Chez Neumansky, 3rd Time's the Charm!

Some Progress in the Basement

2012-01-31T07:30:00.000-08:00

Well, I lied...not all the demo was done.....

I forgot to have this wall to the mechanical room removed.

Now you see it, now you don't.

New Wall.
I've never built a load-bearing 2by6 wall before...
And officially I still haven't as the wall shown below does not have a 'real' footing underneath it. Its just sitting on the 4" thick slab.

There was no room to tilt up the wall so I built it in a way no real carpenter would. Besides, working alone how would I tilt up a 21' 2by6 wall?

How Not to Build a Wall
First, I laid out the bottom plate and made sure it was parallel to the center load bearing wall. I tacked it in place with the ramset.
Then using two 'cabinet jacks' I stuck the top plate roughly in place. Then I used a 'straight' 2by6 and a level to make sure it was exactly in line with the bottom plate. Then I shot the first top plate to the underside of the joists, up from below. Then I nailed the second top plate to the first.
Then I measured and cut each stud separately and nailed them in place.

I also built my first triple 2by8 header. The span table said I could get away with only a double 2by8 header (and two jack studs to span 3-2) but then how would I make up the rest of the space in the 2by6 wall?
So, I used three 2by8's (good for a span of 3-11) and two sheets of 1/2" ply. I used construction adhesive to glue all the pieces together then I nailed the heck out of it with the nail gun. Its a very heavy, solid piece.
If you notice the header is nailed directly to the double top plate...there is just enough room for the door underneath it, as long as I don't get too crazy with the shims.
Putting that bugger in place was a comedy of errors...trying to lug it up there while getting the cabinet jacks underneath it...I picked that thing up, hefted it into place at least 8 times before I got it right....

Its a good thing building the header went well as I have a sinking feeling that there are no code compliant headers over the two doorways in the 'official' load bearing wall...

After I built the wall I swear the floor above feels a ton stiffer.

Built this little wall

To fill in the open area where the kitchen was.

The doorway from the mechanical room into the other kitchen was also filled in and I mounted the units electrical sub-panel in the opening.

I also mounted most of the new electrical boxes in the walls, ceilings.
I will not keep most of the existing electrical it seems...at least the existing in the kitchen has to go...I'm hoping to re-purpose the stuff in the other rooms.

Had some important visits last week.

First up, my building inspector.
I wanted him to come out and take a look at the situation since we uncovered a lot of 'hidden conditions'. He was like, 'Ya, gotta fix all those buried junction boxes.'
He also pointed out a couple of code violations that I had missed.
Its against code for copper water pipes to touch galv gas pipes...didn't know that.
He also said that there needs to be fire stopping between the top of the furring wall and the actual exterior wall. He said that stuffing the hole with Fiberglas insulation would be okay. I also plan on filling all the joist and stud bays completely with Fiberglas insulation....so hopefully belt and suspenders fire stop wise.

The BI also did confirm that the HVAC soffits are not built correctly...

The soffit needs to be uh, enclosed on the inside completely with fire code sheet rock...
So, hurray, more demo, as I will have to yank the existing soffits down and put up the drywall then rebuild it...

Actually, I'm not sure how to do the soffit. I've been puzzling over the HVAC plans and how to implement them in the 'real world'. Right now it seems like I have more HVAC trunk line than I have space for it...
However it works I will make the soffit big enough to conceal the trunk line, plus any number of utilities like the gas lines, the main water lines, electrical, TV-phone lines...If I'm lucky I won't have to drill thru hardly any joists! Course I have to build the fricken thing....

I was also happy about what the BI said about the floor joists. You see, floor joists have specific code specified lengths they are allowed to span. Depending on the type and grade of the wood and its size.
The BI confirmed that they are Douglas Fir and that he would be very comfortable with using the #1 column in the span tables!!! That's really good cause #1 wood spans a lot farther than #3 or #2.
I couldn't get him to agree to let me use the Select Structural (the strongest modern wood grade) column. He said I would have to get a structural engineer for that.

Visit From My Structural Engineer
The next day my engineer could make it out to look over the situation. I wanted him to take a look at three places where I was not sure if I needed to add posts-beams. I wanted him to asses the lack of earthquake retrofitting, and I wanted him to tell me what he thought the joists could span.

You see I thought the joists where old growth redwood, which you can not find in span tables really..

The engineer confirmed that the wood was Doug Fir and he said that it was 'at least' as strong as a modern structural select 2by10!!! Which means now, officially my joists can span 17' with no problem. Actually the farthest span I have now is only 12'-6" so I'm feeling really good about the structure.

Even, better, he confirmed that I could remove the existing post-beam, beam no post, and the load bearing wall in line with the joist situation did not need any re-inforcing.

Which means I can get rid of this post-beam in the new master bedroom!

I can get rid of this beam hanging from the joists.

I am so freaking glad of this development...the other option would of been having to use some sort of fancy engineered beam to span the spaces and I would have to dig-pour new footings for the posts...that would of been a significant expense and a huge time suck.

I was so happy about the results that I cooked everybody a fancy dinner to celebrate.

Earth Quake Retrofitting
Not so good news here... I don't know how to do it.
My simple cook book method of figuring out how much shear walling I need says that I need 23' on each side of the house!!! Because of windows that is pretty much impossible to do....especially on the short ends of the house....

Soooooo, I'm going to have to have my engineer figure out a more clever way to get a safe amount of strength in those cripple walls...

Wow, that was a lot of words wasn't it!?!?

Halloweeeeeen From Spaaaaaaaaace!!!

2012-01-25T13:13:00.000-08:00

Say that like 'Pigs in Space' from the old Muppet show....does anybody remember that but me?
Any who, the haunt nerd group I'm a part of sent out an alert that Google maps had updated their satellite pictures of the SF Bay area at the end of October....

Know what that means? It means you can see our Halloween decorations on the satellite photo!!

Check it out!!

See, Halloweeeeeeeeeen frooooom Spaaaaaaaaaace!!!!!!

Not sure exactly when this was taken but it must of been right at the end of October as I didn't have all that stuff out until the last week.

Why, yes I am a huge dork.

Chez Neumansky 2.0 is in Contract!!!

2012-01-15T07:21:00.000-08:00

subtitled, ' Disclosures Smosures'

According to the Redfin Page the house was listed for sale on Nov 7th and went pending on Nov 24th!!! For the asking price of $725k!!! Wow, only on the market for 17 days!

I have to say that we were totally shocked that the place was listed for that much...then imagine our shock when it went pending for asking so fast...

We are viewing this as a vindication of our initial take on the house. When it was a rat infested, practically falling down mess and everybody thought we were nuts...this finished product was what we saw. A nice Victorian with a 3 color paint job all fixed up inside and out and pretty. Truthfully, we still wish that we could of been the ones to do it but we've moved on to bigger and better things.

Back when we were trying to decide if we should pull it off the market and do a 203k refi, get it fixed up quickly-cheaply and then put it back on the market, we never, ever projected seriously a selling price of $725k.

I'm looking at the super detailed spreadsheet now and if we had done it and put it back on the market for same amount we would of netted over $60k.....hurray....

I'm sure the current owners stand to net much, much more than that as I bet they have extremely low overhead with the 'contractors' they used.

Disclosures
If you haven't already, take a look at the Redfin page linked above...notice anything strange?
I noticed two things that I don't think I've ever seen on a Redfin page before.

In the spot where there would usually be a Zestimate it says this.

Home Value Estimates for 1310 PACIFIC Ave

The seller of this home has requested that home value estimates not be shown. Per MLS rules, Redfin and other public MLS-powered sites may not display any automated valuation for this home.

Hmmm....what's the good reason to do this? If you go to the Zillow page it still has the Zestimate..which shockingly is $721k!?!?!?! Almost the exact asking price???

Then there is this,

Sites Linking to 1310 PACIFIC Ave

The seller has requested that all public comments be removed from this listing. Per MLS rules, we are not allowed to link to blog posts about this home.

Hmmmmm.....could the seller possibly be trying to hide the existence of this blog? Hmmm...what's the non-shady reason for this? I can't think of one can you?

If you type in the address into google this blog show's up as the #3 result usually....so, its not like it can be hidden...

But, I don't know...is it possible that in this day and age people who are going to spend $725k on a house won't do at least a Google search?

In an earlier blog post I invite any possible new owners to contact me with any questions that they might have.

Yet, no one has? Seriously, how could you not take advantage of a resource like that? I'm not tooting my own horn here but, c'mon.

Our old neighbors say that the person in contract is a nephew of another one of our old neighbors who we would see everyday and say hello to....it's not like were complete strangers...

I do wish the new, new owners of Chez 2.0 luck.

After the close of escrow my consulting fee for helping you figure things out is going to be $100/hr, 3hr min.... Ha, I wish...

But Seriously

I think that according to Real Estate disclosure laws not disclosing this blog to potential buyers might be illegal...

Couldn't this blog be viewed as one big loooong in depth inspection report? I know you can't hide the existence of an inspection report, especially if its negative.

Actually, I think a case can be made that any of my KnifeCatching reviews constitute a property report and should be included in the disclosure packet. Especially where I note possible serious issues like crumbling brick foundations or leaky roofs or illegal work.

Nobody Speeds in Alameda!

2012-01-14T08:00:00.000-08:00

No, I did not just get a speeding ticket in Alameda.

Everybody knows...you don't speed in Alameda. Everybody knows this. Everybody knows that the APD takes speeding seriously.

You may go 28MPH but any faster and 'THEY WILL GET YOU' Everybody knows this right?

Somehow the APD has been able to leave this lasting impression with those of us who live/work/frequent Alameda. Heck, I don't even know if they STILL enforce the speeding limit so strictly...maybe they don't have to because they've convinced us its really, really not a good idea to speed in Alameda.

As a result, we have streets that are safe for kids, safe for bicycle riding, just safer-better.
As a parent, I am very happy about that.

Here's my question.

Why don't people have the same opinion of the Alameda Building Dept???

Wouldn't it be better for our fair city if people had the same opinion on doing work without permits as they do towards speeding?

What if people knew, KNEW that they would most likely get caught and have to pay big fines if they did major remodeling without permits?

Why is there not some sort of fine-administrative judgement that can be levied against contractors who do unpermmited work? Right now, its the HO that shoulders all the burden. Shouldn't there be a fine levied against the builder also? Maybe revoke their business license.

It seems to me that right now the system is set up to encourage illegal builders to do unpermitted work.

Putting the Fear into Home Owners
Here's what I think should happen....

Outreach to Homeowners and Contractors to explain the new reality.

First off, step up code enforcement dramatically. Its human nature, people are not going to toe the line unless they feel like they are going to 'for sure' get caught and that the consequences are going to be severe.

On top of the other code enforcement fee's tack on a FINE to the homeowner for using illegal contractors.

Figure out a way to slap a fine on the contractors that work illegally in Alameda...I mean, its against the law right? Just like having too many chickens.

The Result
No more scary-shoddy-illegal work done on the island. What's that going to do to property values?
No more illegal contractors undercutting the legit guys.
More revenue to the city due to the increase in permits.
More revenue to the city due to houses being correctly valued and taxed by the assessors office.

Now before somebody can say, 'Of course you over there in the republic of CA want to increase taxes.' I'm not talking about adding any taxes. I'm talking about getting people to obey the law which will have concrete benefits to our city.

Yes, doing it illegally will be cheaper than doing it legally....BUT YOU'RE DOING IT ILLEGALLY!!

The current system is broken with illegal contractors ruining it for the legal ones.

I'm going to send this post to all the Alameda elected officials and Building Dept heads. We'll see if I hear anything back.

KnifeCatching 1235 Hawthorne St.

2012-01-13T07:40:00.000-08:00

KnifeCatching 1235 Hawthorne St.

Up for review today is 1235 Hawthorne St. which has the official specs of being a 3-3.5 of 3330sq ft on an ginormous 13,986sq ft lot built in 1950 on sale for $1.475M!?!?!? Last sold in 94 for $570k. The house has been on the market for 115 days with no price drops yet.

While I got some pics of the place, go to the Zillow or Redfin sites for the official pics/prose.

Front of the house

I have to say, this place looked pretty amazing. Its got location, location, location with it being a lagoon side house in the Gold Coast.

This review should be sub-titled 'Don Drapers after-he's-made-it house'.

From the big fancy automatic gate to the stainless steel fence the house fairly oozes money. It looks like a Bel-Air mansion to me. The house has a very large open floor plan on the main level that is just perfect for entertaining...need to impress some investors? Have a sunset cocktail party.

I am mildly impressed that the PO's are even having open houses...People who can honestly afford a $1.5M house now-a-days don't troll open houses....When I was touring the house there was a large steady stream of people who I would have to say were probably looky-loo's (like me). Probably the entire point of the open house was for the Realtor to drum up new clients. If this was my place (I wish I had that kind of money), I would not want the 99%ers tromping through the place. I'd only show it by appointment to pre-qualified buyers.

The Good

Location, Location, Location. Lagoon side home in the Gold Coast in Franklin School District.
Marble, Marble, Marble! I think every floor in the house is covered in marble.
Radiant heating!
Love all the Birdseye Maple cabinets and trim that is everywhere. Very 50's.
Its got a serious MadMen vibe.

Lots of windows and views!

The garage has a nice little office off the back of it with views.

Big master suite with views and a little private 'smoking balcony.'
Giant fancy display kitchen (with views).
Wet bar in the great room for entertaining.

The Bad

There were a couple of troubling things about the house that I saw. Trying to be objective and not be wowed by the pretty and the views.

Its really MadMen lite...since the house was redone with modern finishes its a little less authentic MadMen as compared to 1223 ST Charles St.

All that famous glass faces South!!! The house has no AC that I could tell....how is it not going to be a furnace in the summer time?

Check out this big double door that opens out into...

No where...

Zillion Dollar House and they couldn't even use a modern thermostat? huh?

Troubling Permit Record
I've read it, and read it and read it....I still don't understand exactly the story its telling...
There are tons of permits pulled over the past years but a lot of them were never finaled....this is curious to me...why, after paying the fee's would you not get your permits finaled? Laziness? Ineptness of the contractor? What worries me is that there was some reason why the contractors work could not pass inspection...and they gave up???

Work done with permits that were never finaled.

New windows and doors in the Sunroom.

200amp service upgrade and gas line for trellis and 2 gas logs.

The master bath remodel, interior stair replacement.

The fancy front fence and gate thing.

Work that I can not find any permits for.

Uh, the radiant heating? or is it original? Don't know, Realtor implied that is was all new.

The fabulous kitchen.

Maybe minor, but I saw a lot of electrical work that wasn't reflected in the permit record.

From the Realtors ad copy

Every aspect of this home has been upgraded and remodeled with meticulous attention to detail.

Hmmm...permit record doesn't really support that notion....at least it doesn't support the notion that the work was done legally...

Maybe one percenters don't care about those kinds of things because they will just come in and do a gut remodel anyways? At least I'd think they would care to use it as a bargaining chip in price negotiations.

I don't think I've seen a house with so many expired permits....I would argue that, this is actually worse than doing it in secret. Now you are on the Building Dept's radar as having expired permits and here's what I know happens. You go down to the building dept to pull a permit for something and they check your record and they go...'OOohhh,..yea, we can't issue you any new permits till you close out all the old ones.' So, is the new owner buying all that liability also? What hidden conditions are going to be uncovered?

Conclusion

An amazing show place home in a fantastic location.

Price?? I don't know..this place is so far outta my league that I don't have an honest frame of reference that I can use.
Buuuut, if its open ever again y'all should tour through the place as it is pretty amazing.
This house, I think hits all the high marks for a wealthy persons residence, definitely a braggable house/location, big entertaining spaces, big master suite, big fancy kitchen...and on and on.

It's a one percenter palace.

And that's the way I see it.

KnifeCatching 1223 ST. Charles St.

2012-01-12T08:20:00.000-08:00

KnifeCatching 1223 ST. Charles St.

Up for review today is 1223 ST. Charles St. which has the official specs of being a 2-2 of 2441sq ft on a 7686sq ft lot built in 1958 on sale for $929k on the market for 120 days with no price drops last sold in 88 for $390k.

As usual, pics/prose on Zillow and Redfin. The description on the Redfin site is especially awesome I think. There should be an awkward prose contest for Real Estate listings.

This review is subtitled, 'Don Drapers Starter House'. If you don't know what that means get yourself a copy of Madmen.

There are hardly any mid-century modern homes in the Gold Coast in Alameda and this past weekend there were two open!

