Exhale.

Brokers tour is today. If I weren't so tired I'm be nervous. The past two days have been excruciating. The little details will kill you.

I had tweeker girl at the house. Yes.... I wound up using tweeker girl after all. I figured I was going to be there doing touch up. But, it turned out the whole crew was there. So she didn't have a chance to rob me blind. She was punctual. And, a really hard worker.

I had to have a talk with all my people because they all looked at me with that wide eyed "what the fuck look". They all thought she was right out of rehab. If only.

My worst fear was she would talk my ear off. But she was really good. She mainly washed windows all day. Which I would guess hadn't been cleaned in 20 years. And.... she did a really good job. Even though she was there for about 6 hours - she didn't complain once.

I guess sometimes you take a chance on people and it turns out okay.

I had my tile guy in doing this:





This is how it used to look. The dark living room is exactly how the room looked when we bought it. The whole house was really that dark.







Aside from all the physical labor - the static level was really high. I had Christian radio at one end of the house, and NPR at the other. Who on earth could say that wouldn't send you into a tailspin? Being an atheist.. both sides of my brain were in a tug of war.

I think the NPR was actually the most destructive force. In an election year... it caused many debates. Then, my conservative agent friend came in and decided she wanted to poke my crew about their views. Which wasn't helpful. My tile guy is a Hungarian immigrant, and I'm not so sure he doesn't pine for the days of communism.

It seemed everyone was acting up in some way. Alpha contractor was in a surly mood. Even for him.

I found myself managing relationships almost as much as trying to get the work I needed to do done. My brain still hurts today.

Mental notes.

So.. while doing the Canton house there were many things I ran into that I didn't expect. One of them involved installing a black floor in the bathroom.



A couple of weeks ago Alpha contractor walked up to me and said "you are going to have to caulk around that toilet".

Me - Okay.

Him - Since the floor is black, you're going to need to find some black caulk.

Me - Do they even sell black caulk?

Him - Yeah.. but don't ask anyone in the store for it.

Me - Why? Ooooh.

Well.. I put that project off for a while, and now its time to make sure the inspectors don't flag that toilet for not being caulked. I tried to buy it from Amazon, but they don't have any quick shipping. And I obviously need it this week.

This morning Alpha contractor asked me if I'd found any yet. To which I had to tell him no, and ask politely if he could pick some up.

I don't know why adding the word black makes this whole thing funny. I could go anywhere and ask for caulk. But add the word black to it, and it makes everyone laugh.

The rundown.

Okay - so I'm not quite done. So, I thought I'd show you how the window I'd fought so hard for turned out.



If you haven't been keeping up - see the before picture here.

Most of the weekend was consumed with lighting purchases. And bunny spa. They all needed their nails trimmed.

The bi-polar weather makes it so they don't know what kind of fur to grow. One day it's freezing (almost) which sends out the message "grow a thicker coat". The next day its 90 degree's. Fur is bad. Mmmkay? Ditch the fur. Sucks for bunny owners.

When its static-y - it's super static-y.

Today was a duffer. I think I'm still on track for being done-ish at the end of the week. But I'm going to have to do double time tomorrow to make up for what I didn't get done today.

The big issue today was this pane of glass. Apparently Alpha contractor and I have some big issues about doors. From the day he started - he's wanted me to rip this window area out when I replaced the door.



I am not exaggerating. We've probably had like 50 discussions about it. He thought I should just get a door with a new "light"(window). I've been fighting him tooth and nail.

The funny thing is when we first bought the house I hated this window. But, as we tore stuff out - it grew on me. As each week passed I was more and more resistant to rip it out. It is kitchy and Miami retro in a way. And ultimately.. I would guess its a pretty expensive pane of glass. I seems a shame to rip it out. I also feel a little nostalgic about it. It is one of the few original items from the house.

The problem has been that Alpha contractor wanted a pre-hung door. Not just because it's easier, but the weather stripping is modern. And it would just be a bunch of work to get a non pre-hung door to fit in the space. So maybe it is because its easier.

With time running out. I had to go shopping with him today to find a door. So, most of today involved:

Him - They don't have any doors that are the right size. You should rip that window out.

Me - what if we did "this" - or "that".

