Why we are renovating...Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
The renovation saga...
Meg and I have been really, really busy since the last post....and a lot has happened.
On Thursday we will rent a drywall hoist and install the drywall on the ceilings and walls of the new rooms. Fortunately these are the rooms with the newly installed AC. (0:
Looking back, we should have been a little more critical of the foibles of our construction team. The sloppy, uneven concrete pour should have been the first sign...the wall framed on a slant like this ///// should have been another....the door frames that were installed and shattered by the nailgun....hmmm?...the gable not centred over the door....the two new rooms constructed bigger than the requested dimensions....the vapour barrier attached to the wrong side of the insulation...the OSB nailed to the wrong side of the wall...the patchwork shingling job...yada, yada, yada... It seemed like every night we found mistake after mistake after mistake and,when we confronted them with the errors, had to put up with flak and temper tantrums. Not the most professional crew in the valley.
It became more than stressful. Neither Meg nor I was sleeping well...our house was in chaos, our lives were in chaos and we were walking on eggshells around our hired help. After a particularly nasty rant from a crew member one morning, Meg and I decided to pull the plug on their bad behaviour/attitude, cut our losses and let them go before they completed their contract. We had had enough.
That all happened about three weeks ago. We are feeling so much better now. The stress level in down and we are happily working on the renos ourselves.
The weather has been incredible for the whole project. Since we started in the beginning of June it has rained twice. It's a record year for sunshine and days without precipitation. How lucky we are! Maybe a little too lucky as the thermometer approaches 40C...(100F or more).
So far, in just over 2 weeks, in the heat, Meg and I have :
- Reorganized the workshop
- Sorted all the lumber, cleaned up the entire worksite and returned over $1500 of material that was over-ordered
- Removed the bay window in the front of the unit; re-framed the wall and installed three new windows; insulated, drywalled inside, sheathed the exterior and trimmed around the windows
- Designed, cut boards and screwed down a 8' x 40' deck
- Painted 250' of fascia, 250' of window trim and 80 4'x8' plywood boards (both sides)
- Insulated and vapour-barriered the two new rooms
- Installed two air condtioners
On Thursday we will rent a drywall hoist and install the drywall on the ceilings and walls of the new rooms. Fortunately these are the rooms with the newly installed AC. (0:Needless to say, we are exhausted by day's end but are so happy to be working on our project. In the end our living space will have increased from 1091 square feet to 1750 and we will both be able to stretch out and be creative in our studios.
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