Tag Archives for Remodel

Waterproof

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This past weekend was that rare December combination of dry and above freezing–time to slap on the tarry muck that will keep our new space dry.
Ideally, this would have been a job for those very dry and warm summer and fall days we enjoyed so much, but that is just not how things went down. This meant that we spent a lot of time drying off the styrofoam insulation with compressed air before we could begin with the application, and to some degree we are hoping we got it “dry enough”.

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The waterproofing material is sticky and rubbery and quite difficult to get off of your skin, even with paint thinner. We were working in very tight and awkward spaces at certain points, taping up the larger gaps and the seam around the bottom off the wall. We were only able to get 2.5 coats on over the weekend with three of us working (thanks, Monica!) Morgan got the rest of the third coat on today.
Alas, though our brief warm/dry spell threatens to come to an end, three coats is not enough. Hopefully we can score another three day stretch in the next month or so to properly finish the job.

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As I was slathering black goo on the outsides of our foundation walls, I was marveling at all of the little steps that go into this huge project. I don’t get that many opportunities to participate in the work, other than occasionally shoveling gravel or cleaning the work site. It was good to be able to do something useful– one small, tedious, and entirely crucial piece of the big project that is our new home.

Pipes!

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The all-important business of plumbing drains is the current focus around here. Water leaving the house– a luxury I will never take for granted again!
On the right in this photo you can see the bin that catches our kitchen sink drain, as well as the hose that goes to our side sewer clean out, with a sump pump assist. We do the same thing for our shower drain.
At the beginning of the summer we would pump the grey water to our ornamental garden beds, but that became quite tedious. It’s rainy season here again anyway, so off to the sewer it goes.
It occurs to me that the most disgusting part of the house is that which makes it most “civilized”. Looking forward to rejoining you all in that civility.

The reality of the personal Porta-Potty

poophammock

Our friend Matt Conlon posted this valuable information for the Burning Man community many years ago. The reality of having your own personal porta-potty is that it’s a bit like it is “freshly cleaned” for about 4-5 days after it gets cleaned, so splash back is a real issue. I am a fan of the fabled Poophammock technology (thank you Matt), but Morgan prefers to throw a few toilet seat covers down at the moment of release.

I don’t know what Huck does, but I do know that I have gone in there to find pee all over the place, and when asked what the deal was, he confessed that since he wasn’t wearing shoes, he had been standing on the toilet lid and aiming at the urinal from there.

I’m pretty sure you all needed to know this, so you are welcome.

The Plan

I have been holding back on publishing the Plan. We have been through so many dramatic changes with our plan that it didn’t feel right to put them out there officially until they were official. We are submitting the whole package with corrections today to the DPD, and (please, oh please!) I believe that this is what we will be permitting. Hopefully very soon.

Here are the Elevations, showing our basement as the new entry level on the west with a wall of glass on the south side facing the yard. The Floor Plan shows the new floor as a big room that encompasses living, dining, kitchen, and craft area, with a powder room under the new stairs. Upstairs you can see the original layout on the left, and that what is now the kitchen will become a bathroom with laundry, the current bathroom becomes the hallway connecting to the new stairs and back door, and the living room becomes a new bedroom. If I can convince Morgan to give up the little porch, it is supposed to become a closet for that bedroom.

Less evident on the plans are the new storage shed attached to the garage/shop and the replacement decking that goes with it. We realized at some last-minute point that it would have to be added to the plan because we wouldn’t have anywhere to put our bikes or yard tools unless we did. That added time and hassle to the plan, including invoking a drainage plan that is a real pain in the butt.

This plan has untold hours of work behind it. We went from pie-in-the-sky to something more grounded to having to completely abandon that so we could work around our neighbor’s side sewer. I’m not even going to go into the neighbor thing on here, but despite all of the incredible frustration of that process I think it ultimately forced us to hone our plan to something more elegant we could maybe actually afford to do. Huge thanks go to Barbara Busetti for sticking with us through this endless process.

I like what we have come to, and I look forward to living in it!

