SonicChicken blog

Final inspection is tomorrow! Our attic fans are both permanently installed, and the attic is relatively comfortable except from late afternoon until nightfall.

The whole-house fan is wired, tested and operational. Our new fan is a 2-speed unit, whereas our old one had three speeds. We rarely used the medium speed on our old fan, so I guess this isn’t a great loss. The new fan seems quieter on the high speed but a bit noisier on low speed, compared to the old fan. (A net “win” I think, since only the high speed was ever much of an annoyance.)

I got the kids’ closet lights installed and managed to slice up my hands pretty well. (These are surface-mount fluorescent fixtures, lots of sharp metal edges.) I’m glad that I had the foresight to put 2×4’s in the closet headers where the fixtures get screwed to the wall. No drywall anchors–they’re screwed straight into cripple studs, so the fixtures are rock solid!

The required smoke alarms are installed. I have two more that I’m going to install, but they’re not required for inspection so they go to the bottom of the list.

I’ve got to go to work today, but I’m off tomorrow for the inspection. I still have a few things to do tonight and/or tomorrow morning:

• Clean up the light- and switch wiring for the attic lights.
• Wire and install ceiling light in entry.
• Run power to the smoke alarm network. Install two “extra” smoke alarms, time permitting.

We have about one week left before our “final” inspection. (Final in quotes because I haven’t heard of many people who pass their first “final” inspection.) Our punch list is still fairly long, but many of those items aren’t required for inspection, e.g. baseboards, window trim, etc. Here’s what needs to be done during the next seven days.

• Install smoke alarms. The wiring is done, except for power feed. Other than that, all I need to do is put up the ceiling mounts and attach the smoke alarms.
• Install fluorescent lights in the kids’ closets. Wiring is done, just need to put the fixtures on the walls and hook them up.
• Bolt the dishwasher into its cabinet.
• Install the last few (5?) switch- and outlet covers in the utility room and garage.
• Install last two exterior outlets and weather-proof covers, on the front porch and outside the new bathroom. (Wiring already done.)
• Install final two exterior lights, outside the back door. (Wiring already done.)
• Finish installing both attic fans. (Each about half done already.)
• Finish wiring and test the whole-house fan.
• Clean up the light- and switch wiring for the attic lights.
• Wire and install ceiling light in entry.
• (sub) Patch ceiling in bathroom hallway. Don and J will take care of this in the morning.
• (sub) Don and J are also going to pour the concrete pad for the A/C condensor tomorrow.
• (sub) José will install the A/C condensor on Friday or Monday.
• (sub) Kevin (the mason) will be out Thursday or Friday this week to extend the chimney to the required height.

I’ll be home tomorrow since Don and J will be working, so I’m going to try to finish the attic work in the morning before it gets too hot. (Plus, once the attic fans are both running that will help control the temperature in the attic.)

(Update: I forgot to include the pictures. Doh!)

It’s been a while since I’ve posted–too busy working on the house to write much about it!

The stucco crew was out last week and got the house wrapped and lathed. (And incidentally gave me a ton of things to do in order to minimize future water damage. Great advice, things that needed to be done, but it burned up a lot of the time I had planned to use for wiring.) We got dinged for $800 for re-flashing all the windows. Turns out that the flashing along the bottom of the window was supposed to be left loose/flapping, i.e. only peel the top inch or two from the adhesive, so that the waterproof paper could be slipped under the flashing. So the stucco guys put new flashing along the bottom of all the windows while they were wrapping the house, and because of that they had to also flash the sides and top of the windows. (It’s just like the roof, you have to work from the bottom to the top.) Here’s a picture of the shop, without paper, to show the original window flashing:

I got most of the wiring done while I was on “vacation” last week, so we called for our rough frame inspection last Friday. And we finally failed an inspection. It was Chris, our regular inspector (yay!), but he busted me righteously for not having all of my grounding wires tied together. (I thought we could just leave the wires in the boxes and make up all the connections after drywall. I was wrong.) He also nailed the contractor for omitting sheetrock nailing blocks around the bathtub and lack of insulation “dams” at the eave vents. (According to the contractor, the insulation people usually put these in before they start blowing in the insulation.)

The contractor sent out a couple of guys to take care of the insulation dams and the bathtub framing issues yesterday, and I spent the weekend and yesterday afternoon/evening tying all my ground wires together and generally making the wiring look neat and tidy. We’ll get a re-inspection sometime today, and hopefully we’ll pass this time around!

