Renovation (Week 9)

Week 8 was pretty boring but Week 9 is getting off to a better start. Our walls are now closed off with drywall.



Of course, it hasn't been taped up, but it still looks nice. I was relieved that the now-closed-off wall between the kitchen and back bedroom isn't that bad. That was one of those things that I was worried about. But with the bedrooms being larger and the kitchen now open to the dining room it wasn't that big of a deal. Tomorrow everything should be taped up and looking nice. Then more waiting....

All of the photos from today can be found here.

Renovation (Week 8)

Week 8 went by without much happening. I guess it was insulation week at the Bartolucci/Nelson residence. We now have insulation in our walls and attic. A few boring photos of insulation can be found here.

Renovation (Week 7, Part 2)

Today I woke up early, had some espresso, and scootered over to the house to see what was up. I was surprised to see that the chimney was done. Since Wednesday it has been taken apart and reconstructed from the roof line up. Again, I'm sure you are sick of hearing this, but it's beautiful.



I walked up the steps and saw that the door finally has a lock. And guess what? My key worked.



The inside is now relatively clean, they've removed all of the heavy equipment and the big dumpster in the backyard is gone. I guess that we've moved into a new phase of the project.



The duct-work for the new furnace is now in place.



As always, you can see the rest of the photos from this week here.

Renovation Tip #1

When you are paying people (e.g., architects, contractors) by the hour, your off-hand comments might end up costing you lots of money. I don't mean to say that you shouldn't be yourself when talking to them, but just to be aware of the situation. You are paying them money for every minute that you talk to them. The minutes that these off-hand comments take up might not account for much, but the work that they go off and do might. A comment that you made about how you weren't completely satisfied with the TV placement might mean that your architect spends hours (charging you > $100/hour) thinking about a better situation. I'm also not saying that they are trying to screw you. It's just that your idea of what you're willing to pay for perfection and theirs might be totally different. Be very explicit about the boundaries of your working relationship.

Renovation (Week 7)

Today we got to see the result of last week's craziness. The new furnace is installed, and it's about a third of the size of our previous one. Supposedly the previous one was actually an oil furnace that had been converted to gas a long time ago. It was old, maybe 30 or 40 years old. The new ducts are much less obtrusive than the older vents. This means that the horrible duct going across the basement, the one that everyone knocks their head on, can be removed. The new furnace is a Trane XR90, which is 91% efficient, probably double the efficiency of our old guy.

In the attic they've installed a piece of plywood where an electrical socket and the transformer for the low voltage lights in the kitchen have been mounted. The smurf tube also terminates there.



When everyone is gone, and any little comment doesn't cost me fifteen hundred dollars, I'm going to drop some networking cable in the smurf tube, mount a little shelf to that plywood, and install my wireless router there. Hopefully that will extend the wifi reception deep into the backyard.

The punchdown block is now full of the Cat-6, but not yet actually a real panel. Each of the pairs is labeled with the room and there are two colors per drop (the electricians are so thoughtful).






We also now have french doors in the back and a bunch of new windows that can actually be opened; What a concept!





The old door has now been re-hung and installed in its new location. When the cabinet maker was at the house for a meeting with us a while back he mentioned how much he liked the door. He said that it was probably Honduran Mahogany and made sure that we were going to keep it. When it was taken to the door people they also commented on how nice of a door it was, they said that they couldn't even get wood like that anymore, and the closest thing wouldn't be as good, and would cost around $3500. It feels a lot better knowing that we decided to spent $400 having it re-hung rather than the $800 for a new door.



The rest of the photos can be found here.

Renovation (Week 6, Part 2)

This was quite a busy week at the house. The roofers came, then the plumbers, and the electricians have been there all week long.

The roof has now been completely finished. Doesn't it look beautiful?



They also cleaned out all of the crap in the attic.





As you can see the kitchen is nicely framed in. If we needed extra storage, the attic space over the kitchen would be the ideal location. The blue tubing is the Smurf Tube for the networking cables.

I believe that all of the electrical outlets are now in place, including the exterior ones, which will be very useful for the electric lawnmower. Yesterday I also noticed that the new french doors in the back have been installed, though I don't yet have a picture of them.

As always, you can view the rest of the photos from this week.

Renovation (Week 6)

This week started off with quite a big change. On Monday I scootered to the house during lunch to see what what up (since I don't currently have a way to get into the house outside of working hours). When I got there the front steps were covered with tarps as the roofers were just about to strip the roof. While I was inside the house stuff was falling down on both sides of the house at a massive rate. When I left 45 minutes later there was no roof.







I also noticed that the holes had been cut in the floors for the new vents and the opening between the dining room and the hallway had been expanded.





Today I went back during lunch and much to my surprise the roof was completely finished. It's amazing how fast those roofers much have worked.



Also, most of the electrical work has been finished. There are electrical wires everywhere.





In the basement they've installed the new electrical panel (with dedicated switches for high voltage things like microwaves).



But the thing that really makes me smile is the new punchdown block.



Thing is where all of the networking cables will terminate, and will be where I hook up my server and all of my networking gear. There's even a nice little niche in the wall for my server.

The rest of my photos from this week can be found here.

Renovation (Week 5)

It's the end of week 5 and we now have a east-facing window in our bedroom.



It looks really good. One window may not seem like that big of a deal but for the first 102 years of our master bedroom's life it contained only one window, that faced north. This one window was also 6 feet from a 30 foot tall apartment building. Since we knocked down the wall between that bedroom and the entryway, and took that small room's window we ended up with a 2nd window. And in the opening where the front door used to be we added this third window. Our bedroom will finally not be so dark.

The contractor did an amazing job recreating the trim for this new window.





The electricians have supposedly finished installing the new electrical outlets. I believe that tomorrow they are supposed to start installing the Cat-6.



The rest of the photos from week 5 can be found here.

Renovation (week 4), but this time only with photos

So it turns out that I've been doing a very horrible job with photos during the last two weeks. But I do have a nice photo of the framed in kitchen:



It's hard to believe that there was ever a wall there. Here's a photo of some old wallpaper that they found under several layers of crap:



They've replaced all of the old galvanized pipes with new copper ones:









And for some reason I only have one photo of the master bedroom's new window, and it's from the inside, right next to our old door.



One thing that's making it difficult to get good indoor pictures is that we currently don't have a real door attached to the house. There's plywood screwed on over the new door opening and every morning the contractor uses his electric screwdriver to remove it and every afternoon he reattaches it. But he's always gone by the time I get there after work, so it would be difficult for me to actually get into the house. Oh well. I try to do a better job with photos this week. It didn't start out very well since I was charging my camera's battery on Sunday night and forgot to put it in on Monday morning before our on-site meeting. Shoot.

But, I've got to admit that I'm doing a better job composing good photos. You can see the rest of the photos here.