Front of House.

Okay so, not the best pic..check out the shots on either of the websites above.

But honestly, the house looks a little fugly from the street. All you see is this massive garage and a high wall. The front yard is all ivy (low maint!).

You walk into that door on the left and there is a nice enclosed courtyard with a Japanese theme and a little fish pond. Its too bad the pond was looking kinda gross and I swear the area reeked of cat urine. I even asked another browser about it and he said he thought it was probably the juniper bushes.. I actually smelled each plant and it didn't appear that the stench was coming from any of them.....

The description of the house says its got two master suites...its got a weird floor plan I think. It has this really large Master Bedroom and big master bath and then this little bedroom. It looks to me more like an age in place set-up where the smaller room could be for an in-home care provider or something. Also the house seems smaller than the listed sq footage?

The Good

In Gold Coast neighborhood on a quiet dead end street.

In Franklin School district.

All on one level...age in place?

Big 2-car garage.

The kitchen looked like it was in good shape and its actually good sized with what looked like plenty of storage.

The master bedroom and bath is of a good size. The master bath was large but seriously weirdly laid out I thought...lots of wasted space.

It appears to be some sort of copy of an Eichler. So, if you like that kinda thing.

Its got radiant heated floors. Which is great but almost none of the houses promotional material even mentions it?!?!?!? Why would you leave that out?

This is the boiler for the floors...it didn't look super new to me.

Lots and lots of big windows, sliding doors to the outside. You can really bring the outside in, in Eichler fashion.

Check out the back yard

Not exactly large space back here.

And the doors-windows to yard.

Original un-messed with midcentury modern.

Here's some fun details I took some quick snaps of.

This is the garage wall that faces the courtyard.

There is glass on the garage side. It just looked kinda cool looking out into the courtyard.

Check out this intercom system panel.

Doesn't that look super 50's?

Check out the wet bar and in house natural gas bbq! (on the listing page, sorry)

Crazy Scooby-Doo Hallway

This is the hallway to the garage. Its narrow and has like 37 doors. When I saw it I immediately thought of that scene in every Scooby-Doo episode. Where the bad guys are chasing the gang and everybody is running in and out of doors in a long hallway and getting all turned around? You know the one I'm talking about right?

That said, the house looks like its got a good amount of storage.

The Bad

Its an unmolested mid-century modern...

From touring the house and looking at the grounds and the over all level of upkeep with the place I was left with the feeling that this place was owned by elderly folks who keep it clean but didn't replace stuff when it got worn...It doesn't need to be remodeled but uh, refreshed maybe is the word for it? The original finishes are just worn after all these years.

My fav, Carpet in the toilet room.

I can't tell if the kitchen was redone...the permit record doesn't say anything about it and it appeared to be in better shape than the rest of the house.

Part of being unmolested is that the house probably has the original galv water piping and elec...which means fuses.

According to the permit record the roof was last done in 83. If that's true its a safe bet its going to need a new roof.

Problematic Radiant Heat.

Yes I love it but the problem with this old style is that they used copper pipes in concrete and after enough time the copper pipes ALWAYS spring leaks and fixing them is a major PITA.

Lots and Lots of Windows.

I know I said this was a positive earlier but its also a negative. It seems like almost the entire perimeter of the house is windows. When I realized that I couldn't help but think,...dang this place could fold like a wet cardboard box in a big shaker. To do that many windows/doors now a days takes special engineering which didn't exist back when this house was built.

Missed Marketing Opportunity

I remarked to the Realtor showing the house that the place was 'Sooooo MadMen'. She had never heard of the show!?!?!? The house seems so perfectly preserved that it looks like a set from the TV show.

Several people who where there looking at the house totally knew what I was talking about when I made that comment to them....

The show is super popular with like an entire fashion movement behind it...why would you not use that to your advantage? People who are specifically looking for a house of this era are going to be fans of the show...trust me.

Here's my gift to you. Before the next open, watch the show and study up on it. Have a fancy martini set out on the wet bar and drop as many MadMen references as you reasonably can when describing the place.

Conclusion

Very well preserved example of a midcentury modern that just probably needs some refreshing.

With a kinda weird floor plan that doesn't seem really conducive to raising a family there...house just seems a little bit small for that.

Think that this would be a great place for grandma and grandpa to have to be close to their grand kids.

Also seems like a great place for a hip same sex couple who are not planning on having any kids. You could have a lot of fun 50's themed parties here.

Price

$929k for whats basically a 2441sq ft low maint bachelor pad.....doesn't that seem a bit high to you? While I don't believe that the house needs $100's of thousands of work it does require some work....

Shouldn't the fact that its been on the market for 120 days be telling somebody that the price needs adjusting?

And thats the way I see it.

KnifeCatching 1441 Grand St.

2012-01-11T08:00:00.000-08:00

KnifeCatching 1441 Grand St.

Up for review today is 1441 Grand St. which has the official specs of being a 4-2 of 2737 sq ft on a 6000sq ft lot built in 1905 on sale for $819k. Originally listed for $849k its been on the market for holy-moly 202 days!!! Last sold in 02 for $750k. Been on the market 202 days and they've only dropped the price $30k, last price drop in Oct...hmmmmm...

Somehow Zillow doesn't even know the place is for sale? You can see additional pics/prose on the redfin site for it.

The Good

First off I want to say that this house/grounds are gorgeous.

The house has a nice multi-color paint job.

Its got a pretty amazing front porch.

Check out that two story turret with curved glass windows!! The windows look originalish and you hardly ever, ever, see turrets with their curved glass windows now a days.

I have major turret envy.

The grounds appear nice and very private, almost fortress like (foreshadowing).

The house itself is huge. You can tell that when it was new it was an upscale place. Lots of fancy trim and paneling...all painted white of course. Big grand windows.

Its got a little one car garage off the side St.

Super awesome solarium with Jacuzzi off back of house. Done with permits!!!

Right on the edge of the Franklin School District.

With my remaining battery power I snapped this picture of a funky detail that I really liked.

It looks like the little slot goes all the way through does it not? This is on the lower level of the house.

The Bad

Location, location, location....check out this satellite view.

You got churches, across the street. Big apartment buildings as neighbors. The house is on the corner of two of the busiest streets in Alameda. In fact there is a bus stop right outside the house on Santa Clara. Its LOUD inside the house...I suspect this is why its been languishing on the market for soooooo long. The 2nd story turret is a bedroom and wow its noisy....There just doesn't seem to be a good way to reduce the noise...it comes right through the old single pane windows. Most sound is transmitted into a house through the windows...so what can you do to reduce sound? Replace the ir-replaceable curved glass windows with modern double pane flat windows??? Horrible...You can buy sound deadening curtains but then you'd have to keep them closed all the time? I'm also guessing that the fortress like yards is an attempt to cut down on noise and give the HO's a modicum of privacy.

4 Bedrooms?
The specs say its a 4 bedroom but really, its a 3 with a good sized walk-in closet. On the top floor of the house are two good sized bedrooms, one medium sized bedroom (which doesn't have a closet) and a very small bedroom that would make a good sized walk-in closet. In fact, the door had a little brass plaque that read 'Office'. It would be a cozy home office also.

Brick Foundation

From what I could tell from my inspections the house is still on its full brick foundation. It looks like the front 1/3 was capped and has new pressure treated bottom plates (this does not appear in the permit record...). There is a serious B.S. quote for a foundation replacement for $31k.....make sure you look at what exactly you're getting for that money.... In my opinion the house needs a complete new modern foundation and earthquake retro-fitting and that is going to cost way, way more than $31k. Try more like $125k.

Master Bath?

Doesn't have one...can't see a good space to put one in.... I can't be the only person who really, really, really doesn't want to share a bathroom with teenagers?

Kitchen

While good sized it is seriously stuck in the 80's.

Roof

Permit record says it was reroofed in 83. To me, it looked like the roof is completely failing, at least on the little rooflet over the porch. Looking out the windows onto the roof you can see shingles that are so deteriorated that the Fiberglas backing is showing!!!

Elec/Plumbing

Nothing about this is mentioned in the record. From what I could tell the house is most likely still on galv water piping. There was a newer looking meter panel but it was locked and I couldn't see the rating. From the size of the panel and the wires coming to it I'd guess its probably a 100amp panel at most. It also looked like the original abspestos coated ducting for the heater is still being used.

Windows?
I didn't check every window in the houe but I looked at most of them. None of them opened. In fact most of them had been painted in place for so long that there wasn't even a gap between the window sash and the window frame...totally sealed! Great for keeping out drafts and noise not so great in a fire....Actually, I don't understand how it could be legal to sell a house with non-functioning windows...especially in the bedrooms...What happens if theres a fire and heaven forbid the new owners can't get out of the house? They would have to bust out the windows.....if they are lucky....who's going to be liable in a situation like that? C'mon Realtors y'all know that my favorite melodically named 'construction company' would unstick those windows for pennies.

Conclusion

I actually feel sorry for this house....it could be such a great place...if you could pick it up and plunk it down on a quiet street.

The price seems just, uh, crazy to me considering the kind of work the house needs.

It needs a new foundation, roof, master bath, kitchen remodel, service upgrade, and a repiping...that's going to be over $200k in work...

And you're still going to be living in a noisy fishbowl.

To me its probably worth $600k. But when I'd redo the foundation I'd dig out the entire basement and add probably 1000 sq ft of legal living space.

And that's the way I see it.

KnifeCatching 1021 Fair Oaks Ave.

2012-01-10T09:06:00.000-08:00

KnifeCatching 1021 Fair Oaks Ave

Up for review today is 1021 Fair Oaks Ave which has the official specs of being a 4-2 of 3446sq ft on a 5000sq ft lot built in 1900. The house appears to be a legal duplex with two separate addresses. The 'Realtor Facts' say its a 5-3...so I'm not sure where the disconnect is...According to Zillow this property has been on the market for 100 days. It was originally priced at $925k which was reduced to $895k two weeks later. This house was last sold 04/08/08 for $970k..youch..

This was the last house I looked at and the battery on my camera was totally dead so..not a lot of pics. Check out the Zillow, Redfin pages for official pics and prose.

Google street view of front of house.

I actually like how the house looks from the front. Its got an interesting porch and an interesting roof line. There is an apartment building on one side unfortunately. Nice tree out front and a nice little yard.

The Good

In Gold Coast neighborhood in Franklin school district on a quiet side street.

Legal duplex! Live in one unit and get help with the mortgage from the other? I think that's a positive but most folks say houses like duplex's are harder to sell and they sell for less.

Big House...if the official stats of 3446 sq ft are true that's a pretty large house for the area.

Permit Record says that there was a new foundation done in '08. Not done by professional foundation contractor unfortunately....

Apparently there is a large usable attic but I couldn't get up to it to look.

House is a Marcuse and Remmel just like Chez 2.0. Still has a fair amount of original details in the front part of the house.

The kitchen was large with lots of storage and a little eat-in island.

The Bad

~$18k in termite work!

Kitchen desperately needs updating...actually, if they woulda spent two half days wiping on a gel stain and a couple of clear coats the kitchen would of looked a million times better. Four hours of work and less than $100 in materials...why would you not?

Baths need updating.

Not much of a backyard.

Bottom unit wasn't open.

Nothing in the permit record about modern electrical upgrades.

Nothing in the permit record about modern plumbing upgrades.

Nothing in permit record about these two newer looking decks.

This worries me....in Alameda a 2nd story deck HAS to be officially engineered. Unsafe-overloaded 2nd story decks have a habit of collapsing and hurting people...If I was seriously considering buying the place I would absolutely make the current owner prove its officially safe.

Nothing in the permit record about a new roof...from what I could see from the street the roof does not look new.

Conclusion

Price, price, price, lets talk about price...I know I pretty much ALWAYS say this but... I don't understand how they came up with the price of $895k...it must be based on mostly the square footage???

According to the permit record and what I could see the house needs serious updating.

New roof

mid range remodeled kitchen.

two mid range remodeled baths...

New water supply piping?

New electrical? Upgrade to 200 amps and a modern service panel?

What's going to happen when the city notices that big 2nd story deck??? Trust me, that's going to be an expensive hassle.

$895k is a lot of money for a house that still needs a lot of updating.

According to the numbers from Remodeling Magazines Cost vs. value report and my own experience that's over $100k worth of work easy...and we still haven't seen the condition of the downstairs unit?

Honestly, this seems more like a $750k max house to me...I would say that since the place has sat on the market for 100days that maybe they should consider lowering the price again?

And that's the way I see it...

One more thing....

Take a look at the Zestimate graph on the zillow page.

I don't think I've ever seen one that peaked so high for so shortly only to plunge so low...

KnifeCatching......I'm Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!!!!!

2012-01-09T07:44:00.000-08:00

Mu, ha, ha, haaaaaa....

How do you spell that?

Wow, the weather was so nice this past Sunday that I went for a walk through the neighborhood and toured through four open houses!!

Shockingly enough I felt compelled to write about them...

Soooo, up soon will be reviews of 1021 Fair Oaks Ave, 1441 Grand St, 1223 ST. Charles St, and the big daddy, 1235 Hawthorne lane.

Two Victorians and two mid-century moderns.

While I'm not going to promise that I'm going to go 'review crazy' if there is a house you would like to see reviewed please drop me a note.

Realtors, this is serving as fair warning, if you want your side included in the review you best get back to me ASAP.

Mads

Christmas at Chez Neumansky 3.0

2011-12-24T10:42:00.000-08:00

Now, we've never been really big on the whole Christmas decoration thing...Halloweens our thing. People have always said things to us during Halloween time like, 'Wow, I can't wait to see what your Christmas decorations look like...' and we'd just kinda look at them and smile...we've never really even owned any Christmas decorations until this year.

Not This Year!

Christmas at Chez Neumansky 3.0

Please be kind we've never decorated for this holiday before......and dang buying all this stuff even on sale adds up fast....

Outside Decorations

We replaced the 40W bulbs in the fence post lights with flicker bulbs and then put Santa hats on all the lights. Thank you dollar store for the cheap Santa Hats.

Maybe this should be a recurring theme with us? Pumpkins on Halloween, Santa Hats at Christmas...uh, Bunny Ears at Easter??? Uh, Leprechaun hats on St. Pats day???

Also, copying from Halloween we put a lighted garland all around the perimeter of the front yard...luckily the stuff was seriously on sale at Walgreen's..

We added a ton of decorations from the dollar store to this simple garland to dress it up. We put candy canes on it for people to eat and I don't think a single one was taken!?!?! That sure is a change from the ghetto I tell you what...

BBB had a sale on fancier garland and small wreaths that you can see here also.

Arty Shot...

Here's the best attempt at an overall outdoor shot..though we still missed half the decorations...

We also did the lighted tree thing up the walk way that you can see in the picture above.

Wouldn't be Christmas without the Menorah

Or the 'tree in the window' thing.

If you head up the steps to the porch you were greeted with this cheery site.

We tried to make the big incorrect columns look like 'candy canes'. The garland and wreath here were the fancier BBB stuff.

Stepping inside

More fancy BBB garland going up the stairs.

Mrs. Madmadscientist did this really nice thing with the lights.

She wove greenery into the lights and put hung ornaments from them...looked exactly like something out of a fancy catalog like Grandin Road or Frontgate. You can see some of the other lights in the other shots but unfortunately this is the only closeup shot of one of the lights...

And of course the Christmas-Solstice tree.

Look, we even shelled out for a tree skirt.

We went with a color theme. Red, Sliver and white for the tree. We also got a big G-scale train to run around the track..that was my favorite Solstice present.

We even did the very traditional Christmas village on the mantle with our stockings.

But wait, look a little bit closer at that Christmas village....something doesn't seem quite right there...

Yep we have a Nightmare Before Christmas village. We even got the fake snow blanket and some greenery. This was a hit at night with baby madmadscientist...she loved to inspect all the lighted houses and flick the little vampire boy on a spring on top of one of them.

Nice overall shot of the Christmas room.

We also lit Hanukkah candles

Love this fake fireplace...somehow having it going made things seem more Christmassy.

The final stocking-mantle set-up.

Pre Santa

Post Santa

Check out the eaten cookies, carrots and milk.....definite proof that Santa and the reindeer were there.

Here's something that we shoulda known....

Cats Love Christmas!!!!

Check out this selection of pics showing cats doing what they do best...destroy decorations...

Oh, the indignities that poor Christmas village suffered....

The cats loved the train...

Well that's it.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Solstice to everyone!

