The kitchen job was in trouble. What about the plumbing? The bathrooms were largely untouched when the Bad Labor quit, except for the bare walls and the tubs loosely placed in their designated positions. Oh well, it's time to get real professionals to take a look. Here is a consistent list of problems independently discovered by 2 licensed plumbers (one awarded a contract, the other an inspection fee):
- The pipes underneath the house were too far away below the floor joists. Need to attach them firmly to the bottom of the 2x6s, to secure the pipe, and to avoid clanking noise when the water is turned on.
- The pipes were attached with galvanized devices. Need to use copper devices to avoid corrosion.
- Toilet in small bath will block before we know it since it does not have a ventilation pipe going above the roof.
- Laundry hookup pipes are connected wrong, violation of code.
- Water heater ventilation cannot use flex pipe. Need to replace with fix pipe.
- Need to add ledge to the side of both tubs. Need to add dry mortar underneath the large 72-in by 36-in fiberglass tub in main bath, to make it sit firmly on the ground.
- Need to seal 2 open drain pipes under the house, and connect laundry drain line to a drain pipe.
- Need to attach hose bibs firmly to the exterior wall (all 3 were hanging loose in the wind)
- Need to change all drain pipes underneath from 90-degree angel to smooth curve, to allow clog-removal device to go down the drain in the future.
- Both the kitchen drain pipe and small bath drain pipe need to be replaced, as they were broken in the demolition process.
And, of course, we have all the finishing jobs left, dishwasher and garbage disposal install, tub, sink, faucet, shower head, and ice water line install. All these, and Bad Labor's earlier refusal to replace the water main (the line between curb side and the connection point into the house) as part of the re-piping job, would cost around $5K. As our plumber put it, this guy (the Bad Labor) only deserves to stand in front of the Home Depot, given only a shovel!
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Ill-fated Kitchen Countertop
Granite countertop came in heavy pieces. The 24-in by 8-or-9-ft slabs serve as countertop in the usual sense, the 36-in by 8ft piece is used as breakfast tabletop, and the 6-in by 8-or-9-ft boards go vertically along the wall (hence named back splash board). We picked a stone pattern called Emerald Pearl for our kitchen.
On the next day after the 3/4-in plywood were affixed on top of the kitchen cabinets we went into the kitchen to witness the first sign of failure for our remodeling project. The granite material was sanded into terrible raw shape along the line of slab connection on each side of the wall. The cabinet vendor was called in and the granite slabs deemed permanently damaged.
There were several problems with the installation. The first and the foremost problem was the cabinets were not sitting on level floor surface. The significance of some old hardwood floor boards sticking out from the bottom of one end of the cabinets while old linoleum tiles sitting underneath the rest of the section did not become clear to us until then, a couple of days too late. Failing to level the floor, the plywood on top of the cabinets could have been leveled before the countertop went on. The sequence for the granite pieces to go on also went wrong. The big piece serving as the breakfast tabletop went in last on the window side, leaving a wide opening between the end of the slab and the wall. The sanding at the joint lines was made necessary because 2 granite slabs joined into a ridge, or a valley, or a cliff, rather than flat surface. As it turned out, the countertop could be sanded down with special tools by a specialist from the cabinet shop. The result would be barely acceptable, far below the quality generally accepted in the trade. The alternative was to replace and reinstall the countertop all together, an expensive proposition, since the granite slabs tend to break when uninstalled after being glued down to the plywood.
With the help of our cabinet vendor, by then a sympathetic friend, we had the countertop repaired. The poorly assembled and installed cabinets were also strengthened and their defects hidden behind some properly installed mouldings.
On the next day after the 3/4-in plywood were affixed on top of the kitchen cabinets we went into the kitchen to witness the first sign of failure for our remodeling project. The granite material was sanded into terrible raw shape along the line of slab connection on each side of the wall. The cabinet vendor was called in and the granite slabs deemed permanently damaged.
There were several problems with the installation. The first and the foremost problem was the cabinets were not sitting on level floor surface. The significance of some old hardwood floor boards sticking out from the bottom of one end of the cabinets while old linoleum tiles sitting underneath the rest of the section did not become clear to us until then, a couple of days too late. Failing to level the floor, the plywood on top of the cabinets could have been leveled before the countertop went on. The sequence for the granite pieces to go on also went wrong. The big piece serving as the breakfast tabletop went in last on the window side, leaving a wide opening between the end of the slab and the wall. The sanding at the joint lines was made necessary because 2 granite slabs joined into a ridge, or a valley, or a cliff, rather than flat surface. As it turned out, the countertop could be sanded down with special tools by a specialist from the cabinet shop. The result would be barely acceptable, far below the quality generally accepted in the trade. The alternative was to replace and reinstall the countertop all together, an expensive proposition, since the granite slabs tend to break when uninstalled after being glued down to the plywood.
