3 Musketeers

I desperately needed to go grocery shopping today, so I stopped by the house on the way to Safeway to see what was going on. As I pulled into my neighbor Alison's driveway, she came out to say hello -- she works from home, like me. I asked her if she wanted to take a quick tour of our house, so she walked over with me. Her house was the twin of mine -- with a nearly identical floor plan -- so they can especially appreciate all the changes we're making.

As we walked through the house, I figured everyone must have gone to lunch. Paul was working on the main level of the house, and we encountered a plumber on the second floor, but that was it. Just as Alison was about to head home, Rob suddenly appeared out of nowhere, so I introduced them and we chatted briefly. After Alison left, Rob told me that I had just missed a great photo op -- he and John had been working on a scaffolding on the side of the house installing the insulated sheathing over the fire-resistant material. Neither of them is fond of heights so they were happy to be back on the ground.

They were ready for a break, and it was a beautiful day, so I talked with the guys for a bit while they enjoyed their lunch on the front stairs. This gave me the perfect opportunity to take a photo. That's Paul and Rob in the back, and John sitting on the cooler in front. These three are the core of our renovation crew and are there 5 days a week.
While we were outside, at least half a dozen different guys came out of the house -- none of whom I had seen during my tour with Alison. I commented on this "clown car" effect, and Rob explained that they had all been working down in the basement -- which is the one place we hadn't gone.

Rob's eye injury came up and the three of them started sharing stories about other work and tool-related injuries they had sustained or witnessed. Talk about heebie-jeebies! By the time that conversation wound down, I think all three of them were considering wearing full body armor to work. I was especially wigged out by the story of the guy who accidentally nailed his hand to the deck he was building. He was by himself with no cell phone and could not reach any tools with which to free himself, so he remained trapped there until one of the Steves found him. Yikes!

After that, I was ready to get the heck away from all those power tools (and the accident-prone men who wield them), so I took one last photo and headed to the store.

Oleksa Bilaniuk (1926-2009)

I'd like to observe another virtual moment of silence in honor of Oleksa Bilaniuk, who passed away on Friday after a battle with brain cancer. He was the beloved father of Josh's brother's wife, Laada, and the grandfather of their two lovely girls (our nieces, Laska & Larissa) -- who are still dealing with the recent loss of Florrie, their great-grandmother. Our hearts go out to them and the entire Bilaniuk family.

Busted!

I wasn't planning to go to the house today, but Rob called this morning and asked if I could come over and show the plumbers where we want all the fixtures to go in the shower in the master bath. Apparently, they can't run pipes through exterior walls because they could potentially freeze, so some things can't be installed exactly as they are drawn on the plans.

This was also an issue with our washer and dryer, and they were initially concerned that if they swapped them around to move the washer next to an interior wall, the dryer door would open the wrong way (towards the washer), which would make it difficult to load. Fortunately, our washer and dryer are still sitting in the basement under a tarp, so Rob just went down to take a look at the dryer and discovered that the door opens down (like an oven door), so it doesn't matter what side of the washer it's on. No problem! I wish all our issues were this easy to solve...

Rob also told me he got an earful from one of the Steves (his boss) first thing this morning because he had read about his eye injury on my blog. I'm not sure what upset Steve more -- that Rob got hurt on the job, or that he only found out about it from reading my blog -- but I felt bad that I had inadvertently gotten Rob in trouble. I had assumed that since Dane knew about my getting hit with an errant screw within an hour of it happening, that they all knew about Rob's near miss with the nail as well. But it turned out that Dane only knew about my incident because he had called Rob right after it happened. Oh dear. Sorry, Rob!

My mom suggested I include some photos of the people working on our renovation, since I frequently mention their names (Dane, Steve, John, Paul, etc.), but so far the only one I've managed to photograph up close is Rob -- and look how that turned out. If I thought everyone avoided my camera before, I'm sure they are going to actively hide from me now! I'll have to bring a Distractor with me sometime...

