Hit Me, GC, One More Time (or: Oops, We Gutted The House)
Yup, another long blog hiatus, but happy to report that we've made a ton of progress. But, as the title of this post suggests, that progress has come along with a recurring case of scope creep. Our plans (and our budget) were built on the assumption that certain mechanical systems and interior fixtures were, to some extent, salvageable. This kept the project from being what you might call a "total gut job". We assumed certain walls, a bit of plumbing, electrical and HVAC, some trim, and bunch of other odds and end could stay as-is, therefore limiting the amount of stuff we had to build new and keeping our budget trim and tidy.
As we all know, hindsight is 20/20, but when it comes to our ability to limit the scope to only replacing the bits that we absolutely knew needed replacing, I would say we were basically legally blind. That 75% repair turned into a 100% gut in a few too many instances, but, good news, it only cost an extra 30%! Wait...
So, where did we get hit the most? And where are we now? Let's take a look.
Another area where we did make a last-minute splurge was on the muntin bars. Initially we were going to use "interior" bars which sit inside the glass panels of the window; they're easier to clean and considerably less expensive. But, they can look a little cheesy and pretty unconvincing. The more expensive option (naturally the one we went with) were "simulated divided light," which means there are moldings on the interior and exterior of the window that much more effectively give the impression of an old-timey multi-pane window. We tried to claw back a few bucks by only deploying those on the front elevation of the house, but I think the overall look is really successful.
For instance, coming down the inside stairs now, these windows provide a really nice architectural touch and a sense of craftsmanship. This is in stark contrast to the previous impression they gave which was "moist" and "tetanus shot."
In addition to that little elective splurge, we encounter our word of the day: "overrun." Despite the windows being scoped as replacement windows -- which require a much simpler (and cheaper) installation that doesn't disturb any of the interior or exterior trim or require any reframing of the window opening itself -- the carpenters doing the install found that the windows didn't quite fit well enough to simply "pop in" as replacements. So, they elected to approach the install as new construction windows.
In contrast to a replacement window install, a new construction install means you essentially rebuild the window structure from scratch: in this case the carpenters had to tear out the exterior trim (which had already been repaired and repainted), tear out the interior trim (which we were planning on keeping) and reframe the entire window opening (which our GC was not planning on paying for).
You can see the result here. This will be our bedroom and, in this picture, it is in a state Diana referred to as "well-ventilated." Lovely view, though.
Now, the real benefit here is that 1) the windows are far more stable and it's extremely unlikely we'll have wind noise and crap like that AND 2) the insulation guys will be able to fully re-insulate (with foam) the gaps in between the windows and frames, so we'll have new-home-like performance from a climate standpoint. Our budget, however, is not performing quite so well.
Those issues represented ... [checks notes] ... all of the existing electrical work in the house. Thanks again, guy who used to live here. Now, we could have rolled the dice and only had the electrician do the newly-scoped work as our architect had designed it, but, according to the electrician, the conversion would go something like this:
INSPECTOR: "Why didn't you replace this [ELECTRICAL THING] that clearly doesn't meet code? You are a licensed electrician, you should know that."
ELECTRICIAN: "I AM a licensed electrician and I do know that; the homeowner didn't want me to."
---Now here's the part where this goes one of two ways---
Version #1:
INSPECTOR: [rolling eyes] OK, it's existing, I guess I'll just overlook it.
Version #2:
INSPECTOR: "Well, I don't really give a shit. Fix it and I'll come back to inspect it again two weeks from never."
Apparently version number one only happens when certain planets are aligned and maybe a couple Benjamin Franklins get "left around," but long and short, we couldn't risk dragging the timeline out, so we elected to (oops!) rewire the entire house.
Plumbing? Despite our intention to use existing supply lines and fixtures as much as possible, the plumber told us that it was actually harder to tie all the new stuff together with the old and he recommended starting from scratch. We knew there was a bunch of galvanized steel that had to get gutted anyway, so, you guessed it: (oops!) we re-plumbed the whole house.
With the HVAC, our GC's guy didn't like the way our architect had imagined the layout of the new ductwork and felt that the ducting in some areas would be insufficient. For us, spending so much on this project only to have cold-/hot-spots and a house that might not be as comfortable as possible was just a non-starter. We were inclined to take his opinion on the matter and eat the extra cost.
