This entry will be a slightly different take for those of you who’ve been following this real estate adventure. As I mentioned last time, the tenants who occupied the downstairs unit in the original duplex moved out in May after 2.5 years. We’ve actually had decent luck with tenants, just 3 since early 2016: the first ones two actively military guys who got deployed 8 months into it; the next tenant stayed for 2 years. When we bought the property the downstairs was in much better shape than the upstairs, which needed a complete overhaul, so we focused there. Now we decided we would take the vacancy opportunity to finally do some work down there. This entry will show the results of that.
A reminder of what the outside of the house looks like. We used this as the opening photo in the ad we placed on Zillow yesterday morning. I have two showings so far this weekend already.
Ready for some Before and After shots? Here we go…
Before: this is the entry. Notice the dark flooring in the entry, carpet in the bedroom on the right and living room. The wall on the left needed work – there used to be a window there but it came out when the outside stairs were moved from the front to the side of the house. Also notice the hutch at the end of the living room in the background. We had one like that upstairs, too, but took it out when we did that remodel in 2015.
After: the hutch is gone and you can see all the way through the unit. New flooring throughout, a water proof vinyl, new light fixtures throughout, and a fresh coat of paint throughout. And the wall is fixed.
Before: the split HVAC was put in last fall during the major exterior overhaul we did. The windows had been replaced then as well, and the window coverings with them. Hence the lovely brown paper.
During: the workers used this room as the catch-all for the demolition process. It got much worse than this before that part was done and they hauled everything away.
After: fresh paint, new flooring, and shades.
After: front bedroom showing both west-facing windows. We installed blackout shades here.
Before: Ugh. Those 2.5 year tenants had a cat and a dog
After: Much better.
During: why not have a water heater in the middle of your kitchen?
After: new sink, appliances and cabinets. Stove was replaced, the microwave, garbage disposal and dishwasher are all new.
Before: Bedroom #2 off the living room.
After: just new flooring and paint, and shades.
Before: other view of bedroom #2.
After.
Before: the stove was on the south wall. It worked but was old and the legs were broken.
During: the workers found pipes that had deteriorated to nothing practically. Lots of the kitchen plumbing had to be replaced.
During: You can see the new plumbing going in.
After: much better, again!
Before: The fridge was on the opposite wall before. There’s no good place for it in this layout really. But we wanted to have more of an open feeling.
After: well, the goal of open-ness took a bit of a left turn. Once the old floor was up, we identified a significant problem with it being level. That portion of the house was added on decades ago, and the original floor had sunk pretty badly. So there was almost a 2 inch difference in floor height over on the left. That pony wall was built to hide that. It worked, and created a little cozy feeling in that dining area somehow.
Before: Bathroom.
After: We didn’t do much here except move the toilet to the opposite wall and add a tankless water heater.
This is really before and after: we didn’t touch any of this.
Before: the dining area.
After.
Before: cabinets in the corner.
After: Moved the refrigerator there with cabinets on either side.
Before: Laundry room in the back.
After: Office in the back.
We will use the old washer and dyer – only 2.5 years old – in the new construction. We bought a stackable here and put it in the kitchen where the water heater used to be.
We’re pretty happy with it and I’m excited to be showing it this weekend. What do you think?
I haven’t done an update on this since March 21, 2021, so decided it’s beyond time to check in. It always feels like not much has happened but objectively never true. We ended there with the first floor of framing beginning to go up. Framing is now done as well as windows and doors. The outside is being prepped for siding and there’s a ton of plumbing and electrical work going on inside.
I started out with about 80 photos but as I started looking through them they all began to look alike. What’s fun to look at in person doesn’t translate well in photos or on the page. I couldn’t get excited about writing out that much detail :) So I cut way back (at least for me) and am showing primarily photos that show progress as well as a few other things I find interesting. So let’s get started.
April 16: They’d moved the framing work to the 2nd floor after, of course, getting the internal stairs done. This is the view from the sidewalk. Because we are in a commercial zone, we can build to the property line, where residential has setback requirements. You get a sense of that here – that overhang in the upstairs bedroom goes right to the sidewalk. It’s fun to sit on my front porch and watch everyone walk by. Lots of neck craning.
The view onto 20th Street from the windows of the living room in the front unit.
There will be a window in the stairwells to bring more sun into the units. Each unit has the same design, both of these windows face west.
The single floor mother-in-law unit in the middle will also have a window designed for the sole purpose of letting natural light in. That’s a north facing window with a shed roof that’s over the bedroom.
May 9: A good shot of how close together the houses are.
Framing largely done – view from the front.
I took this primarily to remember to talk about this: This is the parking lot next to the house, at the corner of 20th and O Street. That’s the American Heart Association on the right. Notice the two shades of gray on our wall against the property. This is the firewall we had to put up due to building to the lot line. Graffiti artists have had a field day with that fresh palette. We’ve had to paint, in patches at least, 3 different times since it initially went up. If you don’t take care of it quickly, you get a lovely notice from the city that says “we recognize you’re the victim of a crime here, but, still, we will fine you $650 if you don’t fix it.” It had happened twice already by the time I took this photo, and once again just this past week. Welcome to Midtown.
This, by the way, I took merely by turning southeast from where I was standing when I took the prior photo. That’s One Community Health where I’ve worked now since March 22. That’s “Building B.” While I spend some time there, my office is in “Building A” which is on 21st and O Street. If the American Heart Association building wasn’t in the way I could probably see my house from my office.
From one of the bedrooms in the back unit, looks onto the rest of the property then the alley.
