Look Up, Look Down, but Don't Look Through Please

 Two very different projects are getting worked on this week. The new roof is almost complete while the shower floor is being checked for leaks. Both of them are fascinating to watch in their own way and both have made for interesting conversations at my house.

You can see where the addition meets the old house
and you get a great view of the new roof

Last Wednesday, the roof salesman brought us a sample of about 10 different shingles and told us to pick the one we wanted. We chose a copper colored shingle that is Energy Star efficient. The next day, when Darryl told him what we had picked, he said, "You have expensive taste," and told Darryl it would be an extra $2000. What??!!?!? You told us to pick from the brochure? (Does this count as a bait-and-switch?) He didn't say anything about the Energy Star shingles costing more money. Still, we decided that the money we'd be saving in energy (plus the rebate we're getting) would offset the extra cost. Sigh. Something to add to the "miscellaneous" section of our budget - the section that seems to be growing on a daily basis.

The contractor added water to the shower basin on Friday -
so far it's holding up. Yay!

By the way - have I mentioned my beautiful new shower? 

Grace thought it was odd that we would use the shower to take a teeny tiny bath. I would have explained that it was filled with water to check for leaks, but it was more fun to let her think it was just one more crazy mom and dad thing. The shower has a small seat in the corner ("So you can sit and shave your legs," said our contractor) and two insets for shampoo and such. We have picked out a beautiful tile for the walls and another complementary one for the floor. I can't wait to show you all the photos of that.

Still not the right window over the tub

One other note from today. In case you were thinking that all the problems are now over (goodbye crazy plumbers!), I'm going to have to burst your bubble. Look at this photo and you'll see a lovely picture window right over the bathtub. Sure, it looks nice, but we don't really want a window over the tub that gives anyone in the yard a great view directly into the bathroom. When the windows were delivered FOUR weeks ago, Darryl looked at the two for the bathroom and realized they were not tempered (which is code) nor obscure (which was our choice). No problem said the window company, we'll bring you out new ones in a couple of weeks. Yesterday, FOUR weeks later, the new windows showed up. Tempered? Check. Obscure? Nope. Send them back and redo them please. At this point we are almost costing them more than we paid. They promised to do a rush order this time. I'll let you know . . .

While You Were Gone

OK, so I haven't posted for a few days. I guess in the excitement of having the plumbing fixed I forgot that the rest of the project was still progressing. So let me catch you all up on what has happened this week.

Check out the shower - nice red floor, huh?

The bathroom is framed and the shower is ready for tile. When I stand inside the shower area, it feels enormous. Now I'm worried our water bill is going to shoot through the roof because I'm never going to want to get out. Oh, and don't be put off by the floor that you're looking at. It's some kind of water barrier that goes down before the beautiful tile can go on it. You didn't really think we'd choose that look, did you?

The new roof is going on much faster than expected. It took them one day to tear off the old shingles and get rid of the bad wood. Today they put on replacement wood and some of the new shingles (you can't see them in  this photo though). They will be back at our house tomorrow, because apparently when you're working with a roof you can't take a two-day break; it's all about momentum. Fine with us. The sooner they're done, the sooner they leave, and then the solar panels can go on. If you have read any of the early posts, you'll remember that those solar panels are what I'm most excited about with the whole project. Well, that and the shower. Did I mention how enormous it is? And it has a little seat too!

Putting the new shingles on the roof

They had to tape around the windows to protect them from the plaster

Also this week the outside walls were covered with black paper and something that looks a lot like chicken wire but apparently has a fancy name when it's used in construction. All I know is that it helps keep the water out and the stucco on. Once all the walls were covered with this stuff, they were then covered with a material that looks a lot like thin cement, called scratch coat, which is the first layer of the stucco.

The black paper and wire coat go under the scratch coat and stucco

The other big piece this week was the drywall going up in preparation for the plaster. They got almost all of the interior walls done, including all the closets. So now you can walk through the entire addition and see where every wall is. Inside the drywall is a layer of insulation, and on the walls between the bathroom and the bedroom we added a layer of sound barrier material. Apparently Darryl thinks this will help him in the mornings when I get up early for work and he wants to stay asleep. Yeah, good luck with that.