Fence go BOOM! New-ish Fence

2011-12-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

Subtitled: How I spent two whole weeks working on a 3 day job.....

A couple weeks ago we had some seriously strong winds blow through Alameda.

One of the casualties was several sections of our fence.

insert picture of blown down fence here (if I woulda remembered to take any)

So, my 82 years young neighbor and I set about fixing the fence together....he originally built the fence either 30 or 40 years ago all by himself. I think that for a fence to last 30 years is pretty good, don't you? Of course, back then fences were made out of all-heart old-growth redwood and were substantially more weather/rot resistant.

insert in progress pictures here (if I had remembered to take any)

After Shots!

Here are the sections that we rebuilt.

It was 4 sections in all.

Here you can see the mix of old and new wood.

This section has just old pieces that we re purposed to make do.

Here's where the old posts failed in the wind storm.

The arrow points to where the fence post used to be. You can see that its pretty rotted away.

What's odd to me is that the part of the post that was buried in the soil below the fence footing was actually not anywhere near as rotted as the top part that was exposed to air.

To replace the two completely rotted out posts we used a 10" by 2' sonotube to form the pier or footing...not sure what it should be called.

New Post Footings

We decided on using these brackets because they will keep the posts from rotting and they are adjustable. Our neighbor on the other side did the same thing and he really likes them. It was a little weird and different for my partner but he was won over by how its performing on the neighbors fence. These brackets seem so perfect for the job yet Simpson says that they are not intended to be used for fence posts? I really don't understand that. Do any of you?

In addition to the two completely broken posts there were two that still appeared to be in good shape but were a little loose in their footings.

I found these Simpson fence post mender brackets at economy lumber and we gave them a try.

They are pretty beefy steel that you pound down along the post and then attach with their structural screws. These really firmed up the fence posts, especially since we packed the area around it with the extra concrete. These felt just as firm as the new posts-footings.

They don't make em like that anymore.

I've never built or really even thought about building a fence before so I had no idea what the reality is. We first went to Home Despot to see if they magically carried replacement fence parts...nope..actually the selection of redwood at Home Despot was shockingly bad...didn't really have anything that we could use...So, next we went to economy lumber..where, yes, they carried a large selection of rough, all-heart redwood to build the fence with. Wow, that stuff's expensive...but not in the pre-made tongue and groove style that my partner was insisting that we replicate exactly......so we got to do it all 'by hand'.

Routing Craziness.

Here's a shot of the 2nd from the top 2by4 in the fence.

It is routed on the one side to accept the fence board, and on the other for the weird green wavy plastic stuff....The fence board rabbit is 7/8" wide by 1/2" deep...did it in one pass!! Man that created a lot of saw dust. I had to route every single horizontal piece plus both sides of each new 4by4 post.

Because we used rough redwood the bottom 1by12 board was two wide to fit into the existing rabbits on the fence posts...so, out came the Harbor Fright power planer and zing, zing, zing I shaved down the ends of the boards to form a tongue.

Handmade finials

My partner handmade the finials on the fence on his ancient Black&Decker table saw!!

After we finished the fence he actually made two more outta an old 4by6 fence post!

Speaking of old guardless table saws with adull blade and non-parallel fences....

Thank god it was just really a glancing blow....I tell ya there was a couple of scary minutes between doing it, swearing like a sailor, and getting the glove off and getting the wound cleaned out before I could tell it was superficial. I've had worse cuts cooking.

Next Up, Chez Neumansky Decorated for Christmas???

Halloween Night!!!

2011-12-15T14:25:00.000-08:00

Now that its almost Christmas I should finally get around to finishing up the Halloween stuff no??

Now, without further ado,...a metric f-ton of Halloween People Pics.

These are pics of people who came to help, to visit or just gawk...

But first, an important announcement....

Our 'official' tally for number of people that came through the yard haunt is.....

1500 Freaking People!!!

Nope that's not a typo we went from basically 150 people to 1500 people in the new 'hood.....and we still had fricken candy left over!!! We were so worried about running out of candy that a bunch of our helpers brought BIG bags...but don't worry..its been slowly disappearing...buurp....

Okay now the pics...

We had Zombies.

She's a Zom-beee..get it?

Theres a great story to go along with this picture. This person was working Bob for a while on Halloween night...Some punkass teen boys snuck around the fence on the neighbors side to see how Bob worked. Well, standing on tippy toes they could just see the back of his head. They yelled out stupid stuff like, 'Look, its just a guy on a computer...' At this point Ben turned around and jumped up in their faces and gave them his best zombie growl...Those kids musta jumped up and back 5 feet easy and literally went screaming down the street...

We had families in costume.

We had super cute kids.

We had friends who were crazy enough to give up their Halloween night for us.

Laura Croft.

This is our good friend Lucci playing with baby madmadscientist. He was our carnival barker-gate keeper. We needed him desperately to control the flow of people through the haunt and he was super entertaining in his own right.

These past three pics are of our friend Matt. He was soooo super awesome at scaring kids that he deserves special mention. He was doing the 'am I real or a dummy' thing in the graveyard and just scaring the pants off of everybody.

This is Heather/Medusa-she also gets a super special mention. She was working the foot controls for the trash can trauma and the zombie prop. Her sense of timing was just so perfect that she was getting amazing reactions from people.

We had Grandpa and Grandma

Grandma was a trooper stuck around all night and handed out candy. One piece per child no matter what...

Here's the group of people who stuck around to the bitter end and even helped us clean up after...

Can you tell how crazy tired we all are from this shot?

We really appreciated all the help guys.

Mr. and Mrs. MadMadScientist after a loooooooong couple of days...

See, we can still stand each other!

and baby madmadscientist fast asleep...

with her new favorite sleeping buddy...

Did I mention that the in-laws were also visiting at this time?

Next up, sometime before New Year, videos from Halloween night.

Demo Done!

2011-12-05T08:39:00.000-08:00

Put a big red DONE stamp on the basement demo.

We hired a demo crew by posting an ad in the Craig's List Gig section......odd assortment of people who answer those ads.....They basically finished completely demoing the basement and cleaned up after themselves in 4 full work days. Which is about 1 month and 4 days faster than I could of done it.

The subtitle of this post is
What Horrors Lurk Beneath!!!
With all the drywall off the ceilings and most of the walls a lot of interesting 'features' were uncovered...
Come with me now, dear readers, on a pictorial tour of 'What Lurks Beneath'.

First a boring selection of after shots of gutted rooms

Bye-bye old kitchens.

Here the wall between the kitchen-bath is partially removed.

Bye bye old bedrooms. That gas line above the closet? It just runs to there and stops...?

Insulation sure does take up a lot of space....

Now onto scary things hidden behind drywall.

Check out this selection of odd stuff we found.

Looks like a pair of seriously beefy homemade hold downs, a SCARY looking bottle of beer and what could possibly be a chunk of moonrock? Kryptonite??

Buried Junction Boxes
So, so, soooo many buried junction boxes....

This is an odd one..its a light swich box that is buried behind drywall in a closet!?!?!?

See how the top plate is short of the ceiling joists?

This was where a light switch used to be I think...

These last two pics I thought that I had just copied the same pic twice but nope...

Buried junction boxes are a clear code violation. I'm either going to have to 'unbury' them or redo the wiring with home runs back to the panel or something...

Scary Electrical
This is a live wire just buried in the wall...

Here's a shot of the subpanel for the basement.

Looks neat and tidy doesn't it. Notice anything weird?
It took me a minute but...there is no ground wire!!?!?!?
With the demo done I could look around and right above the panel I found this.

A ground wire collection.

I traced it back to the main panel for the building...which it of course just stops short of...

So nothing appears to be grounded down here...funny how the property inspector missed this...even though he took off the panel cover and looked inside....

Odd Framing...
In this shot look at the original 4by6 beam above the boxes.

As far as I can tell its just hanging in air...there are no support posts on either end...that beam spans 10' with 2 floors above it...don't know what I'm going to have to do with this. There is no way a 6" deep beam is going to be code approved for a 10' span with two floors above...anybody have the IRC span tables handy?

In this shot you can just see the end of a beam and post to the right of the door..

Well now that post is going to be in the middle of the master bedroom. I will probably have to put in a new code correct beam and footing that will span all the way to the wall on the left....

They appear to of framed the interior partition walls after drywalling the ceiling...The demo was made particularly difficult by the fact that the drywall is behind the wall top plates...

Not sure why you would want to do it that way...the non-load bearing walls are all 1 1/8" shorter than they should be...This is bothering me because I am worried about structural rigidity in the houses short direction. That's the weak, more easily rackable direction and having well attached walls along that direction will help in the case of earthquake.

They also appear to of done the tile after the drywall.

Which I don't think is that big of a deal but they didn't hold the drywall up off the tile....its buried...also making it a PITA to remove the drywall.

They put in vents in insulated spaces...

boy was the batt insulation dirty here...

Odd Plumbing Layout
Fortunately the water supply piping is all copper...unfortunately its pretty wacky.
The main line from the street is only 1"...seems smallish to me for a triplex.

The main line enters the building at the front corner and then is routed all the way to the opposite corner (the farthest run it could possibly have) to a manifold.

Here's the backside of the manifold.

Having a manifold is good. I can shut off the water to the individual units without having to cut the water to the entire building...well, that's the theory at least..I'm having a bit of difficulty figuring out which valve goes to which unit.....also, from the manifold there is only 1/2" lines to each studio apartment...seems a bit small to me but the tenants say they have good water pressure so....if it ain't broke don't fix it...

The plumbing in this place is so wack-a-doodled...The hot water heater is in the attic on the 4th floor yet is somehow plumbed all the way down to the basement to supply hot water to the two baths and two kitchens and the laundry room....I have to separate out the systems so the basement unit will have its own water heater. I'm also thinking about moving the manifold indoors to the mechanical room where it will be centrally located and remove like 20-30' of run for the main line.

Vents Schments..
This pic is the DWV for the bathroom sink and the laundry room and the old kitchen.

I can not see a vent for this group...This is a reoccurring theme in this house...not a lot of venting was done when bathrooms where added on...

Whats a 1hr fire rating?
To cover the HVAC stuff they built two soffits to conceal them.

I should also say that at just about every joint in the HVAC system air just pours out of...

I'm not sure if this is correct for a 1hr fire rated assembly...doesn't all four sides of the soffit need to have the fire code drywall?

The exhaust vent shown above turns vertical and goes ALLLL the way up through the roof.

This doesn't seem correct to me either...this was enclosed in a soffit covered with firecode drywall but shouldn't there be more to stop the fire from using this as easy access to all floors of the house?
Good thing about this is that when we install the new heaters this pipe will be unused and we can use this space as a chase to pull wires, plumbing through all three floors.

Choking on Dust
Everyday after the demo I would go and vacuum off the forced air unit before turning it on for the night. Yet somehow it was sucking up great gobs of drywall dust and evenly distributing it through out the house...all three floors where covered in a hyper fine coating of white drywall dust...

After it was too late I finally figured out what was going on.
The heater is built atop a plywood box that is used as a return plenum.

That's actually a good way to do it...provided the box is actually air tight.

Yep, that's a 1/2" gap in the box...through which the heater was sucking up the dust...I'm glad we are replacing the heater as I'm sure inhaling drywall dust has shortened its life span considerably...

No Earthquake Retrofitting Done....
Notice something missing from all the shots of the exterior walls? Yep no earthquake sheathing...this is a huge bummer for me...I was really hoping that since the foundation was done with permits that they would of done the earthquake retrofitting at the same time...nope...

There are some bolts anchoring the sole plates.

But a troublesome construction detail is going to make installing the earthquake sheathing a lot harder...
The fricken bottom plates are mostly buried in concrete...which means that there is no edge to nail the sheathing to...actually, this worries me from a rot perspective also...now the plates are surrounded on 3 sides by potentially damp concrete...seems like that's going to shorten the lifespan of the bottom plates...

Wow, this just added a lot of work and expense to this remodel. I'm going to have to install hold downs, more foundation bolts, the sheathing, the clips to tie the floor joists into the walls...hope my harbor fright rotary hammer is up for the task... maybe even have to pay an engineer to make sure I have enough racking strength in the short direction...ugh...

Nails!
Check this pic out.

This shows probably why the lame bamboo floor in this area was buckled. They nailed the subfloor down to the concrete with about a billion nails. Then they nailed the wood floor to the subfloor...I believe that for below grade applications you are supposed to float the flooring and subfloor...
Not sure what I'm going to do about the nails...they stick up from 1/2-3/4" and are a surprisingly effective trip hazard. They grab the lugs on your work boots and make you stumble...

I plan to float an engineered wood floor in this area so I think that means I have to remove the nails...just pulling them out takes a big chunk of concrete with them...I think I need to break out the angle grinders again and grind them all flush with the floor....shades of having to grind nails for weeks on end at Chez 2.0 for the radiant heating...at least its not overhead.

So, that's it for now...anybody see anything else in the pics that I missed?

Halloween Phase 3

2011-11-15T08:19:00.000-08:00

Better late than never I guess....actually, I'm just avoiding doing more demo in the basement......

Halloween Phase 3!!!

Overall Shots

Yep, going from phase 2 to phase 3 is probably more subtle than most people would like. We finished the yard with another cemetery section. Used rebar and fake chain to rope off areas and to create a path. I'm sorry, for some reason we don't have an overhead shot looking down...We put out our two zombies and trashcan surprise along with the pro fogger we've had in storage.

Creepy Close Up Pics

Pumpkin Zombie

He was placed in the new part of the cemetery right next to the path. When he was activated he scared a lot of people.

Daddy Zombie

Daddy Zombie here was part of the secret surprise when you talked to Bob. We called it the the zombie family picnic with the daddy zombie and the baby zombie.

Demon

We added the scythe and now he's holding a flaming skull. Its funny this was probably the easiest scene to do and it seemed to get the strongest reaction from people...go figure...

Peter Pumpkin

Here's a shot of our magic talking pumpkin Peter. He comes alive every Halloween time to talk to kids and tell them Halloween jokes. We borrowed a much, much better projector this year so Peter Pumpkin was much easier to see. He tells baaaaaaad Halloween jokes and the back story to the haunt. The younger kids seemed to like it. Though, really, I think they liked the munchkin sized hales to sit on the most....

Trash Can Trauma

Closed

Open

When actuated via foot switch the lid violently jerks open, the head pops out and strobe light goes off and a voice says 'Boo!!!! Did I scare you??? Happy Halloween!! Ha, Ha, Ha!' This was placed right in the line for candy and we scared A LOT of kids with it. This was the first animated prop I made many, many years ago. Its been in storage since we moved to Alameda so we just had to bring it out...even though it might not really fit with the theme....

Bob

Bob is the face from the magic mirror in the Disney Snow White Movie. He is a digital puppet who can talk to the kids. Of course Bob was back this year. Slightly smaller than last year but still a big hit! I didn't realize how many fans Bob had....people kept coming up to us non-stop during the month to ask/check if Bob was going to be back this year.

Couple 'Arty' Shots

Next up, shots of the big night and hopefully some video!!!

DeConstruction Day 2

2011-11-14T07:30:00.000-08:00

Day two was mostly spent wrestling with the freaking kitchen counter top...

Of course I couldn't find the camera for in progress shots so here's a bunch of after shots...

Me and MPM worked on the kitchen cabinets and got the HEAVY granite counter top off with out destroying the big section I wanted to save.

The little cut up section around the sink was not so lucky.

All the kitchen cabinets

You know what's funny..these cabinets are soooo cheap that they are actually light! A big 36" wide base cabinet should not be easily carried with one hand....These are the shipped flat packed from china and assembled here and sold at the shady Chinese cabinet place type cabinets at their finest.

After the cabinets where out of the way it was time to bust up some drywall.

Bye bye kitchen wall

Look what we found in the wall.

I'm sure that was a quality bottle....

Couple things I noticed about the wall.

The sole plate looks new but its buried in the dirt.

That's not good.

I also noticed that there does not appear to be any earthquake shear walling in this area? Since the foundation redo was done with permits I was expecting to find shear walling here...

Peeking through the wall I noticed this odd sight.

That's like a siren that appears wired up still??? But it looks like its mounted to the wall underneath the exterior stairs? What could it of been for? Odd right?

Here you can see the gas and exhaust vent line.

At least here he used the correct type of venting. But he used black pipe instead of galv and its already starting to rust....

And then, a lot of hammering and drywall coming down.

MPM was on a roll!

Big pile O drywall

Guess its time to get a dumpster....cept I have no where to put it easily....