From the front bedroom in the front unit, facing 20th Street.
Front unit downstairs living room facing 20th.
This is the inside few of that window (at the very top) in the mother-in-law unit, which I showed the outside of earlier.
May 22: Windows have mostly gone in by this point. They are very nice windows. And that sliding glass door on the left is Heavy.
Those of you who follow my travel blogs have met Paul the dog :)
View from the front.
June 13: view from my upstairs front porch. Scaffolding has gone up to work on siding.
View from 20th. Doors are in.
View from the back.
As I said in the intro, there’s a ton of stuff happening on the inside with electrical and plumbing, but it doesn’t show very well in photos so we’ll wait until things start to take better shape before I go inside. I’ll do another update in a month or two. We’re hoping to finish in September so we will see how that goes.
In the mean time, the tenants of the downstairs unit left after 2.5 years, so we’re taking this opportunity to remodel. I’ve got decent “before” photos ready to go. It should be done by the end of this month so when it is I’ll do a little post about that unit. Who knows, maybe our next tenant will be a reader :)
For a variety of reasons, movement on this project slowed during the holidays then started up again mid-January. Some good progress has been made since so I thought it was time for an update.
As a reminder and for those who may be new to this portion of the blog, the entire project includes a facelift of the 120 year old house – an upstairs/downstairs duplex (I live upstairs), and construction of a new modern duplex next door but on the same lot. The remodel of the existing house was complete in November. If you want to see where we started and how we got here, you can review previous blog entries all from this page.
12/30/2020: We finally got all of the outside lighting up and I’m super happy with it. I love the warm look it brings to the house at night. And the lights are LED with sunlight detection, so they just go on and off automatically as it gets darker and lighter outside. I love that feature!
View from the alley at the back of the house.
1/14/2021: The first load of cinder blocks arrive to build the firewall required for the new construction.
The foundation had been poured on Halloween. So 2.5 months later, we were finally taking the next step.
1/25/2021: This lot is zoned commercial so there are no setback requirements (residential building codes typically require you keep at least 5 feet open between building and the lot line). We are building to the lot line to take advantage of the space. Because of that, a firewall is required by building code wherever we are building to the lot line. So that’s essentially the entire east and south borders. It needs to be 12 feet high for the 1-story parts, and 23 feet high for the 2 story section in the corner.
1/25/2021: Making progress. Weather gets in the way of them moving super fast this time of year. We had hoped to get this done in November so we could avoid all that but oh well. This is the south wall.
1/25/2021: The east wall. That building is the American Heart Association on O Street.
2/3/2021: More cinder block arrives.
2/3/2021: These 2 buys did the entire wall by themselves.
2/9/2021: The 12 foot portion is complete.
2/23/2021: The 23 foot portion is complete and they’ve drilled holes into the wall which the framing will hang from.
2/26/2021: Concrete gets poured into the cinder block wall to solidify it.
2/26/2021: The concrete is coming out of the hose, they are moving it along the top of the wall to fill it in. (And by the way, see that building in the background on the right? That’s One Community Health, where I will start work tomorrow as Chief HR Officer. Pretty excited about that, for so many reasons. They already have me listed on their leadership page!)
3/1/2021: The first drop of lumber arrives for the framing. It was a scene out of comedy capers I swear. When the siding for the remodeled duplex was delivered, it came in 20 foot long pieces like this, too. But the forklift was able to get above the 6 foot security fence of the parking lot next door so it wasn’t a problem. Now, of course, there’s a 12 foot wall there. The forklift driver is asking me – at 7am – what he wants me to do with the lumber. “Beats me.” This is what I pay people for :). Luckily, Randy, one of the guys who’s been here most days since July, showed up shortly after and had the answer, which was the same as the only thing I’d thought of: pull back the temporary security fence across the front. I watched the forklift driver try to navigate these tight spaces between the foundation and the house from the 2nd story porch. After a while I decided it was best to go inside. Pretty nerve-wracking. In the end they had to just dump a bunch of lumber in front of the house (much of it still there) and just move it by hand piece by piece.
3/8/2021: the first of the framing goes up.
3/8/2021: As seen from my 2nd story porch.
3/12/2021: Dan asked me to send him photos of the progress. He noticed right away this didn’t look right – those doors and windows are supposed to be the same height. We pointed out that to the guys that Monday.
3/19/2021: Things start to take shape. This is the same wall as the photo above it, just from the outside. The door height has been fixed. This is the front entrance of a 2-story unit that faces 20th Street.
To the right of that, this is a single car driveway leading to a single car garage. We’d wanted a tandem garage here but the city wouldn’t allow it to open up to the sidewalk that way for safety reasons.
Front unit – living room window and sliding glass door that faces the existing duplex.
3/19/2021: Same wall as above on the right, window of a mother-in-law suite on the left.
3/19/2021: This is a mother-in-law suite that’s a part of the 2-story unit in the back.
Front door of the back unit on the right – enter from the alley. Where I’m standing there will be a detached 2-car tandem garage, but that will be the last thing to go up for access reasons.
3/7/2021: And in the mean time, I’m still living here of course. The weather has improved enough finally to enjoy the great new balcony off the kitchen that was part of the remodel. Ash fixed a great Sunday brunch when we had our friend Laura visit.
And that’s it for now. If there’s enough progress in another month or so I’ll be back!
There are still a few odds and ends to be finished before the remodel is actually done, but you’d have to be living here to notice them. So for the typical reader’s purpose it is Done. It’s so weird living here through all of this because it all feels very slow and like not all that much happened since I last posted. But putting this together I realize it just ain’t so.
