Almost there!

So I realize I haven't posted lately.  That's because we're working NONSTOP to get the rental ready by tomorrow and be out of our house as well.

I just got the call of our first real mess up!  I didn't order a "counter-depth" fridge.  Apparently it sticks out too much!  Oops.  Too late now. 

Other than that, the unit really looks amazing.  I'll have to take a video tomorrow after everything's been cleaned.   The floors turned out really well (they're still laying the trim today).  

Talk about being down to the wire!  We are also moving out of our house this week.  Of course our unit isn't ready yet, so we're homeless for a couple weeks.   We risked it not being done and renting our place out, which makes it a little harder on us, but to be honest, after tomorrow when both tenants are moving in, I'll be glad to be done with our packing.  We're just doing it all in one week.  They're also hooking up the gas, hot water, and appliances today.  Fingers crossed that the tenant has hot water and gas.  

Here are some sneak peaks:

Still Moving Along!

So everything is still moving along pretty well!  The painters have started painting the rental downstairs (after 10 days of prep).  They really did a tremendous amount of sanding and fixing the old trim and walls.  At first we thought they were doing TOO good of a job, but we'll probably only do this once, so might as well do a good job.  Hopefully, they'll finish paiting soon and start on the floors.  The cabinets are almost installed in the rental and appliances are being delivered tomorrow!  The bathrooms are done (guess it's time to buy toilets and vanities).  The tile guys did a really great job.  We're so happy with the tile work that's been done.

Upstairs, the second group of drywallers were fired today.  Apparently, it was quite the scene.  The contractor wasn't happy with the job they were doing, so he asked them to leave.  Hopefully, third time's a charm with the next group he gets. 

There's been some work being done on the front as well.  They had to take the big tree out.  I guess the tree roots were causing the cement retaining wall to break open.  They just finished re-doing that retaining wall today and it looks great.  Here's a peek:

I can't wait for the metal fence to come down.  Several neighbors have asked if that's coming down!  It's the eyesore of the property still!  The contractor likes it for now as another layer of locks to get into the house. 

This weekend, we're doing a massive shopping trip!  We need a list of stuff to finish up the rental: countertop, vanities, light fixtures, toilets, misc hardware like toiletpaper holder, towel racks, etc.

Also, the 'warehouse' party was a success last Saturday night.  We had the music pretty loud and you weren't able to hear it from outside OR next door.  Of course we had to test it.   The toilet got installed Saturday morning, just in time.

We also signed leases for both units this week.  This is really happening! 

Finish Work!!

The tile guys are really working away.  They were there until 7:30 last night, which is always nice to see.  We really love how everything looks.  Here's a sneak peek of the rental showers:

The walls are also being worked on a lot.  They were really able to bring them back to life with a skim coat over everything.  You really can't tell what's old plaster wall and what's new drywall.  That process takes a long time.

Kekay and his guys are still prepping the rental for paint.  Man - that's a lot of prep work!  They're sanding down the trim, which has about 20 layers of paint on it. 

The contrator is working on replacing the trim that was ripped off - baseboards too.  It all looks really nice.

Hopefully that toilet gets installed for the party on Saturday night.  We're just saying it's a 'warehouse' theme.  Don't mind the dust!

Of course I had to try these things on.  {can you say two broken wrists}.  They are incredibly hard to walk in.  They might make an appearance at the party.  - reminder to hide these things.

The really great news is that the rental unit is pretty much pre-rented!  They haven't signed the lease yet, so I'm not going to spike the ball, but they're really excited about it.  We've been having open houses at our current place and had four groups interested in moving in.  We really hit it off with one group and asked them to move into the rental to be our neighbors downstairs.  They were really excited and jumped at the chance.   One of the women is in the wine business, so that's a pretty great start! 

We have another group for our current place as well and they're signing the lease next week.  That's a lot of financial pressure off, but now we need to really finish everything up by Sept 1st.  (Actually, we need to finish by August 30th so we can still go to Yosemite).  That's my goal!! 

That's a lot of stuff!

My parking spot in our garage is completely full of STUFF.  That's our appliances, some cabinets (the other 90% of the cabinets are in our current dining room), the rental floors and a bunch of painting supplies.   I'm really feeling the remodel now that I've got to find a street parking spot every day.  Jimmy says 'poor baby' (he finds a street parking spot every day.  :)

Full Steam Ahead

So everything is really coming together.  You can see the exterior paint is almost done!  It’s pretty dark!  I was a little shocked, but I that’s really what we were looking for. Dark and modern.  The painter really did an excellent job on the stucco with smoothing everything out and patching any cracks, holes or problems.  It almost looks like a new stucco job compared to what it was!  Try to envision it without the red doors and orange stairs, and without the old metal gate.  I’ll be glad when that front is cleaned up.  I’ve also got to head to the paint store to find that perfect shade of mustard for the doors.  Still figuring out what color to paint the steps.  It should be lighter, but not too light to show the city grime! 

