Laurie's World

The patio can not be saved…they are going to jack hammer it out and repour

11:30 am

I first heard Dave out there at 7:23am…he may have been here before then, but that is when I heard him…He had a couple other guys with him…his brother, Glen and a guy named Chris…They got everything ready and when the concrete arrived at 10:15, they started to pour…

The pump truck is a line pump this time instead of a boom pump…Apparently the trees made a boom truck a little problematic…

So…all was going swimmingly until they ran out of concrete

So we are waiting for another truck to come with the rest…

12:05 pm

OK…It just came…and guess what no colour!! SIGH! So now we wait for truck number three…

1:24pm

Truck number three has come and gone without leaving us any concrete. Glen sent it away after it sat for an hour spinning while he waited for the pump truck to get the concrete out that was now setting in his pump lines. The pump guy said it was going to take him at least another hour…so apparently if the concrete in the truck gets too hot it sets too fast and the guys won’t be able to lay it right if it sets too fast. What a disaster!

3:28pm

Yup…definitely a disaster…so now we are in "what can be done to salvage this job?" mode. The rest of the patio will have to be poured another day–they say they can blend it in…

Poor Dave…(What am I saying actually??? POOR ME!) But Dave has gone off to try to find a tool to clean up the grooves. Glen and Chris are here trying to clean up the finish…Glen thinks we should let the grooves go and just clean up the finish , then once it is dry, cut the grooves with a saw. Sounds Great to me…not sure why they did not do this in the first place…

Note Rachael’s supervisory stance!! No matter where she is standing…That is a "Russill" thing–for my Mum…

OK…had to change up the theme for Vicki…she was freaked out by the last one

Phase one of the insulation took place today…So much more to the Air Infiltration package than I knew…So hopefully we are on the schedule for the batts on Monday…still waiting to hear back about that.

Cement Dave is here working hard to be ready for our 10am pour tomorrow…I will let you know how that goes…

Siders are here again…maybe today is the day for completion…and then we start the fight over the bill

L

Thanks for asking though!!

And, oh yeah, Cement Dave had a small heart attack–remember when I said we would be lucky if he lived through this job…SIGH! Maybe working in 102 F degree heat is not a good idea…The thing that makes this difficult is we are not suppsed to know–so now I have to watch him like a hawk without him getting suspicious. He still plans on getting our first pour (the back patio) on Saturday

The good news is the insulators are coming tomorrow (Washington Insulation), so we can get our inspection on Monday and the drywallers can start on Tuesday–WHAT?? you say?? Wasn’t that supposed to happen last Monday? Good to see y’all are paying attention

The NICE guys (John and his brother–did not catch his name) that I hired to do this went out to get the materials for the job and were nice enough to call us from the store and let us know that the materials alone would be more than the materials and labour quote we had from Washington Insulation. A (wise) little bird (Drew) told us that no one could beat the prices of going straight to a company that insulates and does nothing but insulation…as they are the only ones who get an inside track on pricing on insulation—everyone else pays retail!! So happily enough these guys (since we were on a time and materials bid) told us we should really go with this other bid–It was only by chance that they even knew about the bid because as they were heading out the door they told me they were going to Washington Insulation to get the materials and I said "Haha…I got a bid from them and it was just over $1000…so don’t spend more than that!" It has not been my practice to compare bids openly with the subs…but in this case it is good it "slipped" out…saved us about $950. Had to wait until Friday the 13th to get the job done though…OOOOOH!! I am sure it will be fine thoughI am not the superstitious type. We are still getting these guys (Precision Restoration) to do the drywall though…They will start on Tuesday as we do not know what time the inspector will meander by on Monday.

Yeah…I gotta get some steam out and I know of no better place to do it than this. Maybe somehow somewhere when someone googles Bryan or Dick or Aaron or BetterBuildDesign or whatever the heck the name of these guy’s company is, this blog will come up and I can get the word out there. I am gonna get the name of the company off their trucks tomorrow…all three of them have it on there, I just have not paid that much attention…I hope they are proud of the fact that they have been parking outside of my house (for sometimes up to 6 whole hours a day GASP!) for four weeks now and everyone can see that they STILL have not finished siding my house.

