Rehabber’s Rehab

The ultimate goal is to be done with the kitchen, bathroom, and sunroom by Nov. 1, knowing that that goal will probably end up being Thanksgiving.

To keep on track with that goal we have set up a tentative schedule with no real dates yet, but we just keep trying to plug away at things on the list. Here is the rough sequence of things that need to happen.

There is limited things we can do without a permit like floors, demo (under the cover of darkness), painting, and trim. After that things SHOULD be done by permit. Often they are not, but if you get caught you can face some heavy fines and when we sell the house we want to be able to say everything is up to code and we did it right.

So assuming a permit is obtained, the sunroom needs to be framed so that we can do the electrical and the plumbing should go before electrical as common construction courtesy. That leaves us with all the set up to squeeze in between the major work weekend that the sunroom will require before we turn it over to the pro plumbers and electricians. The tricky part will be trying to minimize the amount of time we are living in the house without a bathroom- demoing the tub right before the plumber drops in the new tub and shower and then putting up the tile quickly. All said and down I expect three to four days without a shower.

The other thing to squeeze in is the inspections. You can’t cover up any walls without letting the inspector see it. We will try to keep the bathroom operational by covering one side of the walls with sheet rock and leaving the other side open to inspection.

After plumbing, electrical, and framing inspections, we can throw up the drywall, spackle, sand, and paint. That of course will not be as easy as writing it and will probably require the third of our big work weekends when our Dad comes up to help. The first allowed us to get all the gutting finished and almost resulted in a collapsed sunroom roof that was waiting to cave in but got some help from Randy Kelso, kidding. The second work weekend being the sunroom roof, windows, and door project.

Once the cabinets and countertops are in the plumber can finish installing the sinks, we can do the trim work and set up the appliances.

A final work weekend will entail putting on the back porch hopefully sometime in Mid-late November.