Remodeling an Older Home

Chapter 5 -- Almost All Done!

2008-03-07T07:03:00.000-08:00

All the inspections are done!
We are finally feeling like we are almost done. The City inspectors have been through the house and have given us a final set of signatures. What a relief that is! I knew that I was dreading the City inspections because the rules about building are pretty arcane and change year-to-year. Since our project has taken a whopping six years from initial design to completion, a lot of rules have changed.

Once the final inspection was over, Miranda and I opened a very good bottle of champagne and just wandered around the house for a while. It was hard to believe the amount of time and effort put in to get the house into the shape necessary for the inspection. All of the little things you put off need to get done before the inspector shows up. All the lights need to be installed, all of the switch plates and outlet covers need to be on, all the plumbing needs to be functional (no leaks please!).

Master Bathroom
When I last blogged, we had finished all of the structural and had started the final details, namely the master bathroom tile work. The master bathroom tiling went pretty smoothly. The only hiccup was the frameless shower door. We made many decisions that should have made the shower glass go smoothly as well (tile placement, making sure the walls were plumb, etc.) however, you don't think of everything. We thought we were smart to have the shower glass sales person came over to take measurements before the tile was grouted so that if anything needed to be changed, it would be easy to do. However, the sales person seemed very hurried to take the measurements and get out of there instead of taking time to work with us on what we really wanted. Had he made one suggestion to have us change some of the decorative tile, many if not all of the problems we encountered would have gone away. Instead, he told us that we would have to cut a channel into the decorative tiles for the glass to allow it to be mounted properly to the wall. He told us to have our tile person do this, because you never know who you'll get to do the glass install and they may just butcher the tile to get the glass to fit. That should have been a warning to us to find someone else. He also wanted to sell us the standard glass instead of the more expensive Starlight (ultra clear) glass because "you'll never notice the difference."

We did as he suggested and cut the very expensive decorative tile to make room for the glass. When the glass installer showed up several weeks later, he told us first that the glass would need to be installed oddly (not flush to the tile in all places) because of the decorative tile, but that they needed to reorder the door to be cut oddly to fit the out-of-plumb glass. In doing this, the upper hinge for the door would sit half on the decorative tile and half off. The installer was trying to get us to cut the tile to fit the hinge in. Instead, I suggested that we simply move the hinge on the new door up until it was above the decorative part.

When the new door arrived, it fit fine, but the cuts in the tile that we made in response to the sales person's advice were unnecessary. So, we had to go back to the tile setter and have him remove the cut tiles, and replace them with new ones. This was a little tricky especially since the glass door was now in the way.

Luckily we had insisted on the Starlight glass and at least the color was better than it would have been had it been the typical green glass.

The glass is fine, but not exactly what we would have liked based on the odd shape and the need for lots of caulk.

We also had a couple of scares with the installation of the shower fixtures themselves. One of them had a minor leak immediately after being installed. We didn't catch it immediately, but we did fix it by the next morning. That meant a minor leak in the walls for about 12 hours. The result was that the wall of the floor below got wet causing the paint and caulk around a pass-through to need to be replaced along with one of the casement boards.

The second shower fixture was bit more of a problem. When the fixture was installed the first time, one of the parts was accidentally stripped. That meant frantic calls to the manufacturer who told us that we would be lucky to get the showers installed as the vendor that provided the shower to them went out of business several years ago and there are no spare parts. Here is when having a very good contractor comes into play. Instead of telling us to go find a new shower, he found both a place to have the stripped part re-threaded and a replacement part made to fit the new threading. He also found a plater to have one of the damaged parts re-plated to match the other parts. The result is a perfect match to the other shower fixture.

All-in-all, the master bathroom is complete and very beautiful.

Final Details
The other major portion of the project that needed to be completed was the basement. We needed to cleanup the wavy walls and reset some doors so that all of them were the same height and swung correctly. Along with installing all of the trim work, it took the better part of two months to finish out the basement and get it painted. With help from Miranda's Mom and step-Dad and our painter, we got the basement painted in a pretty good time.

What's next?
With the house basically complete, we have embarked on correcting a couple of details that weren't in the original plans. Specifically, we are replacing our old galvanized steel water main with a shiny new copper line and at the same time we are fixing our front steps to the house.

Now we just need to move out of the upstairs for a couple of days next week to have the first floor and stairs sanded and urethaned for the last time. Then comes the crazy task of moving into our new old-home.

