Roominations

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Got glass? The slider saga continues


After almost two months of cave dwelling, we got to see the lake from the great room when the wrong four-panel sliders were temporarily installed on Monday, November 24.

Wind-driven rain hit the house throughout the night. I noticed it coming in at 10 p.m. and put down a towel to try to blot up the water. By morning, the towel was saturated and surrounded by water.

I sent iPhone photos to Alex and Steve and learned that, since the sliders were going to be replaced, the crew didn’t caulk around the unit. As a temporary measure, Joe, the leader of Alex’s crew, used a piece of roofing as a gutter to direct water away from the house.

On Tuesday, Joe and his team installed the correct sliders in the dining/screen porch area. There are three glass panels; the one on the left moves while the other two remain fixed.


Stepping back to look at the two styles in the same room, we congratulated ourselves for standing our ground and insisting on the Therma-Tru Slim-Line™ Sliding Patio Door System.

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Sunday, November 23, 2008

Non-glass house


On the night of Monday, November 17, we were especially cold. On Tuesday morning, I discovered the cause: somebody cut a space for the bathroom window and left it completely open! This new bathroom is directly under where we sleep. I took a photo with my iPhone and e-mailed it to Steve and Alex under the subject line, “Big freezing hole.” They’ve since put plywood over the gap on the inside and continued installing stucco on the side of the house.

We are still waiting for the proper transom window to arrive. We rejected a two-pane affair for being the wrong style for the house. The contractor ordered it without our review and approval; he gets to eat the cost.

Insulation installation began on Wednesday. With spray-foam costing about double, we’ve signed up with the Pink Panther (Owens Corning PINK FIBERGLAS® Insulation). When Matt walked in after work, he was like, “Hurrah, insulation!”


Irritation quickly replaced his jubilation. A dark shroud has covered the great room since the crew removed our two sets of sliders on October 2. At long last, there were glass doors in the great room… These were, however, the wrong model. We expected Therma-Tru Slim-line™ doors, which are designed to maximize our view. We got the Smooth-Star® style that we accepted for the bedroom but all agreed was wrong for our living area.

When I got home from work well after 8 p.m., Alex was on the phone, explaining that he couldn’t return the seven door panels; Matt was explaining that Alex couldn’t attach the sliders to our home.

All three of us suffered a sleepless night. The question I kept asking myself was: What will ultimately make me happier, getting the job done now (which is what led me to accept the window order and the back doors and the bedroom slider), or saying “no” and being stuck with nothing, as we are in the downstairs bathroom?

Alex met with us on the morning of Thursday, November 20, admitting his ordering error and providing us with a solution: install the wrong doors now and swap them for the correct versions when they arrive (both styles use the same track). We agreed. And as we now wait for this crucial step in buttoning up the house, ice forms on the lake.


Renovation tip: Trust but verify. Come up with a system that enables you to double check and approve every important item that your contractor plans to order for your home. It will save you aggravation—and it will save him money (and the time and energy it takes to deal with an aggravated client). Although we provided the contractor with a window and door schedule, we still ended up with different stuff than we specified!

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Sunday, November 16, 2008

The spicy smell of cedar


Miguel and Jess are constructing the privacy walls on both the upper and lower decks. These are comprised of cedar over a pressure-treated infrastructure. After a lot of ruminating, the concept Steve, Matt and I agreed on was a horizontal “good neighbor” fence.

Below it, Matt and I are installing cedar deck skirting. The idea of off-the-shelf lattice wasn’t cutting it for us, so we ordered one-by-eights of cedar from Corey at 84 Lumber and are attaching the boards horizontally, with gaps of about an inch. The house is starting to look anchored to the ground.

With all the recent rain, this lumber is perfuming the air and making us all the more anxious to get to a point where we can install our cedar hot tub, which I optimistically ordered in February.


Renovation tip: Save time by creating a drilling jig that eliminates the need to measure over and over and over and ensures all the screws line up attractively.


On November 7, we blew past the tentative completion date for the project. For me, this was a non-surprising non-event; I had placed little faith in this date. Nonetheless, there is progress:

  • Joe installed the all-important operable Velux® Manual Venting skylight in the upstairs bathroom on November 10. Like all our windows, it is Energy Star rated.


  • The roofing materials arrived on Tuesday, November 4—at the neighbor’s parking area. (I brought over a nice bottle of apology wine.) The next day, Matt spent some time on the roof, seeing how Joe installs it. (Then the rotted side wall in the great room—the reconstructed exterior is shown below—diverted the crew). The Advantage-Lok® Standing Seam roofing in unpainted Galvalume® now covers about 80 percent of the house. Our Energy Star-rated roof has a Total Solar Reflectance (TSR) of 68%—the highest offered in this product line—and it gleams in moonlight and disappears in the fog.


  • The Therma-Tru® sliding glass door was installed in our bedroom on November 5. It still doesn’t open or close easily enough, but at least the non-functioning, code-violating bay window is gone. (So is the one in the kitchen.)


  • My front door, Daisy Allendale by Crestview, was ordered in April, arrived in June and on November 15, Joe made it swing true and added the door hardware from 84 Lumber.


  • The stucco process began on November 7; finally, after a lot of begging, we got our color and texture choices on November 14. The stucco crew has been leaving the area disarray. We have cleaned up after them too often. Today Matt sent a note to Alex and Steve entitled, “Weekly email about trash and deck protection,” that said in part: “If they can’t respect our property, then they need to be replaced.”