If you have some catching up to do on prior remodel blog entries, here’s where we’ve been:
October 20. In prior blog entries, I made vague references to “electrical challenges.” The beautiful electric panels you see above is the culmination of all of that. A 4-meter panel had to be built to accommodate the new units in the duplex to be constructed, and the two meters that had been in place were moved here, with all of that old wiring taken away. There’s more to the story in terms of why all that took so long but I won’t bore you with all of those details here. Suffice it to say that if you were me, you were pretty happy to see this done. It took probably 2 weeks for all of that to happen, in intervals; this was the first day of just getting the boxes up.
October 20. The very scary stairs in the back. I was NOT sad to see these go.
October 20. Meanwhile, on the other side of the house, painting was well in progress. Can you say “YELLOW”? When they first did a test of it after opening the first can the painters were like “are you SURE?” You could tell they thought I was crazy. I said “it’s a Victorian, it’s supposed to be obnoxious. At least it’s not purple or pink!” They agreed this was better given those options.
October 22. The stairs are gone and all the new siding is up. Notice the upstairs door is gone, too.
This is what the inside of the upstairs looks like now. This and a whole bunch of other miscellaneous work on the inside will be done later, maybe January.
October 27. The footings for the foundation poured. That’s concrete coming out of that long arm.
October 27. End result of that process.
October 28. Layers of rock and sand next.
October 31. The foundation is poured. They were here from about 7am – Noon. I lost count of the number of spinning concrete mixers. Six I think in the end.
Foundation done. The next thing to happen here is a sound wall going up on the east and south sides, and then the framing will go up attached to that. That’s all December/January time frame and not much will happen until then. So I doubt I’ll have another blog update this calendar year.
It occurred to me that I’ve never mentioned that this house is zoned into a historical district. Excitingly named “20th and N Street Historical District”, a map of its boundaries is outlined in red above. Note that little box that juts out on the bottom. That’s this property. It was gerrymandered into the district only because of its age, built in 1900. There was nothing special about this house really when we bought it, unlike many of the houses along N Street between 20th and 21st which have the official “registered” plaques on them, etc. Why do I bring this up now? Because in the planning stage, we had to think a lot about what we wanted to do and if it would meet “preservation” standards in terms of look and feel of the neighborhood. There were always 2 levels of inspections to be done at each interval in planning as well as construction – which our architect and general contractor handled for us thankfully. While all of the remodel was going on, they were in constant video contact (pandemic don’t forget) with Historical to make sure that the materials and application of them were in line with their standards, as well as the regular code people to make sure those guys were happy, too. All that to say, LOTS of compliance to be met at every step a long the way. They were having daily video inspections with one or the other for much of the time.
With that, we are ready for the big review and reveal. I wanted to layer in the Historical piece because one of the things we accomplished was increasing the “Victorian-ness” of this house, which made the Historical people very happy. The next series of photos will take you back: before, during, and final photos for each side of the house.
Front of the house, faces west
Before.
During.
The final front view. Above and below were taken about the same time of day a day apart, the first day being a bit overcast. Direct sun has a big impact on how yellow it is. I love it either way. And I’m super happy with the way the attic vent turned out. You could never really see it before; it didn’t stand out that much even if it hadn’t been hidden by tree for the most part. It’s the most Victorian feature of the house.
North side of the house
Before.
During. It looks like a skinned chicken.
More during, many different stages in progress depending on where you’re looking.
Final north side view. This is my favorite look. Rich, our architect, gets credit for the stairs. Dan gets credit for the balcony off the kitchen. Both now the predominant and most charming features of the house. And from November 10-12, a new roof was put on.
Same view, same time of day, different sun.
Somewhere between “before” and “during” for the balcony. All that had happened at this point was the first layer of framing and plywood put over what was just a roof an the downstairs unit. That was early July, one of the very first things they did.
After.
On the balcony, where I’ve sat to write most of this now on Monday afternoon, November 23. But first I ordered new outdoor furniture. (I know you’re relieved to hear that!) It’s a lovely spot and I can tell I will spend a great deal of time here.
Looking back onto the house with a little view into the kitchen through the open door, which used to be a window.
Back of house
Before.
During.
After, with another full view of the northside from this angle. It no longer looks like a dump driving up the alley, which is what I thought every single time I did it for almost 5 years.
One of the things that’s not complete yet is the outside lighting. This will look much better when it is, but this gives you a little taste.
Front porch
Before.
During.
After. I spent some time here this morning as well. Lovely.
Before, the south view. I don’t have a “during” shot for this angle, never occurred to me to take one, so…
After.
The view looking north from the front porch. I love the look of the house next door and the lovely fall colors. I will likely spend a lot of time here as well.
And that, my friends, is pretty much it for the remodel. How do you like it?
I will continue with entries on the new construction but it may be a couple of months until the next one. Stay safe during all this pandemic madness and I hope you have restful and happy holidays.
I’m sure I’m the only one who feels like it’s going on forever. You’ll likely think there’s been quite a bit of progress since the last post because, objectively, there has been. Here’s where we’ve been if you’re just joining and want to catch up:
September 16: The hazmat guys are back for their final stop to remove the last 2 windows upstairs and the last one downstairs. These windows on the north side had to wait until a bunch of electrical stuff – the panels are on that side of the house – got resolved.
For a moment the living room was Very Bright. Then they slapped plywood over the windows for several weeks until they got around to putting the new ones in.
