Patio done. Plants delivered

Brick Patio was finished last weekend. Total count - About 10 yards of concrete, 500 feet of rebar, 2000 bricks, 20 95# bags of white mortar. Argghh. I did all the formwork, and hired out the concrete and the brickwork.

Landscapers are now going at it. A truck load of plants arrived Monday. LL and G are buried in the picture somewhere (where's Waldo?). Hope to have a yard for the first time in 2+ years in a few weeks!

JM

LL Painting Living Room

Got the Living Room painted up last Saturday night. Lisa does the precision cut in, and I do the rollering (dumb animal work).

Garrett loves the big fireplace... he just points at it all the time and says "hot hot". Such a well trained boy (so far) -JM

Sacramento house mostly done. New project in Pollock Pines!

Well the house in Sac is basically done! I will post some pics later. Finally had the backsplash tiled last week. Concrete has been poured for back patio, sidewalks (and repaired neighbors driveway which we damaged with equipment). Still need to finish some painting/trim in upstairs laundry, and finish the basement (which has turned into temporary storage.)

But we have started another project. In Dec we bought a house on almost an acre in Pollock Pines CA (elev 3700). Large house with a huge double ended garage...2100+ sf and 3bed/3 bath if you include all the funky basement and converted breezeway rooms.. But it was a bank foreclosure that hadn't been maintained in a while, lots of animal pee and half finished carpentry everywhere. And oh yeah, the former owner was a junk collector who, upon foreclosure, dumped all of his belongings on the rear neighbors empty lot "temporarily" and refused to take them away!

So far we have hauled away most of the junk to dump, which inspired the former owner to come and collect the remaining things of value. We have pulled all the carpets, retiled bathroom floors, new carpet & paint in bedrooms. We are trying to get the bedrooms livable so we go up and spend weekends... and get more work done! Meanwhile baby Garrett is enjoying all of this and really gets a kick out of big fires in the fireplace and the big unfurnitured open spaces inside, and the trees and pine needles outside.

Permit is Closed!

The permit is closed! Final inspection passed. We are putting the finishing touches on the house. We are painting the trim blue around the windows and putting up shutters and finishing interior details. John had to special order a ridicously high smoke stack to put on top of the chimney. This was to pass permit (our permit is closed!). The rose bush bloomed for Easter and despite being covered with dirt from the excavation and being totally neglected for 2 years.

The Baby is Here!

The baby arrived on 2/22. 7lbs, 6oz. 22 inches long. He arrived at 11 pm at night. John was actually working on the kitchen sink when I was in labor. He was not able to finish though before baby came. Although in the last week the kitchen sink did get installed and is working! All between taking care of a new baby! Attached are pictures of our new little one, Garrett Charles Meyers.

Kitchen progress

Just got granite countertops in today. I spent over 2 days installing the farmhouse sink. Half the time making a template, and the rest of the time gingerly cutting the front of the sink cabinet, wrestling the 120lb sink into position, and repeating... . I don't know how the pros do it, but it took me about 10 tries. Came out almost perfect. Also got the range hood in last weekend. Starting to look like a real kitchen. Our baby is due next week, so now I am getting pretty regular reminders that she has been living without a kitchen sink since April '08.

We were lucky to hook up with friend of a friend who is an underemployed stair rail specialist. He was able to get all the hardware at cost from his company, so we got a pretty cool stair rail at a better price then I could do it on my own. Interesting though, this guy has done hundreds of stair rails but never one with an iron newel post like this. So was a learning experience for both of us. Came out alright, even though we used a lot of 2 part epoxy (I mean like a quart) to hold it in place in the bottom step. Wrapping the curved first step was interesting.... I had never heard of Italian bending poplar before, until I set out to actually buy some in the Sacramento area. Finally found it at a specialty hardwood supply place, it worked great. I have the rest of a 4x8 sheet if anybody needs some wood that you can wrap into a circle...

As a special bonus, here is a picture of making some 3/8" hidden steel brackets to hold up the bar granite. I hate it when you hit your knees on the brackets under most bars.