When you look into the spare room there's so much dust it looks like carpet on the floor!

Hear That? It's a Sigh of Relief

I almost hate to write this post, because I don't want to jinx anything, but I'm pretty sure the plumbing nightmare is over. Oh sure, they still have to refill the six-foot-long trench in my front yard and they still have to re-plaster and paint the hallway closet. And fix the hole in the wall under the sink. And fix the stucco outside the utility sink.

But besides for that, the pipes are fixed, the toilet is back in its place, the shower isn't leaking, and the bathroom sink is open for business.

These pipes were supposed to connect.
Ummm, I'm not a plumbing expert, but I can see that there might be a problem here.

Today the city inspector came and signed off on the plumbing. That means we can close the floor and pretend those stupid pipes don't exist. It also means that the rest of the project can take up all of our time and worry, which is just as it should be. Actually, things seem to be going really well (again, why am I jinxing things?). The exterior walls have been covered with a black paper moisture barrier, the interior walls are being insulated, and the plasterer is ready to go as soon as the walls have been OK'd by the inspector. Wow, it's almost time to choose paint colors, not to mention ordering the bathroom tile and countertop, and the hardwood floor. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Here's the bad news - now I don't have any excuse not to do laundry. Oh well, nothing's perfect.

No Use Crying Over Spilled Water

Today, for the first time in this whole process, I almost broke down. I say almost, because in the end I just had to laugh, but it was touch and go for a while.

We are now an incredible six weeks into the plumbing ordeal. What should have been a relatively straightforward job has turned into one disaster after another and last night we didn't even have a toilet in the house. We had to traipse next door to use Tom's spare bathroom. One of the benefits of living next to your contractor I suppose. This morning I took the girls out to breakfast so that we could use the bathroom. Of course they thought it was a great adventure and such a treat to have pancakes made by Denny's, but all I cared about was the fact that I could flush.

Still, that wasn't the breaking point for me. Nor was it when I got home and saw all my sheets, pillows and blankets on the sofa because for some unknown reason the plumbers had to put a hole in the laundry closet to get to the shower (which has not been part of the problem in any way). It wasn't even when I had to rinse the chicken I was cooking for dinner in a bowl rather than in the sink and attempt to wash my hands without spilling anything down the drain.

No, what finally did it for me was hearing that the plumbers were going to have to go through the stucco on the outside of the house to get to a pipe that is between the exterior wall and the kitchen cabinets, thus putting a bloody great hole in the front of our house. At that point, I really thought I was going to cry. All I could think of was the fact that they have been working on this for six weeks now and it seems to be getting worse and worse. Pretty soon we'll have a beautiful new addition to our home but no original home left. Good thing we put in all those outlets I suppose.

Anyway, at the very moment when I had had enough, I started to think about a young girl I know whose family left Syria a couple of months ago because they were fleeing a war. I thought about a friend who is battling her fourth bout with cancer. I remembered hearing about families who barely subsist on one meal a day. And I realized that my problem is just that, a problem and nothing more. It's fixable. Life goes on, and toilets will flush again.

Besides, I can't do any laundry this weekend. So life's not all bad.

How Much Stuff is Enough?

When the house was originally built in 1937, there were no such things as digital alarm clocks, kindles, ipods, or photo frames that double as lamps. So our current bedroom is completely ill-equipped for our 21st century gadgets. Back in the day, no one thought about having to plug in the telephone or needing to supply power to a TV, a DVD player and a Wii game all at the same time.

One of the outlets in the bathroom

So when it came time to decide where and how many outlets to put in the new rooms, we had to stop and think about what we really needed. When I stepped back and thought about it, it was quite eye-opening to think about just how much stuff we have and how much power we need. So how much stuff is enough? Is it about what we need, or just what we want? We all love to read in our house, but do we need two kindles? I can justify them by thinking about how much space they save and how much entertainment and enlightenment we get from reading so many different things. But couldn't we just visit the library more often and accomplish the same things?

