Project Noise be/gone

Generally speaking, Drew’s a quiet guy and meeting him, noise wouldn’t seem like an issue. But I’m sure a poll by past neighbors would tell a different story. There’s likely many people out there who’d like to ask him to can it (though, to my knowledge, none actually ever have, because, despite being loud he’s way too sweet to get mad at).

Boy blares music like a mutha. I’ve learned to read, movie watch, and even sleep through it, so I’ve grown mostly immune. But that doesn’t mean our neighbors have. And our new block is an older crowd (our next door neighbor is 96 !) SO, I’m not sure how much their gonna be down with his merrymaking.

Because we don’t want to be the awful waffle newbies, we’re aiming super hard to make our house as soundproof as possible. It’s important to us that we feel comfortable playing music (loudly) all night AND that our neighbor’s can still get a good nights sleep.

ENTER PROJECT NOISE B GONE

Our house is only connected to one other house, so they’re our primary focus in noise reduction. Especially because since ‘we’ tore down the plaster walls, we can hear them watching tv, talking, etc.— which means they’ve been painfully hearing all of our powertools/demo/etc etc noise.

They have an addition on the back of their house, which is the part connected to our house, WHICH, based on the noise we hear, we’ve assumed is their tv/hangout room. We’ve made that single connecting wall our main focus. 

For starts, Drew hung homasote, which is an environmentally-friendly fiberboard used (among other things) for soundproofing. It’s manufactured just on the other side of the Delaware River (which runs through Philly) and is actually a pretty nifty green company (see their about section if you’re curious). 

The entire house will be spray foam insulated, which will also help reduce noise. That works starts tomorrow. Then, a layer of drywall will top things off.

Drew’ll have his basement studio, which will have its own heavy soundproofing. But, jumping at the opportunity while the house was all opened up, he went and wired EVERY SINGLE ROOM for speakers (using double HDMI cables, CAT5E, and 12AWG speaker wire). It basically means our entire house will be networked for audio and video— think surround sound on steroids. This means something playing downstairs (audio or video) can be sent to any other room in the house via these cables.

Drew’s got 10 of these things hung around the house-

- along with plans for 2 floor standing tower speakers, a subwoofer, and 2 outdoor speakers. This doesn’t include the 8 speakers that’ll be in the studio. 

He’s also hoping to run CAT5E out back (in the future) for a projection screen. Which would rule. Someday…

We have a zillion things to do to get this house livable, but we opted to run this stuff now because it’s WAY easier & cheaper to do while everything is open. We also think it’ll be sweet perk to add to the value of our house (& keep it up to date technologically-speaking), and, most importantly, something that’ll make us really happy.

But realizing how many speakers Drew has plans for, UM, I’m off to go look into ear plug stock. I’m not that sound of a sleeper.

BE COOL

Our house may be far from done-

but, despite missing flooring, walls, a bathroom, kitchen, stucco, running water, and all that other good stuff, we have a full on HVAC system up & roaring (mostly). That’s right. We can pump some serious AC despite, well, missing mostly all the essentials of a house.

The weather is quickly turning warmer (read: humid), so this baby is pretty damn important. We can’t exactly turn it on yet, still have some electrical work to run for it but THEN this pup can purr.

Since we decided a couple months ago to hack the old radiators, part of the HVAC was a new heating system. 

We opted to have a 90% plus high efficiency system (HEY GREEN DREAMS!).

Along with the new HVAC system, we had the same company put in a new hot water heater. We opted for a 94% plus tankless system.

We were both pretty pumped about how much smaller it is than a traditional water heater, so it saves a nice amount of space. The basement is going to be split up as a music/recording studio, laundry  space, and er, a basement (storage). We need to be pretty smart with space since it’s limited limited down there- especially since we got (another) new waste pipe, which bumps out further than we anticipated.

The drywall will need to extend to cover the waste (white) pipes. At least we saved some space with these guys…

As for our current to-do list:

1. electricity
2. plumbing
3. sprayfoam insulation (still need to find someone)
4. drywall
5. flooring (refinishing downstairs floors & installing new floors on 2nd story)

It’s a relief to see things getting crossed off our list since we can hear the clock ticking. The electricians & plumbers have finished (rough-ins) and we passed both inspections (so glad we eventually found ourselves in the good graces of licensing and inspection).