This is probably also an effect of what I call renofinancialdilation:
re·no·fi·nan·cial·di·la·tion noun
The loss of perspective on the value of money. Perception that numbers with "$" in front of them are not real.
"Boy, I said I'd pay an extra $3800 for heated floors in the bathroom! Seemed so reasonable at the time! Must have had an acute bout of renofinancialdilation!"
On the bright side, they did move the third floor A/C lines inside the exterior wall, which means no more ugly foam line hanging out the side of the house. This was done at least 60% to make our neighbor on that side happy. He's been EXTREMELY accommodating to this process and deserved a little something.
Just for a little contrast, let's remember what the exterior looked like before:
Still a long way to go, but we are making progress!
I wasn't really familiar with mineral wool, but basically it's insulation made from METAL and ROCKS (cue guitar solo!). It's often used for fireproofing but apparently it's also great at sound proofing.
So, our GC said he could put that up, and that it would probably cost a couple thousand bucks. But, he said we could certainly install it ourselves and it would be a lot less than that. For me, as you can probably imagine, a situation that involves DIY and saving a considerable amount of money is a HELL of a drug. So, I signed on for that little adventure.
Now, the tricky part here is that I had to be ready to install said insulation in the brief window between mechanical inspections being completed and walls going in. I couldn't install it before mechanical inspections were done because I'd be covering up, you know, mechanicals, and obviously the insulation goes behind the walls to it has to be done before those go up.
So, I get the call that "hey, inspections passed, go ahead and get to rock'n!" (ok, yeah, he didn't say that last part). So, now I'm like, "OK, just got to go buy this stuff." And of course (and I really should have seen this coming) it's sold out everywhere. After a bit of digging I find an alternative product that is available at a local lumber yard. They have ~20 packages. I need ~17 packages. There's no way to "dibs" those 17. Even if you order online they don't actually "hold" your order. If I bought 17 online and some random person dropped in and bought 17, I'd be out of luck; this is real capitalism, folks.
So, I get up at the buttcrack of dawn and get down there at opening time. I buy 17 of these things to the tune of like eight hundred bucks and then I find out that they're stored in the outdoor lumber yard. In fact, they're in an absolutely massive warehouse where you DRIVE YOUR CAR DOWN THE AISLES. IT'S LIKE A HOME DEPOT BUT YOU DRIVE. YOUR CAR. DOWN THE AISLES. I was having a great morning.
Then I found out that, each of the bundles that I need are about 11 cubic feet in size. That's 187 cubic feet of insulation. The 2011 Subaru Forrester tops out at about 68 cubic feet of space assuming you can fill every tiny crevice. So, I've got what you might call a "math problem." So, I throw a few of these things in my car, ask the guy at the gate/checkout if I can just come back for the rest and go to work.
At lunch, I drive back, rent a pickup, and drive back over to the Aisle that has my desired product only to discover that I ... can't find any. Did someone snipe it?! Store inventory says it's still there. There are bales of insulation stacked literally 25 ft high around me, so is it possible that it's buried behind some other product? I'm in the middle of my work day and finding myself wholly unequipped to hunt this stuff down. I decide to ask one of the random guys in the warehouse if he can help me.
Not only does he help me, he gets the forklift operator to come over and move probably a half dozen pallets of other material just to hunt around for my stuff. And, lo and behold, we find it! Then, just to really be a hero, he loads it all in to the pickup truck using the forklift and I'm on my way.
So then I get back up to the house, slightly sprain my ankle (naturally) moving the pallet out of the truck bed, return said rental truck, and get back to my day job.
The installation of the rock wool itself wasn't too bad except:
As we all know, hindsight is 20/20, but when it comes to our ability to limit the scope to only replacing the bits that we absolutely knew needed replacing, I would say we were basically legally blind. That 75% repair turned into a 100% gut in a few too many instances, but, good news, it only cost an extra 30%! Wait...
So, where did we get hit the most? And where are we now? Let's take a look.
Windows!
In terms of WOW changes, having all the new windows installed comes in a close second to removing the major load-bearing walls from the first floor. To our delight, the huge 10' slider and the bank of windows around the staircase to the basement at the rear of the house returned some much-needed light to the first floor.
