize I have lost all control over the scheduling, quality and work of this installation team.

They show up at 4pm. They have one small pickup just crammed with the ready to assemble boxes all over the place. But, out pours 3 guys and 2 ladies. They just start going to town. Our working hours are 8am to 4pm. At this point my crew is leaving and I’m just standing there. It becomes obvious that these guys are going to work all night with no warning to me whatsoever. I have no idea how they manage this type of scheduling with homeowners sitting in a house.

Then I try to get a straight answer out of this subcontractor on what their working schedule is. “Ohh, we are going to work tonight and then we will work all weekend to get it done”. I’m just sitting there trying to figure out whether I should trust workers I have never met before with someone else’s house and the keys. Also, are they going to lock up properly because we have a lot of expensive tools locked in that house???

So, I have to stay because I have a responsibility to my clients. Of course, about 5pm the guy comes up to me and starts showing me that the outlet for the oven is off by 6" and we need to move the outlet. And, he cannot continue to work unless we move that outlet. Had to call my poor lead to come back and move an outlet 6" in the middle of Friday evening horrid traffic. And then my lead decided he needed to stay with me to make sure that there were not any other issues. Finally, at 7pm they realized there was no lighting in the kitchen and they were going to have to stop because it was getting dark.

Now it turns out that they are going to work all weekend. I cannot get any specific answers on start or stop times. So, back to the project at 8am to open up the house and supervise. There are always a million little decisions I have to make during kitchen install like where to set the shelves, where to set the pull outs, which ways I want the upper doors to open, etc. Of course, at 10am the boss discovers that the kitchen sink cleanout is sticking out right where the bottom of their cabinet needs to be. I tell him to just leave the cabinet, we will install it ourselves because we cannot move the cleanout today. He starts having a fit telling me that he has to install the cabinet, even though there are no adjoining cabinets whatsoever (there’s a dishwasher to right and trash compactor to left). He makes me call my lead out on Saturday to open up the walls and move the plumbing. Oh boy, my lead carpenter was not happy about this. I had promised him Saturday off and he was in the middle of something. But, bless his heart… he dropped everything, ran to Home Depot and showed up with the parts to fix it. This also involved an emergency when he discovered he was missing something he needed and I had to run to Home Depot for the inevitable missing plumbing part.

Meanwhile, all the flooring got installed during this chaos. But, because I have been working with my flooring subcontractor for over 8 years, I had told them where the key was for access to the house.

So, we went from nothing on Friday afternoon to an entire kitchen installed and all flooring installed over the weekend.

I loaded lots of pictures

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Those cabinets are so dark!

When they install the flooring, when it goes through a doorway I can see they are undercutting the door molding. Are they also undercutting the door frame? Or do they just work around it?

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I liked seeing that they hire women for installation. I rarely see that when I go to hire someone to do work on my house.