That's it for day two.

If anybody has a good technique for removing the ceiling drywall I'd love to hear it.
The PO put homosote and 5/8" drywall on the ceiling and the combo is making it very hard to knock holes in it with the framing hammers.

Next up, more drywall coming down!

De-Construction Day 1

2011-11-13T09:15:00.000-08:00

The first day of de-construction in the illegal basement units went pretty well I think.

First off, here's what $3000 in HVAC equipment looks like.

I thought it'd be a bigger pile no?

First I pulled up the carpets, which I'd never done before. It was easier than I'd imagined.

Don't love how they just put the carpet right on the cement floor. I have no idea what kind of under slab water management systems where put in place. I'd have to guess NONE! I'm hoping now that I've 'fixed' the downspouts that there will not be any problem.

Here's a shot that looks like there is some water seeping into the basement somewhere. Like that big crack in the floor too no? So far I have not seen a single expansion joint in the slab....but lots of cracks big enough to fit my pinky in.

The carpet and pad where not wet but we're just starting our rainy season.

The kitchen before the unbuilding.

After pulling off the little bit of crown molding running across the uppers I was able to unscrew them and take them down pretty easily....scary how it seems that the thing that was holding these cabinets to the wall was the paint...they missed the studs on a lot of the screws.

Speaking of Screwy.

The PO tried to hide the fact that this was supposed to be a working kitchen...he hid the cook top mechanicals.

Bad temporary patch

The cabinet above the cook top had a false back and bottom.

These holes were covered with panels.

The upper cabinets came down in like half an hour! This is easy I was thinking....

Uppers Gone

Next I went to the other kitchen and removed the upper cabinets there in much the same way.

Now you see em

Now you don't.

Of course unbuilding the lower cabinets is going to be a bit harder in this kitchen...

I've been using this kitchen as my electronics work bench through out the month of October....where am I going to put all this stuff???

I got all the uppers down in less than an hour and I was thinking...this is going to be EASY!....

Then I started looking at the base cabinets...

To unbuild the lowers you first have to remove the counter top, then unscrew them to each other then unscrew them from any sleepers....

I call this shot, 'I'm F'd'

That is a shot of the counter top mounting block. Theres one on each inside corner of each cabinet. What you are supposed to do is screw up through this to attach your countertop...see how that one isn't being used? None of them were....

Instead they did this

They screwed down through the plywood and into the cabinets...not one or two screws per cabinet like 8 per...making it basically fricken impossible to easily remove the counter top....

You see the super heavy-expensive granite countertop is glued to the plywood..

What I ended up doing was finding a spot where there was a gap between the plywood and the cabinet top and drove shims in there to give me enough space to slip a loooong sawzall blade in there.

Then I very, very slowly added more shims as I worked the sawzall slowly around the perimeter of the bank of cabinets cutting the screws as I went...

I only got about half way done on the first day...

So, all in all I think not a bad amount of work done on the first day.

Final Permit Approved!!! Hurray!!!!..Oh, Wait...I'm totally boned...

2011-11-11T07:56:00.000-08:00

Got the FINAL code enforcement permit approved recently....

Like how it is stamped in red across the top... 'Enforcement Action'

If you open the pic you can actually read all the fee's! There's the fee for this, and the fee for that and a fee for the other...not fines..definitely not fines...just fees.....

This is the permit to legalize the deck and the kitchen remodel in the main unit.

Here's the 'I'm totally boned' part...

They were going to give me only 3 months to do it!?!?!??! That means, that yes, during the worst weather possible I would have to be working OUTSIDE getting the deck fixed...I literally had to beg to get it extended for six months...

For Those Keeping Track

I have six months left on the demo permit for the two illegal bottom units...I also have a permit to legalize the two as a single 3-2...that permit is good for 3yrs....buuuuut..I basically have to get all the work done within the six months I have left on the demo permit....or risk further code enforcement action.

So, that's two separate permits that both are going to expire in 6 months...that if I don't get signed off the city could re-open the code enforcement case against us and re-levy all those fees (not fines) against us!!! Hurray!!!!

Annd we can't afford to have pros in to help so that means me and whatever unskilled labor we can get.....hurray!!!!!

Its a gonna be a busy six months around here...hope my back and health holds out....

Leaky Garage Roof...Patched?

2011-11-10T08:54:00.001-08:00

Okay, I got up on the roof yesterday morning and did my super awesome high end roof patch job....

After talking over options with several pros I came up with this half-assed repair idea. I would use this fancy roofing repair caulk to fill the holes where the shingles had cracked apart and use a piece of flashing metal to make a temporary metal cap shingle.

First off, gotta get up on the roof safely.

I love this ladder...I think some pros might think a ladder like this is 'gimmicky' but it's been super useful for us. We've used it as a straight ladder, a platform when we were grinding all those flooring nails down at Chez 2.0. Here it's being used as a nice roofing ladder (won't F up the gutter).

The Supplies

Yep, can't ya just tell that its going to be a 'high-quality' job? Before I went on the roof I used the clear packing tape on the underside to seal the holes that went all the way through.

Close-up of the fancy roofing Goop I used.

And then I just filled all the cracks with the goop....it cleans up and tools with mineral spirits...I probably should have brought some up on the roof with me to tool the caulk but I didn't...I THINK I forced the caulk down and got it where it needed to go...we'll see....we got a one day reprieve from the rain so I'll have to wait until tomorrow...

Exciting Montage of Cracked Roofing Shingles Filled With Goop.

Now for the super ghetto-fab metal cap shingle.

I ran a BIG bead of caulk around the area before laying the 'shingle' on it. Then I tried to nail through the caulk bead. Just in case I spooged a bit of caulk on to cover the nail heads.

Looks pretty sweet doesn't it?

Of course when I was all done and out of fancy goop I noticed this...

The cap shingles under where I had put my stuff are looking like they are about to go...dang...

Let's hope that it rains tomorrow and I get no leaks....
This roof is totally trashed and really, really needs to be replaced...let's just hope that we can band-aid it along for at least this rainy season....

Chez 2.0 Is For Sale!!!

2011-11-09T09:05:00.000-08:00

That's right folks, Chez 2.0 is for sale!!!

Many, many folks have been emailing me saying...did you see that your old house is for sale??

I honestly have not been back to look at the place at all since we sold it.

But today I went by to take a look and of course take a few pics.

This pic might say it all...

My First Impression

I like the new paint job, it looks right for the house. The new roof looks good.

Like the light hanging in the porch area, though it looks a little low to me.

They planted sod just in the front area.. just exactly as much as would be needed to take this pic...

Looking through the window in the bump-out I can see that they opened up a doorway between the kitchen and what was our TV room.

It looks like they already have staging furniture in the lower unit.

It also looks like they just put a clear coat on the concrete floor down there...which is weird, as that floor had a ton of cracks in it?

Here's another shot from a different angle.

They didn't kill the black bamboo on the right, that's nice.

The pomegranate on the front left corner is actually looking pretty good.

What I REALLY did not like seeing is they had several of the solid wood original doors laying around like they were destined for the junk pile...so, super lame if they are going to junk them in favor of some plastic, hollow-core pre-hung POS.

I didn't walk onto the property to take a look at anything else.

The neighbor on one side says they rebuilt the deck twice as deep as the existing deck and removed one of the doors to the outside in the back of the house.

Holy Crap!!

I just checked the redfin page and they have pics!!! I have to admit after looking at the pics that the place looks pretty darn good...

I can't believe that they were able to bring the floors back!?!?! Man, they were totally trashed I thought...wow those floors look pretty great.

Kitchen looks a little...uh, sparse let's say....

No pics of the master bath...

The bottom floor looks good with the stained concrete.

1310 Pacific Ave Alameda CA is no longer a MadMadScientist production.

People need to remember this when looking at the house. There is much, much more of the new owners in the house than us.

By my count the new owners had to.

Do a complete roof tear off and rebuild much of the roof framing before sheathing and reroofing.
Do a complete water supply re-piping.
Bring heat to the top floor somehow...I'm dying to know if they actually extended the warm water radiant heat to the top floor....
Gut and rebuild the main kitchen plus two other 'sorta kitchens'.
Build three new full baths.
Run the branch circuits on the top and bottom floors.
Rebuild the rear deck.
Insulate, weatherize drywall, paint, trim, all the finishes.

That's a lot of work not done by us.

Wow, it only took them 4 months!!

I'm pretty shocked at this...from the admittedly rough shape the house was in to this in four months...wow...I'm honestly wondering how you do that aggressive schedule and do decent quality work??? At least if someone would have bought it with the 203k program, it looks like it probably would've been possible to get it done in six months.

Tri-plex, Duplex, what-plex?

The house is being advertised as a single family residence, that's also a triplex??? I know why they are doing this..because its easier to sell and appraise a SFR than it is a tri-plex. Problem is, is that it IS legally a tri-plex. Won't the appraiser and bank kinda insist on it being treated as such? Especially nowadays with super-strict loan rules?

The Price

Well, they have it listed at $725k....I don't honestly know how realistic that is...I know that the house is legally a 2702 sq ft 4-3 (because I did the work to make it so) so it's actually a pretty big place by Alameda standards, and is probably legally the biggest house in that neighborhood....I just don't know...seems a bit aggressive to me...

Potential Buyers of Chez 2.0

You can email me any questions about the house at the link on my profile page.

I hope they do an open house this weekend so we can walk through it and I will do an official review of the place....

What's Funny

If you type in the address of Chez 2.0 1310 Pacific Ave the second hit in Google is my joke review of the house...wonder how long it will be till the present owners try to force me to take it down???

The Upside?
Mrs. MadMadScientist had a good point. Now that its 'all done' all the people who thought that we were bug-nuts crazy for buying the place can finally see what we saw in it. To that also I'd like to ad that all the folks who walked through the place when we were trying to sell it and could only see what was wrong with it....now they can finally see it....cept its now going to cost them $225k more!

Would love to hear folks thoughts on Chez 2.0 in the comments.

Update
Just read the super awesome-amazing local paper....the house is open this weekend.
Weird hours though. Sat 12-2 and Sun 3-5.
C'mon everybody lets go!!!
Would love to hear peoples thoughts after they tour the house.

Leaky Garage Roof...gotta fix it ASAP

2011-11-08T10:46:00.000-08:00

Got a day to fix a roof!!!

It's supposed to rain tomorrow.

Having never ever in my life ever really thought about roofing, I've not got a day and a half to stop our garage roof from leaking.

First, I had to determine where exactly it was leaking from. From inside the garage I closed the doors and went looking for sunlight showing through the underside of the roof....well, I found it. There appear to be three main spots where the roof is leaking, though having been up there and seen the condition of the roof I'm surprised it's not leaking in many more places. I stuck yellow pipe cleaners up through the holes so I could see them from above.

One of the main leaks and most light showing is this disintegrated cap shingle.

I don't think that there is a lot of water coming in through here but it has the most light.

From underneath

Doesn't it look all spooky with the real spiderwebs?

I found two other leaks, interestingly enough, where the roof sheathing has a joint.

I believe these leaks are where most of the water is coming in. It gets through the shingles and runs down the underside of the roof where it drips off in various places. See that horizontal crack in all those shingles? That coincides with the roof sheathing joint...coincidence? Those shingles are cracked totally in half and you can see right through into the garage...

Underside view

This, I believe, is the main leaking spot. Look at that fungus damaged sheathing...it's pretty spongy...as in, I don't think it'll take a nail...

Other Side

This leak looks more recent and the sheathing is still pretty solid.

The Plan:

I don't have one. Help...I need to stop this roof from leaking and have the patch hold through this wet season and probably one other...

I've been looking at the roofing isle in Home Despot and hey, you can buy shingles in singles! But you can not buy cap shingles that way...?

I guess my plan is to attach some solid plywood to the underside of the rotted out stuff and then use REALLY long nails to attach the shingles to the roof? How do I do that correctly?

The cap shingle...how do I plug that hole if I can't get a cap shingle to replace the rotted out one?

Any useful advice would be greatly appreciated.

Halloween Time!!! Phase Two!!

2011-10-20T09:37:00.001-07:00

Okay, finally got the phase two decorations done this past weekend...if by weekend you mean that it took me till Tues....

Now, of course these are going to be slightly less dramatic than going from phase zero to phase one...

Halloween Phase Two

Daytime Shots

Sorta overall shot...

Scare Crow and Sign

Big Spider

Demon Guy

Gargoyles

Graveyard

Sign-Bob's Web

Dork Caught in the Act

Super Spooky Night Time Shots

Overall Shot

Scare Crow

Scare Crow with Sign

Demon Guy

Grave Yard Shots

Victoria!!

Victoria is back haunting our house for the first time in many years! She is a VERY particular Victorian lady who will only deign to appear if the conditions are right...I guess she approves of the new digs...

Closer up shot of Victoria

So hard to get a camera shot of her...

I'm stuck...

Check out this shot of the yard from above.

I've got all that space to fill and I am stumped on how best to do it!!!

I'm literally drawing a blank here...first time that's happened in years!

Its not like I don't have enough stuff to fill that space two times over I just can't figure out how to do it exactly....

What we do in haunt nerd terms is called a 'walk-thru yard haunt'. For good flow of the patrons (trick or treaters or TOT'ers) I need to have an entrance, an exit and a well defined path to walk in...just can't figure it out though....arrgh...

Plan was to have everything up and debugged by the end of this coming weekend....

Alamedeans Haunt Your House!!!!!!!!!!!

2011-10-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

Its That Time Of Year Again!!!

Time To Haunt Your House!

Once again we are part of the group of crazies who are putting on the 'Alameda Haunt Your House' contest and canned food drive.

For all the details on the contest please go to the contest website alamedahauntyourhouse.org.

This year we are doing things a little differently. Voting to win will be by popular vote! No official judges this time!

The Alameda Bicycle Coalition will be doing a night time ride to see all the houses in the contest on the night of the contest Sunday Oct 30th. You are encouraged to decorate your bike and come in costume.

Last year we raised a pretty good haul of food for the Alameda food bank.

Over 500 pounds and we're hoping to do better this year!

So, Alamedeans, Haunt Your Houses!!!!

Got a friend or neighbor who likes to decorate for Halloween? Please send them the link to the contest website.

Tell a friend, tell a neighbor, help us get the word out!!

Help us help those in need over the holidays!

Halloween Time!!!

2011-10-17T09:37:00.000-07:00

We've had to discuss with baby madscientist that its 'Halloween Time' not Halloween proper....she kept thinking it was time to get out and get some candy from the neighbors...

But who can blame her really, when her house looks like this!

We are calling this phase 1

Daytime Shots

Overall Shot

Front walk

Front Steps

Fence Pumpkins

Up High

Scary Face in the Bushes

Spooky Night time Shots

Overall Shot

The Front Walk

Up High

Closer-Up Shots

Fence Posts

Scary Face in the Bushes

Close-up Faces

The last two we carved ourselves...you can tell can't you....

That's it for phase one...wait till you see phase two!!!

Steamy Goodness!!!

2011-10-14T07:24:00.000-07:00

We Have Steam!!!!!!!!!!!

Good thing we're in the middle of an October heat wave....

Finally got around to replacing the bashed on steam generator for our silly shower in the master bath.

Here's a shot of the unit before installation.

Its the only 120V model Jacuzzi makes...... it seems pretty budget...

The spot on the wall where the old unit was.

Step one new unit mounted to wall.

Had to use anchors...there's never a stud around when you need one is there?

Cold water supply hooked up.

That white tube on the bottom is a water filter.

See the brass rt angle on top of the unit and the half a union coming out of the wall? I had to figure out a way to hook the two together...

The old push button in the shower was destroyed so I had to replace it with the new one that came with the kit....

Except for some crazy reason..the hardware on the original was not water proof...

Those screws are totally rusted!

I had to chew out the plastic to get rid of this old mounting bezel.

Bezel gone.

You can see right through and into my closet!

New switch has no complicated clamping mechanism.

Just 100% Silicone caulk on the back side.

Union Adaptor Widget.

To hook up the steam generator to the steam delivery tube I had to fab up the above adaptor...ya I know my soldering skills suck...but it didn't leak. I had to go around to EVERY place that sold plumbing in the area to find the exact same 3/4" union...of course the PO bought it at Home Despot...

Here's how it all looks put together.

And now lets push the button and see what happens....

Steam!!!

It took about four minutes to fill our little shower with steam.

Its a great thing that I got this all done during an October heat wave!