September 17: We officially and literally broke ground on the construction of the new duplex…..
…and 30 minutes into it hit a gas line. I was at work when the general contractor called about 8:15am to let me know, and to ask for help getting the tenants out who had been unresponsive to the workers’ knocking.
I called them and left a voicemail and headed back to the house, a walk that’s about 8 minutes. By the time I got there, the tenants were out, and PG&E was there already. I could smell the gas as soon as I crossed N Street 1/2 a block away, and could hear it from about 100 feet away.
Gratefully nothing bad came of it other than the production of getting it fixed. All kinds of PG&E vehicles showed up and shut down that whole side of the street…
…with traffic control (see the guy at the top of the photo with the sign), digging into the street, the whole nine yards. They had to completely redo the line. Yes, it was marked. There’s a dispute about whether or not the line was deep enough or if the guy should have just stopped with the machinery and used a shovel earlier than he was planning to. Thankfully, not my fight and we have no interest or expense associated with it. The gas didn’t get turned back on in my unit until 10:30pm that evening.
September 18: They’ve started to reconstruct the front porch. Notice the lack of siding on the north and the two window AC units; that will look very different by the end of this post.
Progress made in trenches for the foundation.
September 23: The front porch is almost done. It didn’t have a roof before and I’m very excited about this look and function. The 4 posts on the 2nd level were the original posts that were on the first floor before. They salvaged as much of that earlier porch as they could so they could reuse it. Helps with the city’s historical rules in addition to keeping costs down, and just being sensible. Notice the yellow tape blocking off the frame for a concrete slab.
September 24: Like something out of an alien movie, the HVAC guys start installing the refrigeration lines that will be part of the new system. The upstairs unit will have 3 blowers, the downstairs 4.
This was the state of my kitchen for 4-6 weeks, after they removed the window which would be replaced with the door. I never did get used to it being so dark all the time.
The door was put in – sort of – and at least I have light again. It’s north light so pretty indirect and my favorite kind. I’m looking forward to having a functioning door opening up to a functioning deck. Soon.
September 28: I took this day off just to burn some time and it turned out to be a good thing. There was a lot happening, with 3 different crews on site: the regular 3 guys who are always here that work for the general contractor, 3 HVAC guys, and 5 working on the foundation of the new duplex.
My house was pretty torn up most of the day but they did a pretty good job of putting it back together. Except for the dirt. The house was Filthy at the end of the day. I’ve mopped a LOT this month.
The foundation guys were laying the framing for the concrete mold.
The state of my bedroom most of the day.
Eventually this space will be occupied with a detached garage for use by the occupants of the new unit in the back. The stairs on the right – the only way in and out of my unit at the moment – will go away as the area becomes a walkway.
I was sitting right in that chair – where I am at this moment also – one morning when they suddenly and literally start coming through the walls. They were right outside my window starting to tear the old siding out and at some point I guess punched something too far. Notice the breaks in the wall behind the artwork in addition to the one towards the bottom. Eventually all of this will get fixed, along with all of the inside window trim which in some places is in pretty bad shape post new window installations.
September 29: The concrete slab for the stairs gets poured. From left to right that’s Jeremiah, Randy and Brad, the 3 normal guys. Then Mike the general contractor talking to the concrete guy.
October 6: Good progress on the stairs.
October 9: Starting to lay plumbing for the new duplex. And, redwood for the decks of the existing one. Coming soon….
October 9: Siding on the northside complete. The stringers (a new term I learned that I really didn’t need to know) for the stairs are in and painted in the correct color. HVAC is completely running – notice the 2 compressors, one for each unit, and the window units are gone. The piping is still a bit of a mess but they have plans to clean all that up and hide it somehow.
Just a reminder that this is what it looked like last time. (That’s more for my benefit than yours…)
The front is shaping up nicely.
You saw this door earlier, but notice the little white thing top right – that’s one of the HVAC blowers: 3 upstairs, 4 downstairs.
New windows are in the living room, with the HVAC blower top center. And, the window unit is out of the window on the left. I’m surprised at the difference that made in the lighting of the room….
…and so happy that I have a nice little view of the neighborhood now. I’m shocked at the affect this has on me. I really do love Midtown.
The blower in the bedroom, top center. Having AC in the bedroom – even though I’ve only used it one day since it was installed – was a revelation. I’m sure heat will be even more so. This room was impossible in extreme weather. During that awful heatwave we had in August I slept 5 nights in a row in the living room. And in the winter, I use a space heater and electric blanket in here. The only other heat in the house is the wall heater in the living room and no way that can turn the corner it would have to to make it in here. So I’m looking forward to winter now with insulation and better heating. Should make a huge difference.
And that’s it for now. I won’t do another update until the remodel is completely done – whether that’s 2 weeks or 8 weeks – and then we’ll just see how far the new construction has gotten by then.
Thanks for coming along for the ride and I hope you’re safe and well wherever you are.
It is Saturday, September 12, 2020, and has been over a month since my last remodel update so decided it was time. I’m sure it’s just because I’m too close to it, but it seems like not much has been done since my last update but objectively that’s clearly not true. I figured we were at least 1/2way done at this point and our general contractor (GC) confirmed that yesterday, probably more like 60%. He thinks we’ll be done with the house by the end of September. I won’t hold him to that!
