I loved loved that house on Del Monte. That was a year’s worth of work and I maxed out every credit card and had to borrow money from everyone I knew! It was very scary. Sleepless nights. My tax return had a giant ZERO as income that year.
Sold for $1.8 million and now worth at least $2.8 million. Smart buyer has gained $1 million in equity since early 2017
For this project we added 150 sq ft to existing primary bedroom and bath. Configured larger bath and a large walk-in closet. Bathroom and closet are underneath the new 2nd story so the ceiling is getting major soundproofing.
Shower is starting to get tiled and we used the full Schluter orange waterproofing product and the Building inspector was very impressed. He said the company came in to do a presentation to all the inspectors and system has a lifetime guarantee. I just laughed because who is every going to have the same tile in their shower for a whole lifetime??? The tile / grout will get bad before the waterproofing fails. And as soon as tile is pulled off the walls, the warranty is voided.
Isolation clips on the ceiling joists with resilient channel clipped in. This part decouples drywall from ceiling joist and manages ‘impact noise’. Then one layer 5/8 fire drywall, a layer of mass vinyl and second layer of 5/8 drywall. Acoustic putty around every opening and then acoustic caulk around perimeter and in every join of drywall. That dampens acoustic noise. After all that effort, we’d better not hear anything upstairs.
Looks like this
Built 2 1/2 car garage with electric car charger and it will be fully insulated and drywalled.
Exterior stairs with covered landing to new 1 bedroom apartment with laundry.
The sloped flat roofs (to match main house) just got roofed with some fancy membrane stuff. Once again Building inspector very impressed. Another lifetime warranty (I don’t believe that one). It’s a thick rubber material that lays down over whole roof and is melted together. Very expensive but my roofer insisted it was what we had to do. Looks hilarious from 2nd story window down to new primary bedroom roof compared to the bumpy tar gravel on the rest of the house
Sounds like you are doing a great project
“who is every going to have the same tile in their shower for a whole lifetime?”
Well I’d like to (even though it is just plain white tile)- 30 years so far in the master bathroom. Alas, the grout and the shower pan a getting yukky.
I love your posts on here, @coralbrook!
All three of our showers have original (1966) tile! Previous owners added a 4th shower and it only lasted 20 years before the backer board failed.
I love that house so much. I felt at home there and looked the photos with longing many times. Lucky, lucky people who own that place.
We are finally getting to the fun part that you all are interested in. We are closing up the walls downstairs and starting the drywall and painting. And, I have the tile guy doing the primary bathroom in the midst of the big mess
We have been on a temp power pole that took months to get SDGE to hook up. I’m now desperately trying to get off the temp power pole so as soon as we passed the exterior inspection, we are madly putting siding up one side of the wall to get the panel, big pole and top on roof. I cannot call SDGE to hook up the new 200 amp power until we get a ‘rough’ inspection of the panel. Then I can try to get on their schedule sometime in my lifetime.
Here are some pictures of the drywalled interior of primary bedroom, bath, walk in closet and big garage.
Haha, recognize this tile??? Same tile I did in my personal home remodel, but this owner took it to the max. $60/sq ft !!!
I am so sorry it has been 5 months since I updated. We actually finished this build end of May but I didn’t really take any pictures. I think I kept going ‘oh, don’t have any pictures to load’
In the end we gutted primary bedroom and bath, added 150 square feet and added a new attached 2 1/2 car garage and 1 bedroom apartment over garage. total 1650 sq ft addition and remodel of existing bed/bath. They went upscale for their bathroom and closet and we installed three sets of expensive wood French doors in their house.
I think the total cost in the end was $350,00 which doesn’t include everything we renovated or repaired in their main house while we were there. The infamous ‘Oh, while you are here, we need xxxxx’
That comes down to about $215/sq ft which isn’t bad for new construction from the ground up. But the whole time I was freaking out because materials are running about 10 to 20% higher than I estimated and I had to give all my guys a raise because of inflation and to keep them happy. Honestly, all the clients really love my crew. They are getting spoiled now with clients buying them Gatorades and snacks every week.
I have a lot of clients that ask ‘oh, I’d like to buy the guys Beer on Friday afternoon’. They won’t drink it because they are all worried about drinking and driving, they don’t really ‘hang out’ after work. They would just take it home. It’s much nicer to go to Costco or somewhere and bring them the giant box of individual chips and cookies and a big case of Gatorade or sodas. Just letting you all know what they really appreciate.
The owners kept telling me they really liked the crew. They trusted the crew anywhere in their home. They loved the quality of the work. I told them I wish they would tell them directly. So those owners would walk out about once a week with a case of Topo Chico soda and gather the guys and tell them how great they were doing and point out specific things they liked. It was wonderful, really raised the morale on a tough job that had a lot of challenges (Hello San Diego Gas and Electric!!!).
These owners were by far my favorite clients ever. So nice and great sense of humor. I worked hard with the wife on all her design choices. She was overwhelmed but we got through it. In the end we are good friends now.
We went back in today to the upstairs apartment to install a missing piece of backsplash. It took me two months trying to get the backsplash. The young newlyweds (daughter of owner) love their place and it’s decorated so cute. I remembered to take pictures!
Note the blower on the stairs desperately trying to dry the waterproof coating so we can get back to work on 2nd floor!
These are during construction.
Only picture I can find of completed bedroom with barn door to bathroom
And walk in closet we were building out
And then they wanted a ton of cabinets and shelves in their big garage
Turn right after the pantry and there’s a hallway with washer/dryer and storage to the bathroom. Bathroom has that same turquoise subway that I like, owner’s choice.
If you zoom in a bit (pardon that shower glass not clean, they had just taken a shower) you can see really pretty marble inset tile
Dramatic wall colors. They went through a bunch of dark green samples and I finally recommended matching the green color on the IKEA kitchen island. It was a perfect color
More photos
The dresser in living room is on its way out. She’s going to tile inside the faux fireplace and put candles
Beautiful transformation @coralbrook ! Well done.
I hear you about chips and Gatorade. We always provide snacks for our contractors. I put out a basket of goodies and a cooler full of cold drinks when they start. At the end of the day, I check to see what was eaten/drank the most, and buy more of that. The deck crew loved Gatorade. The roofers liked Coke, so they got more of their favorites. 
Always plenty of water. And some healthy options like apples and clementines.
Love that paint color with all the other details!
I buy our water for the crew. I consider it mandatory, along with the Porta Pottie and hand washing. We bring our own mini fridge and small microwave to each project for their lunches. Both are absolutely disgusting inside. I refuse to clean it for them🤣
If someone gets in deep trouble ( miss work without any warning) they are assigned to clean the fridge and microwave