We also avoided a semi-plumbing-crisis. Remember how we had to UNEXPECTEDLY replace the main water line (pipe running from street to house)?

When the plumbers were finishing up, they tested the new pipes and discovered a (drum roll) leak in the sewer line (pipe that runs from our basement, underground, through our entire front lawn, to the street). To replace this, we’d need to dig up the entire front yard (along with the sidewalk) and about 10 feet down. It was bad news, man. BUT THEN, the genius of BUZZ DUZZ discovered a fix to the tune of 100 buckaroos. That’s right, $100, not another couple thousand. Basically (in Rae terms), they were able to shoot a new pipe down through the old pipe (the old pipe was actually 1 inch larger than most pipes, so we had room to spare). OH SNAP.

We’ve got our sprayfoam insulation and drywallers lined up. Sprayfoam starts next week. I am SO excited for walls to go up, like, I can’t almost believe it will actually happen.

This is going to be a real houseee (!) 

Oh yeah, we’ve got scaffolding all up in here. Guess I should prob add stucco as #6 on our to-do list (and then add about 35 other things).

Whatev, we’ve got some fighting spirit in us yet.

Tick Tock (EKKK !!)

Before opening my eyes this morn, my head was already spinning thinking about the house, somewhat startlingly if I’m going to be honest.  (I’ve mentioned before), we are officially on a deadline. The lovely house we’ve been renting has SOLD so we have until its settlement to move out….JUNE 28 (!!), or about 51 days. Fifty-one days to make this-

- a real home. Electricity rough-in is complete (woo-freakin-hoo!) and plumbing started today. All of which was supposed to be DONE 2 months ago but then we got screwed over. Despite losing some money, the biggest upset at this point is probably all the time we’ve lost because of it. Realizing we’d lost our plumber/electrician was only half the issue- we then had to find new ones. Ones that could pull permits in Philly without completely torching our wallet. We did lots of research, had lots of estimates and spent time negotiating with our top picks until we agreed on a company for each job. Which took several weeks to sort.

A word on what’s worked for us hiring different contractors. Generally, word of mouth is usually great; however, we’ve had varying success with these type of recommendations. What I’ve found to be really great…GOOGLE. When searching for a plumber, for example, I visited countless websites and scoured the web for reviews. Red flags, like a couple yelpers voicing similar complaints (even amidst other positive reviews) made me shy away from calling some companies. After putting a list together of companies I’d like to call, their answering/voicemail was another ‘test’. If I got a generic voicemail that didn’t even mention a company name, I didn’t leave a message (& crossed them off my list). If a receptionist put me on hold for 10 minutes as soon as she said “hello” that was a NO, too (we got a deadline people!). Drew fielded all the actual appointments/estimates. Since we had several for each job, we were able to get lots of opinions and pick up on suggestions we hadn’t originally thought of.

Another great thing about getting several estimates is that it gave us a really great ballpark for price. When 2-3 companies give a similar estimate and then the 4th is several thousand higher, it’s easier to see how we could end up overpaying for a job.

Lastly, once we decided on a certain company, we THEN negotiated for a final (lower) price. We’ve been able to get a lower price on every job thus far…so my advice? We consider an estimate a starting bid..NEGOTIATE! 

Our next big steps (in order) are:

1. electricity
2. plumbing
3. sprayfoam insulation (still need to find someone)
4. drywall
5. flooring (refinishing downstairs floors & installing new floors on 2nd story)

AND THEN we can get to all the other needed livable stuff, like a bathroom and kitchen. Having our slick rick electrician/plumber skip out on his contract was such a mega halt and we’re now scrambling to make up the time lost— especially because of our new, quickly approaching deadline. 

Drew’s been super busting his hump over at the house. I should make it clear that while we are hiring people as necessary, Drew’s been over there every single day since the beginning doing a full days work all day er day. But remember how L&I sniffed out our trail? Well that just means we have to do everything SUPER by the book, which means there’s certain stuff “we” can’t do on our own, which happens to include lots of permits (I think we’ve had 4 or 5 pulled at this point {!})…and since only licensed/insured/permitteded peeps can pull those permits in the city SO, we’ve had to hire a lot of different people, all of whom, on top of getting down & dirty himself,

Drew’s had to schedule, organize and coordinate. And they’ve pretty much taken over the street (yeah, they’re all with us…)

But with the countdown on, we’ve got to figure out a way to amp things up even more -well, if we want to have a toilet & stove, for instance, when we move in.