So I have told everyone who will listen and I will tell more…DO NOT hire these guys to side your house, or do anything for you as it will take four times as long as they say and cost you over 100% more than they say it will.

We have not really been chatty with these guys for a while now…ever since Bryan told me that the chimney that was supposed to take 10 hours to build actually took him 29–yes 29! I thought it was 21, but I was wrong. Bryan was feeling generous when he knocked the rate on the newbie’s hours down to $35 instead of his highly skilled rate of $50 per hour. But of course he had spent 2 hours and Dick spent 1, so that brought my grand total up to $1060.

So I have been holding my tongue thinking OK….they said they would be done by Wed of this week…Not sure how they are gonna get that done…but maybe they will pull a couple of really long days and get it done. Well…that was shot out the window when Bryan left at 8:45 this morning and we were down to 2 guys (really like less than 2 actual workers, but 2 bodies lets say). SO when this afternoon I saw Aaron making a big pile of garbage on the side of the house in the only patch of grass I have left and then dumping gargabe cans of loose nails, screws and metal bits on the top…I SNAPPED! Not sure what he was thinking–EVER heard of a garbage bag?? Apparently not–as he indicated when I asked him!

So we will see what comes of this…

Thanks for listening…

Today was all about getting the yard graded for the concrete. We had a bobcat delivered from sunbelt rentals yesterday and a fellow named George (cement Dave’s guy) came to operate it…they got all the dirt moved around and the grade done for the sidewalk down the side, the BBQ patio and the back patio…oh yeah, the porch also…So it looks pretty good…a lot of dust though (cough cough)

Then when they were done the rest of the kids came out to play on the bobcat…

Now these photos snapped by Jackie the photographer (other than the one of her obviously) are much more entertaining than the one of me just sitting there in the driveway!!

Here is how the house is looking from the outside…

Those are my cabinets under the blue tarp in the garage…

This is the street side of the house…check out my new corner window in the master bath…

Ooohh Aaahhh…admire these very nice new solid, not rotten, chimneys that we paid through the nose for!!

Here is the last shots you will see of the inside of the house where you can see the guts of the walls…the insulators will be kickin’ it hard tomorrow

What a disaster eh? Those are the rest of my cabinets in the family room…

So I will update again tomorrow after insulation and inspection of said insulation

Yikes! Has it really been 2 weeks since I blogged…that just shows y’all what life has been like for us the last while…

Against my better judgement, i am going to put up a photo that Troy insisted we take…

This would be MOI (Miss Piggy)…in the bobcat we have rented for the weekend to do the grading etc that needs to be done to pour the masses of concrete…it costs $125 an hour to have trac ho Dave here…or we could rent the machine for $335 for 8 hours…and we do it ourselves…so that is what we are doing. Dave (cement Dave) knows a guy who will come and operate the bobcat for us for a $100 cash–apparently he is 60 something and from Hawaii…so we will have him come for 4 hours or so to get us going and then if there is more…we will play around…

I am skipping ahead though–you must be wondering who cement Dave is?? Well…a while ago, I put the oven/microwave unit, the cook top and some of the old fixtures etc on freecycle…and a gal e-mailed me to say she would like them…in our corresponding, she said something about her husband being out on Orcas pouring concrete or something–so I asked her if her husband did flatwork. She said yes, for about 38 years–so when they came to get the kitchen stuff we met Dave and discussed having him do the patios, porch etc when the time came. Now we have had lots (and lots) of concrete guys here to discuss our cement needs…and we decided at the end of the day to hire Dave–so we call him cement Dave (so as to not be confused with Trac Hoe Dave). He is one of the most interesting characters we have hired through this whole thing, and i am sure if he does not die on this job and leave us hanging…the patios will be gorgeous. He is a big man, and quite old–he brings his step daughter’s boyfriend to help out…His name s Shaun and he is a guitar player (quite talented apparently)–but I worry about his hands–he spent Thursday jack hammering out the sidewalk on the side of the house (as we have decided to redo that also)–Good kid–hard worker–and he got a lot of blisters doing that. First manual labour job obviously–but he is a go getter–so we love ’em. So to get the back patio in we are going to have to build a retaining wall to hold the back of the patio up as it is quite a drop off at the back after we had the grade brought up. Those blocks (300) will be delivered on Tuesday and then we start the wall. The bobcat is here to get the grading finished in all areas, so that will happen tomorrow–The concrete for the back patio is scheduled to be delivered on Sat the 14th–we are doing a colored concrete with an acid wash–and a 3′ square score cut on the diagonal. All the rest (BBQ patio, spa pad, sidewalk, porch etc will be exposed aggregate to match the driveway and the original pool deck area.