Our closet has three outlets just in case

As for the bathroom, why is it that my plug-in toothbrush makes my teeth feel so much cleaner than a regular old-fashioned one? Is it really better for my teeth and gums, or do the moving bristles just fool me into thinking the brush is something special? And since two outlets are being used for the toothbrushes, I need more for the hairdryer and straightener. Hmmmm, is it need, or want? If you look at the photo of the closet, you'll notice one outlet on each wall. I'm guessing we won't need them all right away, but who knows what gadgets we might acquire in the future.

Still, I'm happy about installing the outlets now. From my understanding, it's super difficult to put them in once the walls are closed. I don't think we have excessive stuff, yet the tangle of cords and extensions under our bed sometimes drives me crazy. Having those extra outlets is really going to help in the new rooms. Anyone staying in the spare room will have plenty of places to charge their phone, laptop and ipod while using an electric razor and watching TV. No one will complain that we are not accommodating hosts.

The view from the hallway into our new bedroom

Next up, the installation of the heating and A/C. Now there's some stuff we are absolutely grateful for.

Advice Column

Dear Abby,

My husband and I are having our house remodeled. We started the process back in March, broke ground in August, and still have about two months left (assuming things go according to plan, which, as you probably know, is a horrible assumption to make). The problem is that lately we have been fairly short-tempered with each other. We seem to be bickering over silly things and can't manage to agree on the big ones. My question to you is this: Do you think this is normal or should I be concerned?

Awaiting an answer,

Laura in North Hollywood


Dear Laura,

Everyone I know who has had all or part of their home remodeled has experienced similar issues. There are two sides to every story, and it's important to understand both. The person who is home all day, talking to contractors and handling the details, gets frustrated when he sees mistakes being made and things happening slower than he would like. He spends the day putting out fires and answering the same questions over and over again. At the end of the day, he needs to unload his frustrations onto the one person he thinks will empathize, yet often that person doesn't want to hear about all the problems.

That second person sometimes feels out of the loop, not really knowing what's going on at the building site and feeling as if she's missing things. When she gets home from work, she's expecting to hear about the success of the day and becomes impatient when instead she has to hear about what went wrong. She would prefer to discuss interesting details such as the custom-made bathroom vanity unit or the different types of window treatments that might adorn the bedroom windows; but instead she is forced to talk about the 2 degree angle of the plumbing pipe and the argument about where to place the recessed lights in the closets.

Laura, the truth is that until the remodeling job is over and you and your husband have settled down into the new building, these little squabbles will continue. You're both frustrated and unsure about what's going on and you have only each other to unburden to, so the bickering back and forth is your way of saying, "I hope we're making the right decisions here and I wish there was a way we could know for sure that everything's going in the right direction." I can't answer that for you, but I can tell you that it's all going to be worth it in the end. I think.

Good luck!

You Call This Rain?

Thanks to everyone who expressed concern the other day about the rain and our rooms. I'm sure you can imagine how relieved I was when I came home to find a beautiful blue tarp covering the non-existent roof. OK,it wasn't that beautiful; it was actually a jarringly bright blue piece of plastic. But to me it was a lovely sight to behold, because it meant that everything underneath it was safe enough for now.

To be honest, it wasn't much of a storm really. Oh sure, there was a little thunder and several minutes of downpour, but nothing too serious. Believe me, I've lived through many storms and this one was hardly worth mentioning. So many people make fun of Southern Californians' reactions to rain. The TV news has stories about "storm watch" and flash flood warnings abound. Yet in the 29 years that I have lived here there have only been a handful of times when I have experienced torrential rain that threatened structures and closed roads.

I remember the winter of 1997 when I was teaching in a temporary bungalow during the school remodel and the rains were constant for about a month. The cold temperatures would combine with the half-rate heating in the classroom and it would "rain" inside the room because of the condensation. I remember the El Niño of 1994 when Burbank Blvd in Van Nuys was closed day after day because of floods. I remember one crazy month a few years ago when we had rainy day lunch at school for two weeks in a row and the classes started to smell like mold.

