Day 22 - 9/29/2010

Work started on the outside today.  The crew started on the fascia and siding for the new addition. And new house wrap (not rap) for the outside walls of the addition.

Who needs windows when you have Tyvek

The electrician was back and adjusting the positioning of the recessed cans in the kitchen and adjusted the position of the light fixture for the pendant light in the stairway.  He also started work on some of the final wiring details... adding the connection for the light fixture in the former formal living room which will be the new formal dining room.  It's down to the tiny details for some of the electrical work.

The city inspector came out and did the framing and HVAC inspections.  The HVAC was approved and the framing was approved with one change needed which is to have metal straps for any exterior wall headers for windows/doors that are over five feet.

Andy, Ryan and Pat had a walkthrough to catch any issues before the sheet rock goes up.  There were some more issues with the position of lighting cans that the electrician needs to fix.  There was a long discussion about a small framing problem in the upstairs office.  Every measurement was spot on but there still existed a problem where some of the framing was off by 2-3 inches.  They finally determined that it was probably due to settling of the old foundation (which is an issue all over Carrollton) on which the new walls were built.  This cause a slight downward slope in the foundation.  They put together a plan to address it.

There was also a long discussion regarding the framing for the pocket doors for the office.  Andy says that he mostly followed the gist of the conversation but no way in hell could he repeat it.

Another minor issue is the door to the understairs closet.  A full-width door would not fit so it was framed for an 18" door.  So, there was again a good bit of discussion of how that would affect the design and usability of the closet.  An 18" door is fine for the intended use as a coat closet.  However, it does not allow great access to the a good part of the space that could be used for storage... so, Pat suggested putting a hatch from the hallway wall to the rest of the understairs area to allow access to that storage area.  Ya never can have too much storage.

In the master suite project, the granite is ready for the vanities but Andy is not ready for the granite.  There are two electrical outlets that need to be raised to allow room for the new 6" backsplashes.  Andy will not be able to move those outlets and patch the drywall until the weekend.  The circuit that those outlets are on is the same circuit as the FIOS TV box and it wouldn't do to have the TV out during prime time season premieres of favorite shows.

Not so much dramatic change lately as the first couple of weeks.  The next major change will be the installation of the doors and windows and the drywall.  Please stay tuned to the same bat channel.

Day 21 - 9/28/2010

Today was HVAC day.  The crew was back working on the downstairs HVAC unit.  The source and return plenums were replaced, all the ductwork was replaced and a new return was added on the west side of the house.

Silver ductwork running every which way... looks like something from a sci-fi movie... take us to WARP 3 Scotty.

Joseph brought some samples of baseboard and casing trim to pick from.  Not quite as much fun as selecting cabinets and granite... but it's gotta be done.

More inspections planned for Wed and a walk-through with Andy, Ryan and Pat to make sure everything that needs to be done before sheet rocking is done.  It's a pain, not to mention, costly to fix things after closing up the walls.

Oh yea, we got the first invoices in from RHD... time to write a huge check!  They have done a LOT of work as you have seen on this blog and this is the first time that they have asked for some cold hard $$$.  Their accounts person has been on vacation, otherwise I'm sure they would have sent me some invoices sooner.  AWA's are supposed to be invoiced at the time of approval.

That was pretty much it for Monday.

Day 20 - 9/27/2010

It is still relatively quiet now.  The plumber came to turn off the gas and set up a pressure gauge for the city inspector.  They actually found a very small leak and fixed it.

The city inspector came to check out the electrical and plumbing systems.  He walked around the new area for 10 min or so and gave the official go-ahead.  So, the plumber returned and turned the gas back on and filled up the "grand canyon" that was created in the foundation when he moved the sink plumbing.  He pointed out that there was some rust in the 12 year old hot water heater that we should keep an eye on.  Argh...

Otherwise, the insulation guy came by to determine the insulation needs.  We will have him beef up the insulation and add radiant barrier to the old part of the house as well so another AWA coming my way.  That should be getting underway this week.

