Humor and the WSJ article

Posted on 2007-11-05 by Jim Vanderveen

Remember the highly slanted article in the Wall Street Journal, [Three Martini Renovation](http://sonicchicken.net/blog/wordpress/2007/09/28/wsj-art/)? A lot of people were pretty upset with the author for hoodwinking them into contributing to her preconceived piece. But the timing worked out pretty well–since the article appeared shortly before Halloween, some people chose to find the humor in the situation. Check out the photo at the top of [this article](http://www.houseblogs.net/community/comments.php?DiscussionID=766#Item_1):

Halloween remodeler's costume

On a related note, the original WSJ article, (which is no longer available for free), was [re-printed in the Chicago paper](http://www.humphrey-house.com/2007/10/daily-herald-reprints-wsj-article-with.html), and Jason and Jennifer ([Humphrey House][] bloggers) were at least able to get some editing done on the story.

[Humphrey House]: http://www.humphrey-house.com/

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Insulation, drywall and HEAT!

Posted on 2007-11-02 by Jim Vanderveen

Insulation was installed on Wednesday. Wow, what a difference! It’s *quiet*, and the temperature in the house is much more stable. (Not so cold in the morning nor hot in the afternoon.) I thought they were only going to do the walls at this time, so I didn’t prep the ceiling and left some attic/ceiling wiring work undone. But when I got home that night, I found that all the “open” ceiling (i.e. bare joists without drywall) had batting insulation installed. Rats! That made it even more difficult for me to finish the wiring that night. 🙁

The drywall started going up yesterday morning. [Artisan Drywall](http://www.manta.com/coms2/dnbcompany_f8bs20) is our sub, and they’ve been outstanding! Ron (the owner) and one of his guys even came out and helped us finish clearing out much of the house in order to keep the project on schedule. Ron hired out a separate company to hang the drywall, and they made quite a bit of progress yesterday. They were back pretty early this morning, and they should be finished putting up our walls early this afternoon. (Ceilings were already finished yesterday.) Ron and his crew will be in next week to tape and texture the drywall.

I had to straighten up two studs in our one-and-only hallway, (one on each side of the hall), because they were bowed enough that the drywall would crack if they tried to attach to those walls. One side of the hallway is merely a partition wall, (not load-bearing), so I was able to correct that one pretty easily by making about 5 cuts with a circular saw to bowed-out side of the stud. (A picture or diagram would be very handy here…) This relaxed the stud enough that we were able to push it into alignment with its neighbors, and the drywall guys screwed a sheet of drywall to the back side of the stud to hold it in place. (Took maybe five minutes to fix.) Of course the other stud was on an exterior, load-bearing wall, so I had to plane down the high spot and put some drywall shims in a few places. I *did* manage to fix this wall, but it took the better part of an hour fiddling with the power planer, a 4′ straightedge, and many drywall shims. Added bonus: a huge mess of wood shavings from the planer stuck to the wall insulation and sprinkled all over the floor!

Our plumber came out yesterday afternoon to connect the gas line for the new furnace. He’s doing us a big favor to pull this off on short notice, so I stayed out there and helped him. I was amazed at how easy he made it look, but like any skilled trade I imagine it’s all about the know-how and proper tools.

I got power up to the FAU late last night, and the HVAC contractor was out this morning to fire up the furnace. We have heat! We’ll have to turn it off while the drywallers are sanding, but we’re pretty much climate-controlled at this point. After 2½ years without central heat, it’ll be a **huge** improvement!

On the “even *more* good news” front: I just spoke with our cabinet maker and let him know that the drywallers would probably be finished by next Friday, and I asked if he would be ready to install our cabinets on the following Monday. He responded, “Yeah, but would you guys be okay with me coming in on Saturday instead?” **Heck, yes!**

On the downside, Barb and I gave up on hosting Thanksgiving this year. 🙁 There’s no way the floors will be finished in time, and we don’t really want our 10-month-old nephew crawling around on the unfinished floor. So once the addition is complete we’re going to host a post-Thanksgiving dinner–all the same food, and hopefully all the same people, that we would be having for the real turkey day.

One more minor problem: we lost our Internet connection again yesterday, but I’ll probably be able to get that working again over the weekend. And hopefully we’ll have more time for pictures (and blogging!) now that the bulk of the remodeling work is behind us.