All those plastic-wrapped boxes are the new HVAC systems that will someday be installed in both units. It’s super expensive and disruptive to try to put a central system into a 120 year old house so we went with the next best thing: split systems. The compressor is outside, with as many blowers on the inside as you want. You have likely seen these in hotels and didn’t know that’s what they were called. This was delivered August 10, but the GC decided he didn’t want his guys to install after all and is looking for a qualified electrician to do it. OK by me. Although would have been nice to have them in that for heat wave we had earlier! Currently all we have are old fashioned window units, one in each unit.
August 12. They finally started demolition of the north side. This side is taking the longest because of some SMUD complications that required a plan revision to be filed with the city. And that’s all I’ll say about that. But it delayed everything else because all of the electrical controls for the whole complex will be on this side of the property.
August 20, 8am: The first plank of new siding goes up, see the strip at the very bottom.
August 20, 6pm: Great progress on new siding on the south side of the house.
August 21, 7:36am: The very first real step of the new construction. Crews showed up to dig up the alley to put in the water and sewer taps. That round tool is a saw seeping into the concrete. It was LOUD.
August 25: not sure why this insulation is pink instead of white but it’s pretty :) Not that anyone will ever see it!
City utility trucks and a yellow backhoe in the alley, as seen from my office window
August 26, 7:23am: now they’re back to actually install the water and sewer taps. These guys like to work early.
Water tap in progress.
Water tap complete.
The new doors were also installed on this day. Some of you have seen this before. This photo really cracks me up – shows how crooked the house is. That door is level believe it or not.
Look, Ma, no rat skeletons!
When the workers first started preparing the attic for insulation, they said there were rat skeletons the size of cats up there. They cleaned up what they could, then the GC brought in an electrician to replace all of the knob-and-tube wiring that was up there. Which I was very grateful for. My old property underwriting background always made me very uncomfortable just knowing there was knob-and-tube still in the house. It can be fine if still in good condition AND there’s nothing touching it. So you can’t lay insulation on top of it, which is why it needed to go. I was super happy about that and didn’t even realize what a low-level stressor it was knowing it was there until it was gone. You can still see some of the knobs in the photo, but no more tube!
September 4: Front mostly done with new siding, and of course the new doors. I never realized until this moment how not-aligned the windows and doors are comparing upstairs to down. The old stairs that ran in front of the house always obscured that. While we’ve always known the two floors were never connected, this process has pretty much confirmed that the downstairs unit was built much later than the rest of the house, which is very common for houses in this neighborhood originally built in the same period. Sacramento was super prone to flooding back in the day so many of the houses were built on stilts. Once the levees were built, everyone filled in the lower portion with units with pretty low ceilings, the tell-tale sign. And here, that nothing lines up anywhere. Another sign was that much of the downstairs had insulation when they pulled the siding off, but none of the upstairs did.
Speaking of stairs, here’s a drawing of what the new ones will look like. You can see in the top right sketch how the original stairs were diagonal across the front of the house – the dotted lines. The new stairs will come up from the side, maybe best seen in the sketch top left. It’s going to change the front of the house quite a bit and will make it look much bigger than it did, despite the size not changing. That bottom right sketch is the backstairs coming out, and they won’t be put back on. I have a running joke with the GC about “make sure I have front stairs again before you take these out.”
I spent a good portion of the last weekend of August thinking about colors and coordinating the options with Dan. This photo isn’t the best representation but it’s going to look great we think. The primary color will be that yellow – that it’s called Simply Joyful is just the cherry on top. Window and door trim will be the white color, as well as the vertical spindles of the stairs and porches. Tops of the porches and stair rails will be the red color. And the base and floor of stairs and porches will be the gray.
September 4: That’s Jeremiah, one of the 3 workers who are here everyday. He’s starting to pull the siding off around the kitchen window that will soon be a door, standing on what will soon be the new deck. As seen from the office window.
September 4: The south side is pretty much done except for paint. Notice again how not-aligned anything is, except for the 2 windows on the far right. They were part of an addition that was built at the same time, so that makes sense.
September 4: I get a kick out of this photo because you see every possible stage all at one time: on the back portion, new siding has already started to go up. Above that you see both the beginning of siding coming down and old siding still up. New windows up and down on the far left, old windows still in the center. On the right side, various stages of prep to put up the new siding.
September 11: The front is so done for now they moved the scaffolding to the north side. That’s Randy on the right, one of the regular workers. They were going to leave that porta-poddy right there near the sidewalk and I highly discouraged it, even though they keep it locked. Too many homeless folks in this area. In my insurance days we would have called that an attractive nuisance! So they moved it to a corner of the vacant lot that will end up being a front driveway so won’t really get in the way of foundation work.
September 11: And foundation work is next! All of the needed lines were spray painted onto the ground. The blue is various points in the house, the green is plumbing, and that red wire cutting across shows the actual floor height. Pretty exciting.
Meet Mike Reed, the GC. He’s been super great to work with and does all of the heavy lifting dealing with the city, SMUD, PG&E, etc. Which is exactly what we needed. Keeps us well informed, too.
The same weekend I was dealing with colors I also did a bunch of shopping. It’s all come in and just waiting for its turn to be installed: all of the exterior lights, new mailboxes, new house numbers.
Did this feel like progress from the last time? I guess so. The most important part for me honestly was the wiring which you can’t see but I’m sure happy about that. If Mike’s estimate is right, the house should be done when I do my next update in a month. Guess we’ll see!
Here are the links to other entries if you’re interested and haven’t seen them:
I’m writing the first portion of this post on Sunday evening, July 26. I’m on vacation this coming week and staying at a hotel a few blocks away from my house for a couple of reasons:
Since it’s difficult to travel due to the pandemic, this mimics an actual vacation
It ensures that I’m out of the house in a comfortable setting when the workers arrive at 6am to work on the project. I never knew banging at 6:30am could be so unnerving. First class problems for sure.