The sheetrock sub also came by to determine how much sheetrock will be needed.  At lease this won't result in another AWA.  It sounds like sheetrocking and texturing may commence on Saturday and will take a week.  Once that's done, Andy should be able to start assembling and installing cabinets.  What fun!!!

The HVAC guys came back and started replacing the old ductwork, plenum, etc for the downstairs HVAC unit.  Of course, now that the weather is cool, it will be next spring/summer before we really will know how much difference all of this will make.

On the bathroom front, we did get a call from the granite company.  In the last post, we mentioned that our first choice stone shattered when they were cutting it last Friday.  Our second choice was already reserved for another customer so Andy was planning on driving back out to Keller (Ft Worth really) and pick another stone.  Mike called Andy Monday morning and the other customer released the stone as their designer (oh my!) decided to go another direction.  This stone should work out well.  Check out the colors:

This is the granite for the two master bath vanities.  It is a cream color with brown highlights.

The palette of the bath.  There is also a medium brown on the wall to the right and the trim will be a chocolate brown.

These are the colors of the accent tiles.

Day 17, 18 & 19 - 9/24-9/26,/2010

On Friday, Day 16, we woke up at our normal, ungodly hour, let out the dog, made coffee and waited for the sounds of progress.  It was eerily quiet.  There was absolutely no hammering and sawing.  It was a strange feeling to have some peace and quiet.

Of course, that means we are ready for the onslaught of inspections by the City of Carrollton which will happen over the first few days of next week.  So, until then, not much is happening.

The HVAC guys were out and finished installing the upstairs unit.  That was pretty much it for Friday.  Andy did get a new AWA for replacing and reworking ALL of the existing ductwork in the house.  $$$ a BIG Ka-Ching $$$.

On the bathroom project, Andy got a call from the granite company.  When they were cutting the slab down to size for the two vanities, the slab actually crumbled to pieces.  Apparently it had an internal natural defect.  So, Monday Andy has to drive back to Keller to pick another.

Over the weekend, Andy did his DIY thing and ran Cat 6 data cables and RG6 video cables all over.  He will take over one of the office closets and turn it into a central data and video distribution hub and server room.  What a geek!!  So he ran cabling from that side of the house over to the other side and into the walls.  Rooms will have from 2 video and 2 data connections up to four of each.  So his weekend consisted of installing connection boxes in the walls, drilling holes in the wall headers, installing conduit and pulling cables.  What fun!!

Video cables (black) and data cables (white) coming across the house being distributed to the TV room the sunroom east wall and the office east wall.  There is more cable on the west side of the house as well.

The next few days will likely be fairly quiet while we hurry and wait for the inspectors to do their thang... then it will get crazy again!!  But we are just a few weeks away from the contractor being finished with his  part of the job.  Then it will be a long haul while Andy does the finish up work.  Will it EVER end?

Day 16 - 9/23/2010

Again, another day of beehive activity most of which were mechanicals.  This was Andy's toughest day so far.  Since he works at home, he just can't escape from the bedlam.  The electricity was out today while the electricians worked.  Of course no electricity means no air conditioning, no internet connectivity and no electricity for the laptops. Fortunately, Andy has two Thinkpads for work and he was able to utilize both batteries for about 5 hours of life.  His productivity was not particularly great the last few days with all of the noise, activity and interruptions.

The roofers finished up their last bit of roofing this morning.  It's is nice not having to keep a worried eye on the weather and wonder if one of those sudden afternoon downpours will pop up.

The framers were back.  They had some things to correct such as moving a window over about three inches to line up with the french doors below.  They framed the upper walls around the staircase, framed the attic access door, removed some old roof joists that are no longer needed opening up the attic space, build a platform for the new upstairs HVAC unit and many little things that I probably missed. 

The most obvious item was opening up the entry way.  They took out a few feet of the living room wall to open up the stairway more to the entry.  They also raised the headers of the passage ways resulting in a nice and open view as you enter the house.