Aside from a few minor glitches, it feels like we’ve finally crested the hill that is our addition/remodeling project. Looks like Barb and I will even have a chance to sit around and enjoy a glass of wine some time this weekend.

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We passed!

Posted on 2007-10-30 by Jim Vanderveen

We passed frame inspection! Woo hoo!

Lots of things are going to happen pretty quickly, now. Insulation goes in tomorrow (Wed). Drywall starts Thursday. Our plumber and HVAC people are also scheduled to be on-site Thursday to hook up the gas and fire up the furnace, respectively. (We need to have heat for the drywall tape and texture, which is scheduled for all of next week.) Our cabinet maker has already finished our cabinetry, so he’ll bring them down from his shop late next week or on Monday, Nov 12. Of course, this project wouldn’t be complete without at least one major scheduling glitch: our tile guy is going on vacation for two weeks, starting on Nov 14. We’re trying to work something out between the tile setter, the cabinet maker, and the drywall crew, to see if we can get the kitchen sink and counter tops done before the tile setter starts his vacation.

All the stuff above is being done by tradespeople. In the meantime, *we* have a few things to do as well. Tonight we need to prep for insulation, so all the exterior walls, (including between the house and the garage), need to be cleared and any outstanding wiring issues need to be finished, (e.g. telephone/network wiring, running the few remaining branch circuits into the breaker box). Wednesday night we need to make sure that the entire house and garage are completely empty, so that drywall can be delivered in each room and installed on Thursday morning. We’ll need to pick up a pair of high-efficiency filters for each of the HVAC returns by Thursday afternoon, so that our furnace doesn’t get ruined by drywall dust. This weekend (probably Saturday) we’re going to meet with our tile setter and figure out how many tiles need to be bullnosed in which direction(s), so we can get that started next week. Once we’re ready for tile, I think we’ll resume working on Barb’s quilt studio.

The end of our project is looking a little closer… Well, the end of [phase 1](http://sonicchicken.net/blog/wordpress/2007/06/21/remodel-master-plan/), at least.

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Rough frame re-inspection today

Posted on 2007-10-30 by Jim Vanderveen

(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!

100_0448.JPG 100_0450.JPG

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:

100_0449.JPG

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!

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Inspection woes

Posted on 2007-10-19 by Jim Vanderveen

Normally I’m very supportive of the Sacramento County Building Department. Nearly everybody I’ve dealt with has been helpful, professional, and even pleasant. On top of that, the inspector who’s assigned to our job is outstanding. But he must be on vacation or something, because today I had my first less-than-positive interaction with somebody from the building department.

Enough about that. It doesn’t even warrant a post on its own, so here’s the *important* news. Our gable vents finally arrived, so we can finish the three “showpiece” gables! (The one over the entry and the two in the back yard.) We are going to finish prep work for lath this weekend so that the stucco crew can come in on Monday and get the house wrapped and lathed. They’ll be finished by Tuesday evening or Wednesday some time. While they’re doing that, I’ll be finishing the electrical rough-in. Once both the electrical and lath are done, we’ll call for our rough frame inspection. Insulation will go in the walls the day after frame inspection, (assuming I remember to call them back and confirm!) The day after that, drywall starts. Drywall delivery is scheduled for next Friday morning at 7:00, so the house and garage will need to be completely cleared out by then. If we’re *super* lucky the drywall will be up, taped and textured by the end of the following week (Nov 2).

Just to make sure this weekend is extra fun, we’re driving to Napa (1.5 hrs) tomorrow for Caitlin’s gymnastics meet (4.5 hrs), after which we will be going down to Oakland (1 hr) my cousin’s housewarming party (who cares how long, it’s a party!), then driving back to Sacramento (1.5 hrs, designated driver presumed). So enough blogging, I’ve got ***way*** too much to do!

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39 days til Thanksgiving

Posted on 2007-10-15 by Jim Vanderveen

Barb took a couple of well-earned days off from our remodel and went to the [Pacific International Quilt Festival](http://www.quiltfest.com/activities.asp?id=7) 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…

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Remodel/addition at six months

Posted on 2007-10-12 by Jim Vanderveen

Construction started on our remodel/addition project six months ago, today. We were hoping to be finished by now, but at least the end is in sight! I’m almost done with the wiring (*finally!*), and we’re just about ready to jump our next major hurdle–rough frame inspection. Once we’re past that, we’ve got about four weeks until our kitchen is operational, so we ought to be able to host Thanksgiving this year. Hooray!