Him - well.... the problem with that is...

Finding doors sucks ass. Most doors have one of those moon windows. And of the ones I did find attractive, 80% of those are made of steel. Which brought on a whole other set of static from him.

Him - Snarkolepsy. Steel doors suck. If they get dinged, there isn't anything you can do to fix them, and they look like crap. If you bought a house with a steel doors you'd be pissed.

Which actually is true. But annoying.

As a side note: Alpha contractor exemplifies all the things I hate in shoppers. He walks slow. I had to turn my pace down by 2/3ds. He leaves his cart in the middle of the isles. If I didn't know him, I'd want to beat the crap out of him.

Canton house.

By all intensive purposes - the crapshack will be finished the end of next week. So, since I haven't come up with any funnier name - I'm just going to start calling the place by the road it lives on. It's not a crapshack anymore. It's house a house that looks like someone loved it.. and a house any new family should be happy to live in. I'll have pictures soon.

Alpha contractor and I have been getting along pretty good. It helps he's only been over at the house a couple of days a week. He has other work, and there just isn't enough stuff to keep him there. It will be oddly strange to be rid of him. For all the bitching I did about him.. I guess I grew to like him. I think he thinks I'm okay too. I mean - he lets me use his tools. I guess in a guy way, that says I'm okay.

I also wound up taking a picture of the alpha contractor truck. So you can tell when a contractor thinks he's the biggest dog on the block.



Mind you - the garage is a two car garage, and the back of that white car to the right of the photo is a standard sized minivan. Yeah - he thinks he's bad ass.

What I'm still doing.

I really thought I would have had this floor done by this week. But I still have 18 boxes to go. That may or may not be halfway - depending on overage. Getting things to be straight is a major hassle. I'd show you - but then it would screw up some of the final reveal. For now I'll show you what I worked on today. The entry way.



This is the only old picture I have of the entry way. But, it is taken looking the other direction. From the front door - you couldn't get a shot of the kitchen, because there was a closet there. We ripped it out. Which is why that light is not symmetrical. Now that I look at the area in a photo - it sort of bothers me.

Photo Update.

I know you all thought it sucked. It just needed a light. Who in their right minds would put in a black floor?



A funny (now) side note on that floor. When I had my last set of painters in. I think I've been through 4 sets now. I told them I would go crazy if they messed up my black floor.

So, the obvious choice for them was to not cover the floor when they smoothed out the texture. When they wanted to get paid, I told them I was with holding a hundred dollars until the floor was cleaned up. They bitched and moaned that all it would take was soap and water. I said if they cleaned it - I would pay them the hundred bucks. I'd made a special point after all to tell them I would freak out. They covered the other floor which was tan and wouldn't show every speck of dust. They completely turned me down. For a hundred bucks! Which would have taken them maybe 15 minutes.



A shot of the floor I laid and the back of Alpha contractor. Mr S. Cut all the tiles - but I placed every one of those 18x18 inch tiles. My new favorite toy is a suction cup. You can get them at OSH for a few bucks. I loves me some suction cups.

Now I have overachievers syndrome though - because my tile guy who did the showers is crazy amazing. If tile lines bother you - he is the man for the job. So now I compare all my work to his. Which will never be good enough now. Tile contractor is also my contractor of the year. He is low maintenance. You show him a computer generated photo of what you want. You come back in two days. It looks exactly like that.

New

The kitchen is still under construction - but these are the doors my contractor and I fought about. He adores them now. He gushes. He acts like he was fine with them the whole time. He wasn't. But he is now.. and that is all that matters.



The dining room. I might have the old shot of this somewhere.



And the dining room looking into the kitchen now. You couldn't even see the other door in the old pictures. The single door obstructed much of the kitchen.

Old

Everyone begged us to not rip out the cabinets in this house. They were real old style wood. We could have saved a lot of money if we'd kept them, but they just really reminded me of the wood that was on old water beds.





This was the view from the dining room looking into the kitchen. It had a single door which made it so you couldn't really see much of the kitchen until you stepped right up to it.

My thoughts for today - with pictures!