It’s (super) go time.

Basement Update

Remember when our basement looked like this? 

The basement was pretty gosh darn awful. Then we did this:

It’s kinda hard to tell the difference in the photos, but we had all the cement broken up (by hand…) and hauled out, along with another foot of dirt (dug out) (you may recall the bony treat we found, shudder). That said, it didn’t make it any prettier.

At this point, the basement was completely emptied out, including the 2 year old hot water heater and 15 year old furnace, which “we” carried up to the first floor. We’ve since had each replaced.

After that fun lil’ venture, we had stone put back in the basement, which was our first stop in getting things back in order.

At this point, we called in the professionals. We were hoping to do the whole process  ”ourselves” (note: Drew) but in the interest of time we opted otherwise. That said, we were able to save some $$ by already having it dug up & stone laid.

Following stone, rebar was laid down. We opted not to do a layer of plastic. This was just preference. The theory was that water can potentially get trapped between the cement (which loves water) and then hit the plastic and have nowhere to go.

Finally, getting to the good stuff: ACTUAL CEMENT. This sounds boring (I know), but in sum, it means we finally have a real floor !

The water puddles are just from Drew watering the floors the next day after the cement was poured. I know, seems kinda counter-intuitive to put water in your basement, but again, that has to do with cement drinking water. All water has been absorbed by now.

We’re planning to finish the basement along with the rest of the house (drywall, etc), to water is a dealbreaker (!) (hey, liz lemon). Luckily, we had a trial run: it rained for 24 hours last weekend. I was pretty nail bitey about it. If our basement flooded, we’d be in pretty big trouble, or at least our finishing dreams would be. Since half of the basement is supposed to be a music studio (aka loads of electronics) water would be a disaster. BUTTTT, we didn’t even get a drop from all the heavy rain (!) so our finishing dreams live another day…

As for the walls of the basement, we’re planning to sprayfoam (insulation) them along with the rest of the house. One of the great things about sprayfoam is that it’s water resistant (ta-da).

So that’s my riveting basement update. OK, so maybe it’s a lil boring. But it was actually pretty exciting to see a smooth, level floor down there. The little things, right?

Swervin back into our lane

AAAAAND we’re back. Since our electric/plumbing misstep (to put it politely), things have started to look back up (thankfully!). For starts, it’s (nearly) Friday, which will undoubtably always put a smile on my face. 

We’ve got a new electrician. Actually, there’s a whole whopping team of them and they are whooping arse. All the cans for lighting have been hung and the walls are chock full o’ wires. And little outlets have been placed all over too.

We’ve also got a new plumbing company on deck & hoping they can start first thing next week.

And because we always like to add extra things in, we had another plumber replace the main water line (copper pipe running from street right into our basement), which was a “fun” little bonus in the ever-evolving home renovation..

Drew sweetly pointed out to me that most houses in Philadelphia, since they are right on the street, require about a 4 foot pipe. Our house, delightfully set back, required a 40 foot pipe, which the replacement price tag reflected (whomp whomp).

So yeah, we’re getting back on track. And I have like a zillion more things to talk about it, but I’m going to save that, mostly because I need to find a new picture editor (bye, picnik :’[ ). 

I hope all ya’ll have been feeling sunshiny good and getting heaps of Vitamin D.  What’s making you show off those pearly whites these days, hmmm?

Electric Shock

YAWN. 

We’ve totally been slumbering like babes, eating sugary crumpets til our waists pop and moseying around town like a French couple in love. And getting all crafty with Easter eggs when that get boring. That’s why I haven’t been able to get a hot dang blog posted.

Sike.

The emotional roller coaster ride of home renovation continues on its ever circuitous route. The past few weeks things seemed to start moving really quickly- framing, windows, exterior doors, HVAC. We even added a schmancy motion light to the front of the house to further deter would be thieves from coming back- ha ha!

(pst, the remaining block of wood, which the motion light hangs from is place-holding for a window that’s on order.)

We’ve been pumped about all the activity and seeing the house slowly but surely coming along. Next on the ever-expanding to do list: electric & plumbing.

