What Lies Ahead Part 2

When last we left off we were talking about the permits that we have that are due to expire this October. For fun here is a clip of the section of the plans that go along with the permit.

Here was the existing bottom floor as we found it. Love how the garage enters into the unit via the bathroom? and how the middle bedroom can only be entered through the bathroom also! Talk about a multi-use space.

Below we have the after that we're supposed to have finished by Oct! Sorry about the small size if you click on the picture its readable-ish. Wow, look at all that stuff!! What was I thinking! Basically the only parts of the above that are done are the slab-foundation, the radiant heating, the tankless water heater and some of the earthquake retro-fitting! That means we've got to do all the plumbing still, the wiring, I've got to actually install a kitchen! the bathroom(which is on a seperate permit), frame out the garage and utility closets, insulate and sheet rock everything! Just basically finish everything!

Ya, it'll just take a couple of weekends right!?!?!

Sheesh, what'd I get myself into!

Our first house-iversary!

That's right.. a whole year has passed since we bought Chez Neumansky! After closing up the very last gaping hole in the side of the house, I thought I'd spend some time outside on this gorgeous spring day and take stock of where we are.

From here, I can actually see a lot of our progress:

• There's not a giant pile of trash or weeds filling the yard, the porch or the house.
• The crumbling pile of bricks has been replaced by a modern, strong foundation.
• The other, taller crumbling pile of bricks has reconfigured itself into a driveway (which I can sorta make out through through the open fabulously gorgeous garage door)
• The back porch, which we had to duck under to get to the back door, is now 9' up, and the back door is in a brand new earthquake-resistant shear wall.
  
• The ground floor, which had about 4 different levels - some of which were concrete, some dirt, some linoleum - none of which would conform to modern height requirements, is now a nice, flat, 9' tall rough space.
• I can see the cleanout for the drainage, which runs all the way around the perimeter and under the slab to a sump pump, which has been doing a great job of keeping everything dry through this very rainy season.
• The beginnings of our first floor are framed in: a bedroom, bathroom and hallway, and then our garage/workshop.
• And finally, our awesome patio, which I'm sitting on writing this!
  

Now for the stuff you can't see from here:

• The house is fit for human habitation. I won't go into too many details.. let's just say it's clean enough to shower, eat and breathe in, and if you missed the time when it wasn't, take a look here.
  
• As I mentioned at the beginning, there are no more gaping holes in the side of the house - no more "walls" of tarp, no more 2' gaps at the bottom of the doors because we lowered the ground level.. Our doors should be here in another week or two, but until then, Dan made us some ghetto-fabulous plywood doors (you can see one in the pic above), which make a remarkable difference in how nice the house looks.. plus, we can actually leave a pair of pliers in the garage without worrying that there are 6 different holes in the house big enough for a person to get in.
  
• The radiant heat for the first floor living area is embedded in the slab, and Dan's inside now finishing up the floorplans for the top 2 floors so the radiant plans for the rest of the house can be generated.
  
• The main sewer line from the house to the street has been redone, which is a city requirement when a house is sold - we have another 25 years (once the plumber gets the papers into the city, that is) before we have to have it inspected again.
  
• We have 200 sparkly amps of modern electrical service coming into the house, with a subpanel on each floor.
• We have new front stairs that are not in danger of disintegrating under a person walking up them.

Looking at the plans for 2008, we're making pretty good progress. We still have 3 1/2 months before the anniversary of actually living here.. by that time we hope to have a functional bathroom downstairs, which means all the plumbing, wiring, and heat for the whole house has to be in place so we can close in some walls (as willing as our friends are to dive into anything for us, they still seem to be a little finicky about wanting walls around the bathroom.. go figure).

And here we are.. one year down, 65 to go!!

Plan for 2008

We were inspired by our friends over at casa decrepit to sit down and write out our plans for the year. That, combined with a couple days off saw us hard at work at a borrowed office (at left). Here's a shot of us on the beach in Puerto Rico trying to relax. Dan hasn't yet put his blackberry down...

2008

1 - Brick in the driveway - We saved all the bricks from the chimney, which I'm going to turn into a driveway.

2 - Doors - We need to install a garage door and 2 other outside doors downstairs, since we dug down so much the old ones have giant gaps at the bottom. Then there are 3 inside doors downstairs, but we have to build the wall one of them is in first!

3 - Plumbing - We need to replumb the supply lines for the house before we can close in the walls downstairs. We're using pex tubing, so it'll go MUCH faster than copper. In fact, the worst part is probably going to be drawing up the whole plan for the permits.

4 - Finish the heating system - We're putting in radiant heat on the 2nd floor too, so we're using staple-up there.. and we still need to figure out how to heat the third floor.

5 - Wiring - We need to wire the bottom and top floors for electricity, and run cat-5 all over the place for networking. We'll also run some conduit so we can add things later.

6 - Gas lines - There are gas lines all over the house for gaslights which are no longer there, and for heaters and stoves in random places. We need to remove all the extra pipe and run lines where we actually need them.

7 - Build out the bathroom downstairs - This involves a couple walls, a shower pan, tiling the floor and shower, and installing the toilet, sink, and shower fixtures.

8 - Finish the downstairs - This is everything else downstairs.. we need to put up drywall everywhere, which is why we have to run all the wiring and mechanicals first. Once the drywall is up, we want to build some high shelves for storage. And then we can get all our stuff out of storage, hurray! We'll need to repair all the windows too, and possibly replace some that we can't fix.

After all that's done, we'll get started on the kitchen.. it's probably a little optimistic to think that'll happen in 2008, but you never know.

Now, it's time to squeeze the last little bit of warmth out of the ocean (although the rain seems to have followed us here!) before we head back home tomorrow and get back to work. We need to figure out where the pex lines are leaking from so we can get that slab poured!