An induction cooktop would be just fine for a nice condo, especially the one where the owner does not cook! 
Besides, there are really no huge savings if the only gas appliances are the stove an dryer. Savings come where the whole house heat and hot water are involved… I suspect there is not a whole lot of need for whole house heat in her area, so electric everything would be just fine, and besides, you are not switching her hot water and heat to gas anyway.
The homeowner doesn’t pay for regular homeowner insurance, the HOA pays the bldg insurance and it’s included in the monthly HOA fee. Regarding home insurance… I’ve never had an agent even ask what kind of heating or cooking source. And I have insured a lot of homes over the last 10 years. Maybe because earthquake protection is not included in home insurance here in CA. Homeowners have to purchase it separately and most people don’t insure for earthquakes.
I don’t get yelp reviews:). I don’t have any kind of company presence on the Internet. I don’t even solicit projects. They just seem to come to me through word of month. There was a couple of months I was worried earlier this year but I got lucky. Usually, I give owners 2 or 3 references to call but I don’t think they ever call. I guess if I had a project go south I wouldn’t quite leave that one as a reference?
This house has the oddest heating source I’ve ever seen. There are individually controlled 240v wall heaters in each room. Real eyesores. They are the size of a large central heat floor register. Owner wanted AC installed. HOA denied request and there is absolutely no ducting in the house anyway.
"The homeowner doesn’t pay for regular homeowner insurance, the HOA pays the bldg insurance and it’s included in the monthly HOA fee. "
Yup. Our condo HOA would not have been able to secure earthquake insurance on the structure if it was a gas-heated building. The coverage is pretty cheap, surprisingly. Every insurance co required full disclosure regarding heat sources for us to get a regular insurance policy on our house. Maybe it is WA-specific.
I would use those circuits for the odd heaters to get in-floor radiant heat going.
We will be doing radiant floor heating in the master bathroom (that has no natural light!!) but we are not touching the wall heaters, except to move one from old den location to new den location
The town of Brookline, MA has just banned installation of gas and oil pies any new construction, because they think they can be carbon neutral by 2050.
It’s dumb because the vast majority of our electricity comes from NG power plants, do it is just moving the problem, and with generation losses, transmission losses, and conversion to heat losses, it is probably more polluting to switch to electric.
It still has to be approved be the state attorney general, so it may not ever be implemented.
My DD’s first home was new construction and had in wall electric heaters, no natural gas piped to the house though it was in the street. Weird, it must be significantly cheaper to avoid ductwork. Her next house was a fixer upper, 30 years old, very dated, also electric heat, this time at least it was on a thermostat. But again, the builder cheaped out so many places.
Can you put in those through the wall heat pumps, like they have in hotels, so it can both heat and cool? They have quiet, modern ones now that you can control with a thermostat or a phone app and they’re very energy efficient.
I’m not an expert on this but I believe the wall ac units require a hole to the exterior for air transfer and condensation. We cannot make any holes in the exterior of the building for those units. We were granted an exemption to add one little vent on a side wall because I explained to the Board that the current upstairs bathroom did not have any exhaust fan and it is now required by building code. We have to put in the fan to get the bath remodel passed on the permit.
The owner has agreed to give up on the gas lines. She spent a long time on the phone with me today desperately trying to find a way to move in by Dec 28. After walking her through everything that has to be done after we ever get a permit, and holidays on the middle of everything, I was able to get her to realize that she is looking at about Jan 30. She’s really upset that she has to move twice and put her stuff in storage and find a place to live for 30 days.
She’s just never experienced remodeling before. I told her every time she changes something, asks for more things (just last week she asked for recessed lighting in the shiplap ceilings) I carefully tell her it’s going to add X days to the schedule. I think she hears 2 days and thinks they all happen in parallel on the same 2 days? so far we are about 2 more days x 5 major changes. That’s 2 weeks added to the schedule!!
Not to mention we are not even submitted to the City for permit approval yet. Believe it or not, the City made us submit plans to the California Coastal Commission for an official exemption stamp. Even though this condo is not within 100 feet of the high tide mark, it is located on a single legal parcel which is ocean front. The Coastal Commission is the worst nightmare to deal with. New building permission takes years. But this is an interior remodel only and is not under their authority in any way. It’s none of their dang business what we do inside the house.
City of San Diego clears everything themselves but this little town requires us to go to the Coastal Commission. I’m livid because it’s holding us up for 2 weeks before we can even submit to start the building permit.
This project sound tough. I hope your next flip is less challenging. I bet you miss your last one, where your “client” had thoughts exactly same as you 
Wondering if there is any update? What did this client do about her own housing since this project wasn’t able to be completed on her very short timeline?
Anything else done on this project?
Any new surprises??
Bumping up
Permit purgatory?
Hope @coralbrook was able to restore her CC login after the recent site “improvement.”
I have her email, I’ll ping her.
@coralbrook posted on this site on December 12…which was after the log in brouhaha happened.
@Marilyn have you spoken to her?
Hoping everything is OK and she is just enjoying the holiday season!
Hi everyone, I have just been too exhausted to pull everything together. I promise to give a full update On Solana Beach tomorrow morning since I am desperately trying to take the day off.
Reason I got myself over extended was because I tried to squeeze in a favor for my close friend. She desperately needed a new kitchen, flooring, paint. OMG…pain in the butt. She is very anxiety ridden and was worried about every stupid thing. Complained the whole time about living in a mess, spending too much money and not having a kitchen.
In reality she was inconvenienced for a week and a half to patch, install, sand and refinish the living room, kitchen and laundry floors. After that she finally gave in and got new kitchen cabinets (at first she wanted to waste her money just painting really old beat up cabinets) after I pointed out all the mold in her cabinets. So now we were doing everything backwards demolishing a kitchen on top of brand new floors.
We got her kitchen torn out and new kitchen installed in 1 1/2 weeks!! Including some new appliances, countertops, etc. spent another week detailing some stuff and painting.
New kitchen $12,500 IKEA
Appliances (found gorgeous LG refrigerator and dishwasher floor models) $1,600
New floors and baseboard $4,500
Interior painted $2,000
And she is absolutely pissed it cost so much money. I just cannot win??
Well that sucks. No good deed goes unpunished.
Never have your friends as clients?
Nope, I don’t think I want to risk possibly losing a good friend again. I wonder if she even has a clue how much it costs to get new flooring and a kitchen?? She even held off for over a month because she was waiting for some relative to come give her an estimate and he never even showed up to give an estimate. Next thing I know she calls up middle of November and is frantic because it needs to be done by Christmas
Well, she is one lucky puppy to have all of that done in such a short period of time and at a reasonable cost!! Our kitchen refacing went on for 2.5 weeks… new appliances were installed fast though because… Mister. I can only imagine how long it would take to redo the floors in this place! Yup. She is lucky. A new kitchen under 20 grand is a steal.