Sit up late at night thinking about how you really should check your credit card balances but are to afraid that you have spent WAY too much? That's what I'm doing right now. Life feels very expensive these days and this bathroom project isn't helping...
Plus my sleep deprived brain allowed the man at the lumber yard to order us 8 feet of windows instead of 6. 50% fee to cancel order at this point so I guess we will have 8 feet worth of window somewhere in our house, but it won't be in the bathroom!
Ok enough late night rambling.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Laundry Room
In spite of our plumber troubles, we still ended up with a great laundry room. We just finished it yesterday and it couldn't be better! Here are some pictures:
This is What Happens When You Don't Do It Yourself
So its been a very long time since I last posted, but that's because its been along time since we did any work on the house! Right before Christmas we welcomed our first daughter, Dalila, into the world and have been so busy enjoying her and caring for her that we have neglected our projects. But now that she is a little older and we are more adjusted to being parents, we decided we needed to get back into it or we would never finish our fixer upper.
We decided the next project to tackle would be the laundry room, which would allow us to begin working on our new bathroom. My parents, knowing how hard parenthood can be, offered to pick up the tab on hiring plumbers to do this work so all we would have to do was the cosmetic elements to the projects. Eric was reluctant to give up on plumbing, but after weighing the benefits we decided to hire the plumbers we had always called in an emergency to do the project.
Initially we felt the quote for the work was a bit high considering how long the project was projected to take - roughly 2 days, one day for the laundry room and another for the bathroom. We had talked to other plumbers in our area and none were able to get working right away, so we decided the steep price tag was the price we ( well my parents) would have to pay for the project getting underway immediately.
Things did not go as planned, however. The laundry room took 2 days instead of 1 and when it was inspected it failed, so bringing the work up to code required another day's work. The bathroom ended up taking about 3 days to rough in. For us, this was not a problem; we were grateful to have the work done as soon as requested and the mistakes that had been made when the laundry room failed to be fixed right away.
For the owner of the plumbing company, however, this presented a problem. He now felt he was being underpaid for the job based on the price we had agreed on and without warning or discussion, charged us an addition $2500 on the last day of work, stating the job had taken longer than expected and had been "delayed."
The man apparently could not see reason. He felt we should be paying for the time his guys had to take to fix their own faulty work and for the fact that they worked half days two of the days they worked which made the job take longer(obviously). After an hour long discussion about it, Eric had to tell him we would discuss it further after the weekend. We couldn't see how this was possibly happening - we had signed a contract which he had asked us to sign. We signed it, he signed it and right there on the contract it stated that the cost of the job was fixed. No where on the contract was there anything about how long the project would take, it simply listed the tasks that would be completed for the amount listed.
Come Monday we received a call from the plumber's secretary about how we would be paying for the remainder of our balance plus the addition$2500. Eric told her we were still in negotiation about it and would call her back when we had reached a conclusion. Later that day I received a call from my dad telling me that an enormous charge had been made to his credit card, putting a hold on his card. He wanted to know if we had authorized the charge, which of course, we had not. Can you imagine this company, with out any consent, decided to charge the credit card which we had paid the deposit with?!
My dad put a stop payment on the card and I called the state licensing board because it was getting out of control. When speaking to the licensing board representative, not only was it illegal for a plumber to charge for work that didn't pass inspection, that they were not able to charge more for a job if a contract had already been entered into. These were things which common sense told me, but having the licensing board confirm it prepared us all the more for the next conversation we had with our plumber.
We decided the next project to tackle would be the laundry room, which would allow us to begin working on our new bathroom. My parents, knowing how hard parenthood can be, offered to pick up the tab on hiring plumbers to do this work so all we would have to do was the cosmetic elements to the projects. Eric was reluctant to give up on plumbing, but after weighing the benefits we decided to hire the plumbers we had always called in an emergency to do the project.
Initially we felt the quote for the work was a bit high considering how long the project was projected to take - roughly 2 days, one day for the laundry room and another for the bathroom. We had talked to other plumbers in our area and none were able to get working right away, so we decided the steep price tag was the price we ( well my parents) would have to pay for the project getting underway immediately.
Things did not go as planned, however. The laundry room took 2 days instead of 1 and when it was inspected it failed, so bringing the work up to code required another day's work. The bathroom ended up taking about 3 days to rough in. For us, this was not a problem; we were grateful to have the work done as soon as requested and the mistakes that had been made when the laundry room failed to be fixed right away.
For the owner of the plumbing company, however, this presented a problem. He now felt he was being underpaid for the job based on the price we had agreed on and without warning or discussion, charged us an addition $2500 on the last day of work, stating the job had taken longer than expected and had been "delayed."