The entry looking from the landing of the stairs.  The passageway into the front room is now angled off to the right as you enter the door.  It opens up to an expanded passage way into the stairway.  About three feet of wall was removed.

  The framers also created eyebrows for several of the doorways in the new downstairs area.

It may be difficult to see but both of the large openings to the eating nook have eyebrow arches.  The two doorways into the kitchen also have the same treatment.

 The HVAC guys were here as well installing the upstairs unit.  They have the all of the inside unit installed in the attic above the garage and have run new ducts to the office, storage room, upstairs nook and upper part of the stairway.  They still have to select a good location for the return and to install the compressor outside and get it all hooked up.  Then they start hooking all of the old connections back up.  We really need to replace all of the old ductwork that was originally installed in the house as it has deteriorated to the point that the insulation was falling off.  They will also enlarge the vents in the old office//new TV rooms.  We have always had a problem with that room.  It faces south, has vaulted ceiling and was exposed on three sides and the temp difference between that room and the connecting hallway could be as much as 5 degrees.  Another AWA for replacing all the old ductwork and the new vents and returns. $$$ huge kaching $$$

New A/C system for the upper floor

The plumber also came and moved gas lines to route them around the new addition instead of across it.  Of course, Andy thought it was fun having gas pipes two inches off the upstairs floor.  He thought it would be "cool" to add computre controlled gas jets and have a fire show.  The plumber also moved the ice maker plumbing over about two feet to accommodate the new fridge location.

The electricians were here all day installing boxes and electrical cable all over the place.  They really wanted to get this part finished today and worked until well after 7pm.

Windows and doors have been selected and ordered. 


The granite guy finally made it out to measure the granite for the master bath vanities and the accent tiles for the master bath also were delivered today.  Hopefully the granite will be in next week. and Andy can see how it looks before designing the floor and tub surround tiling.


Andy also received 1000' of RG6 and 1000' of Cat6 cabling which he will run to various rooms over the weekend before the sheetrocking begins.


Things are really moving along but still a lot to do.  We still have our fingers crossed that the Swiss will have a fairly comfy, maybe not yet pretty, place to sleep.

Day 15 - 9/22/2010

It was like a beehive at the house on Wednesday.  At one point there were framers, roofers, electricians, HVAC guys and the contractor all here at once.  WOW!!!  Crews everywhere... it was all Andy could do to stay out of the way.

The staircase was built up to the second floor.  Monica finally got to see the upstairs. Prior to today, the way upstairs was to use the open frame of the lower staircase then climb a latter from the platform at the halfway point to the second floor.  No way for Monica, with her bad knees, to climb that ladder.  But now she was able to simply take the stairs.  She was so excited to see how things were coming especially the large storage closet that will primarily house her scrapbooking equipment and supplies.  Amazing how much stuff it takes to create a scrapbook!!

Access to the upstairs is much easier now

Now that it is easier for us to get upstairs, that means that it is easier for the cats to as well.  And they would!!  We're not concerned about them jumping out the window...well except for the rotten little Sasha.  She's a bit of a klutz.  However, since everything is still open to the attic, they couldn't help themselves to exploring the attic.. and we would never be able to find them.  So, they are on house arrest and lockdown in the bedrooms for the duration.  They are pretty hacked off!!!

The decking on the roof was completed and the roofers are very close to having the roof shingled.  They worked until around 7 pm and only had some of the ridges to complete.  The new shingles match perfectly with the old with the old ones sun-bleached a bit.  You can only tell if you are really looking for it.  Otherwise, no one will know.

Can you tell the new shingles from the old ones??

Speaking of the roof.  From the street, you won't even be able to tell that a second story addition has been added.  The addition fits in so nicely.  Hats off to our architect, Ryan, for a great design.  Even from the back it will look like the house was originally designed this way!!

Where's the second story?

It's hiding up there...