One -

I know for sure I'm being punished for being a depressed teenage girl. For the past three days alpha contractor has been playing the exact same song. For three days people! Over and over and over. And it has only one verse. I'm not shitting you. Something about letting go and praying. It reminds me a lot of how Pictures of You from The Cure sounds. But with much less music and much more of a Robert Smith sounding guy. It's just making me crazy. Would someone who is intolerant as I'm suppose to be put up with this? No - I think not. Yet.. for three days I have. I suck.

Two -

One of my contractors went to find work in Tex-ass. Yes.. that's right. I'm not being illiterate. I call it Tex-ass.

Anyway - he flew in today and came right to my job site. I don't know if that just means he needs money or what. Double anyway. He's been working his ass off in Tex-ass prepping houses. He said the builders over there hire three teams. One to build the houses. One to prep. And one for repairs. For all the shit the other teams screw up.

Good information to know while I'm working myself to death to try and get guys to fix things they screw up.

-----Ready for some pictures?-----

The sea of beige.



I guess I didn't take many pictures of the way the old bathroom looked. There wasn't anything remarkably wrong with it. Except for the yellow tub.

The love-fest is -so- off.

It is pretty amazing to me how different things can be from day to day. Last week I was loving the contractors. This week - they can suck my balls. It is like a constant battle with them.

So - this particular meltdown happened because Alpha contractor brought his paint guy over to give me a quote for mouldings, doors, and the outside of the house. Which was in the range of "are you out of your fucking mind"?

Let's just say the whole quote would have bought a small fully loaded compact car. You've seen the crapshack. It isn't a mansion.

When I told Alpha contractor the price didn't make sense for the house - he didn't say the appropriate thing. Like "yeah - thats a little pricey for this neighborhood". He started giving me all the reasons I should choose his guy.

Which involved "but the house will look like a million dollar house when its finished". Well - the house isn't a million dollar house, and won't be for a very long time.

But - I could have gotten past that whole thing. I understand they all want to use their guys.

My first impulse was to get some guys to come in after Alpha contractor had left for the day. But shit - last I remember.. I'm his boss. So I just confronted it head on and told him I was getting some people to give me quotes today while he was there.

All of a sudden he turns into a disapproving mother-in-law, and starts giving me strong vibes he feels I'm being cheap about the whole thing. Which so totally pisses me off-you can't even imagine. I have been anything but cheap with this house.

After the guy left from giving me a quote - Alpha contractor was clucking about how quickly the guy walked around the house. I've used this painter before - so back the fuck off. Man, Alpha contractor is pissing me off today.

I mean - his painters wanted more than it is costing me to have my whole kitchen installed for christ sakes.

Sneak Peek.

Last Friday, when alpha contractor called to tell me the kitchen was in - I had this overwhelming feeling of calm. Sort of like the feeling you get laying in a swimming pool with your head under water. All the noise went away. Well.. for like two minutes. But, it was the best two minutes ever.

I think I've finally crested the hill. My kitchen will start to be installed on Monday. All the holes in my floors are jacked back up/repaired/ and closed. Lets say it together. There are no holes in my floors. Aw... that feels so nice.

I've learned two things about doing houses I'm not living in. The middle feels like a bottomless black pit. Now I've started to get excited again. I can finally see our ideas coming to life.

The other thing is.. when you have termites - you have way more water damage than you expect. And - I knew there was a ton of water damage.

Here is a sneak peek at the tiles. Feel free to make comments. Even if those comments are "holy fuck I wouldn't have done that".

The color balance is off...which makes them look not so great. Too many weird colors in the room right now causing the tiles to refract odd light. But - since I don't know when dal-tile is going to ship my order - I'm letting you look at the tiles before the rest is completed. Thanks again for all the feedback to my One or Two post.

My happy feel good issue for today.

I'm always bring my realtor friend over to the house to ask how much my house will sell for. She always complains about my house having a hole in the floor.

Well, two days ago - I didn't have any holes in the floor. She had to complain about there not being a kitchen. Whatever.

Which I might add.... the place looks better with holes in the floors and no kitchen than the day we bought it.

Anyway... now I have another hole in the floor. I honestly am not sure how someone can let a house get so out of control.

Moving ahead.

Yesterday - my soul was as as black as the tar I had to rip out and have reinstalled in my bathroom. I was starting to become superstitious about my house. Which is so totally unlike me. But, for a minute I was starting to think Jeff Lewis was looking sane.