Finally I am proud to say that for the first time in my life I have emptied a bottle of wood glue. Usually it dries up, or you lose it. Minor accomplishments. Also its interesting to note that I have had to move outlets or switches in almost every room of the house at this point. Interfering with a cabinet, a chair rail, light fixtures not quite right, or as in the picture above the handrail and switch needed to be at the same place. No fault of the electrician, he place boxes per plan or where we told him to. But with all the planning in the world, it still seems like I am having to move boxes and patch drywall every weekend.

We have been super busy trying to finish what feels like the never-ending project. Since the last update, all the hardwood floors were sanded, sealed, and urathaned upstairs, as were the stairs. We figured out a solution to the stair issue, John and Ron ended up tearing off all the plywood on the treads and adding some strips to the back of each tread. We also reached a milestone in that we now have a stove hooked up in the kitchen! John just cut out the cabinet for the apron sink this weekend and laid out the plywood for prepartion for counters! Soon we will have a kitchen. Susan and I painted the kitchen knook in this weekend. Susan has been helping paint all the upstairs baseboards. The baby room and master bedroom are completely painted now. We are waiting for some vanites to arrive for the bath and a shower door. John connected the upstairs shower with the rainshower and have tested it out. It is so cool! We also moved into the master bedroom upstairs in mid-Jan. Another milestone. We are getting there. The laundry room is completed now as well. We will have railings for both sets of stairs in by next weekend. Also, I have a dishwasher and range hood on the way for installation. Fun, Fun! Over and out. LL and John

Kitchen, Upstairs Flooring, Laundry, Bath

The kitchen cabinets arrived the week of Thanksgiving. Ron and John started the install and all the uppers went in first. Then John finished the hardwood flooring in the kitchen, we decided to use 4" red oak flooring. Then it was stained and coated. We did a darker reddish color. Next came the base cabinets. This all occurred over month of December. John has been very busy installing all the hardwood flooring upstairs. Upstairs is nearly done, we have the baby room, hall/laundry area, and most of the master bedroom done. The stairs will be after that. We discovered a set back today on the stair treads. The framer built the steps very deep and a standard stair tread does not fit correctly. We will need to see if we can get deeper treads. Bummer. In December we rounded up 6 guys to carry the cast iron bath tub upstairs. It was quite an effort by all, thank you Aaron, Jeff, and Jeff. The bathroom wainscoating just got it last coat of paint (thank you Susan and Christina) and John installed the toliet, still need to paint the window. The laundry room is nearly put together now and we finished up painting all the walls and trim. We still need to paint the cabinets (re-used from the old kitchen). My friend from work, Laura and Harvey re-finished the art deco light and we put that up in the laundry room. Looks great! Also, the back steps off the laundry area were re-built. John, Tom, and Drew mixed up 28-80lb. bags of concrete for them, the brick face is yet to go on them. Thank to everyone for your help so far! I think we are nearing completion or so I am hopeful we are! LL

Day 180+: Flooring & Bath

While I was in Singapore, the hardwood floors on the 1st floor were re-fineshed and matching floors were installed in the new family room, you can see this room has been painted too! This past week the tile has been installed in the shower and on the bathroom floor. Check out the wainscoating in the bathroom. This was salvaged from the old porches which was on the ceiling. The new floors look awesome and we are trying to prevent them from scratches in all of this mess. The small hexagon tiles were put in the laundry room downstairs. The marble is in the bath upstairs.

Day 160+

We are knee deep in painting. John sprayed on the primer and ceiling paint over the last week or two. Thanks to our friend Susan we have finished two rooms now! The picture here is one of the upstairs bedroom being painted and the finished product. We also finished up one of the downstairs bedrooms. John resumed installed hardwood floors upstairs. All the interior doors are now hung (then taken down for painting). We are getting most of the work done at nights and on weekends. It has been extremely busy. Check out the crazy scaffolding to get at the ceiling in the stairway.

Days 130-160: Everything Going On!