Hope it stays warm and sunny through Halloween!!!

Though, we can't wait for it to be Coooooold so we can try the steam shower.

Next Up, Halloween, for sure this time.

DIY HVAC with Plans!

2011-10-10T10:24:00.000-07:00

Okay, How Crazy am I???

I'm going to do my own HVAC!!!

It's really not that I want to...it's just that I don't have much choice.

Right now there is one forced air unit in the basement that supplies air (poorly) to the two basement apartments AND the main floor of the house....with the thermostat (t-stat) on the main floor of our house...

This has to change of course.

There needs to be two separate forced air systems: one for the new legal 3-2 apartment in the basement and one for just the main floor of the house...

I talked to a couple local 'well respected' HVAC places, but what I got from them was not encouraging....they both were going to do the system completely using flex duct and just use basic rules of thumb to size the equipment and place the registers...which means to me that I was going to get a non-optimized system sized incorrectly...this matters because what usually happens is they size the furnace too big and you get short cycling...where the furnace cycles off-on in quick succession...bad for the equipment, and the larger furnaces always cost more.

An Aside On Local HVAC Contractors

I've come to the conclusion that the vast majority of CA HVAC types (at least in this area) are fricken lazy and mostly inept. In the SF Bay area..where it really never gets super cold (Think a winter in the North East for comparison) or super hot (summer in high humidity Georgia) I believe this has caused the HVAC types to become lazy...

They can throw together a system using b.s. rules of thumb and over sized power plants and it's okay..nobody's going to freeze to death...and the local building dept isn't requiring people to show real HVAC plans either...

In other parts of the country to get a building permit, the HVAC contractor needs to do a manual J load calculation and a manual D duct calculation. The manual J is where they actually calculate the heating-cooling load of the home based on its size, construction, location. A manual D is where they then calculate the placement of the heat registers and size of the ducting.

I talked to like eight local HVAC guys and they ALL acted like I was crazy for wanting the Manual J & D's done...we don't do that here...one place referred me to an engineer that wanted $1200 to do it!?!?!

End Aside

To The InterWebs!

I found a place online that will do the Manual J,D calcs for you, for a fee of course.

Its kinda got a lame name... PerfectHomeHVACDesign.

The guy that runs it seems pretty reasonable and I like what he's sent me so far.

You send him the floor plan, window-door schedule and what your existing equipment is (if you have any) and he sends you back A LOT of info...most of it you don't need except where he spec's the equipment and the duct maps.

Here's what the HVAC plan looks like.

For the basement.

Take a look at the plan. Some things I've never seen on a local HVAC install. The outside air vent and the jumper vents between rooms. It seems like that around here they just say the space under the door will work.. I asked the designer about that and he said that you'd have to make sure that there was 1.5" clear under the door! How many people have that much clearance?

For the Main Floor.

We have the ducts shown for both as he had to move some around to make them both work.

Here's just the register locations

What he did was use two existing registers and the existing intake for the return air for this floor. I will have to add registers to a lot of places like the bathrooms and whats called the study (really the kids play room) on the plans. Not super fun but we're taking the ceiling down in the basement anyways so it will all be open...gotta do it now.

I think it will be nice to have a house with a correctly designed forced air system.

The single unit that's currently heating the area is a 100Kbtu, the software says that we only need a 45Kbtu for each level..and even then those are on the big side...but its the smallest size unit generally made. We had to get multi-stage burner and fan speed units to keep them working correctly (not short cycling).

Parts List From Hell

I went through the above diagrams and I believe I've figured out how many widgets I need to buy.

Anybody want to check my math?

Wow HVAC stuff is expensive.

Just did an online order (free shipping and no sales tax!) for the two different heating units, special venting supplies, thermostats, and supply and return air plenums...I think all the big stuff and I spent over $3000!!! Holy Fricken Moly!

I still have to buy all the widgets above! Speaking of..

Does anybody know of a DIY friendly local store that carries this kind of stuff?

I don't think Home Despot does but who knows....I can buy a lot of it online but that seems kinda silly, no?

I've gotten the impression that HVAC places that stock this kind of sheet metal are pretty anti-DIY...or am I wrong about that?

Next up....Halloween!!!!

Art Deco Movie Theater....

2011-10-06T08:00:00.000-07:00

That's the look we've decided to go for in our TV room.

To that end we've bought some odds and ends.

Like these cool outlet and switch covers.

Notice the cool repro push button switch. Its a 3-way and a dimmer!

This art deco-ish overhead light.

Annnd the main thing, this super cool new sleeper couch!

We think this couch looks super deco movie theater.(gotta hide that made in America tag better next time I take a picture).

It is a TIGHT squeeze though. Now we can fit 4 adults in comfort to veg out while staring at the flat screen. The couch is comfy and soft.

We bought the couch from the same place in SF where we have literally bought every other bit of furniture we own. Its called Build A Sofa and you can literally customize just about every aspect of the couch. For ours, we wanted it to be a foot wider and a sleeper...no problem they said..it just costs more. You can choose the fabric and the piping color and how many pillows and how firm the cushions are...and its made in America!!! I'm not going to say that their stuff is heirloom quality..its certainly waaay better than IKEA. To get the same level of quality you'd have to pay at least twice as much from a place like Macy's.

Up Next
We want to paint the walls in the room the same color as the piping on the sofa, a sorta steel blue.

We also have to figure out what an 'Art Deco' window treatment would be? We hate the blinds (that don't work anyways) but are stumped as to what to replace them with. Any ideas?

Another Deadline Met!!

2011-10-05T14:00:00.000-07:00

The end of Sept was also the deadline for us to get our plans re-submitted to the city with all the changes their plan check engineer wanted.

As usual it was a crazy last minute rush with me having to rush over to the engineers office so he could sign and stamp the plans. Then when I got to the building dept. the women who usually handles this stuff was off and the person filling in had a different take on what I needed....I only had 2 copies of the plans but she said I needed 4 because planning had a hold on the plans...This was serious, new news to me. Last I heard we had passed the major design review and planning had signed off on all of it....

I had to rush home and print out two more sets of the plans...luckily the sets for planning did not need to be stamped and signed by the engineer.

Without Further Ado...The Plans!!!

Here is the framing plan for the main deck.

I have to add two 2by12's to the spots noted to beef up the rim joists...that is going to suck as I will have to shorten the existing joists then install the new rim and re-attach the joists.

Here is the post-footing plan.

The existing footings are 12" square...which means I will have to dig up and redo the three footings that need to be 18"...that's not super great...but now I won't have to dig up all the footings and redo them.

Construction Details.

Framing Plan for the Balcony.

I'm going to have to do some work on the landing and the stringer connection....which will be fun as its super high in the air...

Some Renders of the different views of the existing stuff.

I had to put the note in about the floor to floor distance as the cities engineer didn't believe it was 12'. He thought it was more..
And Finally the plan for our super fab kitchen.

I'm seriously hoping that the cities plan check engineer takes another 3-4 months to look this over. My biggest fear is that he'll get back to me quickly and they'll issue the permit at the beginning of winter and I'll lose several months of outdoor construction time because its raining...only have a year to finish everything after the permit is issued....

Bees!!! Bees!!! Bees!!!

2011-10-04T14:49:00.000-07:00

Stinging Death From Above!!!

Raining Sticky-Sweet Goo From Above!!!

I hate bees....hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, bees....ow, my back hurts...

So, this past weekend, (the first weekend in October) was do or die time. Remove the bees before the neighbors came back from vacation...

We knew that there were two separate hives in the walls of the house, as we've talked about before.

In preparation to remove the BIG hive I built a little clean room out of plastic sheeting and tried to cover things up as much as possible.

Clean room.

Supplies

That white box on the right is the new hive box. I way, way under estimated how much plastic sheeting I was going to need for this...

Suited Up And Read To Rock!

Luckily a local bee keeper (thanks S) had a complete bee suit that I could borrow..though I don't think she realized the horrors I'd be putting her suit through..

I climbed the ladder and started cutting..with the carbide blade it went pretty fast and pretty soon I had the entire hive uncovered.

Closer look at the hive.

The hive was one joist bay wide and ~7' looooong....
Close-up of bee central.

Old House Aside... Check out the clean cut on the lathe and plaster!

I used a short carbide blade and it worked awesome. With the short blade you can hold the shoe against the plaster so there's really no vibrations and no shaking loose of surrounding plaster. I kept the speed at medium and there was no burning either.

It's funny, the first thing I thought after exposing the hive wasn't OMG I'm surrounded by stinging hell..it was, 'Hey, I've got full 12" joists supporting the 2nd floor of the house, hurray!!!'. The house appears to be built pretty solidly with full 12" joists supporting the two main floors..don't know yet what the top floor (which used to be the attic) has....

More Creepy Bee Pics.

Next The Official Bee Guy climbed the ladder and smoked the bees out...ha...

Actually they barely noticed when I cut the ceiling down around them..which I thought was weird..but WOW when he applied some smoke...MAN the level of noise goes from unsettling to HOLY CRAP!!

What he had to do was scrape the honey comb off the ceiling and try to keep it in as good as shape as possible.

Part Way Done.

He would then hand the chunk of comb to me and I would attempt to vacuum off the bees. The pieces he was keeping went into the new hive held in place with rubber bands.

The Bees just loved Andrew..

Closing up the hive.

I wish I had a video of this..he had a bee vac that was FULL of pissed off bees...then he just opened the vac and dumped the bees on top of the new hive...

The rest of the comb I just vacuumed the bees off of, and put them in big trash bags...we filled 3 BIG contractor bags with excess honey comb..

This is also the point where I was getting stung...on my fricken finger tips!! He'd hand me a chunk of comb and bam I'd get zapped on the finger tips!!! so much fun..we spent like 5 hrs doing this..scraping comb, vacuuming bees, getting stung... I got stung 16 times..turns out I don't really have any reaction to the stings other than the initial pain...

An important step is to seal the bee hive entrance up to stop the bees coming in the house..

I bought the wrong kind of foam so when we thought the hole was sealed it really wasn't...

Then it was vacuum, vacuum, vacuum up the remaining bees and try to clean up the HUGE amazing mess we had created.. On the drop cloth in the entryway was a thick layer of plaster dust, honey, and dead bees...the front entryway to the house was just coated in honey...in fact EVERYTHING was coated in honey..the walls, the tools, us...It had been raining honey on us all day.... We were soaked through with HONEY...so, gross. did I also mention it was really hot that day??? Ugh!!!

I thought pulling down the ceiling in the old place and having it rain rat poop on my was bad..this was worse, wet, sticky, stingy...ugh...

It was a looooong hard 8hr day of overhead labor...ouch, we were both hurting at the end of it...

But, remember that there were two hives.....

The next day I came downstairs with baby madscientist and this is what I saw...

A LOT of bees on the window...loud angry bees...didn't phase baby madscientist at all though..

So, the first thing we had to do on the second day was fix our f-up from the first. We used the bee vac and got the rest of the bees up...then we used the correct super expanding foam and just sprayed the heck out of the place...

There was a stud bay above that had a lot of bees in it so I foamed that up and just foamed the heck out of the area...

One disconcerting thing..(ya just one) there wer a ton of bees boiling out of the hole where the closet bend goes up through the ceiling...this is odd. As I'm pretty sure that it's just plywood, cement board and tile up there...where in the heck were the bees coming from? Did they colonize the underside of the toilet?...Now I'm afraid to pull the toilet to reset it correctly on its flange (it wobbles, but doesn't leak)...

After the super foam job and one more run with the vacuum it looked like we had finally filled the entrance...

Now on to the second hive in baby madmadscientist's room....

Annnnnnd we're done... well, we forgot to take pictures.. but this hive was way, way, way easier to do.. just drywall, no lathe-plaster, very small, just the space here where an old gas wall heater used to live...and lots and lots of foam...

This extraction was textbook and only took a couple of hours...

While small, the hive appeared to be very, very, very old..

Bee Graveyard...

This stud bay was filled with dead bees...like two feet thick..that was kinda gross, the ones on the bottom where practically compost...smelled weird too, kinda musty...

We foamed the HECK out of the entrance and got it right the first time..no new bees...

Here's a couple shots of the outside of the entrance..we foamed it good...

Die bees DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Got a little over exuberant with the foam...die bees die!!!

On the second day either of us hardly got stung...I got stung only three times...but one of those times.....
Some sort of special ops bee got me.. It crawled up inside the leg of the bee suit. All the way up my leg and into the shorts I was wearing...it was stopped by the snug elastic leg band of the tighty-whiteys I was wearing...and it stung me right there!!! If I had been wearing super cool boxers it probably would of stung me on my meat and two veg!!!

We loaded up the hives into Andrew's Car and cleaned up our mess as best we could.

We had tracked honey and dead bee guts down the stairs and all over the front house entrance...
I got to break out the mop bucket and hot water and moped everything...then I mopped it again...and then I mopped it again..

Everything is sticky from honey, all the tools, the shop vac, the extension cords...everything we touched...door handles...walls..windows... This is going to send me to the nut house chattering about 'Sticky, sticky sticky....'

Oh, almost forgot, my 'haul' after 12+ hrs of work...

HoneyComb.

Guess what everybody is getting from us for Christmas???

Funny enough, I have no desire to even taste the stuff...Andrew said it tasted quite good...it was raining honey on him so hard that it leaked thru his netting and into his mouth...

Final Tally
me-20 bee stings
Andrew- way over twenty..mostly on his fingers...
200 pounds of honeycomb extracted from the big hive...
20 pounds of honey comb for us to keep...

Parting Shot.

This was taken midway through the day...at this point I was thinking...I shoulda hired a pest company to kill the buggers then I coulda 'removed the comb' with a flat bladed shovel and been done with this entire mess in half a day with no stings...This experience really, truly sucked...just about as bad as getting an MRI (my new standard of super suckiness).

Attention Realtors! Have you read Burbed Lately?

2011-09-17T07:48:00.000-07:00

Okay folks, I know that there is A LOT of hate on against me and my little blog here by the Realtor Community in Alameda... They sometimes act like I'm Satan himself with my honest reviews of houses for sale...

Well guess what? I'm not the only person reviewing houses for sale!

Realtors, have any of you ever heard of a very popular blog called Burbed?

http://www.burbed.com/

Take a minute or five and read through that blog. Its based in Silicon Valley so don't worry...

Couple of things I want you to notice.. Besides the main editor reviewing houses he's got an army of followers reviewing houses in Silicon Valley. They tour open houses, take pictures and post about what they saw and what their impressions are of the houses. That's tens of people all doing what I do and being a lot harsher about it...they do call all Realtors realatards....I do like the google earth views of the houses for sale that show them right next to a freeway or toxic waste dump or what not...

Realtors, think about how lucky you have it here in Alameda...just one lone nut job reviewing houses for sale... Next time your cursing my name I want you to think this, 'At least we're not in Burbed territory.'

Wanted Independent House Reviewers

Well I guess I have to face facts. Even though I believe that independently reviewing houses for sale in Alameda is a valuable community service I've just been too busy lately to do it and I've missed several good opportunities to do it....

I'm sending out an open call for guest reviewers.

Tour houses you think are interesting, try to take some pics of what you think needs being shown. Try to get a pic of the front of the house at least.

Do a little write-up and send it all to me in an email (my email address is on my profile page) and I will post it to the blog as a guest review.

You can remain anonymous to the world but you can not be anonymous from me. I will need to figure out some sort of vetting process to weed out the people who are not honestly reviewing houses.

So, c'mon and join the fun!!!

Christmas in September!?!?!?!!?

2011-09-16T07:26:00.000-07:00

Okay, following up on my Halloween in August post....here's a little something I like to call....

Christmas in September!?!?!? Seriously??? WTF!!!

Went out to my local Costco on Sept 1st to do some shopping....here's what I found.

They had one isle of Halloween Merch out.

One side of an isle of kids costumes.

One side of an isle of adult costumes.

Now, these weren't even full isles..like half isles with candy and flashlights on the other half. No Halloween decorations....

But right next to the Halloween stuff was.... you guess it....

Six fricken full isles of Christmas Stuff...

In September?!?!?!?

Who is excited about buying nativity scenes in September???

I stood around by the nativity scenes for like 10 min...EVERY single person who walked by ~20, had the exact same reaction... ' Christmas Already?!?!' shaking their heads in disbelief...

What about Halloween?

What about Thanksgiving?

There Outta Be A Law!!!!!!!

They can make laws about, just about any darn thing...well there outta be law on holiday decorations and merchandise!

