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

Post Vacation Update

Hi Everyone - after a great long weekend in Wisconsin, we feel ready to focus on construction again!  I realize we've been a little silent, but things are still moving along.  We've been in inspection mode lately.  The big news is that the plumbing and electric have both passed inspection.  Now we're ready to insulate and wall up those holes!   There are wires and pipes running everywhere, which is cool to see.  Here's a quick walk-thru:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIPQ6RA-PdM

It took us awhile to figure out where all the lighting should go.  We had to ask them to move around some fixture spots (since we framed out several closets, the fixture was no longer centered in the room).

The scaffolding has also gone up outside and they're hard at work scraping away.  We had a meeting with the painter today and it was nice to hear that they haven't found any wood rot yet.  The paint was peeling so badly in places that we thought we could be hit with some replacement costs.  Apparently redwood really lasts forever, even when exposed to our salty foggy air! 

They've got one side primed already and paint samples go up tomorrow.  We're looking for something modern, simple and handsome.  Kinda like this gray house, but we're thinking of a more charcoal trim color versus black:

It's awesome to see how the painters work.  They are using ropes and platforms similar to what a window washer would use for a high rise.  They've got the ropes coming in through the ceiling and are anchoring them to our new beam and the bathroom

Looking down on to the painting platform.

So things are still going really well. We're getting there!

So things are still going really well. We're getting there!

Megan

General Update

I came back from a trip to Portland and was really happy to hear Jimmy say that "things are moving really quickly and ahead of schedule".  That is a first!  Apparently the electrician was working all day on Saturday, which really moved him along.  There is wiring and light switch boxes EVERYWHERE.  We also had a meeting about where all the lights, light switches and ceiling lights are going.  Thankfully we kinda figured this out beforehand while my dad was here.  It's just something we've never thought of - the contractor helped by saying things like "when you're walking to bed from being in the living room, you want to be able to turn everything off on your way there." We also needed to avoid putting 4 switches right next to each other for all the great room lights.  I imagine myself flicking 4 switches on and off every day trying to figure out which light is which. 

At this point, things are really moving along.  The plumber is also full steam ahead with only one problem of putting both toilets in the wrong spot (and cutting holes).  Thankfully Jimmy is over there twice a day and caught it right away. 

Our appliances are being delivered today.  Can't wait to see those!  Our contractor laughs when things like that are delivered and he doesn't need them for 8 weeks.  I think they actually push him along quicker, right? :)   Maybe I can use my new stove in our current house for 8 weeks until it's done.  Now that's an idea.

Also, we picked out our vanity for our small bath:

Cabinets - the decision of the century..

Or at least it seems like. We finally figured out our cabinets (although we're waiting for one more bid to come back today).

We're doing the white of this version on the top - same flat panels:

And this color on the bottom. The door style is the flat panel though similar to the top photo.

I've always loved white cabinets, but am really drawn to the gray now as well. Our flooring is dark walnut, so we wanted to add the white on top, versus dark all around. Also, our hood above the range goes all the way up like it does in the gray photo. We thought it might look weird with such a large gap above the cabinets (our ceilings are 11 feet), but it looks really good here.

Yes - one more decision DONE. Although now looking at the photos, I'm thinking "maybe we should do all gray - I really like that color". hmm.

New Retaining Wall

So my dad stayed an extra day to help with the new retaining wall next door.  Here's a good vantage point photo showing where we removed the concrete and dug out the old wall.

Someone asked why we didn't level the yard to the lower level.  Well.. a couple reasons - having the yard up higher gives us so much more sun in the yard.  Because we're kinda 'house-locked' back there, we can use all the sun we'd like.  The other reason - it's actually um.. bedrock? I'm not sure if that's right, but it's like a slate-like rock that's a foot under the soil.  Working back there was almost like an archeology dig, but we were finding old bottles of booze instead of bones (thankfully).   Here's a picture of all the findings.

Thanks dad for teaching us all of this along the way.  I have my incredibly detailed notes of where to take the yard from here! Bolting and staining - got it!  Digging and carrying concrete is also character building, right?  By the end of this project, we'll have a lot of character!

Happy to report that my slide that was full of trash got smaller.  The demo guys have been coming to take out all the brick in the basement (from the fireplaces that we ripped out), took all the wood, which is awesome, but left the concrete.  Attention friends - come to build some character!

Change Orders & Wide Open Spaces

I'm happy to say that we feel really great about a couple decisions we made.  Things are really moving along.  The walls have come down between the kitchen/living room/dining room, and the space feels really open and bright.  We're so excited to get a more circular and open flow than our current place.  It's really unique for San Francisco.  I've taken a video to show what I mean:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7TIF1EspmU

Also, we were really hesitant about asking for a change so early on, but are really happy we did it.  The bedroom closets were pretty small.  The two interior bedrooms had small closets that backed up to each other.  We decided to combine the two closets for one bedroom and frame out another closet in the bedroom where we stole the closet.  We did it in our unit and the rental and it really changed the apartments from having small closets to decent closets.  The even bigger bonus was that the contractor didn't charge us for it.  He did it to make up for ripping out my bookshelf!  Oh, regarding that bookshelf, we decided we weren't going to put it back in.  We basically took out the rest of the wall there to make the rental living room bigger.  And it actually helped.  We need to sell the rental without a dedicated dining room (they'll have to incorporate a table somewhere in the living room), so we needed all the space we could get in that living room.  Taking out the bookshelf also gave us the opportunity to make the closet larger in the bedroom behind it.  I'm not sure this makes sense as I'm explaining it!   I need more videos!

