A Snarky Post About Real Estate

Okay, so, its been a while since I've written anything about the local Real Estate scene.
All the Realtors in town are missing me super bad sooooooo.....

Here is a screen shot from Craig's List Real Estate Section for all the houses for sale in
Alameda.

I know, not super readable but the point is check out how many listings there are.
Know how many listings are for actual houses for sale in Alameda?
Out of 30 listings only five of those CList ads appear to be for actual houses
for sale with the ad being put up by the listing Realtor.
Putting on my math hat for a minute, that means that only 16% of the listings are real...

The rest is just garbage.
Garbage like this.

Honestly, is someone going to look at this ad with the incorrect English and be like,
'Ya, he's definitely the guy for me??'  Maybe he's a great Realtor, I don't know. But
I would definitely not choose this person based solely on this add...

Which BTW, Isn't the Real Estate for sale section on Clist just supposed to be about
Real Estate for sale? Not people pimping themselves? Didn't they get rid of the section?

The vast majority of the noise looks like this.

$635000 Great deal in Alameda, Come to the East End (alameda)

0BR apartment

Three ways to access this listing :
#1 - Cut & Paste this search URL into your browser: http://po.st/5NfspH
#2 - Reply to this ad and we will send you the email link and Information about the house for sale
#3 -- The old fashioned way. . ...Call or text us at 925-286-7112 and let us know how we can
assist you with your property search.

Simon Watson- Keller Williams Realty
Realtor Bre 01881304
925-286-7112........ 510-859-4773
Market Update: November 26th,
NOV 26th Closed a Cal Vet Loan Today in 20 days.
NOV 5th. .We just got out latest VA Client into contract, we beat 6 other offers
including an ALL Cash Deal, Closing Dec 5th
Our Team Has Sold Over 31 Homes In The Last Twelve Months. Call
Us Today If You Are Considering Buying or Selling a home.
 

I love the fact that the links aren't even real.
Cut and paste...really?
Annnnd who clicks on links anymore that look like that?
Sure, I'll click on the hidden link, I'm sure it won't go to a virus-malware filled
pornsite.....

I bet I'm not the only person who is annoyed by this nonsense.
Maybe the realty company hired some company in India to 'aggressively'
market them.....I don't know...

Readers, Alameda house searchers....does this nonsense turn you off as much as it does me?
Honestly, if CList doesn't get on the stick and do something about it I bet all the legitimate ads
are going elsewhere....

Sorry CList you know I love you (a bit too much) but this is just ridiculous.

View From The Top Of The World

Or the top of our scaffolding

Pretend that I have a fancy camera that automatically does panoramas....

Pretty huh?
Makes me wish we had a big tower that went waaaay above the roof.

Plumbing with PEX and Tankless Water Heaters

Pex, pex pex, how do I love thee, let me count the ways.
1. Never a gonna light anything on fire plumbing with PEX.
2. No meth enthusiasts are going to rip it out of the walls to sell for drug money.
3. So, so much faster...especially with the cordless expander tool.

But seriously, PEX is freaking awesome, especially the Uponor brand.

Here's my super awesome and easy to read plan.

Can you see why my physic students hated my writing?

Tankless Water Heaters

We decided to go with the Navien brand. This is a Korea made unit with
some interested differences from the Rinnai and Aquastar brands we have
used in the past. These units have stainless steel heat exchangers (instead of
copper on the other brands) and a built
in buffer tank and circulation pump. That means, no cold water sandwiches'
and you can turn the flow all the way down to barely a drizzle. Try that with
a Rinnai unit.
The first gen of these units had problems but I've been convinced that these
second gen models have fixed all the issues. Lets hope.....
The unit on the left is for the basement apartment and the unit on the right
is for the main floor of the house plus the laundry room.
Yep, we are separating the water heaters. There will no longer be a single
crappy Home Despot water heater in the attic supplying hot water to the
entire house. BTW, at one point that was three kitchens and seven baths!

The tankless heaters are condensing units that required 3" venting.

It was a tight fit but we managed to get them all in one joist bay.

One of the pex manifolds.

For some reason I forgot to photo graph the other manifolds.
Remember that these are in-progress shots so no, the PEX tubing isn't
completely supported yet.

Those four 1/2" runs on that manifold run to the kitchen and guest bath
of the apartment.

Bath Tie In

I decided to not completely re-invent the wheel on this retro-fit plumbing.
Originally the two 1/2" copper lines fed the guest bath and the kitchen.
Now the kitchen has its own line.

Hopefully this means that someone can be taking a shower and someone
can be using the kitchen sink at the same time.

Above you can see the start of the utility chase.
Here's a better shot.

Water, gas, electricity all through out the house and nary a joist will have to
be drilled....I hope.
Yes, its starting to get ugly in the chase and the wires are all temp supported.
When we are done running all the utilities we will build out a wood frame for
the chase and attach everything for real.

The Tool That Makes This All Possible.

