Tag: contractors

Plan Revision

August 18, 2015 / / 0 Comments

When we switched to doing things The Right Way™ a big part of the reasoning was that it would simplify the project and save time. By moving into the basement we would be able to completely demo the second floor in one step, and nearly all the work done by contractors could be done at the same time. That last part will translate into some cost and time savings, but it has the unfortunate side effect of putting all the big-ticket items into one big chunk. We’ve paid for the project out-of-pocket so far, but we’re looking at a rapid succession of plumbing, electrical, HVAC, spray foam, new roof, drywall, hardwood floors, cabinets, and appliances. Simply put, it’s not in the budget. At the same time, we’re at the point where we want to get the project finished and not spend the next twelve years picking away at it.

The other option is to take out a loan. While these big-ticket items are a year or more out, we’re also looking at some big expenses with the basement, so I figured if we’re going to have to take out a loan anyway, why not just get it now? I looked into a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC), but after talking to lenders it seems the only way to borrow against the house is if it doesn’t need any work done. So I found a second option, a HomeStyle loan (which sounds like a breakfast side), where they appraise the house based on the completed state and pay out as inspections verify the work. That sounds like it would work for us, but there’s a couple catches. While it’s possible to get a HomeStyle loan that allows you to do the work yourself, most of them want contractors lined up and ready to go. Because it’s based on the completed state, the house has to actually be complete when they’re done, and finally, the process can’t take more than seven months. With all the work we’re still planning to do ourselves, there’s no way we could get the whole house done in that time.

Instead we came up with a modified approach. We’ll pay for the basement work out-of-pocket, as well as the demo, framing, and windows on the second floor. When that’s all done and we’re to the point where all those previously mentioned big-ticket items are looming, we take out the loan and get everything else done. We’d leave the attic and basement unfinished, as well as a lot of the trim and finishing work, but the rest of the house would need to be livable, meaning drywall, bathrooms, and kitchen. In fact, while we’re at it we’re hoping to get a few other big-ticket things done too, like the front and back porches, the siding, and the garage. The result is that the project gets put on fast forward.

We have a lot of things to figure out to make this happen, and a lot of work to do before, during, and after this process, but the idea that we might be able to get the house so much further along so quickly (relatively) is exciting, even if it means we’ll have a bigger loan to pay back. If everything goes to plan (caveat: it almost certainly won’t) then we could be living on both floors of the house in just eighteen months. Since we’ve been living in the house for four years already, that’s pretty amazing. Now if I could just get some plumbing quotes, we’ll be on our way!

Contractor Wrangling

August 12, 2015 / / 0 Comments

For the first part of the year, almost the whole first half, we were going like gangbusters on the house. After we returned the mini-excavator and the last dumpster was hauled away, we kind of ran out of steam. We’d go down to the basement and putter about for a little while, digging up the rest of the disconnected sewer pipe to the catch basin, hauling out some of the remaining dirt piles, breaking up the landing outside the back door, but for the most part, a sense of dread and just being overwhelmed took hold. Digging by hand in the clay soil is just terrible and with our dumpsters gone we didn’t really have anywhere to put it. A series of over-tonnage charges came through on the dumpsters that added up to a lot of extra money. We basically got screwed on the dumpsters and should have gone straight to the hauler instead of using a service.

There were some also simple realities of life going on: our son Derek is going to speech therapy twice a week in the evenings, which occupies a decent chunk of our work time. Until she got a new job a few weeks ago, Sarah was working at a temp job that put a lot of uncertainty into our house budget. As for me, I was just sick of the basement. It’s summer, there are all kinds of things to do, and our weekends were more often than not full of fun activities with friends and family. In short, not much got done on the house.

Now that Sarah’s permanently employed, we’re back to hoping we can move into the basement before winter sets in. The only way that’s happening is if we hire out a big chunk of the work: namely finishing the dig out and pouring the new concrete floor, and the sewer plumbing. So over the last month or so we’ve been in contact with a few concrete contractors, a GC, and a couple of plumbers. We got a couple quotes on the dig out and the floor, as well as the new exterior back steps, but getting a plumbing quote has proven elusive. The GC we met with first said he would give us a quote but he never did, plus a lot of what he said really didn’t align with what I understand code to be, even though he said he knows all the inspectors and does it all the time.

Then we met with a plumber that gave us a whole different idea for how to do the sewer plumbing. We were planning on having our sewer pipe run underground, gravity-fed, with a backflow preventer (since Chicago has a combined storm system and high rain can lead to sewer backups). The plumber told us that the city now has additional requirements for backflow preventers that makes them difficult and expensive, and to instead use an overhead sewer line from the main stack to the front of the house. The basement fixtures would drain into an ejector pit that pumps up to the overhead line. The advantage is that it’s unlikely there would ever be a backup because it’s much higher up, and even if it did it would just back up to the ejector pit. Better still, we could run the whole thing in PVC instead of cast iron (which the City requires for below grade sewer). As a result it would be cheaper as well as a performing better. The disadvantage is we would have a bulkhead along the outside wall, but I think we can make that work. Unfortunately, he also said we’d have to have a trench for the new water main, since the city inspectors want to be able to see that it’s one contiguous pipe.