Once completed, you won't be able to tell that this was not part of the original plan

The HVAC guys were out to look over the site, make their plans and drop off some of the equipment.  I really needed more stuff in my garage as there were a couple of square feet of empty space.  We will have a new 2 ton unit for the upstairs.  We will also have them replace all of the ducts in the entire house.  We had very old flex-duct that was literally falling apart.  They will also correct some issues we had with unbalanced cooling/heating in the back room.

The electricians installed all of the cans for the lighting, installed all the switch and outlet boxes and ran the wire.  They were also here until around 7 pm.  This new area is going to be well-lit.  There are 12 cans in the kitchen, 6 cans in the new sunroom with two ceiling fan connections, a can in the stairwell with a pendant light in addition, a hanging light fixture in the informal dining area and three smaller accent cans along one wall, 4 cans in the upstairs nook and 6 cans plus a ceiling fan in the office.  We most likely will not have light fixtures on the ceiling fans.  Plus fluorescent lights in the upstairs storage room and in the under-the-stairs closet.

For Andy, Pat will have them run extra electrical wiring and three outlets in the kitchen wall common to the garage.  This will be for Andy's future workbench area along that garage as soon as we get the kitchen cabinets out of the garage and into the kitchen.

The office with light cans installed

Pat is really trying to get the inside functional in time for Andy to get a working kitchen in before the nation of Switzerland descends upon our house in late Oct for Anna's wedding.  It would be fantastic to have electricity and HVAC all on so that we can put some portable beds upstairs for some of our guests.

Day 14 - 9/21/2010

As we mentioned in yesterday's post, we are getting into the phase where there are not dramatic visible changes as we've seen over the last week.

As usual, the crew got after it around 7 am working all morning adding more roof decking.  However, after their lunch break, they covered the roof up with the blue tarp.  It was looking a bit cloudy and spotty rain started popping up.  I guess they decided to not take a chance.  Maybe another day before the roof is made watertight.

Instead, they did more detail work on the framing.  They added metal support braces to places where rafters were toe-nailed together and they started addind ceiling rafters to the upstairs.  At least those were the things that were obvious to Andy.

The office ceiling rafters are now in place and most of the temporary supports are gone.  Notice that the ceiling vaults from 8 ft to 9 ft.

We have decided to re-purpose the current living room into a large formal dining room.  The new dining room will be used as an informal dining area.  Monica wanted a place to sit at least 10 people.  The new formal dining room will allow us to keep the big table fully extended and still have room for the china hutch, the sideboard and the liquor cabinet.  It has the fireplace and the wet bar, so that will work out well.

However, there is no place for a dining light fixture.  Andy has requested for the electrician to add in a switch and connection for a fixture and we have ordered the fixture that Monica likes.

The new dining light fixture.

Otherwise, we are waiting for the granite company to come out and template the master bath vanities and waiting for the accent tiles to arrive so Andy can finalize and purchase the base tiles for the tub surround.  Hopefully, this weekend he can start laying the floor and tub surround tile.

Andy actually got a night off for us to have dinner with his sister and his niece, her husband and cute little girl.

Day 13 - 9/20/2010

As we close the second week of the renovation, things are still progressing well.
Today, the framing crew starting working on the new roof.  They got it framed and started putting on the decking.  They were hoping to get all the decking on today and get the roofers to lay down the roofing felt, ya know that black tar-looking stuff that goes under the shingles.  Once that is done, the roof is watertight and they don't have to worry with the huge blue tarp every evening.  And the pictures that I take at the end of the day will no longer have a blue tint to them.  That may have been a little over-ambitious.

The plumber made his first appearance in the project.  They had to move the plumbing for the sink about four feet west and bring it up into the wall.  So, they had to jackhammer a trench into the concrete and run additional pipe over and up into the wall.  Andy thought that listening to the jackhammer during a conference call was not really his idea of fun.  Fortunately it was just an internal IBM call and not a call with a customer!