So…the siding update is not nearly as optimistic–we still do not have a sided house–and the relationship with the siders has deteriorated to the point where we are not really speaking to each other (only when we HAVE to). They just continue to come when they come…works half days…talk on their cell phones…whatever! I do not pay until the job is done and they have fixed all the things that Troy and I have found wrong–Like the dryer vent they sided over, the trim board they had to replace three times, the caulking they had to fix, the light fixtures they had off center, the crawl vents they did not finish…I could go on, but you get the idea. The siding is a fixed bid, but the chimnys were time and materials–so–Needless to say we would not recommend these guys–It took them 26 hours to replace the first chimney chase that had rotted out…so this would be very much over the estimated 10 hours that they quotes us–so you cam imagine how I reacted to thatSo we had Andrew come back and do the second one–hmmm…that took 14 hours–much closer to the estimation for a much worse chimney. Basically the "siders" have not spoken to us since we told them they were not going to be doing the second chimney and that we had hired Andrew back to do it. Bryan is Andrew’s old boss–not sure if I had mentioned that before–so a little awkward but what do I care?? I am just glad I do not have to buy a new dryer–which is what I thought I was going to have to do when my dryer stopped heating–I guess the dryer is smarter than the siders! Yikes–did I just say that out loud??

We had our electrical inspection last Monday (after a long, long weekend with Neils). And we did not pass–yes I said did NOT pass. Apparently our recessed cans that Neils spent like 1 day and a half installing are not IC rated (that means Insulation Contact) So all the cans that we have in the "new" area have to be changed so they are in these 10" square metal boxes (called convesion kits), so that the insulation is kept away from touching them…I guess they get VERY hot! Well, this sounds easy enough in theory, but since several of them are within an inch of a floor joist, putting them in a metal box would move them out of alignment with the nice preplanned lighting scheme by several inches. So we pulled those ones out entirely on Thursday (when Neils came back) and replaced them with track lighting–the ones affected were the ones in the sunroom, and over the corner sink…the rest we were able to jiggle etc to make work with the conversion kits. Also, we had o make up all the grounds for the lights and the plugs…So Troy did that part…we had the electrical inspector come back on Friday and he signed us off. YEAH!

We also tried to have our gas inspection on Tuesday–hmm–this guy did not sign this off either–he wanted us to have Jeff come back and disconnect us from the gas and run a pressure test on the system. The only down side to this is he would have to run the whole system to 15 pounds–and code only required gas lines to hold to 5 lbs of pressure back in 1992–so if any leaks were detected we would have to have them repaired. SIGH–such are the risks of a renovation. SO Jeff came Friday am and hooked up the guage etc…He set it up to 20 lb actually and it held completely tight–YAHOO!!

The other hoop we had to jump through before we can insulate and put up the drywall is another framing inspection–So we had this on Tuesday–only a couple of things we need to do, some strapping on the old walls to bring the house up to earthquake code and some fire blocking in the wall we put in to fill in the old pass through between the dinign room and the living room. No biggie as he said go ahead and insulate–he would check for those two things when he comes back to check the insulation…

So we got full clearance to insulate and I have hired that crew to start on Monday–the lead guy’s name for that crew is John–they are a local (meaning Woodinville) company that does renovation and restoration work. John lives in here in the Cottage Lake area and his business parnter Jeff lives over by Wellington. They seem nice and will have the insualtion and drywall done in a week. So then I can paint and we can start the floor installation. Which we are planning to do ourselves. Doug (framer Doug) is going to come and teach us how to get the floors started as that is the tricky part–then we are away to the races.