As I learned later in the week, it also gave me a place to go during the day when they were at it in full force. Relaxing at home during the day would have been quite impossible. Or at least a serious test in blocking out noise and distraction which was not what I wanted on a vacation!
So I’m taking this opportunity to keep this blog updated, even though I don’t know when I’ll post this. The last update I did, Site Prep, I posted on July 9. The next 9 photos were all taken between July 14 and July 24.
July 14. This is the south side of the house where they started taking the siding off. Notice that the downstairs sort of has insulation, but there’s zero upstairs. If you’ve ever been in my house in the winter, now you know why I keep blankets out. The whole house will finally be insulated, the downstairs being replaced; we didn’t even realize it was there. The workers promise me that I will notice the difference right away, winter or summer. So I’m looking forward to that.
This was part of a new term I learned: exploratory demolition. The point of this is to see how much dry rot and termite damage there is and replace any found before the real work begins. There was some dry rot but not a lot, and some old termite damage but nothing new. This was one of the big question marks we had going into this project as we had no idea what would be found and were imagining it could be really bad since the house is 120 years old. We got off easy, and I ain’t complaining.
July 16. The only thing worse than banging on the house at 6:30am is the sound of jackhammers, which is what caused this concrete to look like this. I took this photo at 7:38am. They got rid of everything around the house that didn’t belong to the city – sidewalks, the driveway in the back, this area along the west and north side of the house.
July 17. The next day, the front stairs and upper porch came down. This was 7:53am when I left for work. In progress.
July 17, 11:34am when I came home for lunch. No more. Notice the piece of wood nailed across the upstairs front door. Just in case I tried to step out! In another lifetime, I could imagine that…
Notice the fresh wood between the two floors. This is earthquake retrofitting that was added, there wasn’t anything there before, which was part of the problem. Just the beams going across the house, but nothing holding them in place if the earth shakes. And the earth does shake Every Time that train a 1/2 block away goes by. So a good thing.
The fresh wood over the roof is the beginning of a deck that will go there. that window in the shade is in the kitchen and will be converted to a door. This was Dan’s idea and the city loved it. Super excited to have another outdoor space.
These are the abatement guys, making the lot look like a hazmat zone for 2 days.
July 22, Wednesday, 7:48am. We had to have an inspection done for lead and asbestos and that went much better than it could have, also. Some found just in the windows, not in the siding. But anything that contains either has to be removed by workers trained in abatement or you’re subject to hefty fines. These guys made their way around the house on Wednesday and Thursday removing window trim.
Same day, 12:38pm. We’re in business now. Something about the scaffolding going up made it even more real.
July 23. The back of the house after all of the siding and window trim came off.
The first step is a doozy. (That’s the welcome mat of the tenants downstairs…I have no idea why it’s turned inward!, but it works for this photo…)
At some point during the week the front security door had been removed as well. I usually keep my front door open at night to let the fresh air in. I guess I could still do that – certainly no one’s getting in! It just feels a little creepy. While it’s been decades, I had a little sleepwalking problem as a child. It would be bad if that suddenly cropped up again!
The remainder of this entry was written and posted on August 9, 2020, using photos taken since July 26.
The beginning of window work that’s taking longer than originally anticipated because of the abatement needs. It has to be done in stages based on their schedule, and removing windows based on certified abatement practices takes longer than just yanking them out.
The photos above and below were taken on July 28. Before taking the windows out, they were covered on the inside with white paper and held in place by blue masking tape. Plywood was put over them on the outside until they were able to replace them, one-to-several days later just depending.
The first photo is of course living room, the one below is the back of the house looking towards the laundry area; the office is behind me. The construction guys were very good about putting the house back together. The new windows were put in place on July 31 and they had put the washer and dryer back in their proper place (that’s the washer in the photo – typically next to the window; the dryer is behind me in this photo, they had to move everything out of the way), and sweeping to clean up the vast quantities of dust.
This was also taken July 28. You can see the abatement guys wearing white and yellow, with the white plastic on the ground and the little white hut. They are back this day to start removing windows. But you can also see progress – all of this side now has insulation, and they’ve started to apply the plywood layer on the left. After plywood comes a layer of paper to manage moisture, and then finally the new siding.
Also July 28, they’ve started to remove the siding on the front and make the fixes to dry rot and termite damage, evidenced by the fresh wood you see.
July 31: if it didn’t look like a construction zone before, it certainly does now. The backhoe and earth remover were delivered that morning, along with all those piles of various kinds of ground.
South side complete except for trim and siding: all the foundational stuff in place, including the paper I mentioned earlier, and all of the windows are in.
One of the living room windows from the inside. Super happy with them. Really nice, Pella is the brand. Red on the outside, tan on the inside, double hung (meaning you can raise/lower either the bottom or top portion). Well insulated. Between the windows and actual insulation, you could already tell the different in noise and heat reduction inside, even though just the south side is done. That is where most of the heat comes from after all.
August 3: they’ve started to remove the siding and repair dry rot, etc., in the back. You have to look carefully, but you can see what they’ll fix under the window, especially the right side, and all around the door.
Scaffolding went up on the front. Just seeing those guys on the top level makes my vertigo kick in.
Later that evening, August 3. You can see all of the siding from the attic and second floor now gone. I liked the way this looked with the sun setting behind the trees on the street. It confirms what we suspected – still plenty of shade after removing all the trees that were so close to the house.
