… I could beat myself up for not having done so earlier. Considering the amount of money that flew out of my bank account during this remodeling, I would probably have qualified for some decent rewards by now! Yet another obvious thing that I contemplated but was eventually too busy (or lazy?) to do.
(sorry for this long silence with no post – work and life are catching up with me)
I’ve been debating for a while as to whether I should post the names and my opinions of the contractors that I’ve worked with on the house. I have ultimately decided not to; and for multiple reasons.
First, there are too many lawyers in California and I don’t want to have to constantly think about what is appropriate or not.
Secondly, YMMV – Your Mileage May Vary. Contractors are usually small shops, often just one individual working with subcontractors. And you cannot expect from them the same stability and consistence you’d get from a larger shop. No matter how good the boss is – if he loses his skilled employees he’ll have to hire someone else. Fast. Because he has to honor his commitments. This just happened with our electrician – two of his three employees left to start their own company; with a week notice (he was lucky on that one though – the remaining employee was able to bring in his brother within a few days). Hard to maintain high standards during such events.
And even outside of such dramatic events, quality tends to vary greatly from one day to another, from one customer to another, from one type of job to another. For instance, I recently hired a contractor to complete a job – it was the third time I was working with him and I had been very pleased the first two times: great guy, very reliable, honest etc. I would have referred him to anyone without even thinking about it for a second. But this third time, things have drastically changed, to a point that I cannot trust a single thing of what he’s telling me. What has changed? I don’t know. Hormonal inbalance? Problems handling a successful business? You tell me. All I know is that I’d rather not endorse or give bad publicity to anyone on a large scale.
This said, I’ve been quite happy with most of the contractors I’ve worked with (I consider myself very lucky) and if you need references don’t hesitate to email me. Leave a comment here with your email address – I will not publish it, but will gladly reply to it as time permits.
When I started all this I swore to myself I would stay away from plumbing. I’m comfortable around electrons and wires. But water and pipes?! Well, it turned out that my first rebuilding task in the house would be plumbing.
 |
The laundry area as it was when we bought the house. It’s located in the hallway that leads to the bathroom. |
The laundry area in the house is in the hallway between the dining and the bathroom. We really wanted it to be in the garage, but there’s no drain there and the list of work is long enough as it is. So we decided to simply clean up the existing laundry area for now:
Since I was about to put up new greenboard in this area, I figured out I might as well clean-up the plumbing by installing a tidy valve box.
Only thing: the valves were directly soldered to the pipes. Hiring a plumber for such a small job? How much would it cost me?
Oh well. The Depot had a sale on a soldering kit. Not even half the price of what I would have to pay a plumber to visit me. I might as well get my feet wet!
So here I was, with my propane torch and a book teaching sweat soldering 101. Luckily I wasn’t under time pressure… it took me literally hours and 2 attempts to get that stuff right! Be kind – don’t laugh at me.
Tip: Empty your pipes as well as possible. Any remaining water will make your task very difficult. In my case, the pipes were vertical and full of water. Shutting down the main valve and leaving the taps in the house open was not enough. Modern constructions usually have a purge valve, located very low – of course, this house doesn’t have one. Second best is to locate the lowest tap in the system, often an outside bib, and leave it open. If that is still not enough (remember that everything is pretty much level in an Eichler, a one-story house resting on a concrete slab…) you will need to be creative. One thing that worked for me: blow some air through another pipe from the same system (cold or hot) and force the trapped water out… believe me, that works, even from one room to another. Copper is not really tasty, but it isn’t that bad neither!
|
Not really. I wish I hadn’t been cheap on that one. The MAPP gas torch was only about $10 more expensive than the Propane one. And the time and frustration you might spare yourself with a MAPP torch are well worth the extra cost. MAPP allows you to heat the copper much faster. This is very convenient when you deal with pipes that you cannot empty properly. In one instance I had to repair a leaky manifold still full of water by brazing small leaves of copper to it – this was literally impossible with the Propane torch.
So go for it. |
|
The tent was on for about 24 hours, and the house off-limits for an extra 48 hours – time to let the last vapors of Vikane to leave the premises.
I had been warned that it was best to leave repairs to someone else than the pest control company. This was good advice, and I had declined most of the proposed repairs. But I wanted to have one eave, affected by some dry-rot, repaired before the start of the roof work. And since I had no carpenter yet, I decided to just let the pest control handle it. Well, that was really not a great idea. Work was sub-par, and expensive too. In addition, this would have been much easier to repair while the roof was off – not before! Oh well. I guess that means some extra work for me down the road (I will have to apply some putty in one place, caulk in others and sand before painting).
You’re visiting an Eichler during an open-house and the agent is bragging about the
“wall-to-wall brand new carpet”? I hope you will give her/him a piece of your mind.
