Our Green House (Week 20)

We are now the proud owners of a nice green house. This is a major milestone for us and it's time for us to get to work quickly to turn this place into a liveable home. Especially since our families are coming to visit this December.

Week 13

So our construction project is actually starting to look like a real house now. Our crew started work on the exterior house wrap and prep for siding. Pretty quick, wouldn't you say?

Plumbing and HVAC are underway and Judie and I recently did a walk through with the electrician to figure out where all the light fixtures, switches, outlets, and recess lighting will go. There were alot of tough decisions to make, forced to commit our design choices before the rooms are closed off with drywall and trim. I guess just bite the bullet and keep our fingers crossed that our house turns out half decent.

We went to Anderson Moulding and saw a really awesome door trim so I decided to recreate this at home with the tools I had. I was happy with the results and I think we'll use this design for our house.

Going Up?

It's been almost a month since we started demolition. We've been living in the garage without a bathroom and the novelty of the porta-potty is getting old. At least we have electricity; minus the one night it was accidentally disconnected. Our house is gone. This is a very exciting time, because up until now, all we've just been tearing the house down.

Now we've actually started the building bit, and our foundation is in. We poured a slab, extending the rear by 15-20 feet, and also reinforced the foundation with a dozen concrete pads along the side of the house. We had to replace a large portion of the existing slab because it was cracked all the way through and there was no rebar holding it together.

Now the crew has started with the framing. Since the existing slab is not level, we'll have to spend some time leveling the top plates before putting up the second-floor joists. In the next month the rough framing should all be done and we'll have the skeleton of our new, two-story home.

2nd Floor Addition

Above is an as-is floorplan of our home.

We just hired an architect, Robert Ridgley, to basically triple the size of our house. We'll be going from a 750 sq ft, 1 bed, 1 bath shack to a 2000+ sq ft mansion with 3 beds and 3 baths. The entire first floor will become living space, and the second floor will be for sleeping. We'll also push out into the backyard a bit to add a family room behind the kitchen, and knock down the wall between the kitchen and existing bedroom to convert the bedroom into a dining area. Below is the proposed floorplan.

Custom P-Trap

The kitchen sink was clogged and the plunger didn't help at all, so I decided to investigate. Where to start? Check P-trap of course. I got out my pipe wrenches, set them up on the nuts holding the trap, and barely torqued them before the entire trap just broke apart and fell off. We did the dishes in the backyard that night, with the garden hose.

Well the trap, although broken, was not clogged - which means the clog was still somewhere down the drain. After trying the snake with no luck, I cut open the wall to see what was down there. What did I find? Nothing. The snake goes about 6 inches into the concrete slab before sticking, and I couldn't get it to budge from there. I tried to dig up the drain pipe from outside the house, but hit more concrete; maybe the footer. At that point I was lost. Then I decided if I rebuild the trap and plug up the roof vent, I may still be able to plunge my way out of this.

This time I hit Lowe's instead of Home Depot to compare prices. Judging by their prices on copper pipe, there's not much difference. I picked up some ABS pipe and fittings and got to work. Looks like a mighty fine custom trap if you ask me. But I still have that clog...

521 1/2 Standard Street

I managed to build a dog house for Kali with a single 4'x8' sheet of plywood and a couple 8-foot 2x4's. I used a modified plan from the Wood Zone. I forgot to double-check the measurements before I went to Home Depot and realized the house would be too small her. So I did what any cheap miser would do: I modified the plan so that I could build a house without buying any extra wood. Kali has to do without an awning over her porch, but that's OK because she was never expecting one.

She's got about 34"x19" of sleeping area, plus a foot-long porch; sadly, not a whole lot smaller than our house. Hardware included it only put us back about $25, and should be just fine for a 40 lb. dog in L.A.

Once I was done with it, all it needed was a lady's touch. So Judie picked up some deck stain and turned that plywood shack into a beautiful Redwood chateau.