Porches

One of the hard truths about remodeling is that you rarely if ever have the budget or the exact conditions for your “dream” home. I feel like we’re getting most of what we want and need, but there are always things you let go of– more bedrooms, more storage, space for a pinball machine… Morgan longs for a big front porch. He wants to sit on rockers with his friends watching the neighborhood roll by, wants to be there to greet guests with a beer in his hand and a small roof over his head. I have admired many porches through his eyes.

The fact is, our site plan and layout don’t make a porch as such a viable feature. We will have a lovely patio, and a small landing area by our front door. There is some covered deck planned by the shop and new shed, but it won’t accomplish that front-of-house feeling Morgan longs for.

The house as it was originally had a tiny porch:

Our house in the 1930's

Our house in the 1930’s

Here’s Buphalo today, working on removing the enclosure that had been added somewhere along the way:

Buphalo demo's the porch

Buphalo demo’s the porch

And Morgan, shoring up the roof of the back porch so he can complete the demolition of that:

Morgan working on demolition of back porch

Morgan working on demolition of back porch

Finally, here’s Morgan, enjoying his one evening of living the porch dream before it goes altogether:

Morgan enjoys his porch.

Morgan enjoys his porch.

Hut Tub, RIP

Hut Tub circa 2010

Hut Tub circa 201

Hut Tub, RIP, 2014

Hut Tub, RIP, 2014

Our friend Buphalo purchased a fully- gutted short sale in 2010, a home that needed extensive work before it could sufficiently shelter him. In an effort to save money, and because he has always been more comfortable outside, he and Morgan decided to build a little shack over the remnants of a dead cedar hot tub we had on our deck that he could sleep in until his place was ready. We called it the Hut Tub.
The tub had been too leaky since 2004 to use as a tub, so they converted it to the tiny “sunken living room” of the hut. A tiny wood stove was found to put inside it, a bed platform was built, walls, windows, a roof… what more could you need? Never mind that you could see daylight between the siding boards, and that the temperatures got down into the teens one week, it was a perfectly cozy little home.
We have had only a few other people stay there since Buphalo moved on–it made a decent fair-weather guest house– but we have had little fires and used it to hang out in. It was a very charming little clubhouse.
No more! Making way for a new storage shed with proportions more suitable to our needs, the Hut Tub met its end last Friday. Buphalo was there for the end, as he was in the beginning.
We will remember it fondly.

 

The dust begins

IMG_2603Looking down into the basement from the hallway. IMG_2604Looking up into the attic from the same place.

Finally, some dust and destruction! After twice canceling due to forecasted rain and then having the sun come blazing out, we ignored the weather report and had Shug come over to destroy the chimney anyway. It mostly didn’t rain. There was dust. So much more satisfying than making phone calls and plans. Now there is a hole in the house, though the roof has been patched, and we feel like we’ve made some concrete (no pun intended!) progress.

 

 

Another Year of Waiting

A few weeks ago, a very painful realization lodged itself in my mind– we still didn’t have our drawings back from the engineer. The engineer had had those drawings for many weeks, (though it is my understanding that a few days is more the norm) and the permit process with the city couldn’t even begin until we got those drawings back and our architect did a bit more work on them. The permit process takes an average of 4-6 weeks once begun. We weren’t (aren’t) going to be able to jack up the house and do all the foundation work in the very brief window of dry time between achieving our permit and the onset of rains in the fall.

I must admit that I felt a bit like crying, a bit like screaming and throwing a fit when I realized this. This project has taken so many years just to plan that executing it will be a relief comparatively. Partly this is because we have had to radically redesign our project twice in order to contend with our obstructionist neighbor. Partly this is because we are doing trade for our architectural work, which I’m guessing puts us below paying clients in priority. Either way, it has become a marathon exercise in patience and adaptability.

We settled our lawsuit against the obstructionist on June 12, getting everything we needed from the settlement (alas, they cannot make him disappear). His funky sewer on our property should be fixed within 2 months, and we will have an opportunity to video the line when we are done with construction to show that we did no damage. Not so much to ask, right?

Our consolation prize for waiting, AGAIN, until NEXT spring to lift our house is a trip to DISNEYLAND!!! We’re going in the fall, and we are actually pretty excited.

In the meantime, we will push forward with the permit process and try to prepare ourselves for an early start in the spring. I won’t even imagine a future in which that cannot happen next year.