Per usual, nothing of the original system was left. The precious copper pipes had been previously cut out so we’re starting from scratch. That’s right, there’s been no running water in this who-ha the whole time “we’ve” been working. Ew dirty hands.

We’ve had an electrician/plumber (he claimed to be so handy he was versed in both) lined up for months and paid the obligatory down payment. He did a few small things, like replacing the sewer pipe, installing a new circuit box, and running temporary lights while all the other work has been going on.

Then it was his turn to shine. And I wanted him to sparkle like my favorite egg.

But he didn’t have the same plans. He dropped off. He kept saying he would finish by LAST Friday, but erm, that’s kinda hard to do when you show up at noon and only work a few hours. 

A few hours work is better than nothing though, non? Thursday he didn’t show up. And he didn’t Friday. And he didn’t Monday. And when he finally called yesterday, Drew told him don’t bother coming back. We get it, we’re kinda getting played and we’re just facing facts. He’s holding up the whole house process thingy we’ve got going on and it’s mighty frustrating. Oh, and losing money. That like, triple times a million blows.

I’ve been googling the crap out of local electricians & plumbers to come in and give us estimates for the work. The first guy’s estimate made us laugh, in a nervous breakdown way. Drew’s still recovering from it-

Just as we were starting this process everyone kept saying ‘it always ends up costing double’. Guess what? It’s true!

So the past week and half hasn’t had any major movement aside from estimates for insulation and now electric and plumbing. But next week the ride should pick up- we’re scheduled to have our basement poured, the house stucco’ed, and hopefully we’ll be getting back on track with electricity and plumbing. 

OH yeah, and the house we’re renting (which has been for sale) is under agreement so we’ve got a real live deadline now! Eek. I don’t mind so much, (goodbye daily showings!) but Drew can’t help feeling the pressure. But as some of you know, there’s not much that can put him down so we’re just keeping on..

Radiator Killjoy

Funny how you think you know something, and then you realize you don’t know squat about it, ya know?

So we did buy this house with intentions, like, it wasn’t a complete eyes-closed-and-point or the equivalent to a drunk dial (however frightful it may have been).. and one of the things we counted as a bonus was the old radiators. 

We wanted this type of heating, as its preferable for dorky allergy sufferers like me.  Drew had already envisioned them all shiny and candy-coated in a cool 50’s car color.

Then we debated AC. The 1875 house did not, unsurprisingly, have central air. Adding it in now would be a lot cheaper than down the line (since the walls are all open (note: non-existent), but either way, it wasn’t a cheap option. We weren’t pumped to put $$ out for this when we have so many other projects going on. But then we went all oh to hell with it because hot summers equal bad news for Drew. So we sucked it up and brought on the HVAC guy-

And he basically killed it. In two days he had ductwork thrown up all ova

 

How does this tie in with radiators? Welp, the ductwork run for AC is the same that’d be used for forced hot air heating. We have no ideas when the radiators were last working, or what kind of condition/restoration they might need (or how expen$ive that might be). So, we opted to forgo the glorious, clean heat of radiators for this new system. We’re hoping to just stay mindful of it and have the system cleaned regularly (however often that is..) to avoid dirt/dust/allergen build-up.

Now we just have to figure out how to get rid of six 600 lb radiators without breaking our backs/car/etc. Fun fact, you get .07 CENTS per lb to scrap these, thats  42 whoopin’ big ones for a single radiator, that you gotta lug and unload. Needless to say, we’re trying to find other alternatives. Any takers?

Let There Be Light, or, The Window Story

After we cleaned/demo’d every bloody hell inch of the house, we threw out all the windows. They were cracked up from, um, I don’t really know, crackheads maybe? None of them locked, and some were missing half the glass, replaced with thin plastic. It was open access, kinda like a cheap hooker. A squatters dream.

Looking at this picture, I actually feel slight fear. I have no idea what we were thinking, (seriously). This place was so far beyond hot messness when we stumbled upon it on a weening Friday eve. I’m tempted, for politeness, to say something optimistic, like, how we’ve just dug our heels in and gone at it all hardy-like, WHICH we (again, generous ‘we’ [note: Drew]) have, but it’s been hard and almost character testing. I say that mostly lightly, but yeah, there’s this little part of me ready to march up to every neighbor’s door to finally figure out who keeps calling L & I on us, and whyyyyyyyyyy (and then the more sane part realizes it doesn’t matter). 