I say, no decorations up and no merchandise out until 30days before the actual Holiday!

That would mean no Halloween stuff out until Oct 1st.

That would mean no Christmas stuff out until the day after Thanksgiving. What ever happened to Thanksgiving anyways?

City Council Members can pass laws right? Or boards of supervisors? I say, everybody emails their local representative and tells them that they are SICK to death of merchants putting out merchandise MONTHS ahead of the holiday.

I'll start, here's a link to the Alameda City Councils contact info. Click on their names to email them.

Contact your local elected official and tell them,

There Outta Be A Law!

Heck, if we can't get the elected officials to get off their duffs and do the right thing we'll make our own law. A referendum or something!

If you feel as I do please pass this on to anyone who might be interested in the message.

Who's with me??? Anyone??? Beullar...? Beullar???

One Fancy Pants Closet....DONE!!!

2011-09-15T11:26:00.000-07:00

Put a big red DONE stamp on one Closet.

The back finally healed up enough to get what was supposed to be a simple chore done...putting in the closet organization system in the master closet.

Here's what the closet looked like when we bought the house. Just one long shelf and one long closet rod.

Well, its what it looked like filled with my crap...

After much researching on closet systems we decided to go with a custom closet from a place called www.easyclosets.com. They had the best online tool and their prices included shipping which I imagined would be quite substantial for the particle board that their systems are made from.

I signed up with them, did my best to think up a usable design on their website then contacted them so they could tweak my design (free closet design is included with the price). I talked to a Tracey who actually had a couple important points and I feel that she actually added value to the transaction. There factory is all computer controlled and they had my closet pieces cut and shipped out to me via UPS the next day. The closet is 8' by 4', so not huge, but there is 10' ceilings and I wanted to make sure to take advantage of the height...I choose the nice drawer slides and drawer pulls and the grand total was close to $1400!!! Still at this point I felt like I was getting my moneys worth....(foreshadowing).

The boxes arrived about a week later..VERY heavy-dense packages all at about the limit UPS allows of 60#. Like a sucker I helped the UPS guy carry them in off the truck...and by help I mean I did 80% of it while he twiddled with his hand held computer thingy they always carry. Sure glad my back wasn't hurt when I was doing that...

Somehow I managed to not take a picture of all eight million of the boxes stacked in the entryway...

But here's a shot of the aftermath...I do have to say the stuff was packed extremely well and there was a LOT of left over cardboard. I was able to entice a cardboard burglar to come and take all the cardboard off my hand.

Here's the entire closet stacked and ready to be installed. Once you remove all the packaging it doesn't take up all that much space does it?

I removed the existing closet stuff...they painted the shelf and wall after they installed the closet stuff...so removing it revealed old paint colors and lots of drywall damage. I also discovered that at one time there was a door way into the area. You can just make out the ghost of it on the left side corner.

I even made some of my own...

Love that granite floor though...
Another awesome thing the PO did was put the baseboard down first and then tile right up against it!! The base was literally entombed in tile and grout...of course I had to remove all of it so that the closet system would fit....

Next I did the worlds worst patch and mud job on the walls...followed by the worlds worst paint job...I know that 90% of the walls are going to be covered but I just couldn't leave them looking like crap...

Speaking of looking like crap..here's my super lame patch job...this was pre paint.

I decided to start on the short wall of the closet...then I noticed this...

Hurray, the broken steam unit is in the way..and there's an outlet there that needs to be accessible...I removed the broken steam unit and carved up the drywall and framing so that that black flex line would run inside the wall and not interfere with the closet vertical on that side.

And Then A Miracle Occurred and the entire closet system was installed without a single hitch...

You have to install these metal tracks that the verticals hook into. You have to make sure they are level and straight even if the wall is wavy. On this short wall here the wall bulges out considerably where they slopped mud over the old door framing...so much so that I could not get the unit to fit on that wall.. Out came the multi master and I shaved down the wall and the shelves in that corner to get it to fit...that was a HUGE PITA!!! I shoulda just spec'd the width as 1" less....live and learn.

Skipping A LOT of steps...here's the drawer unit installed. Looks fine..see how you can still open the drawers with the door open? That was a VERY important design criteria that I had..I didn't want to have to close the door to open the drawers.

Here's a shot of the rest of the closet...

Okay, notice the hanger there...that blue hanger? Notice how it sticks out past the shoe unit? Yep, that's right...the designer didn't leave enough space to make the left side of the unit usable!!!
Arrrrrgh!!! I was super pissed off and couldn't understand how easyclosets.com could let this happen...I talked to the designer who admitted it was her mistake and said they would make it right...well..the only way to make it right is to squeeze down the middle hanging section by 6" to give me the clearance I needed to hang clothes there...that means I would be losing a foot of hanging space...not super happy about that...especially for nearly $1400....

I decided to just move the entire long wall unit down 6"... as you can see here that means that I can't have the door open and open the drawers at the same time...we'll see how annoying that is. The easy closet folks are sending me the parts to shorten the hanging section and I can always do that if having to close the door to open the drawers gets unbearable...

And Now Some Shots Of The Finished Closet

Boy, for a straight, male science nerd I sure do have a lot of clothes don't I??

Hooks!

I put up a ton of 'robe hooks' cause I have the weird habit of wanting to hang up the clothes I'm wearing to air out...like my work out gear and PJ's and what not...

Mirror!

Yep, it doesn't even cover the wall patch...my secret shame...

We've taken to calling it the Bat Closet cause I go in dressed one way and emerge dressed another! Ya, we're dorks...

Break Down on EasyClosets.Com

I don't know how I feel about them...it seems like a lot of money to spend on particle board and melamine stuff...they had good before and after sale service and fixed their F up quickly and at their own cost...but still.... I'm not convinced I got good value from them...

And Now The Hard Work Begins Part 2

2011-08-27T15:15:00.000-07:00

Okay when last we left we talked about the work that had to happen in the basement.

Now lets talk about the work that has to happen on the 2nd floor.

Converting Two Studio Apartments Into A Single One Bedroom

Here is the approved plan for the conversion.

You can see that maybe its a weird lay out but it fulfills our requirements for the least amount of work required. And I believe I can do this without having to have the tenant that currently occupies the C unit move out.

Here are some shots of the interior of Unit B.

The super sweet bathroom

The water heater is in a closet in the bathroom. Its an electric model.

Here's a shot of the kitchen. That's the bathroom door on the right.

Kitchen from the doorway looking in.

This unit does have a working gas range, old fridge and a dishwasher!

The main living area of the unit.

Here is the closet that I am going to shorten to make the hallway.

The main living area as viewed from the front door.

What Has To Be Done

Windows:

Nothing!!! Hurray!!!!

Bathrooms:

Nothing!!! Hurray!!!!

Electrical:

I need to tie both subpanels back together at the meter base and make sure the main cut off at the meter base can handle the load.

Gots to add the wired smoke and CO detectors.

Need to add more outlets to comply with current codes-AFCI protected.

Need to add switched over head lights and exterior lights for the doors.

Framing:

I'm going to have to shorten the back to back closets and create a hallway.

Kitchen:

Remove it completely and turn it into a regular room.

Plumbing:

I have to cap all the plumbing for the kitchen in the walls.

I have to cap the gas line to the kitchen as its meter will be servicing the new unit in the basement.

I'm going to keep the two electric water heaters for now. I figure this way the tenant and a guest and both shower at the same time!

HVAC:

There is an electric wall mount heater that works... I might change it out for a newer one or go with the super hideous electric baseboard heat... I don't think it makes sense to add a furnace to this little unit....does it? Or maybe a mini-split system? It does get pretty darn hot up in these little back units...that might be getting a little fancy though?

How does that sound to everyone?

Course I haven't even thought about if I need to do things like freshen the bath? It appears to be in good working order it just looks a little dated.

And Now The Hard Work Begins...Advice Requested.

2011-08-26T13:11:00.000-07:00

Okay sooo, got the permits to start the work....cept I just seriously threw my back out and I'm not doing any kind of anything for a while....Actually I've got a full plate of 'computer stuff' to do right now so I'll be busy but still, I wanna get this work started!!!

Except I'm not entirely sure how exactly to go about doing the work.

Here's what we have to do for the bottom floor.

I've got to turn this illegal set-up

Sorry about the lack of detail on this existing drawing, doesn't show the existing electrical or kitchens.

Into this legal set-up.

But what does that mean exactly?
Windows:
I don't have to change out any of the windows, thank god.

Bathrooms:

The bathrooms are staying put as-is. Except that I will have to convince the inspector that they were installed correctly. This is probably going to entail cutting into the walls in various places so he can have a look around...I also have to redo the fan-light switch wiring because the fan and light has to be able to be switched separately. I am also adding an on the wall vanity light to both baths.

Electrical:
I'm going to have to add AFCI protected outlets to all the rooms as they only have one per now. Should I cut in new boxes and fish wire or just remove drywall?

Switched over head lights need to be added in most of the rooms and hallways.

I need to add powered smoke and CO detectors to the ceilings as shown.

I'm moving the location of the units electrical panel to a different wall and probably adding several circuits to it.

Framing:
I'll need to add and remove some non-load bearing walls. Biggest thing I'm going to do is remove the wall in the kitchen to open it up to the family room to have a single 'great room'.

The PO also installed bamboo floor in the one bedroom apartment that I will have to pull up as its buckled, ugly and installed incorrectly.

Plumbing:
God, where to start.
The baths and kitchens are all plumbed already and I'm not anticipating having to do anything with the DWV stuff (lord I hope so as its all in concrete...).
But the water supply piping? Somehow, the hot water to these two basement kitchens and bathrooms is piped to the one, single lone water heater in the 3rd floor attic!!! I believe all the plumbing is in the ceiling of the basement. I wonder if I'm going to have to remove most of the drywall on the ceiling just to figure out the water supply piping?

I will have to run new gas lines to the new mechanical room for the new furnace and tankless water heater that will be servicing the unit.

I will install a tankless water heater in the mechanical room also.

HVAC:

Right now there is a single furnace that is ducted to heat this basement unit and the main floor of the house above. I'm going to have to untangle the ducts and separate the ducts for the two different units with two different furnaces. I've also got to fix the heating for the bottom unit which means adding registers and returns in many places..work I've never really done before.

So that's two new correctly sized furnaces and a tankless water heater all installed in the mechanical room. All of them are of the condensing type and all of them will be vented horizontally with PVC pipe through the North wall of the house. I'll also have to figure out what to do with the condensate.

Kitchens:
I'm going to have to 'un-build' these two kitchens

and then re-install the cabinets in the new single bigger kitchen.

Whats the best way to un-build a kitchen? Can I save the granite countertops to re-use them?
I'm going to have to add a ton of outlets to the new kitchen for the counter top, the frig, the dishwasher, range, MW, hood...at what point does it just make more sense to completely remove the drywall and start from a clean plate?

I Need A Plan:
I think I need to decide just how much drywall needs to be demo'd. All the drywall? Just the ceilings? The ceilings and the kitchen?? Would love some advice on that. Seems like all the ceilings are going to have to come down..between running new heating ducts in the ceiling, gas piping, the water piping, the smoke and CO detectors...

Here's my vague sketch of a plan.
Unbuild the kitchens myself. So they don't get F'd up.
Pay somone to come in and remove all the drywall that needs it and clean up after themselves.
Then I come in and do the expensive stuff to hire out. The wiring, plumbing.
Then pay someone else to drywall the place.
I hang the kitchen cabinets.
Then I paint and finish the floors. There is brand new carpet on the south side of the apartment. I would live to save it and keep it as is...does that make any sense? Can it be reasonably protected from the destruction-construction process?

How does that sound? Not sure about how much of a budget I'm going to have to hire any of this out after I pay for the materials...
Help!

And this is just the bottom unit work, still have the two units to deal with on the second floor!

text

We Got Our Permits!!!

2011-08-25T11:44:00.000-07:00

Well, we got half of them anyways! Hurray!!!

The super nice folks at the Alameda Building Dept (obvious ass kissing) called me recently to tell me that my permits were ready and that I could come pick them up!

Hurray!! Now we can get started on converting the illegal work in the basement into a single 3-2 apartment and converting the two studio apartments into a single one bedroom two bath apartment. All legal and above board!

We also got the plan check comments for the code enforcement work, back from the city!

These are the permits to legalize the back deck, stairway, and 2nd story landing, and to legalize the kitchen remodel all work illegally done by the PO.

I've read through the comments and there do not seem to be any real 'we're going to get screwed' comments. Most of them are about the deck and are questions the engineer will have to answer.

One question I don't know how to answer is this.

The engineer says that there needs to be a outlet for this length of counter top at the breakfast bar.

I mean, I can draw an outlet on the plans no problem but how to actually get an outlet into that counter area. All the options seem bad to me.

Besides the joy of cutting through the granite for the box I'm pretty sure that, that back splash is solid wood behind the granite...I don't know about cutting out the granite and then cutting into the wood framing for clearance for the outlet box? I'd probably have to open up the wall on the other side of the backsplash to check and see what the situation is. If I'm wrong about it being solid wood then putting an outlet in the backsplash will probably make the most sense.

I guess I could do a flush with the counter top outlet? But having a horizontal outlet there seems like a really, really bad idea.

Could I put an outlet on top of the breakfast bar in some kind of enclosure? Man, would that look ugly...

How can I get an outlet to service this counter?

Any suggestions?

Halloween in August!?!?!?!

2011-08-16T11:03:00.000-07:00

Okay I admit that this has nothing to do with old houses.

Rant Mode On

I am FREAKING SICK of stores putting out decorations for holidays MONTHS in advance!

I was just at the local SafeWay and they already have Halloween decorations out! Its the freaking middle of August for Pete's sake! Now everyone who's spent anytime reading this blog knows that Chez Neumansky LOVES Halloween....but jeez, in the middle of August???

I was sorta standing there stupefied looking at the decorations and at least 4 people walked by and they all did the same thing... 'Halloween??? in August!?!?!?!?' shaking their heads in disbelief as they walked away...

I can't be the only person who feels this way?

Who else is sick of seeing Christmas decorations on sale before Halloween??

How many times has this happened to you. Its about the middle of October (when 'normal' people start thinking of decorating for Halloween) and you head out to your local big box store for some fun Halloween decorations...AND THERE IS NONE!!! All they have out is Christmas stuff!!!

I have nothing against Christmas...but who wants to be assaulted by Christmas stuff starting in October? Can anybody actually handle hearing Christmas carols for that long?

Don't y'all think it makes the holiday LESS special when its in your face for like three months?

There Outta Be A Law!!!!!!!

They can make laws about, just about any darn thing...well there outta be law on holiday decorations and merchandise!

I say, no decorations up and no merchandise out until 30days before the actual Holiday!

That would mean no Halloween stuff out until Oct 1st.

That would mean no Christmas stuff out until the day after Thanksgiving. What ever happened to Thanksgiving anyways?

City Council Members can pass laws right? Or boards of supervisors? I say, everybody emails there local representative and tells them that they are SICK to death of merchants putting out merchandise MONTHS ahead of the holiday.

I'll start, here's a link to the Alameda City Councils contact info. Click on their names to email them.

Contact your local elected official and tell them,

There Outta Be A Law!

Heck, if we can't get the elected officials to get off their duffs and do the right thing we'll make our own law. A referendum or something!

If you feel as I do please pass this on to anyone who might be interested in the message.

Who's with me??? Anyone??? Beullar...? Beullar???

Rant Mode Off

I feel better now....

Update 08-29-11
Not a single Alameda city elected politician even bothered to reply to my email. I sent them a link to this blog post with the subject heading of 'They're outta be a law'...
Guess they're too busy to answer an internet crack pot...

Stupid Freaking Kitchen Cabinets.....

2011-08-12T12:02:00.000-07:00

Holy Fricken Moly....

Wow, if you REALLY want to screw with the next owner of your house take the door off the kitchen sink cabinet, the one with the cabinet info, with you when you leave...

Turns out it is NEARLY im-freaking-possible to find out where your cabinets came from.

No Identifying Marks

I've been over every inch of the cabinets looking for a manufacturers mark. I've looked inside all the cabinets, the drawers, the tops of the cabinets...nothing...Arrrrrrrrrrrgh!

The Search For Matching Cabinets

As a commenter suggested I also thought that the cabinets MUST be from one of the local Chinese cabinet shops.