I also finished tiling the second/guest bathroom upstairs. It has sat for several weeks now with everything done but the floors–so it is nice to have that done–Here are some pictures so you can see…Of particular note is the tricky cut for the heat register–It is a long narrow register, and I was able to do it in one piece

I will take some pictures of the outside of the house tomorrow and post them up so you can see what it looks like. I am starting to think I may reconsider the colour I had chosen for the house. I was going to go with the colours we had before–safe choice–as I really liked them–but oddly enough I like the colour of the preprimed cedar–and so do other people. There have been a few people that have stopped by to say they love the colour we painted our house. Funnyas we have not painted it…but I may just go with somehting close to this colour. It is a sage gray colour–the sage only comes out in certain lighting conditions…so it is kinda cool. A little different–but the shed won’t match anymore–not that I should paint my house to match the shed–but I really do not want to paint the shed–so we will see!

For those who are wondering why I look like I have been in a mud wrestling competition in that photo at the top of this post. I spent the day diggin’ Dig, Dig, Diggin…just like one of those juvenile delinquents in the movie "Holes" for those of you who get out to the moviesWe have noticed in past years that there is a little sink hole situation at the tightline access by the pool equipment. Shock surprise–Anyway, since we seem to be in the PVC pipe repair business these days as well as going to be pouring concrete over there in the next few days–we thought this would be the time to address this issue—GLAD we did! I dug out the whole area down about 3 feet to expose the fact that we have a mystery pipe (and whoever put it there just cut a square hole in the side of the corrugated tightline pipe and poked the round 2" PVC pipe into it. OK–now I am just a lowly homeowner–but even I know that is not right–and it explained our sink hole–since anytime large quantities of water were put down the pipe, it would have sucked dirt right along with it). That and we all know the saying about round pegs in square holes etc–The other weird thing is we have no idea where this pipe comes from. It is only 8" or so below grade and it comes from the direction of our neighbor’s house. Well since we do not know what it is for we are not going to just cut it off–so Troy went to Home Depot (kickin’ and screamin’–we hate Home Depot) and got the parts to make it right–so we did that and then filled her back up…

OH YEAH! I am almost forgot! Our cabinets were delivered on Thursday–they filled the first stall of the garage and what was left (about half) for room in the family room. They are so PURTY–and they have that new cabinet smell

Also, Dick finally got the second window installed in the master bathroom Now this is my new favourite thing that we have done in this renovation…There is such a nice breeze that blows through the washroom and it is SO bright! Troy is thinking maybe he could have skipped the rest of everything we are doing–All he needed to make me happy was to put a second window in our bathroom

I must say…I am enjoying the peace and quiet of the weekend. It is hard not having any privacy in your own home! I like all the guys that are here day in and day out, (some more than others), but I do like it when they go home at night too!

This is where things stand at the moment. All but one of the windows have been installed. The new one in the master bath (to complete the corner window look over the tub) still has to be framed out and installed. I am happy that we have at least one window in our washroom again…The old one was boarded up for a long time! None of the blinds are back up a they have not caulked around the inside of the windows yet.

So we are nice and bright in here the moment the sun comes up. I am going to lean on them to do that on Monday, so we can put the blinds back up.

Doug and little Andrew put in the footings for the BBQ porch…so that is close to being done now…

The siders have rebuilt the top of one of the chimney chases. Still have to do the bottom of that one and the whole one on the east side of the house though. They also started to install the siding…I LOVE how the cedar looks…probably any siding at this point would have tickled my fancy though. But it looks great and it is starting to look like a real a house again! They put the blocking for the added lighting on the back and "we" are also wrapping the windows on the whole house. The sides and back did not have trim around the windows, only the front, so we think that will class the place up a bit

Note the nice new chase on the right in the photo below…

The electrician is still in Disneyland…so other than Doug and little Andrew (vs big Andrew/Drew) coming around to do finish up their odds and sodds…there has not been much going on inside the house. We are expecting our cabinets delivered on July 5th, so it is likely they will sit for 3-4 weeks before they get installed as there is much to do before they can go in–finish the electrical, get it inspected, insulate, get it inspected, drywall, paint, install floors, then cabinets–PHEW!