But right, we’re talking windows here. So we boarded them up all tight-

..which actually caused a slight insurance nightmare (who’da thought). Staying on track..

New windows came. It was glorious.

There’s 8 windows along the side of the house (which I haven’t got a good pic of outside thanks to ‘Beware of Dog’ door), and when they were all in, it was crazy how much light came streaming into the house. It’s been dark in there for so long, and we constantly keep the door closed (hey, nosey L&I lovin’ neighbors!), so having light suddenly flood in was kinda like coming up from a cave all pale-faced & thirsty.

AND getting to look outside while standing inside was refreshing (not so much for Drew who was busy applying “Great Stuff” (it’s really called that).

The windows are energy efficient, and I don’t understand how or why, but the stickers on them said so. We opted for this, which although upfront cost more, should be made up for in heating/cooling costs down the proverbial road. 

So now we’re framed up & windowed out (nearly framed I mean).

We got the new windows in, then boarded then right back up. D’oh. We got a new front door though.

Tryna keep this place as sealed up as a good nun.

Tides a Turnin

Remember how scary the upstairs was? A quick trip down memory lane…

We bought it like this:

One of the bedrooms was so full of crap that we couldn’t even walk in it, and there was mouse poo, all over, and just layers and layers of horrible, awful, soggy stuff (thanks squatters!)

Then we did this:

And voila, all said crap found its way to a local dump, which felt like a huge feat. Until all the old framing came down and made new piles of unwalkable stuff.

Then we (and I say “we” generously because you may have seen my floral toolbelt) ripped out ALL the 2nd story floors and half the joists:

All that wood ended up on the front lawn-

thanks to these buff dudes-

Some wood had to be burned/trashed BUT we saved a ton for future projects (recycling-dreams…). So up to this point, the 2nd floor was basically off limits to me. I wasn’t into hopping joists, especially because I feared a drop would send me straight into the netherworld of the  bony basement. So yeah, I stayed away from that potential disaster.

Then Christmas morning Tuesday after work came, and I crept up the steps 

AND THERE WERE FLOORS!

Like, real, live, walkable ones. I wanted to run, jump, danceeee all over that beautiful (ok, I know that’s a stretch) sub flooring. I settled for walking all over it real slow like and smiling like a toothy fool.

In order to make the flooring flat and level, we had to ‘true up’ all the existing joists (which means they had to be adjusted underneath so they would all be level, and then this could lay level over them). Not only did we have to attend to every single joist (completely replacing 7 of them), but nearly every single roof rafter had to be sistered & leveled out, too. 

The new joists look like this-

They’re so clean and neat and new looking, sigh.

But more stuff happened. Like, serious stuff. I crept upstairs yesterday after work and feasted my eyes on this-

Yep, the whole upstairs is framed out (er, as much as can be done before the HVAC ductwork is put in). It was bliss walking through the ‘doors’ to each bedroom, seeing the closets mapped out, exactly where the shower will go, etc.

This wood pile is the nicest cleanest one I’ve seen yet. I kind of love it.

We choose to go with metal framing (against the brick) because it’s more rigid than wood and doesn’t bow/shift with the weather, it’s pre-drilled for electric to run through it, and its more durable (rot/mold resistant). It’s more expensive than wood (I totally just found this out!), but it goes up a lot faster, so you (hopefully) save money in labor.

We had originally hoped to keep a few walls exposed brick, but our energy-efficiency dreams killed that dead quick, oh, and finding out our neighbor’s drywall was directly over our brick didn’t help either.  They (thankfully) mentioned they could hear talking easily through the walls once our plaster was taken down. I’m sure this means by this point (2 months later) they’re walking around with ear plugs and/or wanting to kill us- not only from chatter, drills, banging, metal cutting, but who knows what tunes are being pumped through this gem all day long-

OK one last thing::::

WINDOWS COME TOMORROW. Goodbye homeless looking house!

I love this view. Our house looks like a little baby next to the towering neighbors. But doesn’t it, albeit boarded up & sorta wimpy, look kind of cute & lovable, a la Fivel?

Backyard Shenanigans