Chapter 4 -- Lots of Progress

2007-11-01T09:38:00.001-07:00

Catching Up
It is difficult to believe that it has been so long since I posted anything about the remodel. We passed the 1 year mark last week and we are still going. However, we are almost done now. Let's do a little catching up.

Structural
We have finished all of the structural corrections (which took 9 months!). Some of the things we needed to fix caused us to open up walls (tightening the bolts that hold the house to the foundation) which in turn required us to do more patching than we needed. It is amazing how many things lead to another.

Some of the structural adjustments where to over-engineer sections that simply weren't strong enough. All of these adjustments were made on advice of a civil engineer. I highly recommend hiring a third party engineer to work with your contractor. It should be someone that the contractor trusts, but it should also be someone that was not involved in the initial design. Such a person will feel free to discuss ideas to solve problems that arise without being wedded to the design as it is.

Pay attention to everything
One of the most important lessons we learned from this project, communicate everything. Don't be afraid to change your mind or to own up to bad decisions. The sooner you communicate that you think something is wrong, say it. An example of where we didn't do that is our drywall. We made some assumptions based on the method the drywaller used that he was very detail oriented. He is methodical, but did not have an eye for the details that we saw. When we asked for things to be done, we would say; "Please finish the living room walls so we can get the painter here." After he was done, we did not question his work nor look at it with eye toward what was wrong, but rather told the painter to get started on the painting. He said there were a few things that he needed to have fixed, which he could do. Since the drywaller was not immediately available, we agreed to have the painter fix the things he was seeing. The result was that when the paint went on the walls, we saw every defect, every place that wasn't sanded, and everything that the drywaller didn't do. In the end, we had the room painted five times. That was mainly because we did not go through the drywaller's work with a fine toothed comb before allowing the painter to start. The painter and the contractor carry some of the fault as well since both should have done some of the inspecting first. However, the responsibility is completely up to the homeowner to make sure that everything is the way it should be.

Kitchen
The main focus of the remodel when we began was the kitchen. I wanted a larger kitchen that would allow me to cook for large gatherings and be a place that we could hang out. We now have that in spades. We hired a family friend to install the kitchen cabinets. Custom Spaces is the name of the company. Daniel used to build the cabinets himself, but that became impractical when they had more than a few customers at one time. Currently, they buy the cabinets from a company in Quebec Canada that uses formaldehyde-free maple plywood. Daniel does the installation with some helping hands and the result is stunning. We couldn't be happier with the result. We ended up painting the cabinets and the result speaks for itself.

We are currently using the kitchen for dinners. There is an eat-in-counter that is not pictured that is awesome. There are still a couple of items that need to be addressed (note the missing doors in the foreground of the first picture) before it is completely done, but it is functional and beautiful.

Floors
We had one heck of a time with our flooring. We decided to go with a local mill that sells lumber and mills their own flooring under the impression that local is better. However, the material we got did not meet our exacting requirements. We wanted rift and quarter-sawn white oak for the downstairs. That is very similar to the original flooring. The original was top-nailed and this would be tongue-and-grove 1/2". We knew to expect some variation in wood color; after all not all trees are the same. We ended up with about 25% of the wood being unusable. It was either an odd green color, or pink, or some mottled black and white that was jarring to look at. After going back and forth with the vendor, we finally got enough material to cover the entire floor and it looks great, but it took a long time to get there.

Having learned our lesson from the first floor, we went to a different vendor looking for the material for the second floor. We decided on quarter-sawn red birch. What an amazing color when it is oiled. It has a depth that is out of this world. The material was so consistent that we still have most of the overage that we purchased. We hope that we'll be able to use it to refloor the only room in the house we didn't touch upstairs.

Upstairs
We are almost done upstairs as well. The painting is happening now. By the middle of next week, all of the walls, ceiling, and trim will be done with the exception of the master bathroom which still needs to be tiled.

The tile design for the master bathroom took a very long time to design (as did many things in this remodel). We finally found the tiles we wanted and colors that made us happy. Of course that means we are using four separate tile vendors just for the bathroom. The tile setter is the same that tiled our upstairs deck. He did a very good job and fixed the grout at his expense when his crew installed the wrong color. In our experience, most contractors would have tried to convince us that the wrong color was just fine or that they would need to charge us for the labor to fix it correctly. Be wary of those types, you can be talked into all kinds of things you don't want.