Anyway, before I left the house, I asked Rob if there was anything new to see. He mentioned that Paul had built temporary stairs to the back porch. I was excited about that until I discovered that the temporary deck of the back porch had been pulled up to build something else, so in order to get in or out of the house through the back door, you had to perform a little balancing act along a 3-foot span of wooden support beam about 2 inches wide (see the bird's-eye view from my previous post). Paul said he'd rotate the remaining piece of plywood so it spanned the length of the porch from the back door to the stairs. Good thinking!
Rob also gave me some hardwood flooring samples to take home. Here are some options for bamboo flooring:

Yes, that sample above on the left is stained green. I'm all for 'green' flooring, but I don't know if I'd literally want my hardwood floors to be green. The bamboo floors come from a company called ecofinishes that specializes in environmentally-friendly flooring. I have mixed feelings about bamboo -- while it is a rapidly-renewable, sustainable resource, it has to be shipped from overseas -- but I don't want to dismiss it entirely. They will be extending and refinishing the existing oak hardwood floors on the main level of the house, so we might prefer to continue with that on the second floor instead of switching to bamboo or another material. Rob gave me some samples of oak and maple flooring as well.
Lots of decisions to make! The big one we need to make ASAP is about the roof, but we are still waiting for SAI to get back to us with samples and pricing for the various options. I'm really hoping we can find an affordable alternative to asphalt shingles. I don't think that would look right...

Safety First

I went over to the house yesterday to drop off the electrical plans, which we had borrowed from Rob to make sure all the light fixtures, outlets, and switches were where we wanted them and to make a complete list of the light fixtures that we need to select. Once again, the house looked much the same from the front.
There was a lot of activity indoors. I noticed Rob had what looked like blood on the shoulder of his shirt, and when I asked him about it he directed my attention to his left eye. (And later graciously let me take a photo...) See that red spot on his lower eyelid? He was pulling a nail out of something and it flew up and hit him right there. Just a millimeter higher and it would have gone right into his eye! He said he'd told his wife about it and she was pretty freaked out. I don't blame her -- I was freaked out about it myself. I imagine she's thinking of ways to permanently affix safety glasses to Rob's face, much as I often wonder how I can get Josh to wear a helmet at all times, not just when he's riding his bike.

Anyway, Rob didn't seem too fazed by the incident, so went over some questions that had came up while Josh and I were going over the electrical plans. One involved the light fixture over the kitchen sink. The plans had a recessed light there, but since I am not a huge fan of those, I thought a wall sconce mounted over the window would look nicer. We stood in the kitchen and Rob pointed out that the piece of wood over where the window will go is a structural element that they can't run electrical wiring through without getting approval from the engineer. That seemed like too much of a headache, so we tried to come with with some other ideas. While we were standing there, I heard a noise from where John was working on the stairs behind me and then felt something impact my right butt cheek. John called out, "That didn't hit anyone, did it?" I told him that whatever it was had hit me, and he ran over to see if I was OK. It was just a small screw, so I was more startled than injured, but it probably would have hurt a lot more if it had hit me anywhere else (that particular spot is pretty well padded). He and Rob were both very apologetic, but I assured them that I was OK. John still seemed a little shaken, so he took a break from the stairs to help us brainstorm about the kitchen light, and even drew some sketches on the piece of drywall that was leaning up against the wall. (Rob told me John leaves little works of art all over the house.) He had some good ideas that I can go over with Josh.

Meanwhile, the plumbers were hard at work installing the cool Aquatherm piping. As I mentioned earlier, it is made of a special material that can be fused together to form one continuous piece. Rob said the plumber demonstrated for them by fusing two pieces together and then cutting them in half, and they could not tell where the joint was. Here they are working down in the basement to run the plumbing up to the bathroom above.You can see all the little bits and pieces in the main level bathroom.
John is helping them sharpen a drill bit so they can run the pipe through the ceiling.John actually finished building the stairs while I was there, and as soon as the last tread was in place we all stormed up them to check out the second floor. (Our architect and her husband had stopped by and hadn't been upstairs yet, either.)It's hard to take photos upstairs because it mostly looks like a wooden maze, but here's the view from the front bedroom looking back down the hallway towards the back bedroom. The bathroom and stairs are to the right, and the master suite is to the left.
This is the master bedroom. Since I was there at lunchtime, Rob offered to pick me up a sandwich at Rocklands, a tasty BBQ place near my house, and I ended up having lunch with Rob, Paul, and John on the floor of the master bedroom. I didn't really think anything of it at the time, but in retrospect, it was kind of odd to eat lunch in my bedroom with three men ...And here is the tub enclosure and shower in the master bathroom.It was fun to be able to see some of the views from the second floor. From the master bedroom, I had a bird's-eye view of Paul's progress on the back porch.And from the front bedroom, I could see the McMansion two doors down, which is still twice the size of my house, even with the second floor. (It's still for sale, by the way, if anyone has $2.1 million to spare...)
This is the view from the front of the house looking across the street. Our neighbors have all been very supportive of our renovation, and the people across the street actually encouraged us to make our house as big as we could (we didn't). From this perspective, their house looks much smaller, but in reality I think it is still bigger than ours.
I discovered one of John's little wall doodles in one of the bedrooms upstairs.Just as I was getting ready to leave, Dane, our project manager, called Rob on his cell phone. When Rob told him I was there, Dane asked him to put me on the phone. He told me they were going to get me a Kevlar vest to wear when I visit the house. I laughed and told him that wouldn't help protect my butt, and asked how he already knew about the incident. Apparently, when a client gets hit with a flying projectile on the job site, news travels fast. Rob took this opportunity to show me the entry he was writing up in his daily work log: "Naina was shot in the butt." Nice.

