Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Ready, Set ...

The great race has begun. It is a race to the bitter end. In the lead is "money" not far behind but loosing steam is "work". At this point in the renovation money is flying out fast, big ticket items like foundation, seismic retrofit, plumbing, sewer, windows, cabinets, are on the books and we are quickly realizing the cash drain is faster than the cash flow. Our new strategy is to finish off the back portion of the house, fix the leaks in the roof then move in half way. We will then rent the back cottage which we are currently living in and put a new roof on before next winter. All the while, cash flow picks up in order to make up for our love of soundproof super windows and we are back in business.

It is a double edged sword. The faster the work gets done, the quicker the money disappears. Boy oh boy is the work getting done quickly. I woke up this morning and found dry wall up and sub floor repaired in the utility room, a wall in the kitchen removed and the ceiling framing all sparkling new and shored up. We met to discuss the framing for the outside kitchen wall today which was well underway by quitting time this evening.

























The great flooring conundrum of 2009 has also been solved. No longer will we be subject to a 3/4" - 1" difference between the kitchen and mud room's sub floor. By removing the original but irreparable doug fir in the kitchen we corrected the gap between the dining and kitchen. The new gap appeared when the previous 70s addition of a mud room and master bedroom occurred. Instead of putting the floor joists at the same level as the rest of the house, they decided it would be neat to raise them up just a bit. It truly was laziness and nothing else. So with a fancy slight of hand, the mud room will now be level to the rest of the house. We are not removing the oak flooring in the bedroom to mess with that though. A nice piece of transitional threshold will have to make do.

Below, E and Sophie check out the new floorless mud room. Note that this picture was made possible by a missing wall. Silly me, I thought things were going to start going IN the house not out of it.

E and I finished wiring the master bathroom, sans fan. E is at this very moment in an e-mail struggle for an exchange method that doesn't sound like a complete scam. Upon realizing that not only was the metal housing box for the fan bent, but the fan itself was mounted crookedly, we asked for an exchange (damage seems to have been done in shipping). The response we received consisted of

"I am sorry to hear that u r having a problem. Please tell me if what I am proposing is acceptable to u. I won't make u send back the unit that u have there. U can use parts or get rid of it. And I will ask u to just pay us for the amount it cost us to ship u the new one. If that is ok with u ( I think its fair ) just email us and we will ship it out and let u know the exact amount that usps charged us last time. And u can send us a check made out to cash please."

It is me or is business casual really getting out of control? Plus, cash, I think not. So the battle continues.

1 comment:

  1. Good to know that the previous owner appears to have had dealings only with those on the up and up....

    :-)

    ReplyDelete