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 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!

As the roof has to be replaced I started investigating about my options. The best source of information for this is, once again, the Eichler Network. They have a great article about roofing.

This foam stuff sounds like a very funky 1970’s option. I think I’ll go with the single-ply Duro-Last (also known as “pool liner”) - checking with some flat-roof owners in the area, but also in Europe, this seems to be the most sensible option. I have identified three companies and will get bids for the job.

An interesting thing that emerged during my quest for the best roofing option was the electrical question. Indeed, Eichler homes have no crawl space and no attic. So the electrical wires run straight on the eaves, under the roofing material. Obviously a nightmare when you want to upgrade - you need to open the roof to access the cables; provided you know where they are! This explains for the mess of wires you can see on some Eichlers: people just take a shortcut and run the cables around the walls or on the roof. Bottom line: if you remove the roof you have to take this opportunity to upgrade the electrical..

I guess I also need to find an electrician now…

Note: you may wonder why this blog is subtitled “Adventure in DIY remodeling” if I’m going to get contractors to do everything. Well, Duro-last requires a professional installation, and the re-wiring will have to happen very quickly while the roof is off. I need help here! My turn will eventually come…