Well that's all fro now. I'll write another chapter when we get moved back into our space upstairs.

Chapter 3 - More Design Decisions

2006-11-21T20:32:00.000-08:00

The first couple of chapters have outlined the problems we are facing with completing our remodel. Now I'd like to share with you some of the decisions that we've faced (again) and how we came to our make our decisions (so far).

Background -- The Basement
As I mentioned in the previous chapters, this is our second attempt at finishing the remodel we started in 2002. When we first started the remodel, we had a general idea of what we wanted, a bigger kitchen, a bathroom on the first floor, and a master suite over the improved kitchen. The first design/build contractor talked us into much more than that and convinced us that it would be doable within our small budget. One of the things that we added to the project turned out to be a lifesaver. We made the basement into a small one-bedroom apartment so that we could live in the house while the upstairs was being remodeled.

This space is where we've been living since February 2004. It is much better than the period of time when we spent 9 months without the back wall of the house or a kitchen.

The decisions in the basement were really driven by the end goal of having a media room/suite in the basement. That and keeping the costs down so we could spend our money on the upstairs where will eventually live. So in keeping with these goals, the basement is practical. It has a bathroom with a tub, a large walk-in closet (eventually for one-a-year clothing storage), a washer and dryer, and a small kitchenette (part of which we need to remove once the house is complete).

On the second pass of the remodel, we need to rethink little things like what will the flooring and wall colors be.

Finding a Great Designer -- The Best Decision to Make
Going into the remodel this time, we decided (Miranda really needed) to get some help that was lacking the first time. Miranda remembered that she had a couple of business cards from open houses in the neighborhood that were several years old. The cards were from the stagers of the house for the open house. The houses were staged in a way that made us both go "That's it!"

Miranda made calls and we interviewed a couple of people that were designers, people that can help guide you through the myriad of things that need to be decided both when remodeling and decorating. The person we liked the most was also the person that did the best staging. Her name is Leela Willow and we think she is the best! To be honest, I thought that hiring a designer was a waste of money because my preconceived notion (somewhat based on the first remodel experience) was that they make you spend money hand-over-fist and bend you to their will. Leela is completely the opposite. Her goal is to make you happy with the design.

I'll be mentioning Leela quite a bit as she has been an enormous help to us throughout this process.

Fireplaces

In Chapter 2 I talk in detail about the fireplace decisions. Leela was a major factor in how our decision was made. She made us think about the final look we wanted for the living room and dining room and whether a fireplace made sense with that look. As we worked out what our desires were, the decisions started falling into place. We also needed to solve a couple of problems that the first contractor stuck us with regarding venting of the furnace and the water heater. Recently as we've been working on the house, we have needed to rethink keeping the living room firebox (I'll talk about that in a later post).

Revisiting Old Decisions

Because of our circumstances, we needed to basically rethink several decisions we had made with guidance from our first contractor. We simply couldn't trust those decisions anymore. The big ones were around the kitchen layout and the exterior. The exterior stoops (the front entry, the kitchen entry, and the back stoop) either needed to be built (kitchen and back) or as was the case in the front had to be rebuilt to fix water intrusion issues that the first contractor basically ignored and made worse by an attempt to use marine epoxy.

In order to ensure that our current decisions were good, we looked at the project anew. Since we had drawings and such from the first time (drawn by Miranda and Susie, Miranda's Mom, without help from the first design/build contractor) we could use those as a starting position, but the idea was to rethink all of it to make sure that we were happy. Using Leela as a sounding board we showed the drawings and she helped guide us to the final decision which was to keep the design we had with the addition of some crown molding.

As to the exterior, the parts that were not yet built we decided that they were easy enough that we didn't need to change them. The front entry however is a different matter. Since the repairs to the house require that we remove the flooring from the original part of the house and the front porch decking, it made sense to think about what we really wanted for a front entry.

Front Entry

For me it was difficult to imagine what I wanted for the front entry. I hardly ever notice entries to homes. I mean when you go to a friends house you only see the front entry as you come in. As Miranda and Leela pointed out, the front entry to a home should be a reflection of the home owners and should be inviting.

After a concerted effort to notice them, we came up with the idea of adding a small overhang over the newly centered larger front door. The overhang will provide a place to shelter from weather and an ideal location for an overhead light. The change requires that we remove an odd detail at the top of the entry (which is perfectly fine) and that we fix many of the waterproofing issues that the entry has had over time.