I found this photo from 2015 – really of the entire kitchen but cropped to focus on the window because I realized I didn’t otherwise have a good “before” shot. This window is in the back of the house, looks east into the parking lot of the American Heart Association. It was a single huge window that, in my mind, was a picture window. I didn’t realize until I found this photo this morning that it wasn’t actually, it’s just that it was broken and wouldn’t open so might as well have been.
Here’s the new window that I absolutely love. Functioning for one, and looks great with the 4 panes and the security guard gone. Also, the back door, not pictured to the left of this, will be going away as well as the back stairs will eventually come out to make way for the garage that will be associated with the new duplex. So we still get opportunity for cross breeze. I leave that back door open quite a bit when the weather is nice so this is a super reasonable substitute. Still laughing to myself a little bit to just realize that prior window wasn’t a picture window. The way my head works is a little scary sometime.
That’s it for now. I wanted to do an update at least once a month and this makes that quota. Looking forward to seeing the progress in another month.
We closed on this property I believe on July 23, 2015, give or take a day or few. Nearly 5 years later, the first step towards actual work took place on Friday morning, July 3, 2020. It was the teeniest of first steps, followed by a few more a few days later, but I was excited about it nonetheless. Finally.
I’m not going to post about Every Single Step, I promise. But I’d said in my Memorial Day post that we would likely get started in 5 weeks so wanted to give an update that somewhat matched that. I’m thinking I’ll probably collect items over the course of a month and post at that interval. It will depend on how much progress I want to record (or, more likely, remember to).
On Friday, July 3, all that happened was the wooden fence that created side yards for each unit of the existing duplex was taken down, and the vacant lot cleared of weeds and other debris. On Tuesday, July 7, the trees came down.
This is what it looked like before.
Street view from Google, taken in 2016
And after.
The 3 trees that were directly in front of the house are gone, along with the fence and the huge tree that was on the side of the house.
I’ve actually spent some time on my porch the last several evenings, including as I’m typing this, because it’s much more pleasant with those trees gone. I liked them in some ways because I could hide up here and people rarely saw me if they were walking by. But those privet trees dropped filth onto this porch year-round. I swept it and the stairs good on Tuesday after they were done. It was so refreshing to walk outside on Wednesday morning and have it still be clean. In 5 years that had never happened before. It will be even nicer once it gets a roof!
The porch on the day I moved in, October 30, 2015. The porch today.
In addition to the trees being gone, notice also the difference in color of the porch. That’s how filthy those trees were.
A closer view taken a week ago. This comparison gives you a slightly more dramatic view of the difference without the fence and trees.
That’s probably all that’s worth seeing really: the before and after. But that’s not going to stop me from posting a few more of the during…
Friday morning, July 3: the first slats of the fence started coming down. It was ridiculous how excited I was at such a small step.
This was about 9:30am on July 3. The contractor had a couple of guys over to start clearing the land so he can start working on the foundation of the new duplex that will go here.
Taken about the same time the next morning. Notice the tree shadow is in the same place as that red marker.
Four days later: the cottonwood tree across the way, and the camphor tree close to house now gone. That last remaining tree in the back is on the property line. We just got clearance last week from the city to remove it, but the contractor needs to make arrangements with the users of the parking lot – Community One Health across O Street – to make sure that area is clear before we can do it.
This was a large camphor tree that I’m sure is many decades old. We had much discussion about whether to leave it or take it out. At a minimum it would need to be trimmed back terribly. In the end the city approved it’s removal (did you know you can’t just remove your own trees without a permit??) so we figured that was a sign. It does provide a lot of shade to the south-facing windows of the existing house – of which there are many. Oh well. Once the new duplex is in that will help block the sun some, as will having new windows and insulation put in the existing house.
From this angle that camphor tree would have been on the right. But now it’s gone!
It got a little bit of vertigo watching the guy go up in that cherry picker. It was wild to watch them take down that huge tree limb by limb, using a rope/pulley technique to keep them from hitting the house as they chain-sawed them down.
All that was left of those 3 privets in front until they took a pretty scary saw to those stumps that ground them into dust.
A few “before and after” shots from the inside with the trees gone.
That tree provided a ton of shade for the house. Here you can see him hacking away at the big trunk, now lying on the ground to the left. From the bathroom. Now you see it….…now you don’t.
And, it’s a Lot More Brighter on the inside without that camphor tree. I don’t usually have the shades up that high anyway but wanted to see what it looked like. And it’s bright.
Yesterday and today they started doing “exploratory demolition” to see what kind of condition the bones of the house are in. We’ve actually been a little worried about what they will find when they start tearing apart a 120 year old house. But so far so good and we hope that continues.
It’s Very Loud work. I actually went into the office today and worked there all day for the first time since March 16 because I just couldn’t concentrate with all the noise.
It’s Memorial Day during the COVID-19 pandemic. While I probably could have come up with something to do if I really wanted to, I’m one of those people where all this isolation really works for me. So I continue to take advantage of it. I did a 3.5 mile walk this morning down to the Tower Bridge, along the Sacramento River a bit then back up R Street, thinking when I got back I would do some writing. All kinds of blog ideas floating around in my head. But the idea that got the most energy was preparing for the next big adventure in my life: a complete facelift of my current residence.
