Some Assembly Required

The carpenters are here today, getting started on framing the floor of the addition. As you can see from the picture, it will take some work to turn the pile of wood into a floor. I'll take another picture this afternoon to see how far they got during the day. We are supposed to have beautiful weather for the rest of the week, so hopefully I'll have some great pictures of progress on Friday.

Firm Foundation, Finally

With the sun finally shining, the concrete crew poured the foundation for the new addition to the back of the house, the patio and the new front porch. The front porch itself took a ton of concrete, probably literally. The back patio looks really nice. It is neat to have a good feel for how big the new space in the house is going to be. We are going to go ahead and build the front porch, which will provide a nice entry into the house.

View of the front porch:


Foundation walls:


Patio:

More Rain Delay

I know the blog has been pretty slow, but progress has been too. We have been facing weeks and weeks of rain. Just as the ground dries out, we end up with more rain. We have gotten the casita sheetrocked, as you can see in the pictures below. They have taped already, and will be doing the texture on Monday. We have also gotten the forms almost completed for the house addition, including the new patio and the new front porch.





The good news is that the weather looks really good for this week. Hopefully there will be lots to report, as they will pour the foundation tomorrow and the framer will come on Tuesday to get started reworking the back and adding framing to the foundation. The stucco crew will be starting on the casita on Monday as well. With sunny weather in the 70s, it should be a good week for the Katz bungalow.

I Thought Smurfs Were Blue?

In spite of the rain, things at the casita have been moving along a little faster. With the building weather tight, the plumbers and electricians have been finishing up their rough-ins. After a brief discussion with the electricians, during which I explained that they couldn't put the electrical panel right in the middle of the wall of the casita, we got the wiring roughed in.

For such a little space, there are a lot of switches. The light in the little hallway is on a different switch from the can lights in the room, and the bathroom has three switches -- one for the fluorescent can fixtures in the bathroom, one for the vanity light, and one for the fan. We have a couple of outlets up high for the TV (which will be mounted on the wall) and in the closet for a modem to get internet access.

Speaking of TV and internet, what's all this about smurfs? Well, taking the advice and generous help of our good friend Bruce, Jake ran a few short runs of smurf tube in the walls so that later we can pull low voltage wire through it to bring internet, TV and phone to the casita. You can see the smurf tube in the picture below. Most smurf tube is blue, hence the name, but Jake used the orange stuff because it is a little more flexible and easier to work with.



After all the rough-ins, including the fire sprinklers, were inspected and passed, the insulation guys came. We have insulation everywhere, including the interior wall, which is great for noise reduction. They had to use the expanding foam in the ceiling, because there can be no air gaps up there since the bays are unventilated. It is expensive insulation -- you can see it in the ceiling in the bottom picture.




Now that we have passed the insulation inspection, we are ready to sheetrock. I can't wait to post some pictures of the finished sheetrock in the casita!

Rain Delay -- Thanks A Lot El Nino!

The rain delay has been with both the main house and the blog. It has been just too depressing to post during these last two dreary weeks, but I decided that if I wait until the rain to stop, you may not see a post until April.

Just after my last post, the foundation crew came in and finished the back yard demo.


Both cages, the rest of the garage and the picnic table have all gone from our back yard to big piles of junk in the front yard, as you can see from the picture below.



They also brought a truck in to remove 40 yards of dirt, thus turning Mount Katz (an excellent photo spot for the casita) into the Katz swamp, complete with extreme puddles and lots of very wet mud.

During our few breaks in the weather, they did excavate for the foundation for the house and the patio. They had to cut a hole in the floor of the house to get down in there and dig for an additional piece of the foundation that will help support the posts and beams of the addition. It looked like really painful work to stand down in the crawl space and dig up the dirt and then lift it up through the hole.

This picture shows where the new wall will be -- it doesn't look like we are adding that much space, does it?


This picture shows the entire foundation excavation, including the patio, as seen from the house. The patio looks big, but I'm sure we'll wish we had more space.


Also, in the interests of destroying absolutely all of Jake's landscaping and irrigation systems, when jackhammering out the front step and excavating for the footings for the new porch, they cut the main irrigation pipe that runs across the front of the yard. There is no question that we are going to need to do major work on both the front and back yard landscapes when all this is finished! You can see the excavation in the front below.


As of today, the foundation crew has built the forms for the foundation, but with all the rain this week it is doubtful as to when they will do the actual pour. We'll let you know!