So all in all I'm not going to complain about a few drops of rain on the new construction. Instead I'm focusing on the sunshine each day that brings us one day closer to the day when I can lie in my bed all warm and cosy and listen to the beautiful sound of rain on the roof.

The More Things Change . . .

This is the inside of my new bedroom. If you were at all familiar with our house the way it used to be, you might appreciate the little chuckle I had today looking at this. In fact, with all the exposed wood in this new room, it now looks very much like the old room used to, with its wood beams and wood walls. So today when I was looking at this, I thought about the fact that we seem to have done so much in such a short time and yet it looks as if we haven't done anything at all.

I had to take a step back and think about what the last several months have brought us, to realize just how much has happened. We spent about three months figuring out the plans and getting all the permits. Then we demolished the back of the house and dug a great big hole in its place. Next came the concrete pour followed by the framing and the plumbing. Now we have part of a roof and some windows (leaning against the shed in the back yard, but windows nonetheless). Soon we'll have new heating and air conditioning and a new tankless water heater so that we can run laundry and shower at the same time (oh, the exciting times we have ahead!).

Yet despite all these wholesale changes, the thing that really helps me focus on the newness of it all is a change that is more felt than seen, one that only Darryl and I might notice. You see, in the old room, which was basically a 1970s version of a ski lodge, the wood was dark and knotty. We had to put in white tile on the floor when we moved in to counter the darkness of the room, despite its 12 foot ceiling. The new room has four huge windows, which, along with the windows in the bathroom, will flood the area with natural sunlight and bring a warmth, both physically and visually, to our home.

Come to think of it, that's not a little thing at all. Bringing the sun inside may be the biggest change of all.

"Wood"-n't you know

Maple . . . 

. . . or mahogany?

Floor. You step on it. You throw dog toys on it. You sit on it to do a jigsaw puzzle with the kids. Occasionally you vacuum it. Who would have thought it would be so difficult to choose one? Darryl and I have spent weeks going back and forth to a few hardwood flooring stores, trying to decide which wood is best for us. There are so many mind-boggling variations to consider. How hard or soft should it be? Solid or engineered? Stained or natural color? This is one of those decisions that I wish someone else would make for me. After all, when we moved into our house, the oak floor was just sitting there, waiting for us to walk all over it. In fact, it was actually hiding under the awful grey carpet, but we were happy to have it when it finally saw the light of day. After that, we never really thought any more about it, I mean, it's the floor. As long as you don't fall through it, it's doing its job and that's all.

Just as an aside, why did people cover up natural hardwood floor with carpet? It seems as if that was a fairly common practice in the eighties and nineties. Was wood so old-fashioned? I have heard of so many people who bought their houses, only to discover a treasure hidden beneath the pile. Just wondering.

Anyway, we have narrowed our choice down to two woods. As I'm looking at the photos they seem to look so similar, but actually their colors are quite different. The maple is more golden, a little warmer in tone. The mahogany is deeper, with a little more red. The maple is narrower, only 2 1/2 inches wide, while the mahogany is 3 1/2. The maple is stained, which means that if it gets scratched, the natural color of the wood, which is much paler, will show through, whereas the mahogany is the same color from top to bottom. But if we ever wanted to, we could sand and then stain the maple to a different color, while the mahogany will always be the same.

So if you're not busy tomorrow, come on by and choose. Whatever you say will be fine with me. It's one less decision I have to make.

Walled In

I don't know what it is about putting up the walls, but now I feel like there's no turning back. Not that I wanted to before, but now it seems like a permanent structure that's not going anywhere. It may be because the walls enclose the entire structure now and we can't just walk through the frame any way we want to. The problem is, the walls are just a blank stretch of plain, raw wood and it looks so different from the rest of the house. Yes, I realize that it's waiting for stucco and paint on the outside, and plaster on the inside, but my first reaction this afternoon was shock - it doesn't look right. I'm not sure how else to explain it.