Overall the design will match well with the existing house as well as make the house more appealing. That's what an excellent designer gives you.

Chapter 2 - Defining the scope

2006-11-13T09:54:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in Chapter 1, we have been through one attempt at remodeling our 1912 prairie-style home in Oakland. This chapter is going to list many problems that we need to address while finishing our remodel.

Replace old sections of foundation that were left by the first contractor.
Reframe walls where the studs are not connected to the plate.
Flatten (not level) the floor in the old house to make a transition to the addition possible.
Replace all subfloor and flooring in the old house.
Remove both masonry chimneys and one masonry fireplace.
Replace the furnace and water heater flues which were routed into the unlined masonry chimney.
Add height to floors to make a clean transition between old and new.
Replace the exterior doors.
Rebuild the front entry.
Waterproof the front entry to prevent water from leaking into the shop added by the first contractor.
Figure out why several new electrical circuits do not energize.
Add missing electrical circuits in the kitchen.
Install the kitchen.
Paint inside and out.
Install two bathrooms including the master shower.
Replace the deck on the second floor to remove a beam that protrudes into the deck surface.
Add missing kitchen stoop.

Note that this is a short list of things we need to accomplish. All-in-all the list of problems introduced by the original contractor is longer than the original scope of the work!

Decisions, decisions
There were several things that we had to decide before we attempted the fixes. The most difficult of the decisions was whether to keep the fireplaces. The house was built with two masonry fireplaces, one in the dining room (which was not functioning), and one in the living room (which we use a few times every year). At issue was the fact that the two chimneys were not strapped to the house and since the floor levels in the original section of the house was going to be changing by at least two inches, the hearths would need to be replaced.

Fireplaces and Chimneys
If you own an old house and have an original fireplace you may have this same dilemma, especially in California where there is the chance of earthquakes. Factoring into our decisions regarding the fireplaces are the fact that old Rumford style fireplaces are large polluters, the masonry chimneys are not strapped to the house, modern building codes require high-efficiency wood burning fireplaces if you are not repairing an existing one, and we want to keep the feel of the house as built in 1912. After many discussions between ourselves, our designer Leela, our contractor Bill, and family members, we made the decision to remove the dining room fireplace completely, and to save the living room chimney and hearth, but keep the firebox and repair it.

Notes for people looking for replacement fireboxes: The new high-efficiency replacement fireplaces are much better for the environment, but they do not have the same old-world feel as the original Rumford ones. There are newer ones that mimic the Rumford style, but they have vents that surround the opening. Because of the louvered vents on the front, the look is very modern, not old-world. One of our goals with the remodel was to make the house seem as though it was built with the addition in 1912. To us that means keeping as much of the old-world feel as possible.

Dining Room Fireplace
Our final decision was to remove the dining room fireplace completely and to replace the chimney and hearth in the living room but leave the existing masonry firebox. The dining room fireplace (as seen here) would be completely taken to the ground. We came to the conclusion that we would never use it. The only time it would make sense to have it fired up was during a dinner party. The person sitting in front of it would be very very hot. That plus we could use the chase for running flues for the furnace and water heater, we could add a small coat closet on the first floor, and add a linen cabinet in the upper stairs bathroom conspired to have us eliminate the chimney and fireplace. Also, we would be saving money by not trying to repair and strapping the masonry chimney.

Note to interested parties in the SF Bay area: we still have the dining room fireplace facade in the back yard and it is free to anyone with a truck that wants it. Note that when it came off, it came apart as the mortar was pretty worn out. It is laid out on its face in the correct alignment.

Living Room Fireplace
When deciding what to do about the living room fireplace, we really had to prioritize the features we wanted. As I mentioned above, the old Rumford masonry fireplaces are polluters, but the new high-efficiency ones don't have the right feel to them. Along with that, we needed to decide if we were going to face the fireplace with tile or stone, what color that would be; how large would the mantel be, should there be an overmantel, etc. In the end, our living room fireplace priorities broke down something like this:

Maintain the old feel
Make it as earthquake safe as possible
Keep the cost down
Be as green as possible

There are other elements I haven't listed, but this is the general fireplace priority list for our situation. Since the high-efficiency fireplaces don't give us that old feel, we decided to work with what we had. Also, since there isn't a really good way to make a masonry chimney earthquake safe, this needed to be replaced with a lightweight metal flue. By leaving only the firebox, we are able to "repair" the fireplace without meeting the current building codes which would have forced us to use a new firebox.