I set out one morning recently (carrying one of the cabinet doors with me) heading to the biggest and well known cabinet shop Sincere Plumbing. This is probably the biggest and nicest shop in the area. I was sure that this is where the PO got the cabinets, this was going to be a quick trip where I could get the replacement cabinets I needed no muss, no fuss.... No joy, they have a ton of cabinets but no one there could remember then ever carrying a style or color exactly like what I have.

Craaaaaaap!

Next I headed out to Granite Expo, a place similar to Sincere in style. There they did not have the cabinet style or color...dang...

That exhausted my knowledge of 'nice' Chinese cabinet shops...

Since they are across the street from each other I stopped into the Home Despot to see if I could find a match...Checked out the in stock cabinets...no joy. I actually got a kitchen cabinet specialist to help me. Schockingly enough she was helpful and knowledgeable. Home Despot did not carry the exact door design in any of their lines nor did they have a color that was a match. Kraftmaid cabinets has a color called cranberry that was close...

Right down the street from Home Despot is a cabinet place (I think its called AAA Cabinet or something like that that works out of a warehouse with a hand lettered sign they set out...what the heck, might as well try them.... No joy, no color that was close and no door style that matched exactly.

I headed off to a place in East Oakland next. This place only had a couple of different styles and again no joy...

I stopped at two other places in East Oakland that appeared to be selling cabinets...no sign, nothing written in English, stores in weird back alleys....shady....no joy...

To the InterWebs! After doing a search it looked like Lowe's in stock cabinets in a color called Merlot might be an exact match! Either that it looked like one of the lines they carried (that home despot doesn't might be a match) I was stoked, it made sense that the PO would of used an in stock cabinet. The PO seemed to of bought just about everything in the house from Home Despot...

Combining a run out to Harbor Fright I stopped at a Lowe's....no joy on the in stock cabinet..not raised panels and the color was not exactly right.

After MUCH waiting I got a Lowe's kitchen specialist to take a look a the door I'd been carrying around. No joy either! They had a finish in their Diamond Reflections line that was close but not exactly correct... But they had no matching door style. Online it looked like the Halston door in their Burgundy finish was a complete match... No joy.

Arrrrrgh! I think I've blown through all my easy options...I would of sworn the PO would not of paid real money to have a real cabinet shop make him cabinets...but what other choice is there?

What I Learned About Chinese Cabinet Shops

They all seem to carry the same stuff pretty much. Like there is one or two factories churning out the stuff.

Unless you speak fluent Chinese and love to haggle stick to the two bigger shops that actually have the prices for cabinets listed.

Everyone tells you that the doors are made out of Maple!

The hinges are bad copies of quality units...the hinges look like they won't last very long.

Cabinet quality was somewhere between in stock at one of the big box stores and semi-custom cabinets ordered from the same big box store.

They don't make right angle corner wall cabinets!! None of em! They just make the angled corner cabinet.
They only come in 36" high versions.

If I could be convinced that they wouldn't sell destruct they are probably a good value.

LIMITED choice of options in cabinet types.

Help Me Find My Cabinets!

I think what I'm left to do now is to go around to every single cabinet shop in the area and show them the door and say, 'does this look like something you make?'

There's got to be a better way! Somebody help me figure this out please! A super fabulous Chez Neumansky 3.0 themed prize to the person who comes through.

Look at this shot. The Chinese place don't seem to have options like the glass doors our the open shelves shown here.

One thing that was throwing people off was the quality of the hinges used in the cabinets. The hinges are Ferrari Brand (made in Italy). Which is apparently much nicer than any of the hinges you'd get at one of the Chinese cabinet shops.

But seriously, if these are semi-custom cabinets why in gods name would the PO of used these dead end cabinets?

The color is another thing throwing people off. Its really, uh, wine colored..like the end of a cork after you pull it out of a bottle of Merlot or something.

Here is a close up of the door.

The doors are also heavier-denser than the doors of similar size that the Chinese cabinet shop folks kept saying was Maple.

Here's a close up of the door edge profile.

What seems to be throwing the most people is the edge profile of the door. Its got like a tapered edge that I have literally not seen ANYWHERE else so far....

If we can't figure this out then I don't know what else to do. We really want to put in the 6" wider stove...but we can't do that without replacing the base cabinet to the right and the two upper cabinets above the stove...

Dang, its not like we have to money to redo the kitchen now anyways....

Arrrrgh!

I'd really love any suggestions as to how to solve this mystery.

UPDATE:
One, I forgot to say that the cabinets are 42" tall...which means none of the big box in store cabinets or the Chinese cabinet shops will have a matching cabinet. They all top out at 36"

Two, I think Tish may be onto something.
Costco sells a brand of cabinets called 'All Wood Cabinetry' that is looking promising.
They sell them in 42" heights they have a style that looks like its the same.
But not a color....maybe I have a discontinued color?
I sent them an email with a link to this post begging them to take a look...hopefully they will and I will get some good news!

UPDATE 8-16-11:
Daaaaang, just heard back from the costco cabinets people and they say nope, cabinets aren't ours!

KnifeCatching 1336 Sherman St.

2011-08-07T15:38:00.000-07:00

To be honest we where interested in this house because on paper its practically the exact same house as Chez 3.0....and man, does that mean Chez 3.0 is worth 1.275M???? I wish.

Here's the HBR page of the place with super fab photo's and what not.

In keeping with this new 'kindler gentler' thing I'm doing I'll start out with the good.

The Good
The house is gorgeous. The outside looks like its been freshly painted. Its got a turret!! Hurray!!!
The grounds look amazing (what there is of them).
The woodwork on the inside is unpainted! The main floor is really gorgeous with all that unpainted woodwork. There are two fireplaces with original looking tile and very fancy mantles.
The kitchen looks like its been recently redone and it is of a good size.
There is a HUGE 3 car garage in the backyard.
Its in a great neighborhood on a tree lined street. Jealous of the tree-linedness of that block of Sherman.
Its in the Franklin school district two blocks away from Franklin School and Park.
BIG attic for I guess storage...or expansion space.
Decent sized basement area with a full bath.

What The Permit Record Tells Me
Kitchen Remodeled in 95 with permits.
Looks like an elec service upgrade was done in 89 but finaled in 98?
New roof in '06.
Sidewalk work done in '07.
3-car garage built with permits in 07, permits finaled in '10...
Hey, new furnace in '11.

The Odd
That kitchen looks like its waaaaaaay newer than 95. Look at the pictures, does that look like a kitchen that is over 15yrs old?

I love old houses, but the main level of this place is just sooooo cut up into little rooms...I think its actually the most cut up of any old house I've seen. It all looks original, and the house would of always been a grand home so the little tiny rooms on the main floor just seem kinda odd to me. The small room theme is also going on on the second floor. There might be 5 bedrooms but none of them are what you'd call, generous.

No central heat on the 2nd floor? The one with all the bedrooms? The furnace is new but there are no heating ducts to any of the rooms on the 2nd floor. There appears to be just one register in the hallway!?!?!?

No master bedroom-bath?

The place really has no back yard. Its all either driveway or garage. There is a nice little deck off the kitchen but still...no yard. Its all up front.

The Bad
The Realtor showing the house told me that it had a 3/4 foundation replacement? Which she told me meant that 3/4 of the foundation had be replaced. I checked the permit record and this does not show up there anywhere....So....either the Realtor was 'mistaken' (see kinder gentler) or the work was done without permits or somehow a big, huge, expensive, job like this isn't on the permit record.

It would also appear that the basement is finished as living space with a full bath, illegally as I can not find any permit record for that.

This last comment might seem kinda anal to some folks but... Take a look at the picture of the front of the house. That concrete retaining wall looks pretty brand new no? Count how many steps up from the sidewalk. I count 5 yet there is no handrail? That's officially unsafe by the building codes.

I didn't measure the retaining wall but I'd guess that its at least three feet high. There's no fence around it! I saw that and the first thing I thought of is, WOW how unsafe. It's the only decent sized patch of grass on the lot which means kids are going to want to play on it...Your toddler takes a step over that edge and wow, that seems like a long way down, and that its going to end badly.

Conclusion
Not that my opinion matters but...

Don't you think that for basically 1.3M that the place would have a master bedroom and bath?
That there would be central heat up to the bedrooms? That there wouldn't be possible illegal construction issues with the basement and kitchen? That the house could still possibly be on brick?

Someone called this house 'turn-key' in an earlier comment but I honestly don't see it that way. We are not of the socio-economic group that can afford a $1.3M house but we have lots of friends who are. No way the wives aren't going to want their own master bedroom retreat...or not have central heat through out the house.

Now the attic is being billed as having 'expansion potential' and that would probably be the logical place for the master retreat. That's not going to be cheap to do...especially on a house that is already costing almost $1.3M. Beside the costs of finishing the space as a higher end master retreat I'd bet that there are going to be serious hidden costs in retrofitting the structure to carry the new load safely..

Soooo, very pretty house inside and out, not turn-key I'd estimate that it would take at least $200k to convert the attic...so then is the house worth $1.5M? I don't think so, but maybe more like 1304 Morton and price it closer to $800k.

And thats the way I see it.

KnifeCatching 1330 Clinton Ave.

2011-07-25T12:46:00.000-07:00

KnifeCatching 1330 Clinton Ave.
Up for review today is 1330 Clinton Ave. which has the official specs of being a 3-2.5 of 1631 sq ft on a 6750 sq ft lot built in 1946 on sale for $815k.

Sorry for the Google street view shot, my camera phone stopped focusing. I've been interested in this house for a while as I pass it on Clinton every day and have been sorta tracking the work done on it.
Lots of pics at the Redfin page for it. At least in the verbiage the listing agent calls the weird quarter bath off the kitchen a quarter bath and not a half bath. The story from the listing agent is that the original owner passed away and his sons have fixed up the house for sale.

The Good
Before the weird conversation with the Realtor I remember thinking...'Wow, they've actually done just about everything I advocate for when trying to sell a house for top dollar.'

They attached a sheet to the glossy handout stating all the work recently done on the house.
The grounds were nice and well groomed.
The house was freshly painted inside and out.
The floors were redone.
They freshened the kitchen by replacing the flooring and cabinet handles and repainting the cabinets. The kitchen was very nice.
Pull-down ladder and storage in the attic.
The house is in a great neighborhood like three blocks from Franklin School/Park.
Great front yard for Halloween and nice street trees!

The house literally gleamed it was super pretty. I wish that I had my camera with me as the shower stall in the master bath had this hilarious nautical theme.

There is a cute little balcony off the master bedroom that I bet is nice to relax at.

Two full baths on the second floor so you don't have to share with the kids.

Large backyard area and good sized garage-workshop. There were a couple of super cool looking old woodworking tools in there that looked like industrial art. Lots of old cracking asphalt in this area that looks fugly to me. What I thought was funny is that they had taped pictures of what the wood shop could look like if it was turned into living space on the walls. I hadn't seen this before except we did it when we where selling Chez 2.0. It honestly looks like they borrowed that idea from us.

They had a binder of inspections and estimates for work needed.

Overall I was very impressed with the house. It's a completely original vintage 1940's home. The listing agent calling it a jewel box does not seem out of line to me.

What The Permit Record Tells Me
There are only two entries to the permit record!!
One from 1946 which is an electrical permit for adding outlets and switches and fixtures-finaled!
A permit from 1991 for sidewalk and driveway.
It looks like there is no weirdness with the permit record vs. work done.

The Bad
Its a completely original 1940s home..that can either be cute or the kitchen and baths are going to look horribly outdated to some people.

Okay, the house is TINY!!! 1631 sq ft. I'm sure this house was fine for 1940 but now...I don't know. It's sorta like the house is 3/4 scale or something like that. All three of the bedrooms are not what you'd call, generous. The kitchen is teeny by modern standards - definitely not an eat-in thing.

Vintage 1940's wiring-fuses on the upper floor.

The Roof
It looks to me like the house still has its original wood shake roof from the 40s!!! From what I could see it looks like its in pretty rough shape. I pulled down the attic ladder to peep at the underside of it and I could see daylight through cracks in the shakes in several places and what looked like water staining on the underside of the shingles. The listing agent said the roof was water tight so I don't know... The handout said the roof had been cleaned?? So maybe they pressure washed it and forced some water up under the shingles...
There was an estimate from a roofing contractor there for $7500...but I read it twice and I really couldn't figure out what it was for exactly.
The roof needs a complete tear off, sheeting the roof deck and new shingles. My experience with roofing estimates leads me to believe that doing it right is going to cost more than $7500.

Overheards
Just to prove that I'm not the only person who thinks this way I'll report on what I heard other people saying. I eavesdropped on three couples conversations that all went exactly like this.

Him, 'Man, it sure is small.'
Her, 'Yes but its soooo cute!'

My fave overheard was from someone who said, 'Wow every time I come here I feel more claustrophobic!!'

Conclusion
I'm really impressed with the house and the preparation that went into it before they put it on the market. I wish more sellers would do that. The house is super pretty, in what looks to be super great shape (except the roof), in a super great neighborhood.

Okay I haven't talked about it yet but now's the time....

I don't understand how they came up with that price?
$815k...for 1631 sq ft??? 1304 Morton is almost twice that size on sale for $75k more...
another house sold in that neighborhood for that exact same amount yet it is more than twice the size.
Like, what are the comps they used? Does it have an ice cube's chance in hell of appraising for that amount?

I don't understand who the target market is for this house.
Honestly, the house seems too small for a modern family. A couple parents and one kid, and use the other bedroom as a home office? Even then the place is basically packed. You'll have to use the dining room as a dining room and that just leaves the decent-sized fireplace room as the family, living, do everything else room. It seems like though once the kids hit teenagerdom the place would be too small.

So, is it a $815k starter house? If the new owners don't absolutely love the house as is, any remodeling of the baths-kitchens is going to push the money sunk in vs. what the house will sell for ratio way the wrong way....

Then I thought, well, it could be a good 'retirement home' to somebody who wants to live closer to their grandkids...Older couples don't typically have the acres of crap modern families do...the house could be right sized for that with a room for the grandkids to sleep in when they are visiting. But then there's stairs....old folks and stairs go together like sardines and mint-chip ice cream.

Honestly, it seems like it a great $650k house.....
I suppose the carrying costs of the place are very small so the heirs can afford to let it sit on the market?

I think that this is the most times I've used cute and super in a review.

Had an Odd Conversation With A Realtor Today....

2011-07-24T21:42:00.000-07:00

Maybe I should subtitle this post as...

The Great Satan of House Reviews is Back!!!! Muuu-Ha-ha-ha!!!!

Man, did I have the oddest conversation with a Realtor today....I'm still puzzled by it...

Cause honestly, I can't tell if the Realtor was just clueless or if they where very cleverly F'ing with me...

I'll tell the story and let you guys decide.

I went and looked at 1330 Clinton today. When I was looking through the binder of inspections (good for them) the Realtor was chatting with me off and on as she was greeting people coming in the front door.

I told her that I lived around the corner on Sherman and then she got. I thought, sorta strangely interested in WHICH SPECIFIC HOUSE I lived in.

I said something like, 'the big ugly white one with the ugly fence.'

She said, 'The one where all the work is going on?'

I said, 'No, I'm not that crazy.'

And then she kinda launched into this odd diatribe.

'That's the house where the guy lives who writes all those horrible things on his BLOG about houses for sale in Alameda.' She said blog like it was drenched in sewage.

So now I stop trying to make sense of the roofing estimate and look at her...and say, 'There's somebody who reviews houses? And you think that's a bad thing?' Honestly, I'm looking at her and I can't tell if she's messing with me...

'Yes, he says horrible, personal things about people.'

'Does he say untrue things about the houses?'

'Yes, its all untrue...I don't know why he feels like he needs to write such nasty things about people...but I guess some people just feel the need...you know...'

'Hmmm....'

'And that's why no realtor will touch his house.'

'How do you mean?'

'No Realtor wants to show his house because of all the horrible things he says on his BLOG.'

Then she went off to talk to someone else and I finished reading the reports and left. She left me with the distinct impression that she thinks that I am some sort of mental defective with a strong nasty streak. Like I should have horns on my head and a tale....

I just can't tell if she was screwing with me or not? If she was screwing with me its a super clever way to do it. Right in front of a crowd of people she basically called me an F'ing A-hole and told me to stop writing reviews in such a way that I couldn't really respond in kind.

First off, it really seems like she's never read any of my house reviews. And that stuff about no Realtor will touch his house...she doesn't know that Chez 2.0 is already sold? Weeks ago? She seems to think that I live in the big white house with the columns (I wish, I could afford that place...its like a palace that sold for $1.1M and the new owners immediately launched into a multi-hundred thousand redo) and that I'm trying to sell it?

