that brown house

back in march we purchased a washer and dryer. we surprised the salesperson by asking if we could hold off on delivery until late april (instead of wanting delivery asap). we figured that the electrician was starting mid-march (with an estimated 2-3 weeks of work) and the piping would be done in april in conjunction with the bathroom remodel…so by late april we’d be moved in and anxious to have laundry of our own.

well, as we drew close to the april 26th delivery date, the piping was done, but the electrical work wasn’t, so eric postponed the delivery and sent me this e-mail on april 23rd:

OK, our washer/dryer delivery is rescheduled for May 10th.

after the awful first electrical inspection on the 7th, it was obvious that we weren’t going to have power by may 10th, so we talked to the electrician who assured us that if we took care of the water heater issue, he could be re-inspected and have us power by the 13th or 14th and could be done inside the house prior to our target move-in date of may 22nd. the message from eric, re the washer & dryer:

Now rescheduled for May 31st.

well, with the rough-in not done until the 19th, and pg&e refusing to switch power because there wasn’t a sticker on the service box, it became obvious that we weren’t moving on the 22nd. we postponed and scheduled movers for today, the 29th, instead. surely an extra week would give the electrician enough time to iron things out.

or not. of course, he did have time for a four-day memorial day weekend, but he probably has electricity and doesn’t need to be out of his apartment on june 1. after surveying the number of wires still hanging out of the walls and ceiling and observing the electrician’s absence on tuesday, eric renegotiated for us to stay an extra week (for a cost, of course) in the apartment and rescheduled the movers for june 5th. then we hear back from pg&e that the soonest appointment we can get to switch the service is june 4th. all this extra time and money and we are still cutting it insanely close! i’m just praying that the electrician will get his act together and be done tomorrow (which will take a miracle since he’s not there working today) so that i can spend my birthday weekend scrubbing everything without worrying about him coming back in and dirtying it up again. oh, which brings us back to the continued lack of power’s impact on our washer & dryer delivery:

And now it is rescheduled for June 7th! This is apparently the last day we can push it out to, since it has been at the shippers’ for a month and they will return it if they have to store it any longer than that. She could not tell me what time they would be delivering it, but they will call between 4 and 8 the evening before for confirmation.

another giant thanks to eric for taking over all this rescheduling. when i last went to pick up my mother’s medications from the pharmacy they told me her prescription plan was no longer valid (!) so i’ve had to redirect my attentions to resolving all that…oh yeah, and i have a big work deadline on june 5th.

too. much. drama.

Um, so yeah, we’re not moving in tomorrow. We still have no working electricity.

We did succeed in finally putting a coat of paint on the bathroom walls last night, though.

The real accomplishment of the weekend was getting a coat of primer and two finish coats onto the ceiling, window frame, and door frame in the bathroom. Unfortunately I don’t have a picture to post where you can actually tell that anything has changed.

Meanwhile, in the half-bath, the old, leaky, many-gallons-per-flush toilet chose Sunday to decide to stop working at all. Fortunately we had planned to replace it all along and already had a nice new one ready to install. Naturally this took a lot longer than we expected, and included another trip to the hardware store to buy a new shutoff valve and flexible water supply connector. Steph repainted the wall behind it, which had missed the last couple of layers of repainting. So finally we got it in and…

The door won’t close. Bah. It’s the same size as the old toilet, but the drain opening is apparently further back in it, so it sits a little bit away from the wall instead of right against it, far enough out that the door runs into it. We’ll have to take the door off and remount it so that it swings out instead of in, but that will have to wait a little while. Meanwhile we can put up a curtain or something.

The other annoying part is that we thought we had bought the extra-high-efficiency toilet tank but after we got it installed, it turned out only to be the fairly-high-efficiency kind. Maybe the store will still be willing to swap it for the other.

Other minor stuff: repainting little bits of ceiling in the dining room and office around the light fixtures, and in the kitchen around some of the electrical outlets.

