In my mind I thought having the plumbing and electrical out of the way would put us at the halfway mark, but by the timeline (which has probably slipped a few weeks because we couldn't get the cabinet order executed on time) we're a month and a half into what will likely be a four and a half month project. One-third. Our makeshift kitchen looks like this, due to the plumbers needing to get at the ceiling:
Kinda miserable.
I think the HVAC guys are done - there's a lot of low-profile ductwork and flex tubing snaking around now. Here's the view from the old breakfast room, with just the remnants of supports left in the middle wall:
In the trench sits the new kitchen A/C feed, routed to the toe-kick next to the dishwasher space.
Check out the view into the basement through the old subflooring:
I'll be happy once the extra crews are out (and I get water to my bathroom again). Nothing against them, but having a half-dozen people descend on your house at 7:30 each morning for a week gets old. Electricians return tomorrow (and I forgot to get speaker wire... oh well) - maybe by Tuesday all the specialists will be done.
At that point we cut a bunch of huge checks, per the contract.
Actually I lost count of the number of workers at the house this morning. There may be more that I missed. Three separate crews (carpentry, plumbing, HVAC). The driveway looks like a 7-11 parking lot.
Today's big event was the widening of the door between the kitchen and back room.
This involved cutting a brick's width of wall away, and there's a new layer of coarse red dust in the construction zone. It also looks like the saw threw the circuit breaker a few times.
Steve is trying to convince me to replace the shower pan in the master bath, which leaks a few drops of water over the course of a shower. He thinks it will only get worse as time goes on. I'd really hate to go through bathroom trauma on top of the rest of this. After the hurricane we discovered that the drain outside the laundry room doesn't go anywhere, so we're looking into a sump pump for that corner of the basement - another big chunk of change there.
I ordered a pair of ceiling speakers for the kitchen. The AudioSource IC8S seem to rate pretty well for the money ($100).
Today I came home to find a trench dug through the kitchen subflooring. It looks like they're going to run the risers for the guest bathroom sink up through the gutted kitchen wall rather than mess with the dining room, which is great.
Trixie is standing on the top of the basement ceiling panels. Probably best not to put a human foot between those joists.
You can see right through the kitchen subflooring into the basement in spots. This picture turned out a lot more elfin than it looked in real life... that's just weird. I blame the Canon Powershot flash. For everything.
I was counting on a lot more drama with the repiping, but I guess when half the house is already demolished down to the frame there's not much more damage a plumber can do. The plumbers have actually been doing a really good job - Steve recommended them because he knew they'd work as cleanly as possible given the circumstances.
The plumbers repipe the house this week. No more pinholes.
Please.
We finally decided on low-voltage track lighting for the basement bar area. A 150-watt flexible track system with four 35-watt lamps priced out at $1200. A 150-watt straight track with four less decorative 35-watt lamps added another $400. Wow.
The allure of low-voltage systems is the ability to use smaller halogen bulbs, which has led to some really creative, edgy lamps. Which cost a million bucks.
We went with Tech Lighting for the flex track and Juno for the straight.
We made it through the hurricane unscratched, getting our power back after about twelve hours. Some of our neighbors weren't so lucky - a few photos here.
Now if you'll excuse me I have this hurricane to attend.
tried all night to snake out the clogged stairwell drain outside the laundry room. not looking good. sump pump on ups.
We finished emptying out the kitchen tonight. As I'm typing the dishwasher we never liked is making its final run.
Here's the temporary pantry, courtesy Staples.
The house is a mess from top to bottom.
I really hope this thing doesn't undo any of our good work.
It's been a wet year which means the ground is soft. We have huge trees surrounding the house, staring down at that back room. Don't need no wind.
The folks are still mopping up from the storm that clobbered Bermuda.
Today was a big day - Steve (the builder) and I moved the refrigerator into the dining room to prepare for kitchen demo later this week.
Today's lesson: refrigerators roll back and forth, not side-to-side. When you use a hand truck to move a refrigerator contents may shift.
Half the stuff in the cabinets is boxed up. I bought a cheap bookshelf from Staples to hold cat food and Pop Tarts and coffee.
Meanwhile the back room keeps progressing.
They're getting down to the finishing details in the back room. The beadboard ceiling is up and the beams are cased (this photo is a couple of days old and shows one finished beam). I like the wood our builder has picked - he's returned wood that didn't have enough character.
We went to Lighting Unlimited on Saturday and spoke with the VP at length about low-voltage tracks. He assured us that what we want to do would be expensive (upwards of $500), but if we wanted to go for it to insist that a qualified electrician do the job. In other words, not to be talked out of our design by an apprentice afraid of blowing an expensive transformer.
As we looked over a few more lights I thought I saw one of our electricians walk by. He was the quiet one, not the lead guy who taked me out of low-voltage in the first place, but as we were squinting at him he shot us a furtive glance and hurried off. "That's the guy!" We pointed him out to the VP, who told us he works at the store and is a journeyman electrician on the side. "If he wants to wire houses at 9PM that's his business."
I think we'll be getting that low-voltage system without argument.
I think we have the kitchen for four or five more days.
They demo'd the breakfast room this week. This is the wall that will disappear - the duct in the middle (guest bedroom A/C return) is the one that will be routed under the new floor... or is it around the other wall and through the ceiling? I've forgotten pretty much everything we've signed up for.
The demolition revealed a remarkable amount of pinhole corrosion on the riser that started to give me trouble a few months back. The arrow points to a drop of water from a baby pinhole that's just starting to break through, the bastard.
We need to have our flooring decisions made by the end of next week - I took exact measurements of the basement, drew it on graph paper at the scale of two squares = 13 inches (13in being a side of linoleum tile) and cut little tile squares to see how they'd fit. We're going with a diamond pattern to echo the old tile we discovered under the back room carpet.
We're wrestling with the electricians over the lights for the bar in the basement. The most decorative lights are available for low-voltage track systems, but those require chunky transformers which generate heat... and some design effort on the part of the electricians.
In interiors, however, low-voltage transformers are often best located at the fixture. This allows for the exact desired voltage to be supplied to the lamp. In addition, all wiring to the fixture is conventional electrical work that requires no special knowledge or experience on the part of the electrician.Remote transformer systems are an alternative, but only experienced personnel should design and install them. The advantages of remote transformers include lower acoustical noise, intrinsic circuit safety, and, occasionally, a lower installed cost due to less expensive materials or simplified wiring methods.
Many remote transformer installations, however, when not properly designed or used, have suffered from poor voltage regulation, severe overloading, and higher installed costs. At least one major manufacturer has stopped marketing remote transformer-supplied track systems.
To prevent significant voltage differences from fixture to fixture, the distribution pattern of the transformer should be radial or star-shaped rather than a long string. Because voltage drop accumulates along a string, improper wiring can produce extremely bright and short-lived lights near the start of the string and dull, yellowish lights at the far end.
The alternative would be a mains-voltage track with individual step-down transformers for each light. The lighting designer we spoke with at Expo felt that method was old-fashioned when dealing with a new installation and expressed confidence that a low-voltage design could be installed in the basement. We'll see - the electricians were equally adamant the other way.
We finally ordered the kitchen cabinets at the end of last week. Twenty-eight thousand dollars. It's an amazing amount of money, but we know the results of not paying real cabinet money:
We had to sign or inital 42 pages of contract designs and fax them back before the builder escaped for the Labor Day weekend. Things have been delayed long enough.
There was a lot of this over the weekend:
I think we're satisfied with maple floors and one of those two granite selections. Melanie visited R. Bratti in Crystal City on Friday and it looks like we'll find a slab we can work with. That's a big relief.