One of our neighbors had a little bit of advice for us last week, as they installed almost the identical range as we we have 3 years ago. Their floor is sagging under the weight of this appliance, and now they have to get in someone to go under there and jack it up and reinforce the support in that area of their kitchen–WHO KNEW! So I called Dacor and got the weight of our range (613lb-) and then asked Doug to get us the appropriate amount of support under our floor. Seems like an easier thing to deal with now than in three years…We were somewhat likely to not have had a problem due to the fact that one edge of the range is resting completely on the old foundation wall…but we had him throw some extra support on the other side just to be sure.

Now for the big news that I know everyone is wondering about…..What is happening with our septic field?? Well I sent the guy with the trac hoe away on Friday morning—who can afford him?? After Dave and Harry found the ends of the four lines that go toward the house on Thursday, and we discovered that while they were dirty, they were all working fine (as in not plugged–which was what were afraid of) We decided that what we needed was to expose the ends of all eight lines, take the caps off to see if they were all in working order and run them till they were clean, and put in elbows to turn the end up, put in risers so we could access them easily again in the future. So, we spent Thursday evening digging up the end of the far lines in the septic field. We found two and then we restedWe found the other 2 on Sat (today). Part of this whole process is to dig out under the line and put in all new gravel, then add more gravel on top, put down fabric and caution tape, then backfill with dirt. SO the less of the line we dig up, the less we have disturbed and the less we have to fix and fill in.

This was one of our first digs…

Then we got better and this is how good we got by the last one…faint of heart may want to look away as the next photo goes by…

The one thing we have noticed that disappoints us, is that there is not very much gravel in the trenches around the lines. Enough I guess to meet minimum codes requirements to pass the initial inspection 15 years ago, but really, that is all. So the liquid just has that much harder time disipating as the soil in our back 40 is not great…a lot of clay etc. Oh well…I am not going to dig the whole thing up right now to replace the gravel. It I had an extra 10+ grand laying around, I might–but I do not, so I won’t…We cover it up, cross our fingers and move forward….

Tough day…Tough day…but tomorrow is another day–and Troy will be home

So another little issue (other than our crummy chimneys)…completely unrelated to our renovation has arisen. We are having some problems with the drain field on our septic system. No pictures…trust me, it is not a pretty sight!!

Dave was here today to finish up the grading around the house, and he agreed to dig around with his Kabota a little to see why we have wet spots in the back behind the pool and by the firepit. We actually noticed this little problem last year, but initially thought it was related to the leak in the pool (but as it turns out we fixed the leak and there were still wet spots) So we kinda ignored it this winter–‘cuz who can see a wet spot here in the winter anyway

Anyway…we can no longer ignore this issue for a couple of reasons–one is that it turns out the prior owners poured concrete patio over two of the lines–which is kinda of a No-No–DUH! And it was our plan to enlarge that patio in our new design–So we need to figure out what to do about that. And OH YAH–we have a bubbling geyser by the firepit.

So I had Dave dig up the ends of four of the eight lines in our field…it would appear that one of the four is dealing with the majority of the fluid from our system. Now anyone who knows anything about Septic systems (which would be me now–not that I EVER wanted to know ANY of this!) would know that a very important concept in septic design is that the lines need to have equal distribution. So the valves are open as we can see some fluid out of all of them, but there is something else causing problems–blockage or lord knows what!

I ordered 12 yards of 1 1/2" gravel (spec–which means washed in gravel lingo) from Cadman to be delivered tomorrow (between 10 and 12) so that when we do get this figured out we can fill the trenches and bury the lines properly (which for the record–was NOT done the first time) Probably the holes are starting to plug in the leech lines..

So tomorrow we dig some more–

The window guys got the 6 windows in our master and the bonus room installed today–YIKES! These were without a doubt the toughest 2 rooms to deal with in terms of "access" to the windows to do the work–Hmmm! They managed just fine though–so tomorrow they start to deal with the chimneys (they got the scaffolding delivered today) and hopefully get some siding installed in the back.

