Another Deadline Met!!

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!!!

Stinging Death From Above!!!

or

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?

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!?!?!?!!?

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!!!

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...