Rehabber’s Rehab

We’d been pretty unhappy with the electrician, from his constant complaining, scratching up our newly refinished floors, and leaving messes around, he has been one of our least favorite contractors (although I am sure he has not liked this project either as he is deathly allergic to cats, and has been miserable the whole time).  But when I mentioned my biggest pet peeve to him, that the two plugs in the bathroom above the sink were not level with one another, I was told that it would be “no problem” to fix it.

So when I came home from work tonight, and went in the bathroom and saw the GIANT hole in the wall indicating he had fixed it, I figured it was no problem, no big deal.  I said “so…I guess the electrician was here.”  Thor had been home for a couple of hours at the time and replied “yup, he was just finishing up a couple of things.”  Thor seemed happy with having our electrical work done. I asked Thor if the electrician was done, and he repplied in the affirmative, everthing looked good.  I asked Thor if the two electrical boxes were level now, and he said “huh?  The electrical boxes?”

He then went into the bathroom.

“*Fudge! Gosh Darn it!  Gosh darn child of an un kind woman! What the fudge!  What the fudge was he thinking.  That fudging incompetent unmentionable…” and so on.  And on.

Meanwhile I am in the kitchen wondering what just happened.  I ask him if he’s hurt.  Because if this was about the hole in the wall, how had he managed to miss it the previous two hours while he was home.  To which Thor replied “*Fracking butt eater.  He put a giant hole in the wall.  In my newly dry-walled forking wall!”

I guess he hadn’t noticed.

The house was dark when I came in tonight, but that was no surprise since Thor was out working.  I turn on the kitchen light, and nothing happens.  Maybe I flipped the wrong switch?  I’m still not used to even having light switches that turn things on.  Nope, the other switch doesn’t work either.  Now I start to worry.  I walk through the house trying to turn on every thing I can, and each time am met with the same result: nothing.  There is no power anywhere to anything, and the house is incredibly cold.

This is more than a blown fuse.  Did we even have fuses any more?  I call Thor, and he has no idea, but suggests maybe ComEd came and switched our service.  I go outside, and sure enough, the meter had been removed and the original power lines that fed into the house had been cut.

We were pretty hesitant to try and turn the new electrical panel on ourselves.  We vaguely recalled being warned about messing with “something” that if touched could basically blow the house up.  So what followed was a series of phone tag between myself, Thor, Matt, the head electrician, and then the guy who has been working on our house, and a few frantic calls to the power company’s various voice mails.  The result was me sitting in the dark and cold in-between running out to the car to keep my phone charged up wondering why in the hell the electric company hadn’t let us know that they were going to switch our power.

The electrician finally showed up (he had been dragged from his sick bed by his boss), it turned out to be a pretty simple matter of first checking to make sure the connection to the old box was off so the house didn’t blow up.  Then as he flipped the on switch to the new panel I could hear the furnace rumble to life, and the rest of the house turn itself back on.

Framing complete, plumbing roughed-in, and electrical racing to get done. That can mean only one thing, INSPECTIONS.

Inspections are like the big toll bridge and the inspectors are the trolls. If you fail your inspections you cannot pass go or collect (spend) $200. The next month is huge for us, because I actually have two weekends off to work. So in theory we could do insulation the first weekend, an insulation inspection during the week, and then drywalling the next weekend. Then the spackler could come in, followed by the floor guy, and some quick painting which would allow us to install the cabinets after Christmas just before the new year. That would be a level of completion that we thought was impossible just a couple of weeks away.

But this whole schedule rested on the decisions of inspectors who could ridicule the slightest problem.

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The house is busy with plumbers, electricians, and me an amateur tiler.

The plumbers finished with the rough in last week, which allowed us to set the new tub, take out the old one, and finish the final walls to gut. No more plaster and lathe! All that they have left to do is set the toilet when we’ve tiled the bathroom floor and set the sinks when the cabinets and countertops arrive.

The electrician also started working when we tore off the roof. He basically had three projects: Replace the old electrical panel that was a cobbled together set of fuses with a new bigger service; set all the new electrical lights, recepts etc. in the kitchen, bathroom and backroom; and three, update other parts of the house like lights in the livingroom (where there were none) and smoke detectors in every single sleeping room of a 1000 sq ft house (Oak Park overkill?). The electrician took a mini break to tend to his birthing wife, but was back on the job the NEXT DAY much to Liz’s shock and dismay.

With the tub set, we could start tiling with our recently chosen slate tile. This was only mildly aggravating because our tile was actually a lot of little pieces glued to a vinyl mesh that was a foot by foot piece. Every other tile I picked up would loose half of its little pieces. But it made for relatively easy work around the fixtures because you could get away with cutting the mesh more than tile.

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The Goal:  Tear off the roof on the backroom, finish enough framing to get the plumber and electrician working, and maybe just maybe install new windows.

Well, that kind of got scrapped before the weekend even started.  We planned on finally having our permit after 10 nauseating weeks.  Alas, we achieved plan approval on Friday at 4pm after a lot of red ink and copying by Matt in the Village Hall Building department making final revisions.  However, we did not have all the necessary updated licenses and insurance for our contractors to get the big yellow card for our front window.  Thus, we scrapped the brazen idea of ripping off the back roof in broad day light without a permit.  Also our current electrical service run through where we want the gable to end, so we realized we have to wait for the electrician, who is going to put in a new service.  We’re still on fuses, and are changing the one to the garage every other week with Liz’s projects out there. But it sure would have been fun.  Stay tuned for my Wizard of Oz themed parable on the permit review process in the Emerald Oak Park.

Then our windows plan was in ruin.  Our Jeld-wen windows from Home Depot arrived on Friday morning with a possibility of next day delivery on Saturday.  The only problem was all the back room windows were missing our cottage style grills.  So two hours at Home Depot and much wrangling over the phone, half the windows were going back and the replacement windows for the bedrooms and dining room were be delivered early Saturday morning (I got a call at 6:30 AM when I’ve been working nights for the past month, argghh!).  But this window saga was happening at the same time as the rush to get our permit, so Matt had to leave me to fend through the westside CTA.  I love and hate (late buses) the CTA, but never have I smelled anything so foul as somebody who was s*itting behind me on the Cicero bus. (more…)