I've also been on a buying spree this week.  Literally.  And they needed the specs on our appliances so we sprung for the nice stove (I think I mentioned that we might wait to see what the budget looked like).  As if that's either mine or Jimmy's style to wait or compromise.  :)  Also picked out our vanity for the large bath and the bath fixtures.  It's crazy that when the contractor says that we need our bath fixtures, he doesn't just need one, but 4!  Who know you could spend HOURS looking at showerheads.  Well..  you can.  Here's a bit of the style we're going for.  Our cabinets will hopefully be ordered today.  We're going for a third visit to the cabinet dealer today.  Shooting for more modern, but not too modern, but will appeal to the masses if we ever rent out the space.  Makes your head spin.   I know I've shared this with a couple of you, but we've been using the website Houzz to get a lot of ideas from.  Here's a link to our "ideabook": http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/1696737/_trid=anZtYXVjaDttZWdhbl9qb2NoaW1zZW5AeWFob28uY29t/thumbs/1676-McAllister
Happy Friday!

Sweat Equity

Digging the ditch to get out the retaining wall.

Wow.  I feel like we're talking nonstop and working nonstop with the decisions that have to be made on the inside of the house.  Great to have my dad here to bounce ideas off of and to give an expert opinion on where closets should go and where light switches should go.  We've been talking nonstop for nearly a week about all the details!  It was nice to put in some hard work yesterday and today and really see some progress with the yard.   Here's the 'before' video.  Man, I'm moving slowly!  By the end of that concrete pile, I was throwing them from across the yard and by the end of the day, that ditch (and wall) were completely gone!

We took out a lot of weeds, blackberry bushes and concrete in the yard.  We (dad) were just removing the concrete when we realized that the retaining wall was rotten, so instead of making a new walkway, we had to dig a ditch and take out the old retaining wall.  New retaining wall to go in tomorrow.

Jimmy gives a good overview here of everything we're doing.

Another good shot.  Thanks dad!

Guess who's going back for another coffee break?

And the 'after video' for the weekend.  Indie even came by to check it out.  Notice the wall is gone, we dug new holes, and put the posts back into some new concrete.  That was some serious work. 


The garbage slide is completely filled!  I think emptying that slide is the plan for next weekend.  Gulp.

OK.  Gotta go.  I just closed my eyes for a second while that video uploaded.  I'm drained!

Waking to Hammers

Wow. I was woken up to hammering this morning and was thrilled! Things have been going a little slowly (hence the lack of blog posts). Demo took longer than normal and now they’ve been waiting on our engineer for drawings (we needed a structural engineer because we’re taking out the three walls in our unit). Apparently doing this causes our house to be more unstable in an earthquake so the drawings are important. Totally worth it though, right?

We had an interesting morning last weekend when the garbage truck and five guys showed up to haul all the trash out and there were two cars parked in our parking spots so they couldn’t start working. I would like to think I would never tow anyone, but seeing 5 guys stand there for over an hour literally killed me. They found one of the car owners in a restaurant down the street and were able to get started after 1.5 hours of standing around. Our parking notices aren’t ‘official’ yet, so we technically couldn’t call a tow truck on the cars even if we wanted to.

So, we were happy to hear hammering this morning, when it’s been QUIET the last three mornings. They’re framing out the closets and the walls where we’re closing the pocket doors between the bedrooms on both floors. This should take only two days and then they NEED the drawings to go any further. Unfortunately, our drawing guy is swamped. So far, only two weeks behind (and we started three weeks ago). 

Our Kitchen

The good news is that we’ve almost decided on the cabinets for the rental. The woman we’ve been dealing with has been awesome. It’s been fun seeing our kitchens come to life. In some drawings at least. We decided not to go with the cheap guys for the rental. Paying a little more to have this woman / designer draw everything out for us (she owns a counter top store as well) seems worth it. The cheap cabinets look… well.. cheap. Especially when you get up close. We weren’t too impressed with the IKEA cabinets either. We want to get top dollar for this rental, so are going with a little more style. I also bought appliances and washer/dryer for the rental this weekend. 

Rental Kitchen

Jimmy had a small victory at the building department as well. We didn't notice that the permit guy corrected the type of windows we wanted to do. SF has really strict building codes and generally only allows wood windows on the front of buildings. We tried to go for fiberglass and that's what we got bids for in the front (wood is a lot more expensive and we have 11 front windows). We realized yesterday when ordering the windows that he wrote this change in. Thankfully we saw it before we ordered the windows. Jim was able to go down to the department and have them change it. They even pulled up Google Earth and looked at our current windows and said they looked great (thanks dad!). That was the deciding factor.

