Construction - Month 2 - Foundation & Underfloor

The fun continues.. It's getting more exciting since framing is only a couple weeks away where the new home will start to take shape. I'm looking forward to that..

Week 5

Finish forming

Inspection

Pour Foundation

Week 6

Framing Start
First floor hardwood flooring demo
First floor leveling begins
First floor underfloor install begins
1-2 days of rain

Week 7

This week we made some significant progress on the topic mentioned last month about our siding issue. I found out that I could request a session with the city's historic planning committee to request that my home be removed from the historic resource list - thus making it no longer historic going forward  and thus - allowing me to abide by normal demo and building guidelines instead of historic rules which are more strict. I had to submit 8 copies of a letter outlining my request, justification for the request, sets of plans, and supporting photos and documentation well before the session.

The session was interesting. It was a strange blend of informal (all of us seated at a table) and formal (with introductions, motions for decisions, and so forth). Ultimately they came to a decision pretty quickly in my case. Because the relatively non-historic plans were already approved, and because the home was well underway in construction (was "vested"), and because it never did go through the historic committee for review, they had no real choice but to approve the request. They were a bit frustrated by the fact that the whole renovation never went through a historic review, but that wasn't my fault and in fact we specifically asked at the time whether it would. So sadly there is one less historic home in the city but at the same time I will end up with a beautiful new home when all is said and done.

What that means to me and the siding issue is that now that the home will not be considered historic going forward, I won't need to stick to wood siding and can in fact put the more resilient and green hardieplank siding on that I wanted from the beginning. Win!

Work done this week (see photos):

First floor underfloor work continues..
2.5 days of rain.. lost most of the week
Initial shopping of exterior windows & doors

Week 8

I've been looking over the window and doors quote and asking questions, educating myself, and discussing it a lot realizing that once they arrive, they'd better be right. So every minute detail from the grills on the windows, to the types of screens, to the color, to the brand and model, to the style and finish of the hardware needs to be confirmed. I'm so tired of staring at this cryptic quote that it's hard to read it anymore. But my order of Anderson A-series doors, french doors, double hung windows, casement windows, and insect screens are officially done. 

Dove grey on the exterior, unfinished (to be painted) on the interior. Bronze hardware. Some fancy TruScene insect screens on certain windows, Oh and I went white on the exterior of the various doors because i think it'll give the overall look some "pop".

Work done this week (see photos):

First floor underfloor work completes..
Floor joists, support, crawl spaces, etc..
Inspection of underfloor frame done
First floor sheet floor done
Order for exterior doors and windows placed

wood for first floor walls?

Next Month..

Next month we should see the first floor walls go up, the second floor subfloor built, and the second story walls go up. Exciting times!

Construction - Month 1 - Site Prep, Demo, Forming

So site prep and demolition only took a week and the overall construction project is contractually supposed to take 4-6 months.. 

Week 1

Site Prep & Demolition (see previous update and photos)

Week 2

Some more demo - Porch, concrete, windows, plumbing, electrical
Elevation Cut
Rain - No Activity

Week 3

Lots more Rain - No Activity

Several days of drying out

Week 4

This was more of an eventful week. In addition to the items worked on listed below, the builder wanted to meet me on site about a problem that had some options to resolve that I needed to make a decision about (I figured this meant that he needed me to spend more money.. :). 

Turns out, there were three problems. First, the home had no subfloor. Thats right, the hardwood flooring that you see in the photos is directly on top of the floor joists. It's no wonder the floor was bouncy in some spots.. Normally, the flooring material is on top of a plywood subfloor which is on top of the floor joists. You can see what i'm talking about here:

The second issue was that the existing floor was not level enough. He ran a laser down the floor and showed me how it was roughly 1.5" off as you moved further down the house. In fact the home did have an addition at some point. You can see where the original house was (roughly the rear 1/2 of the home) and where the transition of the addition occured (the front half of the home). When you run a laser down it, it slopes down to the center of the house, then back up to the front. Also from left to right when facing the rear it slopes down. This needed to be corrected else these problems will simply translate to the 2nd story.

To correct these two problems basically is going to cost me around $8k where $1500 of it is in materials and the rest is labor. They plan to tear up the hardwood and put in a subfloor, after they level the various joists and whatnot. My first real surprise.