The sink plumbing has migrated a bit west.

The changes in the profile of the house can now be seen from all sides.  It is kinda of fun watching the neighbors drive through the alley and really slow down and look as they pass our driveway.

Here are some pics from different angles.

From the front you can see that the highest point of the roofline has been raised a bitt.

This is the west side of the house.  You can see part of the roofline but the ugly blue tarp is hiding the rest of the view.

From the east side, the change is much more obvious

The most dramatic change is from the back, of course.  I think this view is what has the neighbors slowing down and gawking as they pass by.

The have decking on about half of the roof, the east side (on the right in the above photo) and the front.  Tuesday will see them finishing the decking and starting the roofing.

One thing that Andy is really excited about is the amount of space in the attic of the west side of the house.  The new roof over garage really opens up that space.  That will yield some great storage area.  Andy plans to floor whatever can be floored and add some shelving.

Andy is actually in the attic above the garage.  Immediately in front are the rafters for the old roof.  The new roof is above slanting from upper left to lower right.  In the back is the attic side of the office wall.

This is a funny pic with the old roof, with shingles still attached, is inside of the new roof.  This could not be opened up like over the garage because this is the cathedral ceiling of an existing room.  Pat will have the crew remove some of this decking to open up passage to this area and perhaps remove the shingles but leave the current decking.  This will give Andy access to the west office wall for his geeky stuff like network and A/V cables.

Not much happened in the inside area.  They did rough out the frames for the windows in the office.  Here is a little taste of the view we will have from the office windows.

The view of the backyard from one of the office windows.  Of course all of those extraneous boards will not be there.

Our next major project will be to create an new outdoor living area on the backside of the pool where you see the grass.  Some possibilities include a hot tub and an outdoor kitchen.  But all of that is after we recover from this renovation and the wedding... mentally as well as financially... Someday.

Day 11 & 12 - 9/18-9/19/2010

On Saturday, things started looking up... literally.

The crew showed up nice and early, especially for a Saturday.  They continued to work on the framing.  One of the first items was to frame just enough the the stairs to make platform for the crew to get up and down to the second level.  To get upstairs we have to climb the frame of the lower steps and then climb a ladder and through the "wall" into the new storage room.

The beginning of the stairway

They put down floor of the upper level over the floor joists that were installed on Friday and started framing the walls of the second story.  We can actually see the dimensions of the various rooms.  That is so exciting.

The beginning of the second story

At the end of the day, Andy climbed up into the second story and tooks some pics.  As you can see, the blue tarp is up for the rest of the weekend and the pics have a blue tint.

Looking through the wall of the storage room down into the foyer and into the kitchen

Looking into the east side of the office with lots of supports to keep the walls up for now

The west side of the office.  There will be pocket doors here.  There are two small closets on this end in each corner.

We are extremely excited about this new office.  The will be two sets of double windows overlooking the pool where we think we will have our desks.

One of the office double windows

One thing is always in need is storage. Upstairs, Ryan designed in a nice-sized storage room. In addition, there will be a door from the nook into the attic where there is a good amount of room for storage.

The storage room.  Monica has claimed this for all of her scrapbooking paraphernalia.

This is the nook which will likely be the exercise room.  The door to the attic will be to the left and the stairs will be on the right.  The air conditioning vents have not fared very well.

There was some progress on Andy's personal master bath project.  On Saturday he drove out to Keller to Absolute Stone to pick out some granite for the vanity counters.  Mike Mendoza is a really nice guy.  He helped Andy narrow it down to two stones.  He alone is responsible for final choice.

This is the slab from which the two vanities will be cut.  It is real bold patter.

Andy also ordered accent tiles for the tub surround and even possibly some on the floor.

Style one of the bathroom accent tiles

Style two of the bathroom accent styles

Andy is thinking about using very light beige tumbled stone tiles of various sizes accented with these two types of accent tiles for the tub surround.