On my way out, I noticed the whiteboard on the work trailer out front had the words "Safety First!" written across the top.
I'm sure they take safety very seriously -- these guys are professionals -- but this particular day was not a shining example. I hope Rob's incident will inspire them to wear safety glasses!

About Facebook

A couple people have told me they found this blog through Facebook, so I thought I'd return the favor and direct people to my Facebook page from my blog. The catch is that I've never actually joined Facebook. Yeah, I know. I work on the web, I have a blog, and I know a lot of interesting people -- so you'd think I would have signed up long ago. But I already spend way too much time in front of my computer, and I know if I was on Facebook I would be tempted to spend even more playing online Scrabble with old high school friends and I'd never get any work done. Plus, I prefer to interact with people In Real Life or at least by email or phone.

Several people have tried to convince me to sign up -- resistance is futile -- but to no avail. My friend Ann finally got fed up and just created a page for me. We've been friends since 4th grade, so she knows me pretty well and we have a lot of mutual acquaintances -- including my DC-area gang that she has befriended during regular visits over the past 14 years (gosh, have I been here that long!?). So she put together a "fan" page for me, added some awful photos from our high school reunion, and invited all our mutual friends to become my "fans". The end result is that my friends (and sister) have done all the work for me to create a Facebook page and I didn't even have to sign up. Thanks, guys!

Ironically, since I still haven't joined Facebook, I can't see my own fan page, but I hear I already have a couple dozen "fans". If you are a member, you can't "friend" me, but you are welcome to join my elite group of Facebook "fans" -- and if you'd rather not, don't worry, I won't be offended. In fact, I won't even know...

Long and Short of It

When Josh and I were out in California for Christmas, we visited Fireclay Tile in San Jose and found ourselves in tile heaven. We were impressed with the variety of tile and excited to learn that much of it was 'green' (made from recycled materials). We could have tiled our whole house with what we saw there, but since they weren't exactly local, we settled on selecting the decorative tile for our main-level bathroom and for the risers on our stairs. Yep, we're planning to do something like this (or this) on the stairs going up from the dining room to the 2nd floor. It's going to be way cool!

Anyway, since this tile is not available through Architectural Ceramics -- where we are getting the rest of our tile -- our builders will have to order it directly from the manufacturer. I've spent the past few days finalizing the details of all the sizes, shapes, and colors with them so they can place the order. Today I went over to the house to go over the tile design for the bathroom with Rob so he can estimate the quantities we'll need. I had some PDFs of the bathroom layout so I drew a quick sketch of what I had in mind, but it was very helpful to be able to stand in the actual bathroom with a tape measure to get a better sense of what goes where.

We want to have a tiled-in mirror in this bathroom, so Rob and I tried to determine what the dimensions of the mirror should be based on the tile layout, the height/width of the vanity, and the placement of the light fixtures. Rob marked everything out on the wood studs so we could get a better sense of where the mirror would go. It probably doesn't show up well in this photo, but we ended up with lots of pencil marks just to the left of the green pipe.It ended up being a rather comical -- but extremely helpful -- exercise because I am 5'2" and Rob is 6'5". (See my post entitled "Ann's Photos" for a visual reference.) We tried to come up with a solution where I'd be able to see more than just the top of my head while Rob would still be able to see his. (Not that we expect Rob to be primping in our mirror after the house is done, but this is supposed to be a 'universal design' bathroom, so we'd like it to be accessible to the 'vertically challenged' as well as the freakishly tall...)