It really seems like this particular Realtor got all her info about me from some bizarre game of telephone that went on too long and where all the different messages have been intermixed and reshuffled. Like all the folks who where pissed off about the 'pink feather ladies' at the 4th of July parade who didn't actually see them!!!

I haven't reread every single review I've written but honestly where does that 'I write horrible nasty personal things about the home owners' come from???

Ruminations On Realtors

This odd exchange got me to thinking about all the other exchanges I've had with Realtors since I've been doing my reviews. There seem to be several common threads to what Realtors think of me.

They just can't seem to understand why in the world I would feel the need to do this.

I mean really, trying to comprehend my motivations seems to cause a lot of mental gears to be stripped. This is going to sound ridiculous I know but...Like I'm completely challenging their world view and their place in it.

Demonization is easier than self introspection.

Most Realtors refuse to admit that there is even a spec of truth in what I write. They prefer to think of me as some 'nasty little man' who has some sort of evil 'hidden agenda' who is quite possibly 'mentally deficient and or unstable.' One of my favorites was the Realtor who asked me why I hated Alameda so much?? Basically, what ever they can do in their minds to be able to discount everything I say. Such as believing that all I do is write nasty personal things about people.

So, here goes, another attempt to explain why I do this.

Why I Review Houses

It's pretty much as simple at this.

I believe that the deck is so completely stacked against house buyers (especially 1st time buyers) that there is hardly any chance that they won't get screwed.

The buyers and sellers agents get paid based on how much the house sells for. C'mon folks do you really think that that simple truth doesn't effect the actions of both agents? That they are not, at least, subconsciously motivated to get the house sold as quickly as possible for as much money as possible? I'm not saying that all Realtors are crooked....just most of them.

Then you say, 'The buyer has inspectors.' Please...the inspectors are almost always referred by the Realtors. The inspectors know that if they don't 'play the game' they won't get referrals from Realtors and will essentially be out of a job. I'm not saying that there are not good inspectors out there..they just won't be the one the Realtors refer you to and they will cost about twice what the hacks charge.

This situation is not alright to me. I just can't seem to ignore this basically institutionalized theft.

Does it make sense to anyone that there are not independent reviews of houses for sale?

Its the most expensive purchase just about everyone makes..yet there are no independent sources of info.

You want to buy a new car, you read Road and Track reviews or Consumer Reports.

You want to buy a new motorcycle, you read the reviews of the different models in magazines like CycleWorld.

You want to buy a new flat screen TV, you read the reviews at CNET or Consumer Reports and hell, the reviews on Amazon.

Looking for a new Restaurant to try? You check the Yelp reviews.

Hell, just about any kind of service business you can check reviews on Yelp.

Yet nothing like that exists for houses? Why is that exactly?

In this modern world where you can get reviews of anything on the internets, why no reviews of houses??

Why Not?
As one commentor here said, 'Looking at open houses on Sundays is Alamedas Fav pastime.'
It really seems to be a hobby of peoples to looky-loo open houses and then make snarky comments to each other about it. Am I evil cause I choose to share my thoughts?

Honestly, am I not doing what any intelligent potential house buyer would do? Am I evil cause I choose to share a process that other people are most likely already doing? And if they are not already looking at houses the way I do and I save them some grief is that a bad thing?

So Much Real Estate Info Is Online

I can go on Zillow, Movoto, Redfin and see when and how much a house was sold for..what all the price changes are for a house that is still on the market, what the legal definition of the house is, what other similar houses sold for in the same area. Movoto even tells you who the legal owner of the house is. I can go to the cities website and print out the permit history of any house I'm interested in.

Now I know that the average age for Alameda Realtors is like 102 so maybe they are not as Internet savvy as your average person.

Hey Alameda Realtors, you probably don't need to worry about this interwebs thing...I'm sure its just a passing fad. I bet lickety-split that people will be back to relying solely on you for all their information on the house they are interested in and the local housing market....

So, in a first I am dedicating this post to D of Bayside Real Estate....for either being super clever or super clueless.

A Kinder Gentler KnifeCatcher....

2011-07-24T07:56:00.000-07:00

Okay so I've started reviewing houses again....already heard through the grape vine that the local Realtor community is super happy about it...

Here's what I will try to do in my reviews from here on out.

I will strive to use language that is uh, as mild as possible but still gets my point across.

I will still comment on the overall condition of the house and its livability.

I will still comment on the work done vs. permits pulled issues.

I will still comment on the work I think the house needs and what the costs are going to look like.

I will still comment on any safety issues I see.

I will still comment on the relative 'safeness' of the neighborhood and the quality of the local school.

I will still comment on things that 'just don't make sense to me' as in, 'what where they thinking' or, 'they want HOW much money for that???'

I'm only going to review houses that are personally interesting to me. So everybody selling ranchers in Bay Farm is 'safe' from one of my reviews unless someone commissions one.

I no longer have a Realtor that I'm working with (so haters stop calling him an F'ing a-hole behind his back) so I'll be touring the houses of interest during their open houses. That also means that I will only review houses that I have personally toured.

I don't have time anymore to do the big picture-riffic reviews I'll probably just snap a pic of the front of the house.

Next Up

I'm working on reviews for;

1336 Sherman St.

1063 San Antonio Ave.

1330 Clinton Ave.

Now, Realtors I know that most of you have set google alerts to alert you when someone posts online about one of your properties. Here's your chance to contact me and get your side of the story included in my review. Act fast though I'll post my reviews as soon as they're done.

I'll try to give advance notice from now on about properties I am planning on reviewing so the listing agent can contact me to get their side of the story published.

I feel that that's about as fair to the listing agents as I could possibly be and still keep my integrity and provide what I consider to be a valuable community service.

We Have A Home Theater Room!

2011-07-23T12:21:00.000-07:00

Mrs. MadMadScientist is Soooooooooooooooo awesome.

This entire home theater thing was her idea! Really!!! Honest!!! She was super worried about our big 'ol tube TV perched precariously on a box in a room where all the kids play....

Now because I'm super we-todd-did I somehow managed to delete all the making of shots...some of them were quite good, of Mrs. MadMadScientist crawling around in the dropped ceiling to fish wires and to drill through the tops plates so we could fish wires through.

First off this post marks the debut of our new rugged camera.

We've managed to kill uh, three other cameras documenting the dusty, dirty work of remodeling a Victorian....we have higher hopes for this Panasonic Lumix which already takes pictures about a million times better than our old supposedly water-dust proof Olympus.

Here's the big old TV.

For the all-important WAF (that's wife approval factor) we had to go with speakers that are hidden.
After some searching we went with these as they were on sale and a fraction of the price of other models.

Actually, I can agree with the hide-the-speakers-in-the-ceiling idea. That would seem to be the most kid-proof option.

We set up a 7.1 surround sound system but I couldn't bare to not use our Klipsch center channel speaker.

Because of the smallness of the room and our desire to keep the expensive toys away from the kids as long as possible, we had to mount the stereo stuff on one wall and the TV on the other. That meant fishing a metric F-ton of wires through the dropped ceiling.

Here's a shot of the four rear speakers and the cool glass shelf wall mounted stereo stand we picked up on Amazon.

Closer-up Shot.

Holy-Moly modern stereos require 37 million cables-wires.
Just look at 'em all!!

Fuuuuuugly...

I was able to hide most of the wires beside the one power cord and signal cord to the sub-woofer.

Check out our cool new antenna!! Does that look atomic age or what?

Here is of course the all-important TV shot.

You can also see the front surround speakers in the ceiling above it. We decided to go with the newest model Vizio 47" 3D TV. The price dropped below $1k so we broke down and bought one. Everything I read said that because of the distance to the TV 47" is as big as we should go....I have to admit the first time we sat down to watch something on it (last season of True Blood on Netflix) I was like, dang, we shoulda gone bigger...I mean its big enough for sure but I wasn't blown away with its bigness like I was expecting to be...

I've looked and looked and looked and I can't seem to find a good solution for mounting a center channel speaker to a LCD TV on an articulating wall mount...so here's my ghetto solution.

Anybody have any good ideas?

Here's a shot of the room now. Look at all that room now! This is a major path here between the kitchen and the kids play room/ the back deck.

The TV is 4' off the ground so we're hoping that that will keep it out of kid range....

Henrietta likes all the space too!

We haven't watched anything in 3D yet so we can't comment on that...but WOW HD pictures are just crazy better than standard def.

Another thing that blows me away...free over the air HD programing! (that's what the crazy antenna is for). I can now watch my 2.5 Men reruns in HD AND 5.1 surround!!! Because you know, that's important.....oh and HD digital radio rules! Almost no commercials and it's CD quality sound AND it's free! Super lame-o corporate radio Live105 has an all 80s channel that we listen to mostly.

So overall, we're super happy with how the system looks, sounds and how hopefully kidproof its going to be.....we'll see I guess.

Hey did y'all notice the new addition in the background in one of the above pictures???

Yay!! Tiny's Back Home!

Yep, we finally got tiny back from Chez 2.0!! We conned some neighbors into helping us move her over to Chez 3.0....man is that a horrible experience...first you have to take out just about all the gravel cause it weighs a metric f-ton.

Then drain the water down enough so tiny isn't very mobile. Then ala the old flipper TV shows you wrap a cloth sling around her and transfer her as fast as possible to a big tub of tank water...Then you drain all the water out of the tank and then you and a couple of other unlucky suckers get to carry it all down and up flights of stairs and do it all over again in reverse! I'm so glad we don't have to do that ever, ever, ever again!!!

Permits Update

2011-07-22T13:18:00.000-07:00

This post should be subtitled,

We're Okay, no wait we're super screwed!!!! no wait, we're okay again....

Still Waiting To Hear About The Code Enforcement Permits...

When last we met, we were still waiting to hear back from the cities plan checker on the permits I submitted for the pre-existing code enforcement issues.

We hustled our butts to make their permitting deadline and now we're waiting....still waiting....

We were freaked because it was explained to us that code enforcement cases have a very strict one year deadline...we submitted the permits back on April 11th... and we still haven't heard anything back yet...well it turns out the one year clock doesn't start until after the city issues the permit...so I guess theres no rush???

Remodeling Permits Fall Into Code Enforcement Black Hole....

We also recently submitted permits to combine the two studio apartments into one apartment and to move one of the units into the basement.

When you file a regular permit they give you a due date about 4 weeks out....well it had been over two weeks past the deadline and I still hadn't heard anything from the city..Annnd I'd been calling like every three days...

FINALLY, someone said, 'Oh, this is a code enforcement case. those stay on the bottom of the pile!'...Nothing I could do could convince this person that, that was not the case...Even though the permit number starts with a CB which means Combo Building permit and code enforcement permits start with an X!!

I had to get the code enforcement officer to talk to them and set them straight.

After he did that I got the comments back in the mail like 4 days later!!!! Hurray!!!

We're Screwed

The plan check engineer just had some minor comments mostly about clarifying things that were all just minor edits.

The fire code plan checker on the other hand...Insisted that the existing windows in our pre-1942 house would HAVE to be upgraded to modern egress standards!

That would mean removing all the original double hung windows and replacing them with fully opening out swing casement windows that adhere to the cities design guide...That would of added thousands of dollars to the remodel cost and lots of man hours...maybe effectively blowing us out of the water....

We're Okay

But the cities engineer said the exact opposite! 'Theres Hope!!', I thought.

Going straight to the top I sent the cities building official an email outlining the situation and he sided with the engineer!! Waa-Hoooo!!!!

As I've said before his word is law and that means that nobody else down there should screw with me about keeping the original windows.

One thing that is going to be a kinda PITA is that I have to 1hr fire rate the joist bays where I am venting the two furnaces and tankless water heater.

I've already finished the changes and should be ready to turn in this revised set of plans Monday morning!! Maybe they'll even issue the plans shortly afterword? That is, if they don't find something else super wrong...which is always a possibility...

KnifeCatching 1304 Morton St.......AGAIN!!!!

2011-07-20T12:17:00.000-07:00

Read This:The following review is just my opinion and only my opinion I am not a professional house appraiser or inspector and I am not a structural engineer. The opinions expressed in this review are based on my own inspection of the property, the publicly available facts from aggregator sites such as Redfin and Zillow and the online permit database for the city of Alameda. I am not responsible for incorrect or missing data that appears in these sources. In fact, its probably best that you just ignore everything you read here as the lunatic ravings of an unbalanced mind.

It's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!!!!! again, and again, and again and again....

KnifeCatching 1304 Morton St. Revisited.

My initial review of 1304 Morton St. can be found here.

Up for review today is 1304 Morton St. which has the official specs of being a 4-0 of 2064sq ft on a nice sized 5513 sq ft lot built in 1895 on sale for.....wait for it.......$899k!!!!!

Holy Mackerel they lowered the price from $1.3M down to $899k!!!

Could it be that a homeowner has actually come down to reality??? Please read my previous review for an in-depth look at the house.

Some Odd Things About The House:

Real Estate Agent Musical Chairs?
Does anybody else think it's super odd that a big ticket fancy house like this has gone through, I think three different realty companies? Intero, Sothebys and now apparently they are using Better Homes and Gardens Realty? What would have to happen to have a place like Sotheby's give up on the commission on a $1.3M house?

Dishonest Description:
The county still has the house as a 4-0 of 2064 sq ft... yet the ad copy from the Realtor clearly states that the house is a 4-2.5 of 3100sq ft... They appear to be counting the illegal work done in the basement and apparently there is now a bedroom down there?

Here's the add copy from the Zip Realty Site.
Rare Painted Lady Victorian - Like a page out of BETTER HOMES & GARDENS MAGAZINE! Was on the market at $1.3M+ now priced 4 quick sale! TURN-KEY condition! Full basemnt & Garage converted to game room/wine cellar & can easily be converted back. Gourmet Remod kitchen with sub zero fridge & viking stove. Stumptous "Eastlake" decor down to the door knobs. Walk 2 shops, park & Franklin School.

Uh, no mention of all that fab stuff being 'unwarrented'???

Still Has Unpermitted Work Issues:
So yes, it appears that someone narc'd on the homeowner for the unpermitted work in what was the basement... (wasn't me honest). Luckily the HO was already talking to the city about getting the work permitted so they dodged the whole code enforcement super expensive bullet but the work still has to be 'normalized'.

A quick check of the building dept records is encouraging. The owner got planning approval to officially convert the house back to a single family and got the planning okay for the work already done in the basement area.

The records show that the HO has entered into the amnesty program and paid the fees to start that. What that gets you is an inspection by a building inspector who will tell you what needs to be done to legalize the space.

The inspector came out and this is what he said.
City of Alameda Inter-office Memorandum Date: April 28, 2011 To: Permit Expeditor From: Building Inspection Subject: Inspection at 1304 Morton St. Permit #B11-0283 A Joint Inspection for the Amnesty Program Inspection at the above address revealed that the basement area was converted to a home theater and a recording studio. Requirements: 1. Have a licensed electrical contractor verify circuit loads for the lighting and recording components of all circuits in the basement area to determine adequate circuit breaker and wiring sizes. Many of the outlet boxes are recessed too deep from the combustible wall finishes. 2. A permit is required for the above work. 3. Drawings are also required for electrical and outlet locations. Inspection time: 1 hour.

That's not too bad actually....well....maybe...

Point 1. could be either no problem our a HUGE PITA...If it's determined that the in-wall wiring is not of the correct gauge then, well, you're going to have to tear it all out and replace it....or more likely just jigger the loads to match the wiring gauge.
The boxes being too deep isn't that big of a deal as it can usually be fixed with a 'mud ring'.

Now remember the HO hasn't done any of the above yet (as of this writing according to the city's online data base). Which means the new owner is going to have to go through and do all that AND pay the permit fees...which since we've recently paid fee's on a similar project I can guestimate that they will be around $8k.

Maybe the HO is not planning on doing any of this work and that's why they are selling it so cheap?

Conclusion:
Yes folks, it had to happen sometime....I actually think that this place is reasonably priced and worth the money.

You probably could not recreate this work for anywhere near the asking price.
If you go through and get the basement legalized you'll have a legal 3100sq ft 4-2.5 which is a good sized house in a great neighborhood for $900kish.

I prognosticate that they will receive multiple offers and that the house will not stay on the market very long. As long as there are enough people who are okay with the house's 'odd' layout.

Next Up:
There are several more houses for sale in the Gold Cost that I'll be reporting on soon....