No huge surprises in the first real week of work on House #3, as I finished most of the demo work over the last few days, building permits have been secured, and the plumbing and electrical bids have been finalized. Wonder of all wonders, the plumber is actually ahead of schedule, which is something I never thought I’d find myself typing.
I was pretty happy with both the plumbing and electrical bids, as they came in at $2,000 for the electrical (which includes installing all fixtures, ceiling fans, and outlets) and $1,800 for the plumbing. It’s a very small, simple house, so I was estimating $2,000 for each job, but that involved a bit of guesstimation based on past jobs, so it was nice to get those nailed down at about what I’d budgeted for them.
No major surprises after demoing out the rest of the interior, other than more ridiculously shoddy work. It was kind of frustrating as almost all the demo work was undoing the recent feeble attempts at renovation, with the net result being a lot of dirty grunt labor and wasting of sheetrock, as we had to open all of the walls anyway for electrical work and getting inspections approved.
It always baffles me that people will be so half-assed with work, as far as taking the time to frame and stud out walls, add new electrical boxes, and sheetrock it all, but not replacing 60 year old electrical wire, or using super-cheap 1/2″ sheets of insulation in the walls you’re sheetrocking over, instead of spending a few extra bucks for decent insulation. I mean, I get why people do half-assed work, so I could totally understand someone leaving old electrical boxes in place, not adding any insulation, etc., and calling it good, but it’s baffling to do 90% of the work somewhat correctly, using a good deal of effort, but half-assing the remaining 10%, necessitating ripping it all out.
My favorite “renovation” was where the guy added a new round ceiling electrical box for a light fixture in the living room, but didn’t have a stud in the ceiling to nail the box to, at the place where he wanted the electrical box at. Instead of using blocking or something similar to give himself something to nail the box to (which he obviously knew how to do, as he did it elsewhere), in this case he just decided to create a huge, basketball-sized mass of spray-in foam, which when hardened bridged the gap to the stud about nine inches away, and sort of held the ceiling box in place and in position. Quality craftmanship, that.
On the annoying and/or frustrating side, the city wants us to add parking space for two cars (a 9′ by 18′ space for each), as that’s apparently required since I’m adding a bedroom to make it a 2-1. It also has to be asphalt or cement. Very much overkill in this case, as the house small, is on a dead-end street, and is the only occupied house on that side of the street. There’s a dirt/gravel driveway to the side of the house that people have obviously used as a driveway in the past, but it’s unclear how much of it straddles the vacant lot next door, so I’m likely going to need to have a survey done, especially if we have to pour a concrete drive. Which isn’t the worst thing in the world, as I’d thought about having it done anyway, but I hadn’t planned on the added expense of providing paved parking for two cars.
All in all, very happy with progress so far, as I didn’t expect to really get rolling until January on this project, so we’re getting off to a good start and already a bit ahead of the game.