The man apparently could not see reason. He felt we should be paying for the time his guys had to take to fix their own faulty work and for the fact that they worked half days two of the days they worked which made the job take longer(obviously). After an hour long discussion about it, Eric had to tell him we would discuss it further after the weekend. We couldn't see how this was possibly happening - we had signed a contract which he had asked us to sign. We signed it, he signed it and right there on the contract it stated that the cost of the job was fixed. No where on the contract was there anything about how long the project would take, it simply listed the tasks that would be completed for the amount listed.
Come Monday we received a call from the plumber's secretary about how we would be paying for the remainder of our balance plus the addition$2500. Eric told her we were still in negotiation about it and would call her back when we had reached a conclusion. Later that day I received a call from my dad telling me that an enormous charge had been made to his credit card, putting a hold on his card. He wanted to know if we had authorized the charge, which of course, we had not. Can you imagine this company, with out any consent, decided to charge the credit card which we had paid the deposit with?!
My dad put a stop payment on the card and I called the state licensing board because it was getting out of control. When speaking to the licensing board representative, not only was it illegal for a plumber to charge for work that didn't pass inspection, that they were not able to charge more for a job if a contract had already been entered into. These were things which common sense told me, but having the licensing board confirm it prepared us all the more for the next conversation we had with our plumber.
For an hour he tried to convince Eric we still owned him money and finally Eric had to tell him that we would not be paying it and if he perused it further we would not only take him to court, but we would report him to the licensing board and better business bureau. He stated he didn't want to go to court and that he would talk with his guys and be back in touch - we haven't heard from him.
Its sad that my parents gift of what should have been minimal time and hassle over this part of the project turned into something that caused us more frustration than it would had we just done it ourselves. We really are do it yourselfers at heart and I think this experience just further solidified that for the rest of the work that needs to be done to our house, we will be doing it ourselves.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Second Closet
We are getting pretty good at closet building! This project took only a few hours over a weeks time to get fully installed and organized.
After
After
After: organized and in use!
After: organized and in use!
Before
After
After
After: organized and in use!
After: organized and in use!
Saturday, November 15, 2008
First Closet
Because nesting has taken over my life, I convinced Eric that we needed to work on the closets in our house. If I cannot keep my house organized before the baby arrives, how will I ever manage after? I figured if we worked on custom walk in closets, there would be no excuse for the closets to ever look the way they do now. We have 3 closets and so far the one in the nursery is finished. Check out the before and afters!
Before
After
After
After
After
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Plumbing nightmares
The complete remodel of the half bathroom has been a great challenge and learning experience. Needless to say I am not ready to quit my day job, but there is something satisfying about doing the work yourself. Many of our friends and family always seem to have complaints about how a contractor did a job differently from what they were asked to do. It is this very reason that we have decided to do many of our home improvement projects ourselves.
The biggest plumbing problem with the half bathroom prior to the remodel was the cast-iron radiator. This thing was old, rusty, smelly and unsightly. Removing it was a gift and a curse. Once it was removed we gained significant space in the room but then we were left to install a new heating element. Since the whole house has baseboard heat with force-hot-water, we decided to replace the big heavy radiator with a small 2 foot section of baseboard heating element with the small aluminum plates. This heating element takes up little space and can provide a good heat source for a small area.
After we installed all of the bead board, trim and baseboard; the toilet (which took 2 tries to get right) and the sink(which took a day to figure out. Pedestal sinks are trickier than you think) it was time to tackle the heat. There is one thing that I had wished I had not done for the heating. When we installed the floor I decided to drill holes for the heating pipes, where they originally were, prior to polyurethaning the floor. The theory was that we would work around the heating element, but when it came time to put the heating system together it became clear that the original setup was poorly executed and difficult to work with.
It took me a good day to figure out how I would get the pipes installed without burning the house down. The main problem is that the heating pipe actually comes out of a small whole in the wall which is not big enough work in and definitely not safe enough to sweat (solder) copper connections. Because of this space constraint I was forced to put together as much of the heating pipes so that I would only have to solder a few connections in the basement and avoid the dangerous hole in the wall. Because of my work schedule I had to do this work over the span of a few days and each night I would have anxiety dreams about plumbing. If you have every seen the screen saver that has the pipes running in all different directions and multiplying at an alarming rate, image dreaming that with a real project which you have to wake up to and deal with.
After much preparation I had decided to go ahead and put together the heating system once and for all. I started working at about 6pm and finished at about 12:30am. After sweating many connections, running out of solder, making a trip to Lowes just minutes before they closed to get more solder, and finishing the remaining connections, the heating system was finally ready to be tested. In my excitement I turned up the thermostat and waited for heat to come, but it never did. At 1:30am I gave up and went to bed. I still had the plumbing nightmare that night which was unsettling because I had just worked so hard to get the job done.