With the help of our cabinet vendor, by then a sympathetic friend, we had the countertop repaired. The poorly assembled and installed cabinets were also strengthened and their defects hidden behind some properly installed mouldings.
Leaky Windows
As the plumbing and kitchen countertops were being fixed, we started the interior and exterior painting jobs. Our painter used high pressure jet stream to wash the stucco wall over a weekend. He was a bit worried because he thought the windows might not have been sealed properly.
In fact, we knew. Daddy had already taken down the outside wood trims on 5 of the 10 new vinyl windows. The wood pieces were trimmed to the same width, and the windows resealed from outside (using vendor instruction and DAP's 50-year caulk). The small bathroom window was in open air under the wood trims (with no tar paper, no stucco patch; you can "feel the breeze", so to speak, if there were no drywall inside :-), as a result of our request to have the originally installed 3ft by 1ft window replaced by a 3ft by 2ft window (Bad Labor threw a tantrum when we made the request and threatened to quit the first time).
The 5 resealed windows survived the high pressure water without incident. 4 out of the 5 untouched ones leaked water into the inside glass pane like crazy. The 5th one seemed to have lived, only to have water dripping out of its irrigation hole continuously (took 4-5 pieces of fully soaked kitchen towel to get the water out). A deep sigh...
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Arched Kitchen Window
One of the problems we noticed in the kitchen was that the visible wood frames of the window seemed to be arched inward. It's mildly depressing to see the center of the top wood frame bending downward, while the center of the bottom piece bending upward. As it turned out the Bad Labor guy either didn't know how or didn't bother to shim the window frames properly to make it sit horizontally against the 2x4 frames inside the wall. When Daddy redid the work, it was also noted that the window itself was not shimmed properly either. Sigh...
Brick Floor Repair
There is a patio area in the back of the house where the brick floor has been popped up left and right by tree roots. In the beginning of the remodeling project, 2 smaller trees and 1 old tree stump were cleaned out in that area, of around 1700-1800 sq-ft. With the estimates at $5/sq-ft for concrete and $10/sq-ft for bricks or paving stones, we were looking at a good chunk of change to redo the area completely. So, we decided to repair the brick floor, using the brick-in-sand method we found online, using weed-blocking fabric, sand, and bricks (no mortar).
The result seems to be quite satisfactory, not only when bricks were laid out closely together, but also when we leave some space (quarter, or even half, inch) in between bricks. We did use 2x4 pressure-treated lumber as edge, along with 2-ft rebars to secure the 2x4s in place.
The result seems to be quite satisfactory, not only when bricks were laid out closely together, but also when we leave some space (quarter, or even half, inch) in between bricks. We did use 2x4 pressure-treated lumber as edge, along with 2-ft rebars to secure the 2x4s in place.
Driveway Patch
The pot hole left on the edge of the driveway, by the big dumpster, in the very first week of the project, was repaired with Asphalt Cold Patch material. 3 50-lb bags were hauled in from Home Depot and the instructions we found online were followed. It seems to work just fine so far. The other day we noticed that some city workers were also repairing the road with this kind of material, by pouring bags of asphalt into a recessed area without the usual asphalt heating vehicle on the side. BTW, a contractor can probably do a much better job in this case, but the repair alone is too small a job. The cost to repair and resurface the whole driveway is at least $1K in our case (vs. the cost of cold patch material, $14.99*3).
Friday, June 1, 2007
The First Mistakes
When a guy, even a competent-looking-and-sounding guy with good references, tells you that he can do it all himself (framing, plumbing, electrical, windows, doors, walls, ...), put a big question mark down somewhere before you make a decision. The first and the biggest mistake we made in this project was that we hired the wrong person to do the job. This guy turned out to be just a handy man. He came with 2 impeccable references.
He has done some small jobs for a good friend of ours, and lots of work for a friend of a friend, a real estate investor, who had worked with the guy for over 10 years. Our real estate investor gave high regard to the man's work, on remodeling jobs big and small, complex or simple, and on the quality of his work. And, of course, the quote (the estimate) for the job was good. So he got the job.
Daddy wasn't sure if this guy could handle the job at its planned scope (i.e, its scale and complexity), and asked him to do the kitchen first. But it was rejected as an all-or-none deal. I was not sure what daddy was thinking at the time, for he had always been working with licensed contractors only, for plumbing and electrical jobs, in the past 20 years or so while taking care of our old houses.