The electrical situation is still a bundle of stress. We’ve got movers scheduled for Thursday, but the best we’ve been able to get out of PG&E is that they *might* be able to fit us in to get the power hooked up tomorrow. Inside, there are still bundles of wire everywhere. It may yet work out, though…

Yesterday, Steph mentioned that the old water heater would be gone before we had a chance to take a picture of the old and new ones side by side. But as fate would have it, when we got to the house last night, the old water heater was still there, so here they are together:

no contractors called me at all today. weird. at least, if nobody is calling, nobody is giving me bad news.

yesterday, conversely, turned into another headache. i wrote previously that the electrician had passed the rough-in re-inspection; however, the inspector didn’t leave the green slip/sticker that pg&e needs to see before switching the service. grumble. so the electrician went downtown to the inspection office and was told that the inspector who did the initial electrical inspection hadn’t noted in the file that he had approved the panel wiring…thus, no slip. what? then why didn’t the inspector who did the re-inspection ask to see the panel wiring? the panel wiring, to my understanding, is/was the main thing getting inspected! geesh. so the electrician and i both have left voice mail for the first inspector. he hasn’t responded to my previous voice mails, so i’m not going to hold my breath to hear back… however, due to this hiccup, pg&e did not come switch the power yesterday and due to memorial day, isn’t scheduling any appointments until next week. who gets a 5 day weekend for memorial day? evidently, pg&e. grumble. grumble. grumble.

although, the plumber called with good news yesterday: they had told me the earliest they could start was the 27th, but at 8.30 yesterday they called and said, “hey, we have a cancellation and if you meet us over at the house, we can start right now.” hello, yes! since i had been running late and was still wearing my towel from the shower, eric went right over. they were having their lunch break when i stopped by on my lunch break yesterday, but this morning they proudly showed off the new on-demand (tankless) water heater and gas line. it’s really compact! i wish i had thought to take a photo of the old and new water heaters side-by-side…they were planning to do the piping and remove the tank today, so i don’t expect to see it when check in over there tonight.

i think the big questions on the minds of everybody who knows us are, “are you ever moving in?” and “aside from the inspector/water heater stress, what have you been doing for the past two weeks?”

well, we gave notice to be out of the apartment june 1…we’re very skeptical that we will have both the electric and the water heater/plumbing done by then. also, movers seem to be in short supply since everybody wants to move memorial day weekend and we don’t want to schedule one until pg&e has switched over the service. we have our fingers crossed for that to happen tomorrow.

the electrician didn’t return until thursday (1 week after the inspection that threw us into a tailspin), but worked through the weekend (saturday & sunday!) and spent what may turn out to have been the two hottest days of the year in our unfinished attic. he was re-inspected today and passed (woo hoo!) so he’s optimistic that he can be done in the house this week. power to the garage is also in the contract, but as far as we are concerned he can come back and do that once we are moved in. he’s also doing work for the friends who recommended him to us, and they too are trying to move into their new home asap.

we’ve done what seems like a million little things, but no “big projects” and, alas, still have no “completed” rooms. the weekend before last eric touched up (paint) all the ceilings where the old light fixtures had been removed and sort of finished touching up the dining room. i took all the drawers out of the built-in china cabinet, filled in the holes from the old hardware, measured and drilled holes for the new drawer pulls, and sanded & re-painted the faces. we exchanged one of the bedroom lights that we had purchased (not realizing it used candelabra bulbs) for the craftsman-style stained glass one i had been wanting for our bedroom. also, the kitchen fixture that had been backordered forever from berkeley lighting arrived, so i think all the new and refurbished light fixtures are finally accounted for.

i decided that even though we still had lots of painting to do in the bathroom, i’d install the towel bars (mostly because i wanted to put the toilet paper on the toilet paper holder). this seemed like an easy task. ha ha ha. we couldn’t visualize if there would be enough space in the nook at the end of the tub for the chest of drawers i’d gotten and a towel bar, so we decided to unpack the chest and sit it in place. despite what seemed like an excessive amount of packing, the marble top of the chest was cracked…so a good block of time was spent returning/exchanging the chest. i did make the exciting discovery that i can take the back seats all the way out of my car and achieve a respectable cargo area. of course, the seats are now in garbage bags in the living room…anyway, we got the new chest home and unpacked. i’m quite pleased with it, however, we still haven’t gotten the towel bars installed.

