Monday -am. I have to say I was a little apprehensive-somehow the impact of doing this huge thing started to sink in. Rob and his guys rolled up to the house about 7:30am. Rob has a nice direct way of communicating and appearing very competent and somehow it feels like things are going to be okay. When I got home it looked like this. Only the floor remained.
Tuesday- The guys arrived a little after 7am. It has occurred to me that I can no longer meander around in the morning - it's get up, drink coffee, take shower, dress, be ready to walk the dogs by 6:45am. Right behind those french doors in the picture is the bedroom. Somehow I don't think it would do to try to snooze away while the jackhammer, digging, etc is happening 6 inches away. While walking Maggie and Camelia at 7:30am I could hear the jackhammer two blocks away. I was hoping the neighbors were deaf and unable to associate me with the noise. No way around this, however. Little did any of us realize that the nice pink tile covered 8-12 inches of solid concrete. And that was just the beginning of trouble.
Wednesday- When I got my cup of coffee and staggered outside, the younger guys were already working. When Rob pulled up in his truck, they said, 'Dad's here'- very cute. The guys were hauling this broken concrete away as fast as they could while it seemed more and more would appear. A snag in the process - the jackhammer uncovered the gas line, buried in the concrete just under the surface - a big no no. The fire engines came. A spark could have ignited god knows what. You can barely see the temporary fix - a yellow hose coming up from the gas meter, which has yet to be moved. All week it has been raining off and on. This is so bizarre in San Diego in October.
Thursday - Most of the concrete is gone and the plumber is there, looking at the water and sewage lines. Unfortunately it turns out there are many many gas, water and sewer lines-particularly gas lines - in some strange unorganized array underneath the rubble. We'll see what transpires here.
Friday - More equipment arrived this morning- made it through the gate- and when I returned home from work a large hole has appeared. Now it seems there are some more issues - nothing left of the peach (no peaches ever) tree except a big root and the property line seems a little off. Of course we're talking about the 100 year old neighborhood here. The soil is clay and awful- that may pose a problem. A lot happened this week - we went from sunroom to no room to big hole in the yard. Rob went over all the things they accomplished and problems that surfaced. The project is really underway.
Things were becoming a little more real. After the drawing process, which took a few months starting in April, and with the beautiful drawings in hand, we had to get estimates to build the actual room. Dan somewhat reluctantly suggested a couple of contractors and my sister had a contractor she recommended. I saw a house on the next block being remodeled and got the name of that contractor. We contacted five contractors, got three actual estimates - all circling around the $80-90,000 level - and I had thought perhaps $50,000. Not even close. When making decisions Jim and I operate on a combination of intuition and experience (Jim is an electrician so he has the experience part in this construction arena). I have a sense about people - but it's sometimes a flawed sense! At least we could both tell the outright scammers and the sort of snakeoil people. We were not particularly happy with the people we were meeting - until Rob Rye from his company Ryebuilt came to meet us and talked about the project with what appeared to be sincere interest, curiosity and lots of questions. He came back in a few weeks with a highly detailed estimate, unlike the other rather general estimates we received. In addition to his thoughtful approach we just liked him. He was very comfortable to talk to-and he was one of the two contractors recommended by Dan. So, even though the project now seemed incredibly expensive, we decided to go ahead and we picked Rob and Ryebuilt. The company is family with mostly their own employees, not a lot of subcontractors and it's not huge and impersonal. Now all we needed was the money.
It was now July and we had yet to experience the completely hideous process of getting a cash out refinance. Bear in mind we had a lot of equity in the house - it wasn't that expensive to begin with and, we both have pretty steady reliable jobs. Refinancing has completely changed since the financial meltdown. It took three tries - my own local credit union turned me down; then an online lender, Amerisave, turned out to be the worst potential lending experience I've ever had - a joke really. They delayed and delayed, asked for mountains of information again and again. At one point they said Jim's driver's license was expired-when I called to protest the woman on the phone looked at the picture and acknowledged she could see the license wouldn't expire for years. Finally we went back to Quicken, my original lender - and the nightmare stopped. By the time I went to them, interest rates had dropped really low and they closed the loan in 3 weeks. Getting the money took more than three months.