I’d written some blogs about this property back in 2015 on the Blogger platform that I was using at the time. I knew before I wrote anything new I’d want to move those here to WordPress so I would have it all in one place. For some reason, this was a bigger deal in my head than it turned out to be (as is almost always the case). There were 8 entries, mostly related to the remodel of the upstairs unit where I’ve been living since 10/31/2015. You’re welcome to review those here if you’ve never seen the inside of my house. It pretty much looks exactly the same now as it did then. (And if you’re a subscriber, apologies for all of the earlier posts. It took me a minute to figure out how to update the old material where needed without republishing each one…)
Before I get started, a personal update although most of you know this: Dan and I split up in 2018. He still lives in Raleigh, NC, where he’s been since 2016. But it was a super amicable split and we quickly transitioned to business partners with regards to continuing to develop this property. So if I still reference him from time to time as this progresses, that’s why.
And another update before I forget: the earlier entries referenced us building a 6 unit apartment building on the vacant portion of this lot. Very, VERY long story short: those plans had to be scrapped once we learned that there wasn’t enough water pressure available on this street to support those needs, and the cost to connect to the water main on 19th Street was prohibitive. So that’s that.
The plan now is to build another duplex on the vacant lot. And we’re ready to go on that front: plans approved in August, contractor hired in February. He’s likely going to begin late June or early July. The update to the existing house will get started along with the foundation work on the new at the same time. So my objective here was to make sure I captured the “before” of the existing house before he starts tearing stuff apart.
I titled this entry Facelift because that’s essentially what’s happening: the entire exterior will be redone, with a new roof, new windows, new siding. And a couple of other changes to round it out.
Front of the house, faces west
For all the pain those stairs caused us – delaying closing by 6 months so the seller could get them up to code – they are going away. The new set will be oriented off the left side of this photo: enter from the sidewalk, 180 degree turn midway up, enter the upstairs front porch from the alley-side. The porch will have a roof (this one doesn’t although you can’t really tell in this photo). And the trees right in front of the house – filthy privets – will go away which I’m super happy about.
North side of the house from the alley
This photo provides a better view of those privets. They provide a lot of shade but they drop stuff All Year Long it seems. Makes it impossible to keep the porch clean and you’re always tracking stuff into the house.
The window AC units will go away and we’re putting in a split system. The window in the kitchen will be removed and replaced with a door, and a deck will be put on that roof area on the far left of this photo. I’m very excited about that and the city loved that idea. (Dan’s, of course.)
Back of the house
I laugh every time I pull up to the house from the alley. “What a dump” goes through my head Every Time. First-time visitors are always Quite Surprised when they first enter because they had already formed an image of the inside based on their impression of the outside and, thankfully, those don’t match. Those stairs are going away and both upstairs and downstairs doors will be removed and walled in. Because where my car is now will be a 2-car tandem garage that will be associated with the back unit of the new duplex.
Security fence surrounding the vacant lot
In January of 2019 I agreed to let the guy who built a new 3-unit place in the alley use this lot for storage. He put up a security fence and that solved my homeless problem: for over 3 years I’d been constantly shooing homeless folks away from my property. I didn’t even realize what an underlying stressor that was until the fence went up and I felt an immediate sense of relief. That project was done in December, so I had the lease transferred to my name because it was worth every penny.
I don’t know when the graffiti happened. Apparently the city doesn’t care about it on these tarp things or I’m sure I would’ve heard about it. When the fence was graffitied in early 2016 I had to have it painted or be fined.
South side of the house
The privet tree goes away of course, and so does that huge tree on the right, (better seen in the photo below). I don’t remember what it’s called.
The vacant lot from the street
I held my phone above the security fence to get this shot. This will be a duplex, two 2-story units, each 2 bedroom/2.5 bath. The one in the back will have a tandem 2 -car garage. The one in front will have a 1 car garage and a driveway that could park one vehicle as well. We tried for a 2-car tandem there, too, but the city won’t allow the garage to butt up against the street sidewalk. They didn’t care about that in the alley. The entrances to both units will be in the middle where there will also be a shared courtyard. All those trees on the right go as well.
Back of the vacant lot
The building next to our property it the American Heart Association. The back unit will have a little private yard that backs up to that building so that the two buildings themselves aren’t that close.
So that’s the grand plan. Given this has been in the works for essentially 5 years, that we may be starting in 5 weeks may as well be tomorrow. It’s going to get here very quickly. I’m planning on staying here throughout, and have notified the tenants downstairs, who also seem excited about it. Everyone asks me if I’m going to move to one of the new units once complete and the answer is “I don’t know yet.” I’m actually excited about staying here for a bit after it’s all done. It’s going to feel different with new windows, the deck off the kitchen and, oh yeah, Insulation! I’m looking forward to experiencing winter in this 120 year old house without freezing.
This is a really nice unit but if working from home continues with any regularity, it would be nice to have the extra space. This is about 800 and the new ones will be about 1300. So we’ll see.
I won’t update this again for awhile, but I’m excited to have gotten this far.
Whatever you’re doing this Memorial Day, I hope you’re safe and happy. And in honor of the season, a couple of other photos.
American cemetery in France. US Troops who died during the D-Day invasion burred at Normandy. Taken in 2014. American Cemetery in Luxembourg. US Troops who died mostly in the Battle of the Bulge. But Patton is buried here as well, although he died after the war. Taken in 2015.
PS: I’ve gotten feedback from many of you over the last few travel blogs that you’ve had trouble entering comments directly into the blog. This is actually always my preference because there are many readers who aren’t on Facebook and I’d like everyone to see everything. So I made some changes on the backend that should make it easier to do. I’d love it if some of you would test that out so we can see how it goes!
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