You remember my house is a dead people house. Right? I was starting to think I might need an exorcism to extricate the bad mojo, and get my project moving.

Fixing houses apparently can make you the most bi-polar freak on the planet. Take one step out of your comfort zone, and things go badly quickly. Which is where I've been at for the past two weeks.

It all started with this master bathroom. The one that was up on jacks you ask? Why yes.. that one. I knew the bathroom was f-ed. What I didn't know was - the previous owners had pulled out some support beams.





From the first inspection of the house on - I was under the impression the bathroom was up on jacks due to all the dry-rot. Until alpha contractor arrived and told me my house was not going to pass inspection if I didn't fix it. Oh yeah - it isn't lost on me that it wasn't flagged on my inspection, but you can guarantee that some other inspector will flag it just to fuck up my day. In this market.. you can't take chances like that.

Anyway.. I get through that bit of madness, and I'm ready to put in the waterproof barrier for the walk in.



The previous owners had already removed the tub - so I figured having a walk-in would be somewhat unique for the neighborhood. My roofer told me he had done tar burn downs on like 20 of these types of showers. This is a process of burning tar sheets to weld them together to form a waterproof liner.

Normally you have a guy with a tar bucket come in - but in California, tar isn't really used as much anymore. When you see roofs being put on, they don't pull a big flaming tar melting machine around with them. So I figured - times change. Building codes change, and this is the new modern way they do these things.

Nope! Alpha contractor comes in, and has a fit. It isn't sloped right. Water is going to collect in the corners. At any rate..I need to call my guy to have him rip it out. Which he does - but my tile guy can't do his work. Which sets him back several days. And, oh by the way - he is coming from Sacramento. More than two hours away. So he drove out that day for no good fucking reason.

Anyway - today I had a roofer out. Who has done the job to alpha contractors satisfaction. It's my tile guys' roofer. Who also came from Sacramento. Even though I had to pay his gas both ways - it cost me 400 bucks less than anyone I could get locally. I just hate having guys travel 4 hours to do a one hour job.



So, the moral of the story is - I now know the correct way to do one of those walk in showers, but I would rather lay down in a hot bed of tar before I feel like doing another one.

Its all about the arch.

I should have been getting my bake on today.. but instead we were dealing with contractors.

Yes... on Christmas eve.

I'm pretty sure they aren't even heathen atheists like we are. But, they chose when they wanted to work, and as long as they aren't pissing off the crapshack neighbors - I'm happy to let them.

The day started out simply enough. Do a drive by at the crapshack. See if anything unexpected cropped up, and see if they guys needed anything. Go to the bank. Come back and start cooking. Simple.. right?

Yeah.

The guys were putting up the gates today, and when we got to the house they had one side hung. And it was terribly wrong.

I had my heart set on a gate with an arch, and the side they had up - was an arch. But it was such an exaggerated arch that the side that attached to the post was only as high as my hip. The side that attached to the other gate was taller than I am. That's a couple of feet from one side to the other.

At this point we start trying to figure out if we can salvage the gates without making it look like a hack job. And it didn't look like that was going to happen.

Mr S. says he can make a template, because he understands what I'm looking for. He sets off to the house. I set off to the bank and Home depot, because we need more hardware to support the extra weight of the gates.

I think it actually took about two hours and 5 people to work out a simple arch.

Apparently arches are much more complicated than you would ever expect. It seems like such a simple thing.. but it turns out not. But the gates are up, and I'm actually a little wore out. Hopefully I can gain a second wind, because I didn't really expect to have a big contractor issue today.

In other tear out news.

We weren't going to do anything with the crap-shack this week. I can only stand about a week of the contractors, and then I need a break.

Don't get me wrong, the guys I have now have been mostly great. But, it is a lot of babysitting to make sure things continue to go "great". With so many contractors in last week, I was pretty burnt.

But - an interesting phenomenon seems to happen when we move into houses. Since we tend to choose the worst house on the block - when we start fixing the house up, some neighbors will start to fix things up too. We aren't sure why this happens, but it seems to do so with regularity.