Headed up to wine country for the 3-day weekend. We agreed to not speak about the renovation. That seems to be all we’re talking about. At least in the last 24 hours it’s been more movement and decisions than me complaining about how slow this is going. We even tried good cop/bad cop with the contractor. I was the bad cop last night and it didn’t work. (although they were hammering at 7:30 this morning) = maybe it did work! 

Peace out. - Bad cop.

Demo Update: Is it time to start building yet?

So, the place is officially ripped apart!  See our kitchen behind Jim!  Only one mistake, the built-in bookshelf was ripped out of the rental downstairs.  Oh well.  They're going to try to put it back in, or take it out of ours and put it in downstairs (that wall is coming out in our unit). 

Here's some footage:

Our Unit - Demo Update

I'm bummed I forgot my hard hat for this video...

The hole in the wall where the bookshelf was!

So sad..  Such beautiful trim. 

Cabinets: So Many Choices!

This kitchen designer was recommended to us.  Her instructions are to look through her portfolio of jobs and pick kitchens we like:

http://www.timelesskitchens.com/

Now that's a fun assignment!  It's so weird that we're doing two kitchens with different goals (or doing two apartments with different goals I should say).  With the rental, we are focused on mass appeal and budget.  For our kitchen, we're basically trying to get the sweetest kitchen possible with the budget we have afer everything else has been accounted for.  Our appliances are the last item we're going to buy.  ie - the price of our stove depends on where we are with our budget in three months.  {man.. I really want that nice stove!}. 

Feel free to chime in on your favorite cabinets!

Demo: First Reaction

Gulp.  So we did an initial walk-through after the demo has started and here's my first reaction. Pretty funny.

Demo - first look video!

I'll have a full demo report this weekend.  Also, a little sad that the box trim had to be taken out in the rental living room, which you see where the wall is basically missing (where one of the walls is missing I should say).

Here's a look at the two soon to be baths.  The room next to me was the kitchen pantry:

Also, here's a look at the front two rooms:

Week 2: Pre-Demo Walk Through

We made a quick video to explain everything that we're doing in our unit.

Pre-Demo Walk Thru

Week 1: It just hit me

Why do I always feel the need to have a project? As if remodeling two units down to the studs wasn’t enough of a project. I’ve decided to write about it. Thanks for the idea Lindsay! When I brought this up to Jimmy, he insisted that it would be fun, that I keep talking about wanting to start writing again, get more creative and learn something new (here goes). 

So the story… We’ve lived next to ‘the duplex’ for the last six years. When we heard the owner was moving out, I decided to put a letter in the mailbox saying that we were interested in buying the house. Long shot, I know. Lindsay and Marion were in the car with Jimmy when I called him and asked if it was too ‘aggressive’ of me to do it. He thought it was a great idea. A couple days later we see some workers in the house. We stop by and see my letter on the floor. Jimmy asks them to give it to the owner, which they do. A week later, I get a call from the owner’s niece / agent and we decide to meet at Denny’s in Berkeley to make an offer. The rest is history. Actually, 75 days under contract, a lender who was impossible to please, and the rest is history.

We’ve been in the house at least 20 times while we were under contact because with the rehab type of loan we got, we needed bids from EVERYONE to submit to the lender, which means 2 plumbers, 2 electricians, 2 contracts, 2 painters, 2 window companies, etc. had to walk through. And of course at various happy hours, we walked through it with 10 other friends.

We walked into the house for the first time this week as owners. Let’s just say I was completely freaked out. Throughout the bidding process while we were under contract, we were really idealistic of what we really could do with the place. Now, it just looks like a ton of work! I’m glad that we went through all the bidding process already, because we could just be at that starting point now and work wouldn’t actually start for another month.

The first day of 'rehab', we had our first wake up call, which we decided was the start of working on our patience. I met the contractor at 8am, thinking there would be a demo crew, but he explained that he only needed a set of keys, that he didn’t have a demo crew until Monday. Uhhh. First surprise. Jimmy was already at the building department pulling the permit, which he spent hours doing. We both came home pretty stressed out that we were already running 3 days late and pulling the permit was really tough.
First lesson – every time we walk into the house, expect that something will be wrong. Be pleasantly surprised if nothing is wrong.

Second lesson - be ready for the time commitment. We had three 7-7:30am meetings this week and three other lunchtime meetings and haven’t started any work yet.

So.. starting on Monday, which is really exciting. We’re shooting for getting a renter in by August to help with August mortgage and hoping to get us moved in by September 1. Wish us luck.  I’d love to use this to get feedback on ideas (we have so many!), share our story of a summer of rehab, and get creative!

Here are the before videos I took on our first walk through.  

First Floor Video

Second Floor Video