PRE-final Inspection!

Today we had our "pre-final" inspection. It's awfully nice of the City of San Diego to offer that to homeowners - we weren't ready for the final inspection, but we were due for a visit; you must have some kind of inspection every 180 or else your permit expires...

The inspector was not our usual Maria (who we love) but the substitute ended up not being as terrible as some have in the past.

Here's the "punch list" of things that need to be complete before our final inspection (due by July 18th)

Finish "brown" (middle) and color coat of stucco
Affix address to exterior of house
Complete trim and casing of garage-kitchen door
Water heater: overflow tube, shut-off valve for cold
Bathroom backsplash
Bathroom floor
Paint underside of roof addition

Most of it is easy -- the hard part will be the first item on the list. We'll be farming the stucco out to professionals and need to get going on the bidding process.

On to the photos!

Closet organization for our back-up closet in the second bedroom. It is currently functioning as our only clothes closet. That should be remedied when Jesse makes our master bedroom closet in about a month!

An update of the exterior of the house. The "scratch" coat of stucco has been applied. As mentioned above, we'll have professionals come to sandblast the whole house then apply the color coat.

We are now in the master bedroom. There was a lot to do before we could paint. First, Jesse removed the old window "trim," which was really just built-up joint compound -- about five inches worth!

This is the area above our new master bedroom closet. We created this space by taking a bit away from the living room. The ceiling was new style drywall -- but it had to be "floated out" to match the existing master bedroom ceiling.

The walls, although newly painted before we moved in, were in pretty bad shape. We think they weren't cleaned before the last paint job -- there was a lot of painted-over junk. All that had to be removed and gone over with joint compound to match. (I helped!)

We replaced the electrical in the entire house. To do that in rooms where we weren't opening up walls, we cut the bottom four inches off the existing plaster to access the wall cavities. All of that had to be drywalled, then floated out with joint compound to match the existing plaster. This will all be covered up with baseboard once we get the floors refinished (summer 2011).

Two of the walls in the master bedroom were new construction -- the walls that border the bathroom and the living room. These needed to be taped, mudded, and textured to match the existing walls.

The more we look up, the more cracks we find in the ceiling! This crack extended the entire length of the bedroom. Jesse screwed up the ceiling in a grid around the crack, then chipped out around the crack to lie "tape," then mudded over the tape and screws, then applied texture to match the existing ceiling. It's a lot of work but makes a world of difference!

Here is that same crack, now with texture over it. Once it's primed and painted, the crack will be gone forever! (It won't return because we screwed up the ceiling -- no screws in the 1940s.)

Existing walls are re-textured. Because Jesse is uber-thorough and wonderful.

Now that we're finished with the joint compound, it's time to prime and paint. We put resin paper down to protect the floors.

One coat of primer and two (and a half) coats of color later...

The master bedroom is functioning as dining room, office, and storage. Here's a shot of the office portion of the room.

On to the living room!

We emptied the living room and started the same process as above in there. Jesse got creative with some chipped paint:

Chipping away the paint to allow for nice fill in area.

Jesse is applying joint compound to mask the areas that were removed. Cheeba is in charge of quality assurance.

Even though he just installed it, not one year ago, Jesse did not like the placement of the light switches. So he moved them.

We stacked our two "L-shape" sofas on top of each other like Tetris blocks. Cheeba thinks it's her own personal cave/fort. I got in there with her and it was pretty great.

The end for now!

the future is now

hello to all our intrepid readers. It has been a long time, but we're back! Because of the amount of time that has passed, this post is most likely incomplete.

Corinne and I spent nearly 2 weeks in her native Western New York over Christmas, which was wonderful.

At our last update, we were working on the bathroom. Nothing else has happened in there, and we are still walking around on backerboard.

The outside of the house is nearly stuccoed, with just a few spots to go. Picture to follow when that is complete, hopefully in the next few days.

The dining nook is now taped and mudded and painted. This is a big deal and was a lot of work. The new drywall did not line up with the old plaster, and had to be completely floated out. The ceiling, only about 4' x 10', required about 4 boxes of joint compound, and in places is a full 1/2" thick. There is a chandelier now, too, which provides a lot of nice light.

The second bedroom is also looking much better. I floated, with joint compound, over drywall where a closet was, bringing the new surface flush with the existing plaster. Then I re-textured and repainted the entire room. Oops, no pictures of that.

I also added casing to the window in that bedroom, which I think looks very nice. This casing is just ripped and routed MDF, which is really cheap. This window used about half a sheet, which costs about $18.

Cheeba thinks it looks nice, too.

We have moved into the second bedroom for now, so I can work on the master bedroom.

Also, I repaired a hole in the flooring where a wall furnace had been, way back when.

Because we have hardwood flooring, repairing a hole is somewhat complicated. It is important that any joints be staggered, so that the patch is stronger and less noticeable. Making the cuts at the ends of boards, between 2 boards that are not getting removed, can be accomplished with a router and a straight edge. The straight edge I was using is a short piece of MDF, secured to the floor temporarily with hot glue on top of masking tape. This way there is no damage to the floor and I can just peel it up when its time to move. In the picture below, you can see a few such cuts have been made. The corners where the router couldn't go need to be cleaned up with a chisel.

Next, a circular saw is used to split the planks that need to be removed down the middle so that they can be removed without damaging the tongues or grooves that are staying. Here it is with all the boards removed.

And here is the floor once the new boards were installed. Drywall shims and a lot of liquid nails were used to level everything out, and only a few face nails had to be driven to get everything down. Where the two floors met, the space was not the exact width of a plank, so instead of having one very narrow plank, I made three slightly narrow planks. These were made by ripping down existing planks and then recreating tongues and grooves using a T & G router bit. The planks I am using were taken up earlier when the closet was built and when the kitchen was expanded. Here's the finished product. This should look nice when we get our floors refinished.

We are under the gun, now. We need to have our final inspection within about a week, before our permit runs out. eek.