instead, i decided that i had to strip at least a few layers of the globbed-on paint off of the bathroom door frame. round 1, weekend before last, was paint stripper and various scrapers…and less than stellar results. plus a drip of stripper must have dripped down in my glove resulting in a small but annoying burn/rash. bleh. so this past weekend i went to the tool lending library (yes, oakland has one too, albeit smaller than berkeley’s) and borrowed a heat gun (just what you want to be using on sat. afternoon when it is 95 degrees). either i was doing something wrong, or there was something wrong with the heat gun (it was radiating heat…) because while i seemed to be bubbling with sweat, the paint didn’t. on to plan b: attack with sandpaper and steel wool. i did this until my shoulder ached, then eric took over. alas, this remains a work in progress. i guess i’m just going to paint over the window frame without first removing what’s there. bleh. bleh. bleh.

also, the new toilet is leaking. grr. arg.

we took my old weber over to the house and i took some time out to grill on saturday. the first meal prepared in the new place! i can’t wait until the back yard is presentable enough to host bbqs…yum. eric did mow down the terrifying mutant dandelions…

as yummy as our grilled food was, the introduction of food garbage (in a bag in the kitchen sink) attracted several armies of ants which prompted me to pull out the crusty linoleum that was on the shelves of the lower kitchen cabinets to try to find where they were getting in to the house. there was so much dirt and debris that i gave myself a mini asthma attack and had to stop. plus, i felt like i was in the electrician’s way. so when eric had to leave to get ready for a social event with past co-workers, i went back to the apartment and fussed over some more painted-over hinges, then motivated some friends to play bridge with mom and me.

we’d love to subscribe to this philosophy, especially considering the number of little things that are broken yet are not getting fixed; however, the city of oakland has a different concept of “broke” than we do and are manipulating us into going broke to “fix” the one system that had already been updated to satisfactory working order before we bought the house:

so, last wednesday, two days before the end of our insurance extension, was the electrical rough-in inspection. the rough-in needs to be signed off on before we can switch power over to the new 200amp service (from the existing 30amp service). the service needs to be switched in order to have the insurance reinstated and in order to continue with the electrical work….again, all dependent on having the rough-in signed off on wednesday and pg&e honoring their appointment and switching the service on thursday…. however, the inspector came and completely threw the electrician for a loop by telling him that he wouldn’t sign off on the electrical rough-in because we had installed the water heater without a permit. the electrician says he tried to convince the inspector that we had not installed the water heater, but that the inspector was adamant that we were trying to sneak something by and that it needed to be corrected before we could be re-inspected for the electrical rough-in. his other correction comments were to cover exposed wiring in the crawl space (calling the crawl space a “basement” even though it doesn’t meet the requirements of a basement) and to add outlets next to the kitchen sink. we all think the kitchen sink thing is ridiculous because there were already going to be six outlets serving the approx. 5′-0″ of counter to the left of the sink and four outlets serving the approx. 5′-0″ of counter to the right. who could possibly need fourteen outlets on a 12′-0″ run of counter? however, i looked up the electrical code requirements in the 2006 international residential code–unfortunately, i didn’t have a copy of the new california electrical code handy (it is, however, based on the international building code), or i would have checked it too:

E3801.4.1 Wall counter space. A receptacle outlet shall be installed at each wall counter space 12 inches (305 mm) or wider. Receptacle outlets shall be installed so that no point along the wall line is more than 24 inches (610 mm), measured horizontally from a receptacle outlet in that space.

Exception: Receptacle outlets shall not be required on a wall directly behind a range or sink in the installation described in Figure E3801.4.1.

the figure is of a sink with counter passing behind. the counter behind the sink has to be less than 12″ deep for an outlet to not be required. so, as ridiculous as it is in our case, we need the additional outlets/locations to meet the letter of the code. too bad i didn’t look this up sooner so we could have just had one hole in the wall, but (a) the electrician should have known this and (b) it’s much more useful to have the outlets nearer the corner, since that’s where we’d be more likely to actually plug something in.

needless to say, i was very distressed by all this news on wednesday afternoon and completely frustrated by my inability to make contact with the inspector to discuss the matter–i left messages and think he may have returned my call while i was on the scooter and unable to answer the phone fast enough, needing to safely pull over and remove my helmet, etc…but he didn’t leave voicemail and didn’t answer when i called back only moments after my phone had stopped ringing.