Man, if you've ever done a lot of hand expanding on 1" PEX you will view
this tool as a godsend. Annnnnd the great thing about this tool is, used models
sell for barely less than new ones.
Trust me, if you are going to do a lot of Uponor PEX you need one of these things.

The Dark Side of Uponor PEX
Like every pro will tell you. Don't use product lines that are not supported locally...
I ignored this advice and wow, now I've paid the price, twice...
Since the only way for me to get Uponors Products is from PexSupply,com I have
to order EVERYTHING online and wait......
As a first time Pex'er what are the chances that I'm going to figure out every
single PEX widget that I'm going to need?
Slim and None....
My PEX-ification of the house has had to stop twice now while I waited for
widgets...

Up Next:
Yep you guessed it, more catch-up posts.
 

HVAC Post #2 Almost Done!

When we last left the HVAC saga everything had come to a halt because we couldn't
figure out how to get the two trunk lines through this opening.

Here is our admittedly kludgy solution.

Ya, I know. We did some custom tweaking to the 8by8 trunk line for the
one system and went down to 8" semi-rigid for the other.

Here's how it looks after it comes through the wall.

We used 6" branch ducts made of alum-a-flex semi-rigid ducting.

I know that what we've shown is not 100% ideal but its the only way that
two non-pros could figure out how to do it.

But ya know what? The parts of the house that were always cold before
are now nice and warm.
The ladies of the household really, really, like the new vents in the bathrooms.
Ahhhhhh, warm bathrooms.

As for that dang gas line....

Moving that stupid line out of the way caused a major reconfiguring and
re-running of gas lines for the entire house!

 So much fun....
Are we done yet?
Almost, we have to finish supporting the duct runs and insulating the plenums
and then, of course, have it inspected...

Up Next:
More catch-up posts!

Yay DryRot!!!

In a load bearing wall!! Yay!!

Here is what the outside of the wall looked like when I pulled off the siding.

I might not be an expert but I don't think
that looks super good.

From the inside it looked like this.
See that lead pipe right there?
See all the dry rot around it?

One joist bay over...

See that freaking pipe on the roof
up hill a bit from the chimney?
That pipe is connected all the way through
the house.
Then, a some point some jackass just cut
the bottom of it and left it in the walls....

After yanking out all the punky wood the
wall looked like that.
Not a lot of meat left on those joist ends...
So an untold about of rain water must of been dripping down
the pipe and rotting the wood out underneath.
I'm betting that if the wood wasn't old growth doug fir that
the damage would of been a lot

Ya that's a seriously comprimized 4by6 header over the windows.

 
 

This is what the studs for the wall of the house looked like.
There is supposed to be a 2by4 there where theres just a little twig of wood...

Here's the big pile of crap wood I scraped out of the area.












See that window on the right.
It was set into the wall so wonky that we had to
pull it out and set it correctly.

Check out the awesome 1"+ of caulk they used on the trim
on the above window!
That's quality stain grade work right there.
















Here's a look at the repair I did.

I sistered on select structural 2by10's to each of the rotted joists.
The repair appears to be pretty robust with the floor above the area feeling much firmer.



 

Super Duper Victorian Exterior Restoration part 1

This post could be subtitled,
A Paint Job Only An Insane Person Would Agree Too

Since the end of August we've had a crew of painters helping me prep the house for paint.....
We've been removing the paint inch by inch by inch, with heat guns and carbide scrapers.

We followed lead safe rules all the way. Plastic tarps entombing the areas we are working in.
Then during the day the paint glop gets swept into a hazardous waste container. At the end of the day we hepa vac off all the plastic, then roll it up tightly for reuse and then we hepa vac'd off the surrounding area just to be double safe. Our mantra has always been, paint chips only on the tarp.
As far as I know there has never been a release of lead paint dust, chips into the environment at large.

The Painting Methodology
First we take as much paint off as we can with the heat guns and scrapers.
Second, we Jasco every single inch of the exterior of the building.
Then on the now lead free building we did a light sanding with orb sanders.
This is the time where all the dry rotted trim is fixed, missing trim is fabricated and things are put back the way we think they should of been in the beginning.
Then, the entire house is coated with a layer of penetrating epoxy from Smith&Co.
Then on goes a quality oil based primer.
Caulking wherever its needed.
Two coats of color finally.

I've heard it said that a good paint job is 90% prep.
Check Out This Prep Work

All of the following shots are after just heat scraping.

 One of the great things I like about these guys
is that they do the entire bottom 10' of house before they call for the scaffolding. Why pay for scaffolding when you don't really need it?



South Side of House

 Crap new wood next to the old growth redwood.
Gee, which type would you pick to build a
house out of?

Fugly, Those BS boxes below those BS Ionian
columns...

 Big Front Window.

 Porch

 The house was red at one point.

 Porch Ceiling.
The wood here is just gorgeous...

 More Porch

North Side












The above shots was how the house looked the morning that the scaffolding company came.

Up Next:
Wait till you see how absolutely beautiful the old growth redwood looks after its stripped fully and sanded....