On my way out, I noticed the concrete guys had taken the forms off the window well. Because we are renovating the house, the county required us to add some sort of egress from the basement so it would comply with current building codes. The original house did not have any access to the outside from the basement -- the only way out was up the stairs and through the kitchen. So, even though we weren't thrilled to have to spend extra money on an egress window, I'm sure it will be worth it both as a safety issue and for the extra natural light it will let into what was a very dark basement.Speaking of the basement, I walked down our new basement stairs for the first time and took a quick look at what's been happening down there. The crew has been converting our previously inaccessible crawl spaces into accessible storage areas with concrete floors. Yay! You can never have too much storage space. Sorry I didn't get any photos, but there wasn't much to see (or much light to see it by since they haven't created the new window opening yet).

Anticlimax

I had a busy day, but I heard the plumbing installation was happening today, so I carved out some time to make a trip over to the house to check it out. It seemed rather quiet from the outside -- and it looked pretty much the same since my last visit.
For once, there was nothing parked in the driveway (except the Bobcat), so I noticed that the paved part had been torn up and replaced with gravel. Apparently all the heavy trucks that had been driving on it caused it to crack and buckle. We were planning to eventually replace it with some kind of permeable surface, which requires a gravel base anyway, so it's not a huge tragedy...
Beyond the driveway, the new basement window well has been poured. The forms are still in place while it sets.
In the back, Paul was working on building our new back porch.
Here's what the house looks like from the back. The new master bedroom is slightly cantilevered over the expanded family room below, which will help protect the windows from the elements.
It seemed pretty quiet inside, too. Rob was set up in the dining room cutting boards to size for Paul. (This was taken from just inside the front door.)
And John (not shown) was working on the stairs. There have apparently been a lot of changes to the stair design, so they've had to rip them out and start over a few times. For now, we seem to have stairs going down to the basement, but you still need to climb the ladder to get up to the second floor.
As far as I could tell, they were the only 3 guys working on the house this afternoon. I asked Rob about the plumbing, and he said it was pretty anti-climactic. One guy came by in the morning and installed a few pipes, but no one took any video or photos. He thought that could still happen later this week, since there was plenty more to do. But for now, the only new thing I noticed were these little green pipes running along the dining room ceiling:
What's the big deal? Well, this is a new kind of 'green' piping called Aquatherm that only recently became available in the US -- the company is based in Germany. Not only are the manufacturing process and materials more environmentally-friendly (and toxin-free) than standard pipe, but rather than having to screw various parts together, this product can be seamlessly heat-fused together. No leaky joints!

According to Rob (and he may have been exaggerating), our house will be the only one between here and Canada to have this kind of piping installed in it. This is as exciting as plumbing can get!

Parking Permits

Thanks to the eccentricities of Arlington County, our little block-long street is the only one in our neighborhood that does not have zoned permit parking. This means that no one can park on the street on weekdays and anyone can park on the street on evenings and weekends (but only on one side, as it is a very narrow street). It also means that we do not have permits to park our own cars anywhere else in our neighborhood, nor are we issued visitor passes to allow guests to park on the street. This hasn't been a huge problem for us since we only have one car and usually only have people over in the evening or on weekends, but it is particularly irksome for some of our neighbors who have multiple cars and have to park them tandem in the driveway -- which requires lots of shuffling around when someone needs to get out. They have been complaining to the county about this for years, but to no avail.

Of course, now that our house is under construction, this has also been a headache for us. If I want to visit my own house during the day, there is no place for me to legally park since my driveway is always full of construction equipment, dumpsters, and/or the builders vehicles. It's only through the generosity of my neighbors that I've been able to park in someone else's driveway or borrow a visitor pass from a neighbor around the corner. But what about our builders, architect, subs, and other people who need to come to the site during the day? The county told me that commercial vehicles are allowed to park in zoned areas if they are providing a service to a resident, but they've been ticketed a couple times nevertheless. Our builders have been talking with the parking people at the county for weeks trying to solve this problem. As a result, it helped draw their attention to the plight of our street. I got confirmation from a very helpful and sympathetic woman at the county yesterday that they will be sending everyone on our block visitors' passes and an application for a parking permit. Yay!