so wednesday night i researched water heater types and installation requirements and took photos of our installation so that eric & i could head to the city on thursday morning to speak with an inspector and try to ascertain what about the current water heater installation violated code (i could guess with a fair degree of certainty, but i wanted it spelled out for me), what the city expected us to do (aside from paying for a water heater permit), and *most importantly* why this new issue was holding up the electrical work which has nothing to do with the water heater aside from being bonded nearby.

at the city inspection office we were able to meet with the inspector who did the electrical inspection. unfortunately, he had little to no interest in enlightening us as to what was wrong with water heater and/or how to correct it, saying only “to begin with, it is in a pit and i’m sure there are other violations, so you need to bring the installation up to code.” when i asked what the other violations might be, “is it the venting? what is considered acceptable venting? what is the definition of a pit? if we dig out further around the heater, is it still considered a pit? what exactly does the code say?” his response was, “we don’t design it for you. you need to get a permit and hire a professional.” i did not feel this was enough information to really be helpful, but after talking in circles foe awhile, we could eventually tell we weren’t going to get any more information, so we moved on to asking why this undefined water heater work couldn’t be happening simultaneously with the finish electrical work instead of holding up the rough-in. the answer was that the bonding is part of the rough-in and when we move water and gas pipes to the new water heater location (even though we will most likely use a new heater in the current location and not change the bonding location) he’d have to re-inspect the bonding.

how. supremely. frustrating.

we then tried to discuss the outlet issue, but got a lecture about how he was already making a concession for us to install additional outlets in the wall beside the windows (about 18″ from the gang of six outlets, and 30″ from the edge of the sink) instead of in the tile backsplash. since we weren’t technically meeting code for this anyway, there was no point in arguing the “spirit of the code” with someone who was already talking to us as if we were ungrateful children, especially when the open appointment hour was just about over.

grrrrr. arg.

so we went and got a permit that will allow us to either relocate or replace the water heater and headed off to work. from work i set up appointments with two plumbers to discuss water heater options. the first one was available almost right away and i was too stressed to concentrate on other people’s permitting problems, so en route to meet plumber #1 i stopped by moran plumbing supply to get a distributor’s take on the requirements (and prices) for tankless and “stubby” hot water heaters (these being the products most likely to fit in our crawl space).

plumber #1 was very nice but i felt like he was (a) trying to sell me on services i didn’t actually need and (b) where he said we could and couldn’t put a heater didn’t jive with what the folks at moran told me…basically, his price was high and for a system that wasn’t quite what i was looking for.

just as plumber #1 was leaving, the mechanical inspector showed up. she wrote up a minor correction on the duct insulation for the heating system (we hadn’t had it inspected previously because it needed to be wired to it’s own circuit first) and then was gracious enough to discuss our water heater with me. not only did she list the potential safety concerns of the existing hot water heater, but she walked around the property with me to discuss acceptable vent discharge locations and clearances should we get a direct-vent tankless unit. she wasn’t able to answer all my venting questions, but gave me her card and took note of a few things to look into for me. she explained that the electrical bonding does not need to occur at the water heater and agreed to talk to the other inspector about why he was requiring the water heater to be corrected before the electrical work could continue.

i admit that i was dubious that she would live up to her word, but the next morning she called with answers to most of the unresolved questions from the previous day AND with the exciting news that we do not need to have the water heater permit closed out prior to calling for a re-inspection of the electrical rough-in! yes, we still need to have the water heater installation corrected, but what a relief to not have that further waylaying the electrical progress! since i’m paranoid and needed to let the electrician know what was going on anyway, i wrote up notes of the phone conversation with the second inspector and cc-ed her on the e-mail. she confirmed the accuracy of my notes and told me to contact her if we had further problems! i’m very impressed. which sidetracks me to the following observation…

over the past several days i’ve relayed this saga to a variety of folks–some co-workers, friends & family, and neighbors. the non-homeowner friends generally react with shock and empathetic outrage, while most other home-owners and architect-ish folk react with a much more jaded welcome-to-the-club kind of attitude that has, in multiple cases, spiraled into a ‘because i had this terrible experience with a home inspector, i did x, y and z without getting a permit.’