There was one thing that I should mention here that took us by surprise. When we decided to take out the chimney, we assumed that we would be taking out the bricks to the ground. Lo and behold, the largest section of brick is actually the firebox itself. Only the narrow part of the chimney is the "chimney". We had our hopes up that we would get back all of this space in the addition where this monstrosity of brick was, but it was not to be. We were able to square off the angled shoulders which will allow us to put in shelves.

Taking the Next Step
With the fireplace decisions behind us, we could now start demolition of the chimneys to make room for the flues. This became more critical as we were leaving summer behind and would need the furnace again very soon. In order to save money, we took on the task of taking the down the chimneys and the dining room firebox. This turned out to be an interesting experience. Overall it took about three solid eight hour days to completely removed both chimneys and the one firebox.

Using an air chisel and working from the top down, Miranda, my business partners Larry and Chris, and I took the chimneys down brick by brick. The hard part was taking down the dining room chimney and firebox. The living room chimney was exposed on three sides and came down very quickly. The dining room chimney was located in the center of the house and was surrounded on all sides. To take it down, you have to stand on the bricks of the chimney as you take them out one at a time. The chimneys were assembled around clay flue liners which are about three feet long and two feet wide and weigh between 20 and 30 pounds each. As the bricks come away from the outside of the clay flues, it gets harder to get the bricks free. Once the liner is clear of bricks, you can either break the clay up and send it down the chimney, or you can do like we did and haul them out of the hole in one piece. Pushing these liners out of the hole and into the attic while standing on a wobbly step-stool is a harrowing experience.

In the end we saved ourselves some money and now have brick with which to make a garden wall. It was a good thing to save the chimney liners as well as Ohmega Salvage in Berkeley paid $5 each for them.

Chapter 1 - Our Remodeling Project

2006-11-13T09:32:00.000-08:00

Our first attempt to add an addition to our house was a disaster. The end result of that first try includes; a set of plans that can only be used as basic guidelines for the number and size of rooms; many problems with connections between the original house and the new addition; electrical circuits that do not energize; furnace ducting that runs willy-nilly in the crawlspace; and a newfound respect for attorneys (thank you Bruce!).

Our 1912 Oakland home was built between Piedmont and Trestle Glen on former pasture land named 'slippery hill' by the locals. The house survived a landslide in 1926 by moving with the slide mass about seven feet from its original location. The city of Oakland corrected the slide problem in 1927 (we hope it is still corrected) by installing a series of drains at a depth of 30 feet below the surface of hillside. Since that time the house has been very stable albeit a little tilted.

The condition of the house when we purchased it in 1996 was pretty obvious, there was a distinct lean to the house (we have since had the lean measured at six inches across 35 feet) which was a result of the landslide. Other than that, we knew that the house was not bolted to the foundation, it wasn't well insulated, much of the electrical wiring was the original knob and tube, and there was only one bathroom (on the second floor). All-in-all not atypical for a house of this vintage. Of all the issues, the size of the kitchen was a sore point. It was a very small poorly organized space. When we purchased the house, we knew that the kitchen would eventually need to be expanded, probably into the back yard. And when we did that, we would bolt the house to the foundation and insulate where it was practical. Maybe, just maybe, we would be able to squeeze in a second bathroom to make entertaining easier.

After living in the house for five years and saving up our pennies, we decided to embark on the journey to improve our home. The primary goal has always been to expand the kitchen and add a bathroom on the first floor. Along the way, the basement was converted to a habitable space so we could live in the house during the remodel (what a joy that's been!). Overall our goal seemed simple enough, add space to our 1912 Oakland prairie-style home so that the house would been a better for entertaining.

Then
It can be said that our first experience with a contractor was not great. There were many red flags that we either chose to ignore or simply did not see until the entire project was into the second year. At that point all we were able to see was red. The contractor was the designer and builder. Because of the settlement agreement we reached with them, I can only say that we parted ways.

Now
It is time for a new beginning. The litigation is over, and we've found a new contractor, Rockridge Builders. Bill Hinkamp of Rockridge Builders has helped us in many ways over the course of the last two years before and during the litigation and has taken on the unknowable task of fixing and completing the work that was started by the first contractor. His approach to our situation is to start with fixing the problems (that we know about) from the ground up.

The project has begun and we are in it for the long haul. I'll be blogging this experience as things progress (with pictures for those of you that need to see it as we go along).