It was very warm today–I thought anyway–but I suppose it was better than rain.

I almost got tired just watching these guys work today! The "siders" were here bright and early, but they spent most of the day installing windows since Dave was here working with the trac-hoe to get the grading and the back fill done. So they would have seriously been in each others way…Fine with me though since everyone had more than enough to keep them busy!

We did find out yesterday that our chimneys are rotting from the top also…what a lovely way to start the week. Once again much worse on the East side of the house than the west…not sure why, but it must have something to do with weather exposure.

I got some pictures of the house so everyone can see what it all looks like…

Here is the house from the west side…looks haunted doesn’t it…

We are the Tyvek house now…

and our KUBOTA…

Things to note…our lovely french doors…and the skylights are in…WAHOO!

Troy is in Toronto…so not sure if you are checking in or not…but here is your BBQ area Troy…Too bad you do not have a BBQ yet…For those who have not heard our sad tale…we ordered a nice Coleman BBQ from Costco and when it was delivered it was very damaged, so we had to refuse delivery…long story short (sort of) but we had to redo the whole order and so now it will be a bit longer for it to arrive (again). But that is actually OK, as we do not have concrete yet anyway…

BTW–LOVIN’ this view minus (most of) Marjorie (the garbage pile)

This is the view from INSIDE the BBQ area…like say when Troy is in there checking on the ribs he is smoking or something…this is what he will seeWell sort of, I guess, there is a lot of landscaping to do back there!

This is the house from the street…still not much to look at eh?

Nice pile of cedar siding waiting to be installed…

Well that is not entirely true…my flowers are lovely these days…if not just a little overgrown…Here are my poppies Mom! Nice eh?? I do not think I have seen nicer poppies than these!!

This is the corner of the front rock wall…this actually looks much better in person than this photo captures…but for the gardening enthusiasts who were wondering how the flowers are doing…i include these tidbits for you

Let’s see…what else?? Well here is the front windows…to the untrained eye, these would appear to be the same windows as we have always had…but let me tell you about these new windows…they are the one finger windows…what I mean is they are like butter opening and closing…very nice! The screens are almost invisble so you do not really see them (which is a feature i never would have really thought made that big a difference) and also we had some of the ratios changed in terms of how much of the windows open. So these front windows used to be only the bottom third opened, we made them 50/50 so the whole bottom half opens…this will make a hige difference to how much air we get circulating through the house. All that , and supposedly we won’t freeze in the winter and i should see savings in my heating bill…We will see about that!. So lets take a vote…who thinks I am happy we did the windows?? You should have asked me that question earlier today when I had to watch these two old guys balance up on the toe of one foot in a 2 inch square space over a hampster tank and a rotating psychedelic light ball to get to the window in Brooklyn’s room. They told me it was fine though…maybe they were just being nice. They both said they had had teenagers before and in fact one has teenage grandchildren…Is this supposed to make me feel better??

They did get more than just these windows done today…

For some entertainment value…here are the kids…

This would be Rachael just getting home from the gym…

Jackie making her B’day party invitations tonight…

Brooklyn the night of her freshman PartyThat is me crying…not her–she had a lot of fun!

OK…Here is Rachael normal…

Oh Yeah! We got our skylights installed today…so we officially have all the natural lighting we are going to get now…

Here are the french doors from the inside…

And the coup of the day…Laurie (YES Laurie) installed the deadbolt on the french door…just felt a little exposed last night without my plywood protection, so had to get that on today. Took me about an hour—but when I go to change the front door over to satin nickel hardware I will be SO MUCH FASTER. As you can probably tell, I am a little proud of myselfNo handle…just a deadbolt (as it will have to come off to be painted at some point anyway–and the reality is, I do not want all the dirty sweaty hands that are around here these days touching my nice handles–so I will wait to put that on) I have fully copped to being the anal homeowner when I made them put a protective cover on the threshold of the door. I do not think it is too much to ask that they keep their muddy feet off my shiny new silver threshold. I am well aware that it will get marred…but I would like it to happen at a GREAT party or something…not by a mud covered steel toed boot

Man am I on a tear tonight…Troy needs to get home so I can use up my words on him