I was so happy about this that I baked some chocolate chip cookies and brought them over to the house yesterday afternoon. I handed them to Rob and asked him to share with the rest of the crew, but based on how many I saw him eat right then and there, I'm not sure if there was anything left to share.

Meanwhile, the house continues to look more and more like a house.
The latest addition is a trailer parked on our front lawn, which doubles as a secure place to store tools and equipment and a sign for the builders.
Outside, the crew was digging a trench along the south (driveway) side of the house for the waterproofing and the new basement window well.
Inside, they had finally started building the stairs. This is the first set coming up from the basement to the main level. The stairs to the second floor will go above these.
It's a good thing they are doing that, because the old basement stairs from the kitchen are now gone -- as is the kitchen floor. There was hardwood flooring under all those layers of linoleum, but Rob said the old adhesive made it impossible -- or at least extremely difficult -- to refinish, so they had to pull it all up (hence the pile of wood).
Coming up next week: Plumbing!

What? That doesn't sound all that thrilling? Well someone's excited about it, because I've been told they are going to be videotaping and photographing the plumbing installation. I'll try to find out when so I can snap a few photos of my own.

Upstairs

Our friend Diana braved the wobbly, 3-story ladder and took a few photos during our 'open house' a couple weeks ago. Since I haven't had a chance to take any pictures from upstairs yet, I had her send me a few to post here. (Thanks, Diana!)

Here's Josh in one of the new 2nd-floor bedrooms looking out towards the back corner of our lot:
This is the view of the back yard from upstairs. I'm hoping it will look a little nicer when it's all done...
One of the reasons I haven't been upstairs yet: no stairs. This is where they will eventually go, but for now there's only a long, wobbly ladder that goes all the way from the basement to the 2nd floor.

Burning Question/Sage Advice

For those of you eager to know the correct answer to my quiz (Mom), here it is:

These little bundles of sage are called "smudge sticks" and they were used by our builders to perform a ritual to rid the house of any negative energy. This tradition is based on Native American beliefs, and -- according to my friend Kristen -- it is quite common in New Mexico for people to do this before moving into a new house. Congratulations to the 62% (5) of you who picked the right answer.

Incidentally, when I was looking for a site to link to that explained what smudge sticks were, I came across this story. I hope both rituals were equally effective.

I stopped by the house this morning to settle a bathtub-related dispute (seriously!), and was impressed -- as usual -- with all the progress they had made since Thursday morning. The arches are back!
The sheathing is in place around most of the house and they cut a few window holes upstairs and covered them with plastic to let in some light.The county required us to install a 1-hour fire-rated wall along the north side of the house because it is less than 5 feet from the property line. This is unusual for single-family homes, but we have to follow the building codes. It was a real challenge for our architect, builder, and structural engineer to come up with a solution that would not only work with both the original and new parts of the house, but was green as well (especially in terms of insulation). Removing the exterior stucco made this a bit easier. The white panels you see here are a type of fire-resistant sheathing called GlasRoc that will play a key role in the fire-rated wall assembly.
I imagine you are curious to know what the story is behind the aforementioned 'bathtub-related dispute' -- it's not a phrase you see very often. We had decided to re-use the existing cast-iron tub from our original bathroom, and asked the builders to save it. I got an email from them today saying that the plans showed it as a tub with a factory-finished front, but that ours was actually a drop-in tub, so we would need to order some additional tile to finish the front. I responded that they should check again, because I was fairly certain our tub did NOT have a tile front when it was installed in our house. I knew the tub was still sitting in the middle of our house, so I went over to see for myself. I was flabbergasted to see that it did not have a finished front -- just a curved lip on the front edge. (It doesn't look too inviting at the moment, does it?)I searched through my photos and found one the home inspector took of the bathroom before we bought the house. It turns out we were both right. The tub does not have a front face, but that's how it was installed in the bathroom -- as is, with no tile -- possibly to provide a little extra legroom for the toilet...So I guess we still have to decide whether we want to install it the way it is or have them build a tile front for it in the new bathroom. sigh... So many decisions...