Jim found our draftsperson, Dan Czarnecki, on Craigslist - of all places. It was sort of a shot in the dark, but...Dan was very experienced, wonderfully low key, easy to work with - was deliberate and thoughtful - drew the plans for our ideas. This was not the first time we tried to get a plan. A few years earlier we had a company draw up a second story addition - that turned out to look like a stucco turret on top our little Craftsman - the sales guy said - oh not to worry - only the floor and walls are extra- that will be $120,000. sigh. Another guy, an architecture student recommended by a friend, took our $1000 to make drawings and went to Berlin. So, it had been about 2-3 years since we even thought about trying again. Dan was wonderful. And reasonable. And got all the permits and told us about playing volleyball on the beach. Dan drew the room to match what we figured would work - a larger version of the sunroom on the back of the house, with a hallway going from the old to new addition. The room would be about 20x20, with a new bathroom, closet, lots of windows and a french door going out to what was left of the back yard - not much. Dealing with that later! I have an idea in my head though. Though 20x20 may not sound big - it increases the size of the house by half! Pretty amazing.
This is Camelia and Maggie, our Australian Shepherds, living here in the 900 sq ft 1924 Craftsman house in Normal Heights. They think the house is too small. I think the house is too small. Jim's more zen and content. I am not a big material person. However, I dream of a closet of my own and a studio. A real room to be creative and maybe sleep in too. This house is smaller than my parent's house but very cute-2 bedrooms, 1 bath. First alone and then with Jim, we've lived here for 20 years. Who knew we would still be here. But San Diego is expensive, moving is difficult and every argument about where we might move came down to the following: how long the commute would be to our various workplaces; how the country places where Duncan the horse might live would also have rattlesnakes that would bite the dogs; how we couldn't afford Mission Hills, or Kensington or even a bigger house in La Mesa; how much the taxes go up when you move. Should we move to Seattle? We work here. So, along the way we did things. Fifteen years ago the sagging house was lifted up and given a new foundation, new drywall, new kitchen and revamped electrical. After a second sagging caused by the new fireplace footings pulling the house over, we replaced the fireplace. A few years ago we added an arbor to the side - giving the illusion rather than the reality of a larger house. Last year we enclosed the front yard with a beautiful fence making the busy street more bearable and creating a much needed sense of privacy in our urban neighborhood. We changed the walk to the porch from straight down the middle to a curve - that made it less conventional, more flowing. Still I dreamed of changing the space in back where a prefab sunroom had become a crowded studio - hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. Jim finally agreed to consider the new room.
Beautiful sunset on Sunday evening-seemed like a good omen for the upcoming week. Also a little unusual for San Diego to have these sweeping curly clouds. But then came Monday- and it rained all day-no progress. 
Tuesday-the big setback- two live gas lines uncovered-they aren't connected to our house- where do they go? Work stopped. Rob frustrated. Us too. Parked the wheelbarrows. SDGE hopefully will come tomorrow. Rob wrecked his hand (not on our job, thank god) and went to ER. 
Wednesday - Rob's hand is going to be okay, happily...but SDGE doesn't seem to be able to get where the live gas lines are, so...we remain in limbo. Thursday-back and forth with SDGE. Now it looks like a meeting is scheduled for Friday. SDGE has to get into next door neighbor's yard - Connie. Connie is a very sweet, elderly woman with many animals- one of her favorite things to do is feed the neighborhood kitties and skunks on her front porch-the skunks have congregated there-many live under her porch- a few took up residence in our garage earlier in the year-until we finally got them out. Cute but gross habits and not people/dog safe. They need to live elsewhere. Hopefully SDGE will be spared-unless they are not not helpful to us-just kidding! Friday- meeting with SDGE. The gas line in the middle of the project hole is NOT live. Yay! so...work might be able to start again next week. Meanwhile, Saturday it's supposed to rain again.