The first week -- three people came in to tear down the existing walls, closets, kitchen cabinets, and everything in the bathrooms. They made swift progress demolishing the old house. They dumped everything into a big dumpster. A 1-year old Maytag dishwasher was also thrown into the dumpster, when Daddy was on a business trip in DC. Over that weekend, daddy jumped into the dumpster to retrieve the poor little dishwasher from under a heavy pile of debris himself. When the dumpster was hauled away a week later, apot hole was left on the edge of the driveway by the metal wheels (see new driveway patching material later).
We used to have two closets in the entry area that separated the living room and the bedrooms. Daddy decided to tear down the closets to make the entry a bit more open and spacious. The separation wall was taken out when the closets were removed. The "openness" was a bit daunting, because one could look directly into the hallway of bed and baths from the living room. And, of course, adding the wall back was a bit problematic. We had a lively discussion on how to separate the living room from the entry area. We went through the ideas of adding a book case, a portable separator, like the Chinese-style wood panels, a wall with glass bricks, etc., before settling back to the good old solid wall. Then we had a debate on how wide it should be, 3 ft, 4 ft, or 6ft (the original length of the wall)? The change from 4ft to 6ft after it was built cost $500 extra, along with some difficult negotiation with our guy.
But the reason why it was a mistake to hire this guy in the first place was not so obvious until the kitchen cabinets and countertops were installed, with several quite visible and serious mistakes (validated by our cabinet vendor later). So he quit, after we learned the painful truth that the kitchen job was in trouble and the other jobs were uncertain too, when it was 8 weeks into the project (2 weeks overdue from the original 6 weeks project schedule). The reality of other costly mistakes unfolded itself later when the plumbing underneath was examined by 2 licensed plumbers and the new windows were stress-tested by the jet-stream water of our stucco painter (each topic will be written up later). Henceforth the work done by this guy was properly labeled "Bad Labor" in our spreadsheet.
He has done some small jobs for a good friend of ours, and lots of work for a friend of a friend, a real estate investor, who had worked with the guy for over 10 years. Our real estate investor gave high regard to the man's work, on remodeling jobs big and small, complex or simple, and on the quality of his work. And, of course, the quote (the estimate) for the job was good. So he got the job.
Daddy wasn't sure if this guy could handle the job at its planned scope (i.e, its scale and complexity), and asked him to do the kitchen first. But it was rejected as an all-or-none deal. I was not sure what daddy was thinking at the time, for he had always been working with licensed contractors only, for plumbing and electrical jobs, in the past 20 years or so while taking care of our old houses.
The first week -- three people came in to tear down the existing walls, closets, kitchen cabinets, and everything in the bathrooms. They made swift progress demolishing the old house. They dumped everything into a big dumpster. A 1-year old Maytag dishwasher was also thrown into the dumpster, when Daddy was on a business trip in DC. Over that weekend, daddy jumped into the dumpster to retrieve the poor little dishwasher from under a heavy pile of debris himself. When the dumpster was hauled away a week later, apot hole was left on the edge of the driveway by the metal wheels (see new driveway patching material later).
We used to have two closets in the entry area that separated the living room and the bedrooms. Daddy decided to tear down the closets to make the entry a bit more open and spacious. The separation wall was taken out when the closets were removed. The "openness" was a bit daunting, because one could look directly into the hallway of bed and baths from the living room. And, of course, adding the wall back was a bit problematic. We had a lively discussion on how to separate the living room from the entry area. We went through the ideas of adding a book case, a portable separator, like the Chinese-style wood panels, a wall with glass bricks, etc., before settling back to the good old solid wall. Then we had a debate on how wide it should be, 3 ft, 4 ft, or 6ft (the original length of the wall)? The change from 4ft to 6ft after it was built cost $500 extra, along with some difficult negotiation with our guy.
But the reason why it was a mistake to hire this guy in the first place was not so obvious until the kitchen cabinets and countertops were installed, with several quite visible and serious mistakes (validated by our cabinet vendor later). So he quit, after we learned the painful truth that the kitchen job was in trouble and the other jobs were uncertain too, when it was 8 weeks into the project (2 weeks overdue from the original 6 weeks project schedule). The reality of other costly mistakes unfolded itself later when the plumbing underneath was examined by 2 licensed plumbers and the new windows were stress-tested by the jet-stream water of our stucco painter (each topic will be written up later). Henceforth the work done by this guy was properly labeled "Bad Labor" in our spreadsheet.
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