Bad Idea. Bad Idea.

It's been a while since my last post. Life just gets busier, especially in the Spring. Hopefully these photos will suffice if you've been jonesing for some updates.

Fielding local labor for drywall hanging turned out to be a less than opportunistic proposal. In fact, it turned into about 60 hours of my own time fixinig a bunch of very poorly hung drywall. I was really hoping that it would save money, but in the end it probably cost the same in $$ not including my time of going over everything with a fine tooth comb.

On a good note, however, we've signed a lease with a future tenant. Let's just hope we have this thing pretty much wrapped up in time for them to move in.

With the drywall hanging behind us though, it became extremely important to find some good finishers. I knew a couple of union guys who wanted the side work, and they did a fantastic job of making a poorly hung job look extremely good.

And now for the nearly finised product...one more coat on the walls and they'd be done. We're waiting until the very end though.

With the warmer weather came quite a bit of exterior work. I also had the pleasure of finding some more local guys who are very good with concrete and masonry for the $$. Actually they're good at a bunch of stuff, and I'm trying to keep them busy with as much as they're willing to do.

We put new drainage in along the sides of the house, formed up new walks around both of they houses, made a new curb along the sidewalk where we took out the tree in the front, and poured two new 10' x 10' concrete pads in the back yard for a patio. So far in all we've placed 8 yards of concrete on two separate days. I'd run home from work, change into concrete clothes, place concrete for 2 hours, then change back into work clothes and head back while the concrete guys finished it up for the day. No wonder it's expensive work to hire out, man. Concrete is work, especially when you can't get the truck near where you want it to go.

Once the concrete was placed, we needed to get some stairs back on the rear of the house. That was all me. In a few days I had the platforms framed and the stringers built and put the deck boards on. I'll get to the rails later.

Of course while that was going on, I gave Poncho, one of my local jacks-of-all-trades, the chance to prove himself on the masonry. I was told he could lay some brick, but the proof is in the pudding, you know. I think the work speaks for itself. He has been a great find.

We started here, on the south side where the brick had pulled away from the house 4 inches. The hole that used to be in the roof allowed water to leak onto the porch. It probably ran off to the masonry wall, sunk into the brick and eroded the masonry strength, causing the wall to pull away and sink. We fixed that by parging the wall surface after pulling the outside wythe of brick off. Poncho cleaned most of the bricks to the degree that I may not have to buy but a couple hundred new bricks to finish off the masonry restoration work.

And shoot, as I'm sitting here I realize that I haven't downloaded the finished wall pictures yet. Trust me it looks awesome now. And here's the other side, where we had to remove the masonry column as it was nearly falling over.

This brick was pretty soft too, although I think it was more the column that was causing the problems.

We removed all of the brick and column foundation, poured the new foundation in concrete, and laid back up CMU in place of the interior masonry wall. Those pics are still on the camera too, but it's coming together really nicely too. I may not have to paint the masonry after all! More savings!

UPDATE: Here's one wall rebuilt.

We also borrowed a large disc sander for the floors in the living room. This might end up being the biggest surprise of the project:

These floors will look fantastic. Stay tuned I guess!

The drywall has begun

Fielding local labor who turn out to be worthwhile construction workers has proved to be challenging but achievable. It amazes me at how many people really just don't want to work hard. They just want to get paid to do nothing. But there are a few out there who will put in a good days work, get paid and do it again. Not sure where they're going, but I'm happy to have a few of them along the way.

That being said, the drywall work is being subbed to individuals, which may in the end prove to be a mistake. So far it hasn't, though we're only through the first week. The uneasy feeling of having a big, expensive finish job turn out poorly is slowly fading away. It help to have experienced it first hand on the first house, because unfinished drywall in a renovation job is at least one thing: UGLY. See for yourself : )

Post Inspection Report

Greetings once again!

It's been a while since the last post, primarily because actually doing work has taken the place of just watching work get done. In the past month, we've finished off the electrical and HVAC rough-in. In addition, several bulkheads and additional framing components needed to be completed, particularly in the kitchen and hall between the living and kitchen spaces.

Today, as I write, the insulators are at the house installing blown-in cellulose fiber in the existing exterior walls. by the end of the week, we'll have all of the fire blocking completed (unfaced batt insulation 16" from penetrations and bulkhead connection) and the rough inspections will be comlete. We can start drywall!

For now here are a few pics prior to insulation and just before we kick off the drywall installation:

Finished HVAC. Those transitions...yeah, I made them from one piece. Well, a couple I did from one piece. Then I started to run out of long sheets of metal.

I didn't run the vent / intake piping for the HVAC. I'm leaving that and the line sets for the HVAC contractor. But the dryer vent, that was fun. I could barely fit my hand into one of the narrow joists spaces left to run that stuff. Lesson learned: Just cut the darn hole a little bigger than necessary. It makes running those pipes MUCH easier.

These will soon be covered with drywall!

Had to rebuild the stair doorway here, and above you can see the dropped ceiling area in the hall. While it worked out to look pretty good, it was REALLY tight above the ceiling. I had to cut a duct and bend a piece of metal over the 3" plumbing pipe that was in the way. Another lesson learned: Leave yourself a little extra space and life becomes a little easier. Granted, I really didn't have it here...

And below you can see some of the handy bulkhead work in the kitchen. 6 can lights a piece, the kitchens here are going to be dynamite!

More Progress!

More pictures, less prose: