Well, we have a tub surround, sort of.
There’s lumber around it, anyway, where the tub surround will be. There’s also an underlayment and a drain where our shower will be, and large boxes of HVAC equipment attached to the ductwork in both the basement and the attic.
We have 96 days before we have to be out of this apartment and, I hope, into the Haunted Money Pit.
Electrical was roughed in and some drywall was about to go up when we realized we needed better insulation on the exterior portions of the roof, and better sound insulation between our unit and the other half of the building. So, we’re holding off on putting walls up to put up better insulation. It’ll be a little extra, but not cripplingly expensive. And it’ll be worth it to have pipes not freeze and have some soundproofing between us and the neighbors.
Meanwhile, the structural engineer reported that one of the beams was sagging on the flat portion of the roof, so that needs to be reinforced. Fortunately that’s not going to be too expensive either.
The old water heater was suspect, and we got confirmation from the plumber this week that it’s as bad as it looked and needed to be replaced. This also isn’t going to be too expensive.
Of course, all the “not too much here, not too much there” is going to add up.
But I did find ceiling fans that look just as nice as the ones we had initially planned on, are still highly rated, and cost about $75 less each. So, that’s a nice savings.
Plus on our last site visit the contractor was joined by a friend of his who is a Buddhist monk, and he gave us his blessing. Apparently they know each other from back when our contractor was a monk for a few years. The stories from this house should be a novel.
Rain-driven to the surface
Then caught out overnight
In the morning their frozen bodies shine
Rimed in platinum
Scattered along the path
Like discarded jewels
While I’m fussing over tile and cabinetry (did you know there’s such a thing as GOLD GROUT?)
… here’s something to actually think about, on memory and justice and society and all the big things:
In liberal democracies, and especially in this one, there are so many distractions and so many options and so much media that the corrosive effects of the loss of the power of memory can elude anyone’s notice until something important comes apart all at once….
We knew from our long involvement in the Middle East where the sources of the rage were. We forgot. We knew from Vietnam the perils of involving the country in a land war in Asia. We forgot. We knew from Nuremberg and from Tokyo what were war crimes and what were not. We forgot that we had virtually invented the concept of a war crime. We forgot. In all cases, we forgot because we chose to forget. We chose to believe that forgetting gave us real power and that memory made us weak. We even forgot how well we knew that was a lie.
Not long ago there was a hole in our house where we’d removed a chimney. It wasn’t actually that big, but it went all the way through from roof to basement, and looking down on it from the third floor was kind of terrifying. I sent pictures around and the response, uniformly, was “don’t fall in!” It was only about 12×12, so it would have been hard to fall through. But still.
It’s gone now. The old pine flooring from what will become the main bathroom has been taken out and used to patch it. So now instead of the wall of awkward closets that was there originally, and the dangerous-looking hole that replaced it, we’ve got this totally normal looking old wood floor, just waiting to be refinished:
While that was going on we had several days of house madness. The flurry of decisions seems to be messing with our heads, and we have a hard time thinking or talking about anything else.
This week, Megan went over to the tile shop and got samples, and I think we’re just about done picking tile, including this black hex tile for the 2nd floor bathroom:
Neena’s Lighting is closing their Cambridge store, so we stopped by and picked up a 19th-century style pendant lamp for our front hall.
We’ve also been over to Ikea to choose cabinets; with that done we can finalize appliance locations and request a price on fancy cabinet fronts from Semihandmade.
We also stopped at two different places to shop for a back door, which has become far more complicated than we expected. We found a hideous prehung fiberglass door at the big-box shops for $250, and one that was acceptable as a special order for $1,000, and then we went over to the salvage warehouse to look at rescued wood doors, figuring we could put on a storm door and it’d be almost as good. We didn’t find any that fit. So, our door quest continues.
To go with the doors, we’ve had to pick new handlesets, which is what hardware stores call exterior doorknobs, apparently. The folks over at Commonwealth Lock have firmly identified the broken one we have as a Schlage G-Series, which was discontinued in 1981. Anyway, we found some pretty ones that fit in with the overall look we’re going for and actually look like they’ll hold doors shut.
Oh god. Tile. There are so. many. kinds. of. tile. I’m really feeling Yellow Brick Home’s post about indecision.
Early on in our pinteresting, we found some really sweet large hexagonal tiles in a rich cobalt blue. Of course, they’re $35 a square foot. So, that’s right out. And where would we even put them?
We’ve got a lot of different places to pick tile for:
The back door needs to be replaced. M is lobbying for real wood; I’m lobbying for fiberglass. She wants character; I want something low-maintenance with good insulation that doesn’t warp in humid weather. So, we’re going door shopping this weekend. Therma-Tru or salvaged antique? Stay Tuned to Money Pit and find out!
Last week I met with the contractor, structural engineer, and architect all at once. Structural Engineer Dan B looked in at the joists and pronounced them quite sturdy and not in need of any modifications. So, that’s good. The oddities that had been seen in initial demo were, it turns out, related to something else entirely.
Then we went into the downstairs neighbor’s unit and we got slightly less-good news. There are three places where we need to put posts made of quadruple 2x4s so that our unit can transfer its weight all the way down into the basement and foundation and ground, rather than, say, directly into her living room. These spots are all inside of already existing walls, but we do have to open her walls up to get to them, then close them back up and paint them again. Downstairs neighbor is, fortunately, OK with this disruption.
Next time on Haunted Money Pit: Choosing appliances, paint, kitchen sink and faucet, tile, and molding. PLUS: Is decision fatigue a real thing? Eh, I don’t really care anymore, let’s just assume it is.
Looking back at what I listened to in the 90s, some of it was pretty terrible. But Sonic Youth wasn’t.
Setback: The joists in the 2nd floor – that picture right below this – don’t do quite what we’d thought they would. This means that we’ll need to open up the ceiling more, both so that the structural engineer and architect can see exactly what is going on there, and so that we can put in recessed lighting that’s up to code. It’ll cost a little more of course, but “wiring up to code” is important and that ceiling was pretty nasty anyway.
Spending: Placed order for all the bathroom goodies: Vanity, sink, faucets, tub, shower. Delivery to be scheduled for next month.
Secretly Ironic 