The last 30 days have been insanely busy. Just about everything imaginable happened in the last month. Here is the running list: drywall texturing, stucco, roof and gutters, HVAC completed, electrical final, plumbing - gas test passed!, this was mostly the contractors. John and I have been doing many, many things with some friends help. Between installing moulding & trim, caulking, painting, staining, installing closets, picking out tile, picking out cabinets, finalizing contractor payment, cleaning up the yard, moving temporary walls, re-installing temporary walls, cleaning, installing flooring, moving stuff from storage to the basement, filing police reports since my bike was stolen (not a cheap one either), sending out windows for stained glass, figuring out landscape plan, trips to home center; I have not had time to blog. And that day job gets in the way too. We prepped and stained/painted nearly all the new 13 windows/door (this took forever!). Thank you so much to Jeff B. for helping us out. A picture of the french doors in the master bedroom are above. You can also see the crown molding and trim around all the windows has been installed. Thanks Ron! The outside of the house needs some paint around the windows and corbels put in and we are pretty close on the outside. The picture of the 1st floor you can see the drywall texture, etc. We started to install the hardwood flooring in the master closet yesterday. Time to get back to work! (If you want to help out we have lots of painting to do, please call!) LL

Day 126: Drywall Up!

The insulation and then drywall was installed in late August. Here is John taking down the ceiling in the dining room in our living space. We are now at the point where workers are invading our area. We took down a temporary wall in the dining room so they could tie in the ceiling, now that leaves the bathroom accessible to them and coincidentally the porto potty was removed. The arch shown is where the old sliding door went into the porch. Now that goes into the new family room. Woo Hoo! We expanded our temporary living/kitchen area into the full living room! Our little space was getting pretty cramped. John broke his little toe on the ottoman, ouch.

Day 114: Blah, blah, blah

Overall we passed a major inspection today! All is good with a few minor corrections, the inspected the framing, plumbing, electrical, etc. We can proceed with insulation and then drywall. The first picture is the back of the house with the first coat of stucco. They will not finish stucco until drywall is completed (or else the drywall guys crack the stucco, the house is in for some pounding!). Take note of the beautiful backyard of dirt, which I have to walk thru to do laundy in the backyard. I like to call it laundry acrobatics given all the items to jump over with a laundry basket in hand, meanwhile trying not to drop anything. I still can't believe we are living thru this mess.

The second picture is John and neighbor John digging a trench for the sewer line, not sure how John talked John into this one, but he sure helped out! Thanks John! I was going to post a picture of the clog in the sewer line but thought it was too disguisting. I am pretty sure we got to the "root" of the problem. Two 45 degree turns in the old original 1937 clay sewer line did not help. One of them had some major roots in it (and some other stuff...). If I get enough comments/requests to post that picture I will, but only if you are ready.......

The last picture is the basement, the walls were stucco'd and all the rough electrical is done! Enjoy! LL

Day 105: The latest

The roof is wrapping up! The first coat of stucco is on the house too. The inside picture shows the future kitchen. You can see that the electrical is being installed as well. As for the picture of those beautiful bundles of shingles.... Well, I spent an entire weekend pulling/pounding every single staple out of those shingles (and this picture doesn't even show all of them...). They once were on the house and we saved them for re-use on the garage. I even bundled them up nicely. Given all the slivers I got at least I saved some money out of the deal. Still not sure if that was worth it, but I guess I can chalk up an A for being "green"! LL

Day 94: Roofing

The roof is being put on now! The scaffolding is up for the stucco to be put on next. On the inside the electrical is being installed and the plumbing is all completed. After the electrical, the drywall will go in! We are in the process of picking out kitchen cabinets now too. LL

Day 83 - Framing Almost Done

Framing crew is almost done, a lot of odds and ends at this point. The fix is done for the front left window that was too close to the roof below it. All the roof sheathing is in place. The bldg inspector was out yesterday inspecting the shear walls, and since roof sheathing was already done he approved that as well, which was a nice bonus.

Stucco scaffolding is up. Working with SMUD to get utility moved along the fenceline so we dont have wires across the backyard... week and a half and counting waiting for the beaurocrats.

Rest of the upstairs windows are up. Plumbing mostly done, and electrical boxes and lighting cans are mostly in.