Let's Play Out Every Possible Terrible Scenario (Or, Nothing Super Bad Happened ... Yet?)
Yes, yet again, we’re taking a long time in between posts here; sorry, we’ve got kind of a lot going on. And really, I think we were both waiting for a comically horrific story to reveal itself during demo: “Surprise, you’ve got MOLD!” premiering this fall on HGTV.
I’ve been psychologically preparing myself for a number of potential scenarios. These were roughly the odds on possibilities as things were getting torn apart:
2-1: Mold
3-1: Eye-widening structural defect
6-1: Plan-altering, dream-ruining discovery
8-1: Jaw-dropping structural defect
10-1: Mold (sentient)
15-1: Dead body in the wall (animal)
17-1: Something that would require the house be wrapped in plastic a-la “E.T.”
20-1: Dead body in the wall (human)
20-1: Treasure Map!!
25-1: Dead body in the wall (multiple)
30-1: ~30% of the structure made of rats
50-1: I’ve been in a dream THE WHOLE TIME
Thus far, NONE of these came to pass. So, I guess we can just update on some actual progress.
Before:
After:
The framers were able to install the massive flitch beams on the first floor to give us a totally open layout. I think Diana and I really never thought this day would come, but here we are. We ran into the site manager a day or two after they got the beams in and he described the effort as “interesting” and “...pretty dangerous”. In the interest of plausible deniability I chose not to ask him to elaborate on that last part.
As part of installing those beams, they were also able to jack up the center of the second floor almost two inches, correcting some pretty serious deflection in the floor joists and giving us a pretty-much-level second-floor hallway. This represents the “right” solution to the problem the previous owner tried to solve with “a metric fuck-ton of self-leveling compound”, otherwise known as the “wrong” solution.
In other remarkable second-floor news, the flooring guy actually thinks he’ll be able to save a lot of the original floor. Now, hearing that gave me a similar sensation to looking at a car folded in half and on fire and hearing someone say, “that’ll buff out.” That being said, I love the idea of keeping some of the original parts of the house because 1) it’s just cool and 2) it’s less money, so… we’ll see if that works out.
In other news, buying windows is horrible. They cost a lot of money and I don’t care for it. It’s even worse when you live in a historic neighborhood and the Landmarks people can mandate that you need wood-exterior windows, which are literally the most expensive AND impractical option for that type of thing. It’s like when they put actual gold (Ag) on a dessert at a fancy restaurant.
Anyway, so once you’re in “all wood windows” land, you basically have to walk into the [window-equivalent of a] Benz dealership to even get started. So, maybe you can do a fiberglass or aluminum-clad window on the sides/back of the house, but you’re already in the Benz dealership. They only sell Benzes. Even the cheap ones are kind of expensive.
So, we were just about 100% done buying a Benz we didn’t want when the Landmark people, out of nowhere, were like, “well, if you get a nicely-optioned Mazda, that’s OK, too.”
Guy, I’ve been in the [metaphorical] Benz dealership FOR TWO MONTHS. We’ve talked about financing, options, color, etc. It feels a little late to turn back now.
So, in a slightly nonsensical turn, we went back to the (metaphorical) BMW dealership that we’d talked to in our tire-kicking phase because our GC gets a lot of BMWs and he “has a guy” and I just realized he actually does drive a pretty awesome BMW M4 so now my metaphor is all messed up. Anyway, we’re buying Pella windows and they cost a lot of money and I hope you never have to go through this.
And yes, it does worry me that I’ve seen our GC driving roughly $170,000 worth of cars at this point.
I’ve been psychologically preparing myself for a number of potential scenarios. These were roughly the odds on possibilities as things were getting torn apart:
2-1: Mold
3-1: Eye-widening structural defect
6-1: Plan-altering, dream-ruining discovery
8-1: Jaw-dropping structural defect
10-1: Mold (sentient)
15-1: Dead body in the wall (animal)
17-1: Something that would require the house be wrapped in plastic a-la “E.T.”
20-1: Dead body in the wall (human)
20-1: Treasure Map!!
25-1: Dead body in the wall (multiple)
30-1: ~30% of the structure made of rats
50-1: I’ve been in a dream THE WHOLE TIME
Thus far, NONE of these came to pass. So, I guess we can just update on some actual progress.
Look Ma, No Walls
So, what did happen? The walls HAVE COME DOWN!Before:
After:
The framers were able to install the massive flitch beams on the first floor to give us a totally open layout. I think Diana and I really never thought this day would come, but here we are. We ran into the site manager a day or two after they got the beams in and he described the effort as “interesting” and “...pretty dangerous”. In the interest of plausible deniability I chose not to ask him to elaborate on that last part.
As part of installing those beams, they were also able to jack up the center of the second floor almost two inches, correcting some pretty serious deflection in the floor joists and giving us a pretty-much-level second-floor hallway. This represents the “right” solution to the problem the previous owner tried to solve with “a metric fuck-ton of self-leveling compound”, otherwise known as the “wrong” solution.
In other remarkable second-floor news, the flooring guy actually thinks he’ll be able to save a lot of the original floor. Now, hearing that gave me a similar sensation to looking at a car folded in half and on fire and hearing someone say, “that’ll buff out.” That being said, I love the idea of keeping some of the original parts of the house because 1) it’s just cool and 2) it’s less money, so… we’ll see if that works out.
Windows
In other news, buying windows is horrible. They cost a lot of money and I don’t care for it. It’s even worse when you live in a historic neighborhood and the Landmarks people can mandate that you need wood-exterior windows, which are literally the most expensive AND impractical option for that type of thing. It’s like when they put actual gold (Ag) on a dessert at a fancy restaurant.
Anyway, so once you’re in “all wood windows” land, you basically have to walk into the [window-equivalent of a] Benz dealership to even get started. So, maybe you can do a fiberglass or aluminum-clad window on the sides/back of the house, but you’re already in the Benz dealership. They only sell Benzes. Even the cheap ones are kind of expensive.
So, we were just about 100% done buying a Benz we didn’t want when the Landmark people, out of nowhere, were like, “well, if you get a nicely-optioned Mazda, that’s OK, too.”
Guy, I’ve been in the [metaphorical] Benz dealership FOR TWO MONTHS. We’ve talked about financing, options, color, etc. It feels a little late to turn back now.
So, in a slightly nonsensical turn, we went back to the (metaphorical) BMW dealership that we’d talked to in our tire-kicking phase because our GC gets a lot of BMWs and he “has a guy” and I just realized he actually does drive a pretty awesome BMW M4 so now my metaphor is all messed up. Anyway, we’re buying Pella windows and they cost a lot of money and I hope you never have to go through this.
And yes, it does worry me that I’ve seen our GC driving roughly $170,000 worth of cars at this point.
You're actually 21 living in lower Allston, on hallucinogens and watching Total Recall. It's been 2 weeks straight Joe. Snap out of it already.
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