I haven’t been posting many pictures, either here or on our (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sonicchicken/collections/72157601178466844/)–either I can’t find the camera when I need it, or (more typically) I’m just too busy to shoot any pics. Yesterday was an exception. We had our GC send out a crew to finish some of the framing yesterday, and I managed to get some photos of (what’s left of) our kitchen:

100_2072.JPG 100_2074.JPG

I also managed to get a picture of the laundry/utility room before the doors were installed:

100_2075.JPG

The stucco foreman came out to look at the project yesterday. He gave us a rather long list of things that needed to be taken care of before he could put up the lath. 🙁 But the good news is that he had his crew set up the scaffolding early so that we could use it to finish sheathing our gables. (That’ll be much easier than hauling sheets of plywood up a pair of ladders!)

Work remaining before rough frame inspection:

– (us) Finish rough electrical–mostly the kitchen, which I can start now that the kitchen framing is done;
– (plumber) Finish rough plumbing–water heater T&P hookup, utility sink vent reconnected;
– (us) Take care of the issues listed by the stucco foreman;
– (insul.) Insulate the original west wall of the house (insulation crew is scheduled for next Monday);
– (us) Sheath the wall after insulation is installed (rain forecast for Tuesday, so Barb and I will do this Monday evening);
– (us) Sheath the rest of the gables (after rough plumbing is finished);
– (stucco) House wrap and lath for stucco.

We’ve got a busy weekend ahead of us! But hopefully we can be ready for our rough frame inspection by late next week, which would leave us five weeks until Thanksgiving. It’ll be close, but I think we can make it.

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Fold-down attic stairs in the garage?

Posted on 2007-10-09 by Jim Vanderveen

One of our neighbors had told us that the [Sacramento County Building Department](http://www.bldginspection.com/) would not allow [fold-down attic stairs](http://tinyurl.com/2ofp3s) to be installed in the garage. I just got off the phone with the inspection supervisor, and he told me that they *are* allowed, but they must have a 1-hour fire rating. I’ll have to check our stair kit’s fire rating when I get home tonight.

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New iMac

Posted on 2007-10-08 by Jim Vanderveen

We’ve been having some trouble(s) with our Windows PC lately, and while I’m completely *capable* of diagnosing and fixing whatever the problem is, I just don’t have time to screw with it. I’ve got a house to finish, ASAP! But I couldn’t just ignore the problem, because the kids need a computer for quite a bit of their school work now. My wife suggested that we [get a Mac](http://www.apple.com/getamac/works.html). I’d been thinking the same thing for months (years?), so I picked up a [20″ iMac](http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wa/RSLID?nnmm=browse&mco=7B723646&node=home/shop_mac/family/imac) the very next day.

100_2065.JPG

It took me less than 20 minutes to unbox the thing, set it up, create accounts for all four of us, and “verify that everything was working” (i.e. play with the new toy).

100_2066.JPG

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CSUS Mac-users mailing list

Posted on 2007-10-02 by Jim Vanderveen

Scott McGown has started a Mac-users email list for [CSUS][]. Here’s Scott’s invitation:

>You’re invited to subscribe to the new MACUSERS-L listproc. MACUSERS-L
is a discussion list to facilitate the exchange of ideas and information
concerning the use and support of Apple macintosh computers.

It doesn’t say anything about campus-only, and I just subscribed from my [gmail][] account so it looks like off-campus addresses are accepted, ***but***: this is a [listproc][] mailing list, and it’s especially finicky about off-campus addresses. In order to subscribe successfully, I had to send a plain-text (no HTML, no MIME!) message formatted *exactly* like this:

blank-line
SUBSCRIBE MACUSERS-L firstname lastname
END

Leave the subject blank and send the message to listproc at csus. edu.

This is a brand new list, and I haven’t seen much traffic yet. The only significant discussion so far has been re [Parallels](http://tinyurl.com/yodjje) versus VM ware/Fusion.

[CSUS]: http://www.csus.edu/
[gmail]: http://mail.google.com/
[listproc]: http://www.cren.net/listproc/index.html

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