Me too, me neither on a project this big and honestly, it is much, much worse than just building a new house. The old house really gets in the way, both literally and well as figuratively. I cannot run electrical, plumbing, heating or even some pretty silly little things such as thermostat wires from the cellar, through the first floor (old house) and into the second floor. Plus, instead of starting out with a foundation sill and building from it, I have to start with the middle of a wall that is not straight, flat, square, parallel or level and sometimes I think does not exist entirely in this universe. That said, the worst is behind us certainly, almost all of the work ahead is either entirely inside the second floor and so all- new in all ways, or will be 'farmed out' such as the siding, rebuilding the porch and most probably the drywall and plaster. Certainly the siding and plaster.
And I am doing things far differently than any contractor would, or at least any contractor working under budgetary constraints. As I said, plumbing these mini- splits, and there are three on each floor, inside the house was and still is time- suicide. Either 1) no contractor would so it or 2) the cost would be astronomical. Not to say I am building anything great here but it is far better than a spec. build house and overbuilt in almost all ways; the second floor was designed to bear 100 lbs. / sq. ft., and not deflect more than 3/8" in the center. Code requires load bearing of 30 lb. / sq. ft. and allows 0.80" of deflection at that loading. So the next people will at least have a house they can put a hot tub in, right in-between the two bank safes.
Just got done cleaning pistols from a comp. this morning, and in a little while Andrea and I will go upstairs to install the last six of the overhead light cans as well as start labeling the wiring and buttoning up the junction boxes for that rough inspection.
Funny thing but after all this time struggling as to how to 'name' or label all the electrical boxes through the house, it occurred to me yesterday that I can just number the trusses and use those numbers for all the junction boxes! And if / when there is more than one on a truss, label it east, west, or center (I do not think there are any with four boxes attached). Duh! And it is not likely that anyone can mistake truss #12, for example, with truss #10 but if they do, then that person should NOT be looking to do anything to or with the wiring anyway.
A few photos and a quick update:
We are off the temp. power TeePee and running on a real, house- mounted, 200 amp service! Of course that $1,800 TeePee now gets broken down and tossed.... including the new panel, the meter trough, the wire, the ground rod and the lumber. But hey, I had to do it to keep power coming into the house while the second floor was removed. Note those beautiful lines 'flying' past the TeePee! (top one is power, bottom one is COX cable):
The COX service tech. who put the new cable to the house was a great guy but just would not touch the FIOS cable that is now lying across my front yard. Sigh. It is the wide dangling off the telephone pole to the left in this photo :
No problem, it is long enough (Easy Boys, I always though it was long enough!) and still has the slide- lock on it so I will just hand it myself. It is fiber optic so it cannot be cut and I think I may need it again quite soon but that is fodder for another thread.
New 200 amp service, the old porch, and the old first floor from the driveway side:
New weatherhead for the electrical service, I think that anchor will give the telephone pole a fair strain in a big enough storm:
The back / west corner of the house. The second floor expansion can be seen here, it is 10' longer than the original house and supported on the west side by the foundation and posts in the photo. That orange line going through the window is me straightening out PEX tubing, letting the sun beat on it after uncoiling it..... I just pull more in through the window as I need more
Sort of a 'straighten and dispense' system:
This was a very unexpected 'no- cost extra': the 8 month old fascia is badly wrinkled and the same age soffit is being pushed down by warping nailers. The contractor who installed this 1) did not end the nailers at a truss and just left the ends hanging, and because they were the worst grade of garbage he could find, they are warping and bending, taking the soffit with it. So the soffit has to be removed, the nailers replaced and the soffit reinstalled. and 2) nailed the aluminum fascia directly to the house. Now wood expands (Boys!) and contracts with temp. and humidity, and aluminum changes dimension with temperature but at vastly different rates. This is why siding has slots in it and the nails are never driven in hard but left a tad loose so the siding and house can move against each other. The aluminum fascia has buckled as the house contracted behind it. So that has to be removed, some joiners installed and new fascia installed to the joiners so they an expand and contract independently. A big surprise on this project is how much was done (and much, much more was tried but stopped) that is somewhere in- between a bad idea and just will not work. This is what that bad install looks like, note the 'wrinkles' in the fascia amplified by the sun- line:
Oh well, it should go a lot faster the second time. I can only imagine how fast it will go the fourth or fifth time.
Brian
I've never tackled anything close to this large (!) of a project (I did replace a load bearing wall with a steel beam once) but, that one quoted line sure sums up almost everyone of my projects that I've ever done.
There may have been a couple that I stopped after the first 90% and had to completely start over in a new direction for only another 180% for a total of only 270% but I don't like to talk about those much.
Thanks for sharing all of this Brian. I would give you kudos for both the sharing, and the execution of your project...but I still don't know what a kudo is.