The view from my front deck.
The view from their front deck. Yikes!
The east side of my house before the Big Dig.
Front again.
East side. The new addition attaches here.
My quirky draftsman Don takes measurements before creating the plans for my new addition. Though he promised to hold my hand throughout the project he went MIA soon after the county approved my building and he was paid in full. Turned out to be typical of just about everyone on this project. Moral: DO NOT PAY UNTIL ABSOLUTELY, 100% SATISFIED AND KNOW THAT YOU WILL NEVER NEED THEIR HELP AGAIN.
The Polynesians pretending to work. They showed up, looked around for a half hour and said they would be back in the morning. Never heard from them again until the State investigator knocked on my door to ask me to ID the guy they would prosecute for fraud and operating without a license!
Jack hammering the obnoxious rock blocking my way to the foundation
The crook smiling because he thinks he's going to steal my money. Luckily, I canceled the check before he had a chance.
Footings go in
Footings done, on to the foundation.
My new upstairs office gets framed
Entrance to the mother-in-law apt.
Basement living room gets framed
View of the new office from the old office. This will be Sage's new playroom once I clear out my junk.
new office
Chris frames the downstairs bathroom.
New entryway.
back of the new addition.
west side of the new addition
I've got siding!
We tear down the wall between my old office (Sage's new playroom) and my new office.
The closet becomes my bathroom and my bedroom becomes my closet. At least for now.
My brand new jetted tub!!
Plumbing out my old closet.
My old bathroom will soon be my new (smaller) walk-in closet
Time to drywall. The first sheetrocker I hired ripped me off and taught me another important lesson- never pay an hourly rate to a chainsmoker and never, never believe someone who raves about how fast a worker they are. Some guy named Scott Rodriguez from Craigslist charged me $20/hr and took constant smoke breaks, moved like a turtle, so that his total hours added up to about 10x more than the actual work performed. You're fired!
Prepping for insulation in my new office
The Second sheetrocker. Lucas was a nice guy but a total slacker. Had no idea what he was doing and it cost me four weeks of wasted time (and another two to fix his screwups) on a job that should have been done in two weeks.
Bathroom gets sheetrocked---- WITH THE WRONG MATERIAL. The inspectors inform me that you cannot use greenboard in a bathroom. It all has to be replaced with Concrete backer board
Ryan's "thunderroom" gets framed.
My office is finally insulated.
We knocked out the wall between my old office and the new one.
Entry to the new downstairs
Downstairs gets drywalled
Old house, meet new house
Another of Lucas' screw-ups. All of the holes for the sockets and swithes were cut too big. :( Chris Monroe comes to my rescue and redoes just about everything I had hired Lucas to do.
Check out my concrete floor. Ryan and I acid stained it ourselves. We still need to seal it.
Holes too big. :(
New office gets sheetrock
Another bonehead move from Lucas. He puts the walls up before the ceiling and now I have a four inch gap to deal with. Again Chris fixes the problem.
Oops. Lucas is supposed to screw the edges of the sheetrock into the studs.
Chris has to pull off drywall and repatch so that the edges line up with the studs.
Tiling my new bathroom
Had to fire the tile guy. Another one that had no clue what he was doing. He wasted two boxes of my materials
My new shoe shelf in my new closet. Anyone need size 7.5 hiking boots? :)
Sanding the new office
Almost ready for paint in the new office
Looove the new built in book shelf. The other side will have chalkboard paint so Sage can draw.
More tiles gone bad.
Had to call in someone else to finish the job. He whizzed in and out in three hours. Would have been a great guy if he hadn't disappeared as soon as he was paid. He forgot to grout a few places and would not return my calls or emails. If you hire a guy named Mike Portillo, don't pay him until you've looked over everything and are completely satisfied. Otherwise, you'll never see him again. Oh, and kiss any workmanship warranty goodbye. Just hope I won't have issues down the road...
The entry downstairs is almost ready for paint too! Just needs the mud on the ceiling.
soon to be Sage's playroom
New space lived in...
New color for my master bedroom