Last week we noticed one of the neighbors who shares a fence started to tear down some of his fence, and was in the process of putting up a new one. The only problem was the concrete pour for his post would have made it impossible to repair a segment we shared - without screwing his stuff up. So, we talked him into holding off for a few days, so we could repair the area.

Mr S. and I were going to build the gate initially. But, since we didn't want to hold up the neighbors, we called one of our contractors to get it done more quickly than we could have on our own.

I didn't really expect any of the guys to work this week - but, I guess they needed money for the holidays because they volunteered to work today. They also agreed to tear out the floor in the master bath. The one that was up on jacks. Which was a huge bonus. This is what is looks like now.



This is what it looked like before.



I was a little nervous of what we might find when we got the floor out because of all the water damage, but other than the shower area resting right on the copper pipes (unsupported) the beams were in remarkable shape. I'm super shocked that one of the core structure has any mold or rot or anything.

Crapshack today.

I don't know.. Crapshack Today sounds like it could be a magazine. Doesn't it?

Anyway...I am glad the week is coming to a close. None of my contractors have made me crazy. Yet. But, I'm just tired of them. Despite how charming it was to walk into the house this morning to all of them singing "How deep is your love?" by the Bee Gees.

My last set of guys are in the house finishing up texturing the walls - so I thought I'd post some pictures.

For some insane reason, the people that owned this home put a new roof everywhere - except the back bedroom. That area to the left of the picture. I'd make arrows... but I'm tired. Just point to the left of your screen.



This resulted in water damaging most of the drywall in that area. Plus, I don't know if you can see it, but it had 70's mirror tiles on the wall.

This is a picture of the room before we took possession. Some may remember the bank removed all their stuff. Thankfully.



This is with part of the drywall ripped down.



They did it so fast, I didn't get any pictures of the ceiling being completely gone. So you will just have to use your imagination.

Somehow we managed to get really lucky, and not have any mold in the framing of the house. When water gets in, mold is always a concern.

This is what it looks like now.



It will look much better after the texture dries, and it gets painted.

This is what the new roof looks like from the back.



New roof from the front.



Before picture of the front here.

Todays image.

Well. There's your problem, right there.

New - from the crap shack.

Things are going pretty smoothly at the crap shack. I'm still using guys I've used before - and they are treating me well. I'm happy to give them work. Especially at this time of year.

They are making the place look so much better. I can barely stand it.

This is the side of the house - before.



That area was basically a trash heap. Plus it was unusable space. Pretty obvious from the beginning. But after it rained recently - it made me so happy I chose to put some concrete there. It was a muddy mess.

It also led to the garage, and I figured most people would hate walking out of their garage to such a fucked up area of their yard.

This is what it looks like now.



Also an unexpected bonus?

After nuking most of the back yard... I found the fences shared by neighbors on two sides, were practically band spanking new! You couldn't even see the fence to the neighbors behind before. And once my guys got all this crap off the side, only then could you see what good shape they were in. It makes me super happy.

You can't imagine how big of a deal that is. Trying to get neighbors to fix fences - sucks big time. Even when you have a really good relationship with them.

Welcome to the Big Top.

My house has termites. I'm not thrilled about it. But - what do you expect when some douche bag piles up wood and garbage against a house for centuries. You can see it here in the before pictures.

Perhaps I shouldn't speak ill of the dead. Never mind. The guy was a douche bag. But - whatever. I knew about them when I bought the house. So, they are more of a mild irritant.

In general - I hate the idea of termites. Even though they haven't destroyed anything yet.

I've spoken to a lot of people about them, and they don't seem to be freaked out about a house with termites. In California, it seems they are at plague status. Since we don't get cold freezing temps, there is nothing to keep them in check.

Then, there are douche bags who do everything to make sure the species proliferates.

Here is my mini rant for today: Houses like my new crap shack really make me sad. I bet when these people moved into this house they were full of hopes and dreams. As those dreams slowly died, so did the house.

You see - when I was a kid, we moved all the time. Sometimes several times a year. Most of the time we would get kicked out, because my family was poor. So - houses hold a special meaning to me. It is such a huge deal to own a house that you can do anything the fuck you want with it. Including, I guess - let the house return to the earth. It still makes me sad when that happens though.