In the morning I gave the heating system another test and within minutes I heard the unmistakable hiss of water leaking out of a faulty connection. To my dismay it was in the one spot that I could not fix easily. It was a disappointing moment and for the first time I felt like I could have paid someone to deal with the problem and be done with it, but I knew that I could fix it myself. To fix the problem I had to take apart about 50% of the work I had done the night before and go out and buy some special copper fittings that do not require solder. These fittings push together and hold tight. I decided to go with this system because I could not image re-sweating connections only to have another leak.
The new system finally works without any leaks, yet I am still haunted by plumbing nightmares...I think it will be some time before we tackle another plumbing project!
The biggest plumbing problem with the half bathroom prior to the remodel was the cast-iron radiator. This thing was old, rusty, smelly and unsightly. Removing it was a gift and a curse. Once it was removed we gained significant space in the room but then we were left to install a new heating element. Since the whole house has baseboard heat with force-hot-water, we decided to replace the big heavy radiator with a small 2 foot section of baseboard heating element with the small aluminum plates. This heating element takes up little space and can provide a good heat source for a small area.
After we installed all of the bead board, trim and baseboard; the toilet (which took 2 tries to get right) and the sink(which took a day to figure out. Pedestal sinks are trickier than you think) it was time to tackle the heat. There is one thing that I had wished I had not done for the heating. When we installed the floor I decided to drill holes for the heating pipes, where they originally were, prior to polyurethaning the floor. The theory was that we would work around the heating element, but when it came time to put the heating system together it became clear that the original setup was poorly executed and difficult to work with.
It took me a good day to figure out how I would get the pipes installed without burning the house down. The main problem is that the heating pipe actually comes out of a small whole in the wall which is not big enough work in and definitely not safe enough to sweat (solder) copper connections. Because of this space constraint I was forced to put together as much of the heating pipes so that I would only have to solder a few connections in the basement and avoid the dangerous hole in the wall. Because of my work schedule I had to do this work over the span of a few days and each night I would have anxiety dreams about plumbing. If you have every seen the screen saver that has the pipes running in all different directions and multiplying at an alarming rate, image dreaming that with a real project which you have to wake up to and deal with.
After much preparation I had decided to go ahead and put together the heating system once and for all. I started working at about 6pm and finished at about 12:30am. After sweating many connections, running out of solder, making a trip to Lowes just minutes before they closed to get more solder, and finishing the remaining connections, the heating system was finally ready to be tested. In my excitement I turned up the thermostat and waited for heat to come, but it never did. At 1:30am I gave up and went to bed. I still had the plumbing nightmare that night which was unsettling because I had just worked so hard to get the job done.
In the morning I gave the heating system another test and within minutes I heard the unmistakable hiss of water leaking out of a faulty connection. To my dismay it was in the one spot that I could not fix easily. It was a disappointing moment and for the first time I felt like I could have paid someone to deal with the problem and be done with it, but I knew that I could fix it myself. To fix the problem I had to take apart about 50% of the work I had done the night before and go out and buy some special copper fittings that do not require solder. These fittings push together and hold tight. I decided to go with this system because I could not image re-sweating connections only to have another leak.
The new system finally works without any leaks, yet I am still haunted by plumbing nightmares...I think it will be some time before we tackle another plumbing project!
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
About the duct tape...
My friend Brittney has questioned the duct tape on the toilet in my "before pictures" twice and though the reason its there is not super interesting, I decided she was owed an explanation ;)
So, when we bought our house it had been on the market for a LOOOOONG time. It was also a foreclosure. Because it costs so much to heat a house in the winter in MA, not to mention the risk of burst pipes, owners who do not occupy the house often "winterize" it which means they drain all the pipes of water so they cannot freeze. This was the case with our house because it was bank owned and had been vacant for so long.
The plumbers put these bright orange stickers all over the house warning that it has been winterized and they duct tape the toilets. I believe this is done primarily to make sure that any squatters looking to live in the house temporarily know the water isn't working. I am not sure if duct tape would seriously stop me from using a toilet if I were a squatter but who knows!
So, Brittney, now you are in the know about the duct tape :)
Also, thanks for your compliments on the house - you are always so very sweet!
So, when we bought our house it had been on the market for a LOOOOONG time. It was also a foreclosure. Because it costs so much to heat a house in the winter in MA, not to mention the risk of burst pipes, owners who do not occupy the house often "winterize" it which means they drain all the pipes of water so they cannot freeze. This was the case with our house because it was bank owned and had been vacant for so long.
The plumbers put these bright orange stickers all over the house warning that it has been winterized and they duct tape the toilets. I believe this is done primarily to make sure that any squatters looking to live in the house temporarily know the water isn't working. I am not sure if duct tape would seriously stop me from using a toilet if I were a squatter but who knows!
So, Brittney, now you are in the know about the duct tape :)
Also, thanks for your compliments on the house - you are always so very sweet!
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