Assuming that we do pass, insulation is scheduled for tomorrow, and drywall will be installed Thursday and Friday. Taping and texturing will take up all of next week (Nov 6-10). Cabinets will be installed on the following Monday. Countertop tile installation will begin that evening or the next day and should be completed by Nov 17, and we’ll work around the tile guy to install our appliances. I doubt that we’ll be able to get our tile flooring in before Thanksgiving (Nov 22), but I’ll let the tile installer make that decision when the time comes. But it looks like our kitchen will be functional for Thanksgiving this year!

Barb took a couple of well-earned days off from our remodel and went to the Pacific International Quilt Festival with my mom on Friday and Saturday. But I wasn’t working alone–J and Andre did a bunch of work for me on Saturday. Major accomplishments were framing the old doorway in the kitchen and sheathing the west gable, which is generally the windward side of the house so the place has been a bit warmer. They also framed the attic access in the garage. While they were framing, I got started on the kitchen wiring.

Barb got back on Saturday night, and she and I worked all day on Sunday. Barb (with some help) pulled the old window air conditioner out of the wall in the front room, then framed in the hole left by the A/C, insulated and sheathed it. She also got most of our crawlspace vent covers nailed in place. Meanwhile I got most of the kitchen wiring done.

The original west wall will be insulated tomorrow, and Barb and I will sheath the wall in the evening. (It’ll be nice having the drywall covered again, now that the rainy season is here!) Andre and J are supposed to be back on Tuesday or Wednesday (or both) depending on the weather. I need to finish wiring the front porch so they can sheath that gable, so I guess that’s my other priority for Monday night. Lots to do this week if we are going to try for our framing inspection, so it may be time for me to take some more time off from my day job…

I’ve been spending nearly all of my “free” time working on the wiring. I’ve come to realize the biggest hurdle (for me) with rough electrical: You do all the work on the wiring, yet there’s no outlets to plug into, no lights to switch on, etc. All that stuff has to wait until after drywall!

Anyway, here’s the progress made by room/area:

• Caira’s bedroom: Done except for termination of network/phone lines.
• Caitlin’s bedroom: Done except for running+termination of network/phone lines.
• New bathroom: Power run for lights and fan, but a fair bit of work remains to be done.
• Laundry/utility room: Done except for network/phone feed. (The patch panel will be in the utility room, so all the comm wiring terminates there.)
• Hallway: Done.
• Nook: Done.
• Kitchen: Main (fluorescent) lighting placed and temporarily wired. (Lots left to do!)
• Dining/game room: West wall (switches, outlets) done.
• Living room: No high voltage work, still need to run network/phone lines.
• Great room: West wall (entertainment center) wired, including speaker wires, network/phone wiring. Wall outlets done. Sconce lighting done.
• Front porch: No progress.
• Garage: Ceiling outlets (lights, garage door opener) done. Power run to GFCI outlet, but not terminated.
• Back porch: Coach lights [re-]placed. Still need to wire them and patch the walls where they were originally placed.
• Quilt shop: Floor outlets done. Outlets on west wall. Quite a bit of work remaining, but the shop is lower priority than the house at this point. (It’s a separate permit, so we don’t need to have it done at the same time as the house.)
• Attic: Whole-house fan done, FAU done, power (40 A @ 220 V!) run to condenser, attic lights almost finished. Power is run for one attic fan.

The major items on the punch list are (biggest to smallest):

1. Kitchen: Can’t do much until we fur out the original east wall to line up with the new wall, but we’ll lose our remaining kitchen facilities when we do that. Thus it will probably be the last thing we tackle.
2. Quilt shop (low priority)
3. New bathroom: Run power for vanities (2 x 20 A circuits). Determine final layout of vanities, place and wire vanity lights and outlets, wire ceiling lights and exhaust fan.
4. Great room lighting: We’ll need to remove some of the old joists to make room for can lights and ceiling fan mount, then place and wire the new cans.
5. Dining/game room: New outlets and network/phone wiring in three original walls, complete with fire blocks–not fun. Replace original ceiling light box with a ceiling fan mount.
6. Garage: Need to install & wire coach lights flanking roll-up door. Waiting on installation of new personnel door for its light.
7. Front porch: Two can lights over porch, outlets for Christmas lights (with in-use weatherproof box) at peak of gable.
8. Attic: Install both attic fans, run power to second one. Finish attic lighting circuit. Test whole-house fan.