This side of shows the three windows in the master bedroom and  reading "nook"

 Actually, it reminds me of a Simpsons episode from years ago. (Note to readers: I have the ability to reference a Simpsons episode that is relevant to almost any situation any time. Call it a special talent.) In the episode, Lisa got a haircut. Part of the way through the cut, her hair looked like a disaster (and that's saying something for the Simpson family). She looked in the mirror and gasped in horror. The stylist told her not to look yet, wait for the final product. Sure enough, when the haircut was complete, she looked at herself and realized she was beautiful. So I'm crossing my fingers that that's what's going on right now with the addition. We're in the middle of the haircut and it's not what I had in mind at all, but I need to take a breath, trust Tom, and wait to look at the end product.

Standing in the bedroom, looking towards the bathroom (with an as-yet unfinished wall)

On a different topic, the plumbing woes continued today. Darryl and Tom are at an impasse with the plumbing company, who insist that pipe can be level instead of going downhill. Yesterday they told Darryl to call the building inspector out and if he approved the job then it was done and we would need to pay the rest of their bill. So out he came this morning, and when he looked at the job and looked at the permit (the one that the plumbing company pulled) he told everyone that they pulled the wrong permit and he wasn't even going to look at the job. Sigh.

Meanwhile, we're still waiting for the DWP to send someone to move the power line and the main box. Until that happens, the electrician we hired can't do his job, and Tom can't insulate the walls, which means the plasterer is still waiting to do his job. So this is why people say construction jobs always go longer. It has nothing to do with our contractor at all, it's all about the timeline of people who don't know us at all don't care about our remodel project. I suppose we can't take it personally. For some people, it's just a job, nothing more. For us, it's our home, it's our family, it's our lives. No big deal.

Fire Stopper

First of all, I have to explain the lack of photos. It's too darn hot! I got home from school and went straight inside and haven't left the house since. Hopefully, I'll take some new photos tomorrow. It was so hot today, that our contractor put his tools down at noon and went home. It was over 100 degrees today and I guess he didn't want to kill himself. Hmmmm, I hope this doesn't extend the timeline. Just kidding, Tom! (I'm not sure if he reads this, but I'd better be nice to him.)

So he didn't really have too much time to work today. But he did do a super important task, which was to put in the fire breaks. What are fire breaks, you ask? Well, I asked the same thing too. When the demo of the old room was finished, I noticed horizontal pieces of wood staggered up and down the existing wall. I asked Tom what it was and he explained that they were there to slow down a potential fire. Supposedly, if the wall catches on fire, these pieces of wood slow the fire down enough for us to run to safety. I was surprised that this safety element existed on a 1937 wall; after all, the original codes for the building aren't exactly state of the art. We looked at the plans for the addition (built in 1940) and the drawings weren't even done with a ruler. The owner (not an architect or a builder even) drew a rectangle, not to scale, then wrote the dimensions of the addition on the rectangle. That's it. No notes about the new roof, the electrical wiring, or the cement foundation. So you can see why it surprised me that and idea such as fire safety was not only included in that original building, but also exists in pretty much the same form today. State-of-the-art building in 1937, who knew?

Anyway, the idea of a fire sweeping through the house made me think about what we might save if we had just a minute to gather our things. Julia would bring her digital camera. She takes it everywhere she goes and spends her time taking photos and videos and then vlogging on her you tube page. She'd probably even take a video of the fire itself. Grace would have a difficult time choosing which of her mountain of books to save, but in the end she'd save her "baby" - the rag doll she's had since she was born - and, of course, the dog. Darryl would bring the ipod because his playlists have been built with painstaking care and each and every song has so much meaning to him.

As for me, I'd look at our photo albums. Our wedding, Julia's baby book, Grace's baby book, albums from when Darryl and I were kids, vacation albums, school memories. Halloweens and birthdays. How do you choose between those? Which ones are irreplaceable? It's not exactly Sophie's Choice, but it's still too difficult a decision to make. In the chaos of the moment, I'd probably just grab my laptop and run. That way, I could start a new blog: "After the Fire - a story of rebuilding." You'd check it out, right?