Unfortunately they still haven’t gotten us a quote, and now they want to come back out next week since their “outside guy” missed the last appointment. Needless to say I haven’t gotten a quote yet. We have another plumber coming out on Saturday morning. Hopefully they’ll both get us quotes; after wasting most of the summer, now we need to get moving on this project, but without quotes we can’t plan or budget.

Momentum

October 25, 2013 / / 0 Comments

We put in the last two bay windows last week, meaning all of the first floor windows are in, aside from the sliding door that we have to hold off on. I need a few more strap anchors and some more flashing tape to call the last window done, and we still have to go around with the Great Stuff and backer rod to complete the air sealing. In addition, Lester, our radiant heating guy, finished the rough-in work ahead of our new boiler installation. It’s been a lot of work but it’s also a very tangible feeling of progress that we’re eager to keep up.

Derek helping

Derek checks for square

Our next major goal is to get the new subfloor installed. We need that done in order to start a whole host of first floor projects like framing interior walls, building the new stairs,  insulating the exterior walls, and getting the radiant floor heating installed. With the weather getting colder day by day, it’s those last two in particular that have our interest piqued.

With so much riding on the subfloor, and the time required to level the wonky floor joists, we’ve decided to hire it out. I’m working on getting quotes this week and hopefully we’ll get some good numbers and people. We’ll need to set to work clearing out the first floor. It’s accumulated an impressive pile of scrap wood from the removing the old windows, plus the giant steel pallet the door shipped on, the sliding glass door we can’t install yet, and all of our tools.

The other thing standing in the way of new subfloor is the radiators, steam pipes, and chimney from the old boiler. The old boiler is disconnected, and so far we’ve been making do with electric heaters. We’ve been reluctant to remove it because it’s still a viable way to heat the house if the new boiler takes longer to show up than the freezing weather.

In short, we’ll get started clearing things out and see how things play out. Hopefully we’ll get our new boiler in quickly and the chimney and pipes will come down before they’re in the way of the subfloor contractor. Worst case, we’ll have to hook the old boiler back up and the contractor will have to wait or work around some things. Either way, things are moving and we’re getting excited.

Better Living Through Self-Delusion

June 11, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Ever since we put up the beam in the first floor I’ve been grappling with the unfortunate reality that I’m not as good at building houses as someone who does it for a living. This is an obvious statement, but it runs up against my perfectionism. We’re starting to do constructive work on the house rather than destructive work. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time, but now that it’s here I’m forced to confront the fact that my carpentry skills are not up to my own standards. I’m also forced to either accept less-than perfect results or redo things I barely have time to do in the first place.

One of our primary goals in building our house ourselves was to make sure it was built right. To achieve this I’ve done a lot of research, a lot of reading, a lot of planning, and we’re spending a lot of money for the right materials. All of that still butts up against the lack of experience I have at physically doing it. I have a level, a square, a measuring tape and good eyes, but things still don’t wind up fitting the way I expect them to.

One of the things I take pride in is a level of honesty with myself and the introspection to see when I’m not doing a good job. Ira Glass talked about the difference between taste and skill, and while he was speaking about the creative pursuits, I don’t think there’s a difference. I know what good quality construction looks like. I can see what’s wrong with every building I walk into, and appreciate it when things are well made.

We watched a lot of Holmes on Homes before starting this project, seeing horror stories of bad craftsmanship from shady contractors. Because I knew I wouldn’t accept less-than-good quality, I convinced myself that I would do a better job, but I failed to understand that just because I would doesn’t mean I could. I recently read a blog post by Allison Bailes discussing his experience building a green home and the role his own self-delusion played in convincing him that he could do it himself and to plow ahead despite setbacks. In a separate post he said that one of the top ten mistakes he made building his home was thinking he could save money by doing it himself.

On the one hand, without the self-delusion, he (and for that matter, Sarah and I) would probably never have undertaken the project in the first place. The self-delusion is necessary to convince yourself to do risky things. Once you’re committed, you eventually work a way through it. However, the self-delusion is only useful up front. Once you’re in the thick of it, self delusion only serves to prolong the project by telling you you can do it all. The question becomes, when is it actually a good idea to do it ourselves and when should we hire out?

There are always things that are worth doing yourself. The basement steel beam is a prime example. We started out convinced we needed to hire it out, got quotes of fifteen to twenty thousand dollars, and wound up doing it ourselves for about two thousand dollars. However, without the help of our friend Mike, a construction welder that was able to buy the steel and help us put it in, it wouldn’t have been so straightforward.

A counter example is the first floor LVL beam. We were quoted a bit under five grand to have it done. We did it ourselves for roughly sixteen hundred. That’s still significant money saved, but the time and effort it took, the quality of the finished product, and the lingering uncertainty of whether it was done 100% properly add up to me concluding I probably should have just written the check.

