We sprang a leak

There was a pretty serious amount of water coming out of a pipe at the back of the house after the driveway got jackhammered last week. Thankfully, our unpleasant plumber was out of town, so the concrete guy, Melesio, came to fix it instead. He's awesome, and a very nice guy.

He fixed the leak in the back, but the backpressure of shutting off the water created another leak at the water main/valve in the front yard. So, he borrowed some bread from us to plug the pipe. Huh? Yes, apparently this is what plumbers do to slow a leak enough to heat the pipe with a blowtorch when soldering a joint. Seems like there'd be a specific product for that. Nope. Wonderbread or Bimbo does the trick every time. At one point, Melesio asked me for another slice of bread, as someone on his crew got hungry and ate the other one.

We've hired Melesio to lay sprinklers and sod in the backyard, as well as pouring the concrete for the driveway and patio. If I could get him to finish everything left on the house I would, and I'm pretty sure we'd get our Certificate of Occupancy in half the time.

Loads of stuff

There have been lots of things happening at the house over the last few days:

• The painters have primed and prepped the interior of the addition.
• They're sanding window sills and other trim and have been taping off the front porch to prime and paint out there.
• We've finalized the trim color to Dunn Edwards's Iron Fixture:

• The plumber moved the water heater and removed it's housing so the back wall can be stuccoed.
• The siding is almost entirely done, just a small section remains to be done over the balcony.
  
• The railing has been installed on the balcony and looks very cool (despite having changed the design from horizontal to vertical rails to avoid the whole "toddlers think it's a ladder" issue).
• The balcony floor has been sealed with some noxious smelling stuff.
• The solar guys are installing the solar panels. Erin said she took some pictures of the panels before they were hoisted up, so I'll post those later.

It's very exciting to see so much happening all at once.

update:

• Concrete patching to fix a plumbing mistake from eight months ago will happen this week.
• Cleaning, sandblasting, and sealing the interior concrete floor is scheduled to begin next week.
  

Paper is up

The stucco and siding prep are finished, as near as I can tell. The main part of the addition will be a smooth stucco. The stairwell will be done in some sort of concrete siding. Not certain, but I think the colors will be gray for the stucco and orange (!) for the siding. The original part of the house will be cleaned and repainted. Color there is taupe-ish, I think.

Let the plumber plumb

These pipes were dropped off a few days ago. Some holes were drilled. The concrete has to be cut to move the sink drain back.

Concrete grooves

In this cruddy, low-contrast photo I took, you can imagine you see little grooves they cut into the concrete. These delineate the different rooms of the addition.
In reply to a question posted in the comments, the mistake with the slab cost about a week of time. No real worries, since they are still about two weeks ahead of schedule.

Slab

This is the slab. It is currently setting for a week before the framing begins. We very carefully selected a mix-in color for it (Messa Buff, ooh!) that happens to perfectly match the dirt. Great.

Foundation poured

There it is. All dry. Ready for the slab to be poured next.

Inspection passed

The inspector gave the go ahead to begin pouring concrete; I'll post pictures of that later.

Plumbed

The plumber has installed what he needed to before the concrete gets poured on Friday. You can also sort of see the grid of rebar that Kevin and Javier built to tie the existing foundation into the new one. The inspector comes today to make sure all is proper before the foundation goes in.

Rebar

Day 5
More reinforcing today. They started adding rebar in the trenches as well. There should be a plumber in the next day or two to put the pipes in there before the cement gets poured.

We met with James (the architect) yesterday, which was fun. I think we'll have to pick out the color of our concrete floor soon. This will run down the hallway to the stairs, in the studio, the little downstairs bathroom, and the back bedroom. They mix color into the concrete, so you can't change it later. Oh, the pressure!

I was nervous about the concrete floor until I happened to see it in my friend's kitchen. It was a very warm yellow, and she loves it.

Reinforcement

Days 3 and 4

Dirt. I'm not a neat freak or anything, but whoah! Dirt everywhere. In piles. Tracked through the house. Coating the driveway. It's hard when you're a nesting pregnant woman!

Also, I have to give this crew credit. I thought construction types usually finished around 3:30, but here it is 5:40 on Friday and they're still working. I really hope they get overtime.

They're reinforcing the trenches with boards. I'm not sure if they planned on doing this, but JP heard something about the dirt being really soft. I think they're going to try and pour concrete (cement?) on Monday, and then get the inspector here. Things seem to be moving so fast! (Remind me of this in about 120 days or so...)

Trenched

Day 2
Okay, so I guess technically this is Day 3 (but I'm sticking with 2 b/c all they did on the actual day 2 was put up a chain link fence and drop off a port-a-potty).

Today we had both a Bobcat and a little digger here. They got rid of the grass and laid out and dug the foundation. It's weird to see the trenches for the foundation -- it doesn't seem as huge as I was imagining, which is a good thing. No McMansions here, please!

One of my friends who's gone through an addition claims that demo, framing and roofing are the loudest parts. So hopefully framing will begin soon -- the sooner to get it over with.

I thought the loss of our backyard would be tragic, but my son is so into the machines that so far it hasn't mattered. He spent some time this evening running around in the trenches.

Will we see a cement mixer tomorrow?? Stay tuned.

p.s. We have a bunch of rebar in our front yard if anyone's interested...

Day of destruction, pt. 2

(Erin posting this one):
Good things about construction starting:
-- We broke ground before my water broke. Whoo-hoo!
-- A Bobcat going up and down the driveway is pretty entertaining for a 2 y.o.
-- They got so much done! Check out the photos. I was really impressed.

Bad things:
-- At 7:15 one of the workers asked to use our bathroom. Grrrrr.
-- It was SO loud. As in earth-shattering, wall-shaking loud. I'm hoping it's not quite so bad once demo is over. I feel really bad for our neighbors. Unfortunately, there's usually someone home on both sides of us. We might have to ply them with Porto's Bakery goods this weekend to sweeten things up.
-- Our phone stopped working about an hour in, and was out all day. Ooops. I do have a cell phone, of course, but reception sucks inside our house so it isn't super-useful.

They are ahead of schedule (yeah, I know it's only been a day, but I'm optimistic!), so we'll have a couple days off (good for neighbor relations). At the end of the week they'll be marking for the foundation, and on Monday they should be digging trenches. Or pouring concrete. Or something like that. Stay tuned...

CA | Boom

Hi, I'm Erin, JP's wife, and I'm doing a guest stint on Parkhaus today. We went to CA Boom today, which is a really cool home design show.

We're considering ditching the planned addition in favor of a series of sheds www.modern-shed.com. Just kidding, James! But we hope to add one in place of the lead-paint peeling husks we have in the backyard currently.

I'm also crazy about some tile that we saw, which maybe could be an accent in the master bath. It's fused glass; doesn't seem to be on their website, but there are these amazing drawer pulls (Did you ever think anyone could use "amazing" and "drawer pulls" in the same sentence?)

I think we've also ruled out using a concrete counter/sink in the bathroom. It's much smoother than I thought it would be, but probably too big a custom expense for us. I'd rather have cool tile!

Not that we'll have any money left for furniture, but we really liked this guy's stuff: www.yglesiaswoodwork.com. And he's just around the corner in Glendale.

That about wraps it up. Ronan is eagerly awaiting the arrival of the carpenters. Of course, we'll see how he feels about it when he can't go into the back yard! Hopefully they'll have some big machines to make up for it, though.

Marmoleum

I didn't realize Linoleum had left, but apparently it's now back. It's supposed to be relatively inexpensive when compared to hardwood, warm and soft when compared to polished concrete, and eco-friendly when compared to everything.
This one is a tile based system called Marmoleum.