Victorian House Renovation in Bloomingdale, DC
It’s in! Workers were here yesterday to finish up. Here it is:
It looks good – just not quite done. Cause it’s not. I have no idea what that board piece is, its actually gone now, i assume it was holding in bricks during instalation?
Anyway, we had a walk through today, and Sergey was not having any of it. The door didn’t seem securely in place, plus some of the bricks were still missing even though the masons have packed up the job site.… Read the rest
Not much to report in pictures, just a new electric panel! We upgraded from 100 amps to 200 amps, which should sustain us not only for the kitchen but for any other future undertaking.
This cost us a pretty penny (or more like 3,000 plus) but hey what are you going to do. You gotta do what you gotta do. Onwards and upwards, day 4 awaits.… Read the rest
Ok so construction day 2 did not bring us any surprises (unlike day 1) — though can’t say the same for our contractors. According to them, the second floor joists were not nearly the piece of cake like the first floor joists. In part because of the shoddy job that was done in patching them up before, and in part I imagine it’s much more difficult fit the beams into place than dropping the into place.… Read the rest
Wheeeee – it has started. We handed over a whole lotta monies, keys, took a deep breath and prepared to trust the professionals. The builder agreed to take pictures of Day 1 for us – so here it is in all its glory, i.e. new floor joists and leveled sub-floor:
To start off the day – nice and airy. It appears that our joists were not even in as good of a shape as we imagined, so all had to go (we did save them because the wood would definitely work as island butcher block)
here are all the new joists:
nice and level – apparently this is the hardest part of installing a new floor in an old house.… Read the rest
Well we’ve finally done it – we made a decision on contractors – the plural here is the key part. The short story is: it’s complicated – we will be working with several different outfits: a builder for structural stuff, an electrician for a heavy up, and a firm to do the rest of the actual kitchen. We have penciled in 1 June as the start date!
The long story is that its too expensive for us to hire one-stop-shop pro.… Read the rest
Soooo, in reference to earlier rhetorical questions on contractors…this is what happens when you don’t get estimates – you get charged twice the amount that you initially thought you would. On our first meeting with the plumber we pointed out several problems and got an estimate of under $300. well a month later and several other problems (initial list was #1-3 of the list below) fixed we paid twice as much.… Read the rest
you find out about such things as “wax ring” – apparently that is something that needs to be put under the toilet upstairs to stop the water accumulation in our kitchen ceiling. bet you didn’t really want to know that, but neither did I…
on to more appealing thoughts — the plumber came, he is the first contractor/handyman that we have ever hired. Both Sergey and I really like him, he showed up on time, did some things and said that he would be back next week!… Read the rest