Another area where we did make a last-minute splurge was on the muntin bars. Initially we were going to use "interior" bars which sit inside the glass panels of the window; they're easier to clean and considerably less expensive. But, they can look a little cheesy and pretty unconvincing. The more expensive option (naturally the one we went with) were "simulated divided light," which means there are moldings on the interior and exterior of the window that much more effectively give the impression of an old-timey multi-pane window. We tried to claw back a few bucks by only deploying those on the front elevation of the house, but I think the overall look is really successful.
For instance, coming down the inside stairs now, these windows provide a really nice architectural touch and a sense of craftsmanship. This is in stark contrast to the previous impression they gave which was "moist" and "tetanus shot."
In contrast to a replacement window install, a new construction install means you essentially rebuild the window structure from scratch: in this case the carpenters had to tear out the exterior trim (which had already been repaired and repainted), tear out the interior trim (which we were planning on keeping) and reframe the entire window opening (which our GC was not planning on paying for).
You can see the result here. This will be our bedroom and, in this picture, it is in a state Diana referred to as "well-ventilated." Lovely view, though.
Now, the real benefit here is that 1) the windows are far more stable and it's extremely unlikely we'll have wind noise and crap like that AND 2) the insulation guys will be able to fully re-insulate (with foam) the gaps in between the windows and frames, so we'll have new-home-like performance from a climate standpoint. Our budget, however, is not performing quite so well.
Plumbing / Electrical / HVAC
Oy. The mechanicals were an area we were really hoping to keep constrained and at this point we've done the complete opposite. The have been prostrained (#dadjoke). The first time we met the electrician, he walked around the house and pointed out about a thousand things that the electrical inspector would ding him on.Those issues represented ... [checks notes] ... all of the existing electrical work in the house. Thanks again, guy who used to live here. Now, we could have rolled the dice and only had the electrician do the newly-scoped work as our architect had designed it, but, according to the electrician, the conversion would go something like this:
INSPECTOR: "Why didn't you replace this [ELECTRICAL THING] that clearly doesn't meet code? You are a licensed electrician, you should know that."
ELECTRICIAN: "I AM a licensed electrician and I do know that; the homeowner didn't want me to."
---Now here's the part where this goes one of two ways---
Version #1:
INSPECTOR: [rolling eyes] OK, it's existing, I guess I'll just overlook it.
Version #2:
INSPECTOR: "Well, I don't really give a shit. Fix it and I'll come back to inspect it again two weeks from never."
Apparently version number one only happens when certain planets are aligned and maybe a couple Benjamin Franklins get "left around," but long and short, we couldn't risk dragging the timeline out, so we elected to (oops!) rewire the entire house.
Plumbing? Despite our intention to use existing supply lines and fixtures as much as possible, the plumber told us that it was actually harder to tie all the new stuff together with the old and he recommended starting from scratch. We knew there was a bunch of galvanized steel that had to get gutted anyway, so, you guessed it: (oops!) we re-plumbed the whole house.
With the HVAC, our GC's guy didn't like the way our architect had imagined the layout of the new ductwork and felt that the ducting in some areas would be insufficient. For us, spending so much on this project only to have cold-/hot-spots and a house that might not be as comfortable as possible was just a non-starter. We were inclined to take his opinion on the matter and eat the extra cost.
This is probably also an effect of what I call renofinancialdilation:
re·no·fi·nan·cial·di·la·tion noun
The loss of perspective on the value of money. Perception that numbers with "$" in front of them are not real.
"Boy, I said I'd pay an extra $3800 for heated floors in the bathroom! Seemed so reasonable at the time! Must have had an acute bout of renofinancialdilation!"
On the bright side, they did move the third floor A/C lines inside the exterior wall, which means no more ugly foam line hanging out the side of the house. This was done at least 60% to make our neighbor on that side happy. He's been EXTREMELY accommodating to this process and deserved a little something.
Exterior Painted!
Holy crap the exterior got painted (mostly). We got very lucky with a few warm days toward the end of December and thus were able to squeeze in several days of exterior work. It's still far from done, but you can really get a sense of what a refreshed exterior looks like and how the colors work, especially with the new sexy black windows. Diana and I both really love it.