  • We passed our structural inspection on November 12.


  • We passed our rough electrical inspection on November 14.


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Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Duct tape, spackle and pray for good weather

By guest writer and project co-conspirator Matt Davis


After months or structural work, framing and endless decisions, the end of the project is in sight. Like the horizon, we can see it but it never seems to get closer. Today, as The Call once sang, “And the walls came down.”

We have exorcised most of the demons, cast upon the home by nefarious owners of the past who learned framing in a gravity-free environment.

In Kurt Vonnegut’s very funny Slapstick, the earth’s gravity fluctuates over eons, being unusually stable in the 20th Century. The story says this is how ancient people with no engines could build Stonehenge and the Pyramids, simply carrying great boulders and placing them.

Gravity must have also been on the lighter side in 1959 and 1997, when former owners Commodore Scrapwood and Dr. Coverup, respectively, slapped broken sticks and rusty nails on our home and quickly left town. At the end of Slapstick, the gravity fluctuations occur more quickly, with the last inhabitants of Manhattan Island alternating between crawling along and skipping lightly with boners. Like living through a remodel.

The latest demon (we’ll call him “Mitt Romney”) reared his darkened coif today when the builder installed windows. Pulling out the old windows on one side of the house took part of the wall with it and unveiled a rotten, termite-damaged wood sillplate. This section had been carefully covered up when the good Doctor did his 1997 space walk/remodel.

Luckily, a large crew of framers (we’ll call them “Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and Franklin”) were on site and rebuilt the wall. We’re awaiting a large bill. Later this week, the siding starts.

Who knows which demon still lurks behind those walls? Not sure, but I know we’ll call her “Sarah Palin.”

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Monday, November 03, 2008

Don’t stew with fury


The windows came today.

Well, most of them. The critical windows did not.

Missing is the operable skylight for the upstairs bathroom. Until it is in place, the roof cannot be installed. From a timing perspective, however, we are in good shape: the metal roofing material is not yet onsite.

The other key elements yet to be delivered are the sliding glass doors needed to close in the great room, bringing in the view and sunlight while keeping in the heat. The great room was opened up to the elements on October 2.

Also missing is a big window for the downstairs bathroom and the sliding glass doors for the master bedroom.

What did arrive was wrong. We specified factory finish white interior. We got unprimed pine. We wanted satin nickel hardware. We got off-white. We wanted gliders. We got casement windows. And there is one window that must have been delivered to the wrong house, because there is no chance that ugly two-pane mistake is getting attached to this Casa!

It seems Alex did not refer to the window schedule Matt and I provided, nor did he write down or remember our instructions from the face-to-face conversations we had about windows. I guess he just guessed—and guessed wrong.

So I let out that deep, audible sigh—the kind that only a frustrated woman can make.

“Don’t stew with fury,” my husband advised.

Too late!

Renovation tip: Be sure to inspect the windows before they are installed to avoid getting a nasty surprise attached to your home. At least the windows sitting on our great room floor are the right brand and series, Anderson 400, so we can take small comfort that we did not get a quality and cost bait-n-switch.


Epilogue: Honey, love the one you’re with


Well, they are not the windows we ordered but now two of them are attached to my house, along with the new back door. We could see these improvements on Election Night because Willi the Electrician has begun putting in lights. Soon the space we call a walk-out basement will be referred to as a room.

I will accept progress with these windows rather than waiting who knows how long for the windows I expected.

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Saturday, November 01, 2008

Sunrise on Saturday


From our master bedroom window, we watched the sun rise over the Feeney railing that Miguel and Jess installed on the deck this week. The sun was up by 7:47 a.m. and the framers, led by Chico, were here at 8 a.m. sharp to work on the downstairs.

It had been a long week of living in a construction zone. On Tuesday, wind and snow drove us to a hotel. Granted, it is a couple of lucky ’fugees who seek refuge at the Westin. The punch line? As Matt was soaping up his hair, the hotel ran out of water, putting an end to his hot shower.

Renovation tip: If you are living in your house during the building process, expect there will come a day when you cannot take it anymore. Maybe it will be the dust, the restricted living space, the cold or the general lack of sanctuary... Go ahead and get out. Consider it a mini vacation and have a great time!

On Thursday, October 30, Alex wrote: “…by middle of next week at which time the roof will be on (delivery was supposed to be today but was delayed!!!!!) And all the windows will be installed… I know it seems like its never going to get done, and that you are living like a couple of gypsies, but I will do all I can to finish and help in any way I can…”

In the meantime, I’ve been having that dream again—the one where wild animals come into the house and rummage through the cupboard, eating my organic cereal and getting into mischief.

Perhaps it is because there was a raccoon in our garbage can the other night, looking back at me when I opened the lid. Or maybe it is because a mother black bear and two cubs kept Miguel and his colleagues in their truck until the family wandered away. Conceivably, it is the sound of the wind rustling through the plastic because we do not yet have walls in the great room.

To help chase the dreams—and the critters—away, Matt put a sign on the pantry.

Sunday


This morning—after going to bed too late and getting up too early because Daylight Saving Time ended—we stepped outside to enjoy the new cable railings sparkling in the sun. Very satisfying.

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