Florrie Fitzhugh (1916-2009)

Josh's grandmother, Florence Hardy Fitzhugh, passed away on Saturday, March 14, 2009. She would have been 93 on April 12.
Florrie was a magnificent, generous lady with a wacky sense of humor and it was a pleasure and a privilege to have known her for the past 13 years. She died peacefully, surrounded by her loved ones and the amazing staff at Kendal at Hanover, who not only took great care of her, but of her family as they stayed by her side day and night in her final days. Josh and I were grateful to have the chance to see her one last time and say our goodbyes on Friday.

And now, a virtual moment of silence in her memory:

<silence



/silence>

Behind the Stucco: the True Hancock Street Story

A couple weeks ago we made the decision to remove all the original stucco from the house so the builders could repair any hidden damage and give us a new, fully integrated coat of stucco when the house was done (rather than trying to patch up the 85-year-old original stucco and match it with new stuff on the addition). It added a significant cost to the project, but when I went by the house yesterday afternoon, I could see it was well worth it.
The wooden structure of the arches on our front porch had rotted away to the point that they were basically held up by the stucco , and water had been seeping through into crawlspace below. There were several other areas where the wood was rotten, including the sill plate along the bottom of the house. They had to build some makeshift flying buttresses on the side of the house to stabilize it while they removed and replaced all the nasty bits.
The house looked a lot better from the inside on this occasion -- probably because everyone was working outside. I don't think I've taken a photo of this before, so here is the 'office' they created just inside the front door (where our hall tree was). The desk is just a piece of plywood and a stack of drawers from our kitchen with sections of PVC pipe attached to the side to store rolled-up plans. Very efficient!
This is the view of our stairwell looking up from the basement. Our old basement stairs are still in place, but you have to climb up that long, wobbly ladder to get to the second floor. The square area in the ceiling is where our nifty remote-control skylight will be installed. In the summer you can open it up and let all the hot air escape from the house, and in the winter the sunlight coming in will help warm up the house.
During our "open house" on Saturday, someone noticed our old garage door sitting out in the back yard and suggested it might make a nice screen for the port-a-john in the front. I passed the suggestion along to Rob, and he thought it was a good idea. Little did we know how heavy the darn thing is. Paul told me it took 6 guys to lift it! But they wrangled it into place. Not sure how much of an improvement it is...
Josh and I went back to the house this morning to go over the electrical plans with Marta and the builders. Josh and I had originally marked up the plans with the assumption that all the existing outlets, light switches, and ceiling fixtures would stay, but since they ended up removing everything, we had to put all that stuff back in on the plans. The electrician had also come through and had a few questions and suggestions that we needed to address. Although it was incredibly noisy, it was much easier to go through the plans in 3 dimensions on site rather than just looking at a drawing.

The crew was hard at work removing all the rotten wood and bracing the house. It was a little jarring to see the porch without the arches, but they assured us they had the technology to rebuild them better and stronger than before. (In fact, we might start referring to it as the "6-Million-Dollar House", although hopefully it won't cost us quite that much...)

That little semicircle jutting out on the second floor is the base of a small "Juliet balcony" for the upstairs bedroom. I'm looking forward to standing up there and calling for my neighbor's cat. His name is Romeo.
You know that expression, "You make a better door than a window"? Well, I'm not sure it applies here. I like how they've removed all the damaged wood from this corner of the living room, but left the window in place.
We were hoping to finally have all the planets align so Lauren could come by and see the cement truck this morning. They told me it would be there at 8:30 am, so I passed the info along and Elizabeth said she'd swing by on her way to work. When we got there for our 8:30 meeting, there was no sign of the cement truck -- but the pump truck was there. Josh and I got a kick out of the name emblazoned across it: Putzmeister.
Unfortunately, the cement truck driver got lost and didn't show up until nearly 10:30. I took a photo so I could at least show Lauren that the truck came to my house. 3-year-olds are not always easy to impress, but I try my best...
I got an email from Elizabeth this afternoon saying they got a late start in the morning and didn't have time to come by, so I assured her they would have been disappointed anyway (unless Lauren is intrigued by the Putzmeister). Well, there may be one more chance next week to make it happen. Fingers crossed...