it’s an unfortunate perpetual cycle that won’t be broken unless both homeowners and inspectors lighten up. if homeowners are all too jaded to get permits, no wonder building officials are looking beyond the scope of what they are specifically called to inspect; and if building officials continue to look for additional issues to call homeowners on, no wonder they try to skip the system…i mean, this water heater thing, in addition to the timing issues that i’ve been droning on about, is a big fiscal setback for us. to put it in perspective, it is going to cost more than the heating installation and take us that much further from our goal of being able to reshingle the exterior.

following the good news, i meet with plumber #2 who’s ideas seemed much more in line with my research and my ideas of how we should proceed. his estimate came in today; while it is $2k less than the one from thursday, it’s still much higher than we were hoping. it’s also comparable to the estimate from the guys who installed the heating system, so like it or not, i guess that’s what we’re spending…we only have a verbal quote from the heating contractor, so we’re looking for some more concrete info. from them before we hire someone. theoretically, the work should only take about three days.

so, my story progressed beyond the insurance deadline without further mention of that issue. why? because amazingly, it was resolved despite the power not having been transferred over yet! sending a photo of the wired panel and a letter from the electrician’s office stating that the service was installed and *ready* to have power connected was evidently satisfactory enough for them to reinstate the policy. i’m assuming/hoping that by the time they realize (if they even realize) that the important thing is not having the panel, but having power to the panel, we’ll be able to prove that the new service is up and the old service is decommissioned. in the meantime, i roll my eyes.

in unrelated news: i bought ladybugs for the rose bush, we had to postpone the washer/dryer delivery again, and we did more painting and other miscellany over the weekend.

we made the final payment to the bathroom contractor on may 1st, exactly 1 month after he started work…which is exactly twice as long as his estimate for how long it would take…we did, however, request a few additional services (the laundry room hookups, a vent for the kitchen sink…) and we are very pleased with the quality of his work, especially the tile. unfortunately, this does not actually mean the bathroom is finished. the electrician still needs to install the exhaust fan and poke holes in the wall for the sconces. once those things are roughed in and the existing ceiling light fixture is down, eric and i can, you guessed it, prime and paint above the wainscoting! i could have finished painting the wainscoting last weekend, but i’m still trying to decide if i want to try to strip some of the innumerable layers of paint off the door and window frames first (either way, the frames will repainted with the same paint as the wainscoting…and the areas of the wainscoting that are incomplete are the portions near the door and window and the top of the shelf). it’s also kind of silly to repaint the window frame before we repair the window. there are three windows with broken cords/counterweights and a few with cracked glazing–the bathroom window has both a broken cord and a cracked pane. it looks like these are things we could fix ourselves (though it is my understanding that reglazing can be tricky), but regardless of whether we do it ourselves or have it done, the windows need to be removed (to get to the access panel for the counterweights) and that means chipping away layers of paint and carefully removing the window trim from the jambs. this is the part that we’re both nervous about screwing up. of course, with the window and trim removed, think of what a professional looking job we could do stripping, sanding and repainting the window and frame!

the electrical work is still dragging along at the pace of a wounded tortoise (please note that it was also estimated to be completed by april 15th); however, the electrician assures us that we will be switched over to the new power by the end of the week (which is our insurance deadline). there are several aspects of the electrical work that we are unhappy about, but the bulk of our frustration stems from feeling forced into compromising what we want because neither pg&e (the utility company) nor the city inspector are going to compromise on anything. our desires seemed pretty simple: locate the new electrical panel and meter somewhere other than the front of the house and such that we can still park a car in the driveway. so, what are we ending up with? that’s right, a big ugly electrical service on the front of the house…and all the dickering back and forth about it is most of why the electrical work is so far behind schedule.

to the electrician’s credit, he did install it tight in the corner (as i requested) so that it’s mostly hidden when you approach the house from the other direction (which means *i* won’t necessarily see it on a daily basis). we’ll also try to have it (and that big conduit) recessed into the wall when we have the shingles redone.

