First Hammer Swing!

The anticipated start date was today, and we started right on time! I swung by the house in the morning to grab something and let the subcontractors know that I was expecting appliance delivery if they were there. The electrician was already looking around the property. I thought it might have been a slow start on day 1, but off to a great start.



One of the first things that's to be accomplished is leveling of the home and some basement work. The foundation isn't in horrible shape, but it could use some shoring up. Unfortunately, I can't convert it into a habitable space without it being at least 7ft high from the floor to the floor joist. The home is currently about 6ft 4in, so it barely misses the mark. The inspector and bank agreed to going with a seismic retrofit for the 203K to pass FHA criteria so I'll be doing that, along with some work here and there.

Once I have a bit more money saved up, I intend to do a full rebuild of the foundation and raise the home to meet code for a habitable basement. The current work is to get me through 5+ years safely.

I arrived at the house in the afternoon to meet the delivery guys, and the first thing I noticed, climbing up from the deck, was "wow...it feels flat" without knowing the work that had already been done.  While waiting, the subcontractor was kind enough to give me a quick rundown of the damage that had occurred:

• One long crack in the kitchen tile
• Lots of plaster cracks
• Door no longer closes

Now, before anyone thinks they were doing things incorrectly, all this damage was expected, and when we put together the 203K scope of work, the tile and plaster cracking was accounted for.  For some reason, all of us decision makers forgot about the door potentially having an issue so we need to address that next.  As the frame of the house is being taken from sloping/wavy to less sloping and relatively straight/flat, this puts stress on the areas being "reshaped" and unfortunately, something has to give.  In this case, that something is something rigid and brittle like tile and plaster.

I talked with the folks at Bakker Construction, a while back and I'll be replacing the kitchen door on the back wall with a wall, and converting the kitchen window to a sliding patio door to take care of the door issue.  I'm currently hunting around for a relatively inexpensive vinyl sliding door with a prairie type internal grid.

The flooring was planned to be replaced with some type of laminate or engineered hardwood for a while now.  I wanted to match the flooring with the bedrooms which was from IKEA, but they no longer sell the material, so I'm hunting around looking for something similar.  The caveat is, I have an aging dog that follows me all over the kitchen waiting for food to fall off the counter, so I need something with a little texture...so the floors in the home will be a bit of a mish-mash...light colored tile in the bathrooms, carpeted living room (for my dog to run around in), dark stain IKEA flooring in the bedrooms with padding underneath, dark dark green tile with a smoked black haze in the hallway (if it doesn't crack during the rest of the leveling process), and an unknown color kitchen floor...

The cracks in the plaster are just that and we had a healthy budget for fixing that, so either refill with plaster, or possibly cut and replace sections with drywall.  I'm not sure what the plan is for this part, though I've been assured that texturally, it should be the same with the rest of the wall.  The rooms are also all different colors...beige living, red master bedroom, one green bedroom, one purple bedroom, and perrywinkle hallway and high moisture areas (bathrooms/kitchen).  I'm hoping to repaint the interior to a uniform and more appealing color down the road.

Back to the basement!  The house is on jacks.  I was told that the home only needed to be lifted a little to remove the mudsill and what not.  They weren't kidding.  It's hard to see in this picture, but after lifting, one of the original pillars connected to a floor joist is no longer attached, but there's only a little bit of space that I can tell.

Looking around, there's new pillars in various places with jacks on top.  It's quite impressive imho how each pillar isn't secured to the basement floor (I think?) but how stable they feel...and with just a little bit of a raise, one of the damaged mudsills was also removed.  On the downside, I noticed that the water heater in the basement was leaking.  There had been corrosion on the hot water outlet line by one of the unions of the flex line.  I suspect raising the house caused it the built up rust to crack, resulting in a leak, but this is already covered in the 203K, so I'm not too terribly worried.  The foundation subcontractors noticed this, and had already shut off the water to the water heater when I got there.  I drained the hot water line as much as I could afterwards to minimize the leak overnight.

After the contractors left, I installed the new appliances...well, atleast 2 of the 3 that arrived of the 4 items that I ordered: gas range and refrigerator.  Dryer arrived, but washer is still enroute.  Also, the gas line to the dryer is missing a valve, so I won't be touching that just yet.  The fridge was encompassed in the 203K.  The rest of the appliances were not.  If I have contingency remaining, I'll try to get reimbursed, but otherwise, the range, washer, and dryer came out of my personal budget.

I removed the original range, realized that I didn't have gas rated teflon tape or pipe goo, so ran off to OSH to get some.  In the process of cleaning, I realized that this green cleaning agent in a spray bottle (Brilliant Green knockoff?) dissolves teflon tape...note to self!  Attaching metal flex tubing isn't that easy, or so I learned.  It sure flexes, but not necessarily in the way I wanted it to.  Still, got it installed, checked with some soapy water for leaks, and plugged the sucker in.  Everything fired up, though it did take a few moments for all the lines to be purged of air...longer than I had expected.  I'll run cleaning mode next time.

Fridge went in without a hitch, though I think I need to re-level it.  It's not shaking anymore, but it's not parallel to the cabinet above it.  Man, the manufacturers use a lot of packing material both inside and outside the appliances.  And, that was it for my day...

Next up...continued work on the basement, and misc. odds and ends things...I think PG&E is supposed to come and check the pilot lights on a few other appliances as well...namely furnace and water heater.