The last issue was that the wood siding issue came up again. I want hardieplank due to it's resiliency. The town wants the style of siding to stay the same which doesn't work with the hardieplank since there is a minor difference in appearance. The original wood siding sits such that one piece sits on top of the next in a small channel. Hardieplank isn't sold in that kind of version. Instead, one piece overlaps the next slightly. The frustrating part is that the average laymen wouldn't notice the difference but because the home was built before 1940, the rule is that I need to stick to the original style. This despite the fact that virtually nothing about the house is staying all that historic (note different gable roof style, new porch that wraps around with craftsmen style posts, 2nd story, etc). So I need to find a way to address this else I be forced to install/leave the wood siding.

Work done this week (see photos):

Remove concrete debris
Layout the footings

Dig the foundation

Start forming

The start of a renovation

Recently, the government declared a state of emergency due to drought conditions here in California. I've been joking that I know exactly when it'll start raining and that that'll be when i get a start date for my project. Sure enough, after being dry all winter, this past week in early February there was a shift off the coast in weather conditions and it's been raining since. Coincidence that my start date is 2/17? I don't think so.. This past weekend we got 21" of rain over the weekend in some areas and looking ahead at the forecast there is more rain coming.. Ah well!

Preparing to start..

A month or so I received word that the town's building department had accepted our response to the comments and officially accepted the plans. I was told to go to the town to draw permits. The builder and I met there and to my shock I was asked to pay $13,044.18, which is the remaining amount owed of $15,700. Up until now i'd been loosely assuming that permits would at best run me around $9,000 so what the hell!?

Ultimately, the permit related fees appear to only be a bit over $7,000. The rest that I wasn't accounting for mostly centered around plan check fees and impact fees:

1. $1,832.28 because they got the sqft wrong the first time around and there was some additional sqft on the plans that i had to pay an impact fee for.
2. $1,408.95 in plan check fees.. this is what they charge you to check your plans.
3. $1,520.00 a residential road impact fee
4. $660.40 for a California Title 24 fee (part 2?)

For those interested, here is the kind of information that the town gives you.. Note that I had no real way to anticipate what i'd be hit with. This was by a long shot the most difficult area to estimate and budget. The town will give you a list of all their fees but not break down which ones will be applicable to you in part because they really won't know until they review your plans and see what you're doing at which point it'll be time to bill you for them. The way that I originally estimated my permit fees was to look up other similar project's online to see what they got charged figuring it'd be roughly similar.

Building Schedule & Contract

My builder did finally get me a contract. Reviewing it I realize I have no real idea what is reasonable to go into such a contract since i've never seen one before. It is basically made up of describing the work to be done along with a bunch of provisions basically designed to protect him or to set a price and process on changes. For the most part it seemed ok to me and in poking around online I didn't notice anything that alarmed me per say. But there is a nagging feeling when reading through it that you don't really know what to look for and that you're basically relying on those references who said they had a good experience. I focused on the online information that I could find as to what was reasonable contractually, signed it, and sent it in.

The basic schedule was Demo would take a week, foundation and framing a couple of months, then all the rest including plumbing, electrical eta for an estimated time frame of 4-6 months. Contractually there was even a daily clause punishing him $200/day if he's late.

His draw schedule mostly has him receiving money as work completes. There was the $5,000 up front to have him draft the schedule and contract and he asked for $35,000 to start, but the rest is due after various phases of work complete. The foundation, the framing, various finishings, and then one payment at project completion.

Moving out..

Packing is always fun (not). It's only then that you realize how much stuff you have and that you could probably live with buying less. Since my property has a detached garage and since I can't afford to redo the garage yet, I am moving everything I own into the garage for the duration of the project.

I nailed up the garage windows after buying wood from home depot, I installed a deadbolt on garage's door, and I installed a lock on the garage door itself to secure things better from theft. I also found and purchased a battery powered alarm which actually works superbly for so little money. With lithium AA batteries it should last more then 6 months easily..

The movers showed up and moved my things into the detached garage in about 2 hours. Funny how it took me the better part of a day or two to box all that up. Somehow that just seems unfair.. :)

Demolition

Once the contract was signed things moved fast. The site fence and toilet was set up and he told me that demo would start next week. Sure enough, after a day of delay so that he could talk to the inspector about what needed to be surgically preserved, off they went..

It only took a day for them to gut the interior. All the counters, toilets, bathtubs, ceiling fans, etc were removed. The drywall and plaster was yanked out. I poked my head into the back door and inside all that was left is framing. Pretty surreal..

It only took about 1.5 more days to remove the whole roof structure, part of the siding, some things they missed inside, and to clean up. They left me a small pile of things that i asked them not to toss out because I planned to reuse them after the renovation or to sell them. Here is where things stand after only 1 week..