the horizontal white stripe in the windows is the fancy new top-down-and-bottom-up shades. we won’t leave them like that…i was just trying them out. we got them for the dining room, mom’s bedroom and our bedroom. once i have a place to set up the sewing machine again, i’m going to make curtains for the living room (and possibly elsewhere).

our progress this past weekend isn’t very monumental either. i was grumpy and frustrated on saturday and eric seemed out of sorts on sunday. nonetheless, we managed to get a coat of paint on the kitchen beadboard & trim, finish painting in the laundry room (not including the little medicine cabinet we removed), and tackle a round of touch-ups in the dining room.

you can see another one of the broken cords taped to the upper window. aside from the blue (which is the same blue we’re going to use in the bathroom…it is lighter than the blue in the dining room…which is hard to tell from the photos since the dining room gets an amazing amount of natural light…), the paint in this room is the stuff left over from the previous owner. the washer and dryer are scheduled to be delivered in less than a week!

we also tackled some of the weeds that had taken over the mostly-neglected garden plot. i’m hoping to smother those that are left with a cloth weed barrier. the cloth weed barrier in the front had been doing a good job preventing new weeds in what i had envisioned being a flower bed, but neighborhood animals had dug enough of it up that it looked like trash, so i pulled it the rest of the way out from under the mulch and threw it away. i didn’t bother with mulch on the back yet…i may pull the barrier up and tackle the rest of the weeds next week.

i almost miss the oxalis (at least it was pretty). what has grown up in it’s place are these terrible sticky, prickly weeds that make me itchy and these huge mutant-looking dandelions that are about three feet tall. yuck. see the edges of the two small trees in the photo? the one on the left seems to be infected with something that leaves a white residue and the one on the right (which seems healthy) is fruiting what might be apples. also, the rose bush in the front has aphids, which i’ve heard is a bad bad thing.

The weird thing about this weekend that Steph didn’t mention in the last post is that when we got to the house Saturday morning, the door was open and someone had installed window blinds without our consent!

We had actually ordered the window blinds, but Steph had called them to postpone the installation since we weren’t done painting yet. But they didn’t listen and came anyway, and the bathroom contractors were there and let them in.

The other thing that had originally been scheduled to be delivered over the weekend and that we had postponed was the washer and dryer. Fortunately they did listen and didn’t come, because we still had lots of painting to do in the laundry room. We did a first coat of it, at least, on Monday night, and now it looks like this:

while eric painted two more coats of paint in the kitchen on saturday and primed the laundry room on sunday, i spend endless hours in the bathroom priming and painting the wood wainscot. i kept hazily recalling the karate kid and “wax on, wax off” unfortunately, i don’t remember the catch phrase for the scene where daniel is painting the fence. painting the beaded plywood requires a surprising amount of attention to detail (surprising only because it’s all going to be one color) to get enough coverage without having the paint pool in the beaded ridges or look gloppy on the trim. eric speed things along saturday evening by helping with some of the priming — he seems to be able to cover twice as much ground in half as much time and without his help i’d probably have only made it halfway around the room — however, i’m really proud of the wall i took my time on; i think it’s one of the first things we’ve accomplished that looks as good as i would expect from a professional.

there is hope that the rest of the painting projects will still come out wonderfully too. the kitchen walls no longer look like they were colored with a giant green highlighter. after three coats, the “overt green” (apple green) now matches the paint sample. it’s not a subtle color choice by any stretch of the imagination, but eric and i still agree that in combination with the white casework and appliances it’ll make the kitchen cheerful and fun…and that’s exactly what i need to placate myself until we can afford to address the kitchen’s other shortcomings.

we’re also really pleased with the dining room color selection. “poolhouse” is a deep blue-gray that contrasts beautifully with the white woodwork. we still have many many hours of touch-ups to do in there. to “get the house ready to go on the market” the sellers’ real estate agent had a painter in to paint, well, everything and it seems that very little prep work went into that paint job. the painter’s tape pulled jagged patches of that paint off the box beams and there are random chips flaking off everywhere. bleh. anyway, we eventually want to strip away the white paint in the dining room, so we don’t want to be spending too much time and adding too much more paint to the woodwork. it will most likely be a few years before we get to the wood-stripping project, so it looks like next weekend will include many hours on the ladder doing touch-up work in the dining room.