Next week, the roof should go on and they will start working on the plumbing and electricity.  Unfortunately, the blog posts could get a bit boring... nothing real exciting about wires and pipes.

Day 10 - 9/17/2010

Well it was quite an interesting day on the Perkins renovation project today.  We are in the phase of the project where dramatic changes occur very quickly.  We thought Day 9 was a WTF day.  Day 10 was at least a double WTF? WTF? day as you will see.

Around 7 am Andy went into the temporary kitchen to get our morning drug of choice (aka: coffee).  There were already a couple of guys hanging around out back ready to get started which they did in just a matter of minutes later.  Lots of noisy banging and sawing commenced.

Andy had his laptop in the bedroom so spent some time checking email before venturing back to the office. As he walked toward the bedroom door he noticed that the light under the door seemed a bit brighter, which he attributed to the plywood being removed from the rear opening.  When he opened the door, it was a huge WTF moment when he saw this:

The view that greeted Andy this mroning

In less than an hour the entire middle of our house disappeared without the assistance of a tornado.

This is at 8:30 am

By mid-morning they only had a little bit left to do.

It is pretty obvious where the new two story addition will go

Around midday, material arrived and the workers got after it again, but this time they switched from destruction to construction.

By 2pm, the new walls are taking shape

As the afternoon wore on, we could actually begin to visualize the downstairs rooms that were previously only lines in the architectural drawings.  We could imagine where the stairs would be located, the doorways between the rooms, the location of the windows including the picture window and the french doors.

Finally at the end of the day, they had the floor joists for the second story in place.  This gave us a great perspective on the new downstairs room layout.

This is the front of the kitchen (cooking area) looking through the kitchen into the sunroom in back and the informal dining on the left which highlight the open great room concept we wanted for this part of the house.  The stairway is off camera directly to the left.

Looking from the sunroom, through the informal dining area into the foyer where the staircase will be located.  The kitchen is to the left of the dining area and foyer.

At the end of the day there is still no roof of course.  Fortunately, there was no rain in the forecast for the next week.  But, they put a huge blue tarp over the roof in any case and plywood over the rear wall.  The pics pick up the blue tint from the tarp. 

As luck would have it, a pretty hefty thunderstorm cell popped up south and east of the house and appeared to be moving toward us. The wind begin to twitch, the house began pitch... well, not quite like in the Wizard of Oz.  But the wind was whipping the edge of the tarp around something fierce  The crew was up on the roof trying to batten down the hatches before the stormed moved in.

We got lucky the storm just barely missed the house.  We had dark clouds overhead, saw some lightening, heard some thunder only got a very few light sprinkles (rain.. not the cupcakes).  Andy was watching the weather radar on his iPad and he watched the storm just bypass the house ever so slightly.  If we were located just a bit north or east it would have been a bit dicey.

The crew will be back bright and early on Saturday to do more framing working their way up to the second story.  Hopefully on Monday they will have enough framing for the  roof to be decked and made watertight.

Day 9 - 9/16/2010

Today brought a lot of changes to the inside of the house basically resulting in the entire middle of the house being ripped apart.

The demo team showed up bright and early before 7:30 am and began tearing into the kitchen.  Within an hour, the kitchen cabinets were gone and they were tearing out the soffits and sheetrock.

Tearing out the soffits

The sink and other cabinets used to be here

A bit later, most of the sheetrock is gone:

This used to be the pantry and cooking area

old flooring coming up:

Taking up the old kitchen floor

Things are looking a bit bare:

Dining room is now open to the kitchen and sunrrom not to mention the outdoors

Just after lunch the ceiling started coming down:

Kicking down the ceiling from above

Finally at the end of the day most of the center of our house is missing:

Literally looking through the old dining room into the old sunroom and the old breakfast nook

This is what is left of the kitchen with a view up to the underside of the roof with wires and ductwork hanging all over

In a matter of weeks, a staircase will be here leading up to the new second floor

As everyone came home today there were various expressions meaning roughly: WTF?