Just for a little contrast, let's remember what the exterior looked like before:
Still a long way to go, but we are making progress!
Insulation: Foam
Ok, so now that the exterior isn't trash, and we have windows, let's actually insulate this place! Our GC's insulation guys came in and spray foamed the crap out of the whole place in literally a day. Spray foam is REALLY cool and performs super well, but we're pretty sure the GC only spec'd spray foam in certain places (opting for more cost-effective bat insulation in most of the space), so it remains to be seen if this is a happy surprise or another "oops!" moment.
Insulation: Rock Wool
In other insulation news, one of the DIY projects I was going to take on was to insulate the first floor ceiling. Once all the walls were opened up, we were on-site talking with our GC about the issue of noise when people walk around the second floor. Putting down new subfloor and screwing down the existing structure will help a lot, but he also suggested installing mineral wool in between the two floors.I wasn't really familiar with mineral wool, but basically it's insulation made from METAL and ROCKS (cue guitar solo!). It's often used for fireproofing but apparently it's also great at sound proofing.
So, our GC said he could put that up, and that it would probably cost a couple thousand bucks. But, he said we could certainly install it ourselves and it would be a lot less than that. For me, as you can probably imagine, a situation that involves DIY and saving a considerable amount of money is a HELL of a drug. So, I signed on for that little adventure.
Now, the tricky part here is that I had to be ready to install said insulation in the brief window between mechanical inspections being completed and walls going in. I couldn't install it before mechanical inspections were done because I'd be covering up, you know, mechanicals, and obviously the insulation goes behind the walls to it has to be done before those go up.
So, I get the call that "hey, inspections passed, go ahead and get to rock'n!" (ok, yeah, he didn't say that last part). So, now I'm like, "OK, just got to go buy this stuff." And of course (and I really should have seen this coming) it's sold out everywhere. After a bit of digging I find an alternative product that is available at a local lumber yard. They have ~20 packages. I need ~17 packages. There's no way to "dibs" those 17. Even if you order online they don't actually "hold" your order. If I bought 17 online and some random person dropped in and bought 17, I'd be out of luck; this is real capitalism, folks.
So, I get up at the buttcrack of dawn and get down there at opening time. I buy 17 of these things to the tune of like eight hundred bucks and then I find out that they're stored in the outdoor lumber yard. In fact, they're in an absolutely massive warehouse where you DRIVE YOUR CAR DOWN THE AISLES. IT'S LIKE A HOME DEPOT BUT YOU DRIVE. YOUR CAR. DOWN THE AISLES. I was having a great morning.
Then I found out that, each of the bundles that I need are about 11 cubic feet in size. That's 187 cubic feet of insulation. The 2011 Subaru Forrester tops out at about 68 cubic feet of space assuming you can fill every tiny crevice. So, I've got what you might call a "math problem." So, I throw a few of these things in my car, ask the guy at the gate/checkout if I can just come back for the rest and go to work.
At lunch, I drive back, rent a pickup, and drive back over to the Aisle that has my desired product only to discover that I ... can't find any. Did someone snipe it?! Store inventory says it's still there. There are bales of insulation stacked literally 25 ft high around me, so is it possible that it's buried behind some other product? I'm in the middle of my work day and finding myself wholly unequipped to hunt this stuff down. I decide to ask one of the random guys in the warehouse if he can help me.
Not only does he help me, he gets the forklift operator to come over and move probably a half dozen pallets of other material just to hunt around for my stuff. And, lo and behold, we find it! Then, just to really be a hero, he loads it all in to the pickup truck using the forklift and I'm on my way.
So then I get back up to the house, slightly sprain my ankle (naturally) moving the pallet out of the truck bed, return said rental truck, and get back to my day job.
The installation of the rock wool itself wasn't too bad except:
- It itches as bad if not worse than fiberglass insulation
- It's a pain to sneak around pipes / wires / etc.
- When they built this house 100 years ago, floor joists being 16" on center was definitely done using "estimation" which means fitment was pretty tricky a lot of the time
Nevertheless, after a couple late nights (one of which was Christmas Eve), we were insulated.
So that's where we are. Next up: drywall, floors, bathrooms, kitchen, finishes. Home stretch!!!
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