If nothing else, I’ve reminded myself to at a minimum get a quote for the work so I can make an educated decision. With Sarah in grad school for the rest of the year, my evenings are dedicated to watching our son, Derek. That means I can only work on the house on weekends or if I take off work, and individual projects that would take a contractor a few days may take me a month or more. There’s value in that time, and I’m slowly realizing that sometimes I need to pony up the cash if it will get things done. To start with, I’m going to get a couple quotes for the joist levelling and the subfloor. If one of them is reasonable, I’ll save myself a ton of time and effort and hopefully have a better product than I could do myself with the time allotted.

Going forward, we’ll take it one piece at a time. We don’t have a construction loan, so everything is out of pocket. That means we feel it acutely when we make big ticket decisions, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth it. I expect we’ll still wind up doing most of this project ourselves with the help of friends, but maybe a bit smaller “most” wouldn’t be so bad.

Project Review

September 17, 2012 / / 3 Comments

Sometimes it helps to take a moment and look at where we’re going and what we’ve done so far. At the moment I’m thinking about a bunch of different projects either in progress or upcoming, so to keep everything straight I’ll lay it out. It also helps for any random or occasional visitors to this blog to know what’s going on.

So, to recap, we bought this house in June of 2011. In addition to the first and second floor units, there was a basement apartment that was like something out of a horror movie. We spent two months fixing up the second floor unit so that we could move into it. When we moved in we put the laundry on the first floor where the kitchen had been as well as stored a bunch of our stuff in one of the bedrooms. Here’s the second floor living room before and after painting.

 

We knew that the support beam and columns in the basement needed to be replaced, so our first major project after moving in was to gut the basement unit. It was a moldy, disgusting mess. Here’s a picture of what it looked like before and after we gutted it.

 

With that done, we got some quotes on replacing the wooden beam and columns with steel, including new footings. The quotes were a lot of money, so we held off doing it right away. Our son Derek was born at the end of November, which interrupted some of our work on the house. I started using Sketchup and came up with a floor plan we liked. I even made a whole 3D model of the house, inside and out.

 

Then we found an architect and got him working on plans and permits with the city. We also started working on selecting contractors, including electrician, plumber, radiant heat and air conditioning installer, and concrete mason. Getting our plans together with the architect took longer than expected, so we decided not to wait until we had our permits before demoing the first floor. After moving the laundry and storage to the basement, we threw a demo party last month and gutted the whole first floor. Here’s the before and after gutting the first floor.

 

Along the way there have been a lot of smaller projects, like moving gas lines and plumbing, re-routing electrical, getting a new electrical panel installed, exterminating cockroaches and disposing of at least a dozen rat carcasses, checking the depth of our foundation footings, and a lot of planning.

So what’s next? Our immediate steps are to select a concrete mason, since that’s the only thing holding up our permit submission. Once that’s submitted we should have permits in thirty to sixty days. ComEd will be installing our new electrical service in the next few weeks. I have to remove the electrical running along the  beam in the basement, since we can’t replace it until I finish that, and the seemingly interminable cleanup on the first floor will need to be completed, including our room full of lath.

Once we have our permit, the beam and column replacement in the basement can take place. We may wind up doing that ourselves because it would save us a ton of money. Once that’s done we can demo the foyer and replace the bearing wall in the first floor with an LVL beam and columns, and close up and replace windows. We can start replacing the plank subfloor with plywood.

Next spring we’ll put in a new high efficiency hot water heater and boiler that will direct-vent, allowing us to remove the chimney. We’ll take out the front stairs, demo the second floor office (where the new stairs will connect), and frame the opening for the basement stairs. Then we can finish the subfloor and install the new stairs.

Then and only then can first floor construction really start: new front and back doors, framing, plumbing, electrical, and the first floor radiant system (all big projects themselves). Then it’s insulation, drywall, flooring, cabinets, doors, trim. I honestly don’t know how long that will take, but I’d be very surprised if it’s finished by the end of 2013, and that’s just the first floor.

Some of these pieces may move around. We were hoping to have the new radiant system in by this fall and that didn’t happen. We thought we’d have the basement beam in last fall. Things that cost less like replacing the stairs  may happen sooner –maybe even this winter– while replacing the windows doesn’t happen until later. Some things are fixed in order. We can’t frame until the subfloor is replaced, and we can’t do that until the beam and bearing wall are replaced, the chimney and radiators are removed, and the stairs are replaced. The chimney can’t be removed until we have the new radiator and hot water heater. It’s a very big jigsaw puzzle.

With my full time job, Sarah’s graduate school and job, and a 9-month-old baby, it’s going to be a long process. If you’re considering taking on a project like this yourself, make sure that firm timetables are something you can live without or that you have a lot more free time than we do. Make sure that if you’re doing it with someone else that you both have clear expectations. I still think that working on a two flat is the perfect way to do it. One of the things that makes this project so bearable is that when we’re done working we can just go upstairs where there’s no dust or debris, cook dinner in a real kitchen, relax on the couch, and sleep in our bed. A lot of home improvement projects aren’t so lucky.