The sheetrockers are getting close to done!  The mud is taking longer to dry than we had hoped, so their sanding has been delayed a couple days.  The good thing about doing two units is that we’re not losing time when the rental mud is taking a couple extra days – they just got a jump on the drywall in our unit.  They’ve got fans and heaters running like mad to dry it out.  

This is our kitchen area going into the living room!

A peek at the rental unit where the bookshelf was!

We’ve got Keiko, a manager that Jimmy works with, coming to lay our floors.  We also got our interior paint bids back – talk about breaking the budget!  We really underestimated that figure.  Thankfully Jimmy is resourceful and asked Keiko to get together a crew to bring over to do the painting.  This way, they can coordinate the floors and painting together and we’ll be paying this group hourly instead of a painting contractor.  The only downside is that we (Jimmy) needs to get all the supplies and kinda watch over them.  Both units flooring and paint look like they’ll take about 3 weeks, so Sept 1 is realistic, but we’ll be cutting it close!  

The tile also just arrived today for both bathrooms along with the flooring on the rental.  Sept 1 is the ultimate move-in goal, but the bigger goal is to have one unit done enough to throw a party next Saturday night.  We’re having a bunch of friends from LA come up for Outside Lands: http://lineup.sfoutsidelands.com/  next weekend, and the post-party is at our new place.  The contractor laughed when we told him we at least need one toilet installed by next Saturday.  I’m excited to see how far we get in the next week.  We’ll have flooring, tile, painters, cabinets, and bathtubs all in process (plus one toilet). 

We also just listed our current place on Craigslist and are having our first open house on Saturday.  I’ve just started answering all the Craigslist ads for people wanting to see the apartment, which is great.  {this was a shocking reminder that we’re about to be landlords… again}.  So, we’re moving full steam ahead.  I’ll be so happy to see some finish work in there! 

Drywall, Tile, Windows and Paint

Everything has been going along really well!  The windows are all in (except for one that we forgot to order up in the attic).  The exterior paint is really coming along well.  We love the color we picked.  They completed one whole side and the white windows really pop.  On the front of the house, we're adding another even darker gray trim color.  Here's the side that's recently done:

They're moving full steam ahead with all the drywall repair.  There are so many holes to be filled in both units!  The rental drywall should be done by mid-week, and then they'll move up to our unit.  While the drywall guys are working, our contractor has been working on the beams.  It's too dark for photos, but the holes they had to dig in the basement and yard for the poles are massive (this is to support the weight of making our unit open concept). 

The big accomplishment of the weekend was picking out all our tile for the 4 bathrooms.  We're doing both rentals the same, with a modern gray floor, white subway tile and a nice mosiac accent. 

For our two bathrooms, Jimmy and I couldn't decide between two options.  Both options look really good together, so we decided to do both!  We'll see which option looks better when it's done! :)

Here's a quick shot of our tile:

We're doing the marble in one bath with the tub, the streaky gray on both floors, the flat grey on the walk in shower with a blue strip through the grey.  Pretty exciting!

You can really see a lot of movement every day, which has been fun.  I thought we had some breathing room since we got the tile figured out.  Now they're looking for the backsplash and countertops....  Is there such a thing as decision making overload? 

Great Update

We've had a really great week.  The contractor passed the building inspection on Wednesday.  This was needed before they could start insulation.  We were happy to see the load of insulation delivered Wednesday afternoon and they're well under way.  Also, our windows came in yesterday (they were supposed to be delivered Monday), and the guys were all there this morning to start installation.  39 windows total, which is crazy!  Even more crazy is that they're estimating they'll all be installed within 7-10 days.  Sheet rock comes after the insulation.  Weird that we need another 'insulation' inspection before they can start sheet rocking though.  Then after sheet rock is in, they do a 'sheet rock nail' inspection.  No wonder the city is broke!  I joked with our contractor that he doesn't even have the sheet rock nailing clearance yet!  I guess that give us assurance that everything is being done correctly.  We also have some paint samples up on the exterior.  The painting guys are really moving.  They've got most of the outside sanded and primed.  They used a filler type substance on the window trim and a lot of cracks that we thought we'd have to replace.  Also, there's some decorative trim on the front of the house along the roof line.  We thought we'd have to replace that, but they're really sanding it down and bringing the beauty back!  Here's the gray house again.. now picture some door and trim colors! 

Maroon is the obvious choice, which looks great, but I'd love to get a little more creative.  Our windows are white and we're going to do a dark gray trim, but the decorative trim and door can be different.  I really like the idea of a mustard color, which is a classic color combo with gray, but I haven't seen it on houses very much.  Guess I need to get some samples!  I really like these combos, although Jimmy hates yellow.  Thankfully this is mustard!






















Or gray and green?

or orange?

Remember, this is SF and we can be a little crazy!  I'm thankful for that!  

Goal of the weekend: buy tubs and tile. 

Mental note: I should have been looking at tile this whole time.  Oops.  Not paint colors!

TGIF!  xoxo