New carpet in an Eichler is bad mojo. At best, the agent and seller are clueless and are genuinely unaware of the non-sense of having carpet in an Eichler (note that this makes the agent an incompetent one). More likely, they’re trying to hide something…
Why are carpet and Eichler a non-sense combination? Because carpeting your slab means that your living space will be better insulated from your heating source (your radiant heat, either the original one or the electrical alternative) than it is from the outside (through your single-pane glass wall)! Think about the overhead costs in your winter heating bill. And I am not even talking about aesthetic considerations or inherent qualities of other types of flooring.
In the house we bought, the carpet was there to hide the ugly truth. And I missed it. I had pulled the carpet in one spot during the visit, and exposed bare concrete (oh joy!). Well, that was just bad luck: this spot was an exception. The rest of the house was covered with badly brittle vynil tiles…
It’s official now: I hate carpets. And especially the standard-issue brown one. I wish to never put my eyes on one of these ever again.
More details on the flooring effort in a subsequent post.
|
I would strongly recommend you pick up that book if you do not have much experience with tools.
I know. You’re dubious about trusting Home Depot when it comes to writing books. Believe me, they got it right there. I particularly like the fact that they have a dictionary with pictures of all the tools. Now I can finally go to the store and ask for tools by name. What a relief! (have you ever tried to describe to a vendor “that tool that kinda of look like this and you use for this and that”?). Some people dismiss it as not detailed enough. They’re not entirely wrong – it is quite high-level: general steps, tools etc. But the photos are quite informative and you get a good feeling of the work involved in such or such task – very helpful for planning and deciding whether or not you’re ready to take up the work on your own. When you need actual details, you can always ask your favorite contractor, a friend, or the Internet. I wouldn’t recommend the book on bathrooms from the same collection though – it adds little value over this one. |
When I was getting ready to start the remodeling I went to the city hall to request a permit for all the items I would take care of, namely:
I didn’t really pay attention, but the man over there gave me one single permit for everything. That was a mistake.
If I had to do it again, I would insist on getting 4 individual permits instead – even if it comes as an extra cost. Why? Because one year later, we still haven’t closed that single permit (and had to request an extension). After going through the kitchen, electrical and first bathroom, we moved in and started working on many other small items. And left the second bathroom for later.
It is annoying to have this single permit still in the air, making sure it doesn’t expire etc. In addition, one problem in one of the rooms is enough to put the whole permit on hold.
Bottom line: individual permits are better than a single jumbo one.
I hate to put some limits to your creativity, but bathroom remodeling is subjects to some hard constraints.
At the beginning we had all these brilliant ideas for our bathrooms. We sketched multiple plans, moving fixtures around. For instance we really wanted to switch the shower and the bath tub – it seemed that having the tub in the master bathroom and the shower in the guest bathroom would make more sense (how likely are your guests to have a bath when visiting you?). Sure, it sounded good on paper…
Wake up! Bathroom fixtures are no regular furniture. They need water, just like plants – actually this is not such a big deal: re-routing copper pipes is within reach of a handy homeowner. But more importantly: they need to evacuate waste and used water. Through drains. Drains are these heavy, large pipes, going from the roof (each drain is ventilated) to the floor where they exit the house through the concrete slab.
Think about what would be involved in moving one of these drains: jack-hammering the concrete slab (and if you own a working radiant-heat system you should be very circonspect about the idea of hammering your slab!), but also potentially having to open the roof in a different location (and if you have a single-ply roofing system, opening a hole in the roof requires professional intervention to maintain your warranty). Oh, and last but not least: you would need to reroute these heavy pipes – I have no experience in this domain, wouldn’t even know where and how to start, but this sure wouldn’t be as easy as a copper soldering…
Bottom line: unless you have an unlimited budget you should really consider a bathroom remodeling that keeps the fixtures (sink, tub or shower and toilets) in their original location. Unleash your creativity in other areas: tiles, cabinets, windows or skylight etc. There is plenty that can be done to give a radically different look to your bathroom.
As far as we’re concerned, the tub and the shower will not leave the locations they had adopted back in 1964, when the house was built!
Well, The Plan is pretty simple: remodel everything. And do as much as we can ourselves. I guess it’s called optimism – or maybe plain stupidity.
This blog will capture all the phases of the remodeling: before, during, after. I’ll try to sprinkle a few hard-learned lessons here and there (who knows, it might prevent someone from making the same mistakes one day…), provide info on tools, suppliers and techniques.
Check out the right-hand side navigation bar – posts will be categorized so that you can go straight to what you’re interested in (ex: bathroom, or tools).
Or do it the “old-fashioned” way: by chronological order.
Make sure to check the disclaimers.
I’d be curious to hear from you if you find these pages to be of any interest. Leave a comment when you have a chance!
