The Bagley Project

The Walls are Up!

2009-11-15T19:11:00.000-08:00

The sheet rockers are nearly finished. Above is a picture of the MIL apartment living room from the dining area.

Another picture of the downstairs living room and dining room, this time from the front door.

Above is a picture of the dining room and kitchen; the darker coloring in areas is because they haven't dried completely yet.

Upstairs dining room this time from the kitchen.

Insulation Pictures

2009-11-05T20:41:00.000-08:00

Sam and I stopped by the house after work today to check out the sheetrock and siding, and it was very exciting. Looking like a real house! And a new house, to boot, rather than an old house with new stuff in it. Unfortunately, coming right from work, I didn't have my camera on me, so I can't share just yet. However, here are some insulation pix to whet your appetite.

Living room, in all its Pepto-Bismol glory:

Bonus room, really starting to feel like a room at this point:

Basement living room:

And finally, one of the MIL bedrooms, also showing the new windows that Ben cut out:

The Whole Story

2009-11-04T21:32:00.000-08:00

I don't think Sam really did the whole ADU permit ordeal justice, so I'll try to fill in some details. Not too much, mind you, since I've been spending way too much time lately staring at a computer.

Basically, this whole issue starts way back before we even bought the house. In order for the bank to sign off on our loan, we had to provide a renovation permit. And in order for us to get a construction permit, we had to show Seattle's Dept. of Planning and Development our renovation plans. This meant drawing up the house layout as it was ("the original"), and how we planned to change it ("the renovation").

When Ben drew up the plans for the original, they very clearly showed that there was already a MIL apartment in the basement -- kitchen and all. And when he drew up plans for the renovation, that kitchen was still there. DPD permitted our renovation, allowing us to go through the rest of the loan process and start the laborious rehab project that you've had the pleasure of following here on The Bagley Project.

During our first framing inspection, however, Ben found out that we were short a few permits, including one for our Accessory Dwelling Unit (the MIL). If DPD had done their due diligence back in June when we were first requesting our renovation permit, they would've known back then that the previous owner never got the necessary permits for his MIL apartment. Then they would've informed us of the need for this permit. Then they would've looked over our permit application and informed us that the ADU couldn't be approved because we lacked off-street parking for the main house, let alone the ADU. Then they would've told us that that the ADU had to be converted back into a garage in order for the house to be in full compliance. Then we wouldn't have bought the house, and we wouldn't have dumped thousands and thousands of dollars into a renovation.

But they didn't. And they didn't. And they didn't. And they didn't. So we did, and we did.

So obviously we were NOT amused when DPD realized they made a mistake and tried to tell us -- $60K in -- that we would have to turn the MIL back into a garage.

I DON'T THINK SO.

So Ben and Sam told the lady at the DPD as nicely as possible that that just wasn't going to happen. That it was their oversight that led to this mess, and that we weren't about to throw $60K down the drain just because they don't double-check their work.

Apparently this woman at the DPD took the boys very, very seriously, and sent our case directly to the department's top lawyers. Who knows what happened then, but some time later -- as Sam mentioned -- we finally found out that the lawyers agreed we should be granted an exemption from the off-street parking rule. And there was great rejoicing.

Good thing the lawyers sided with us, because otherwise we would've had to hire some lawyers of our own, and honestly, who has the energy to deal with all that?

So that's pretty much the story. As Sam mentioned, insulation is all in now, and we have pix to prove it. I'll try to upload these tomorrow. Meanwhile, Ben reports that the sheetrockers were working until 9pm today, trying to finish the entire upstairs. Ben also reports that he's put up the siding on the front of the house and about half of one of the sides. I can't wait to get over there to take a gander.

Plans and Permit in Hand

2009-10-30T11:28:00.001-07:00

You know that relieved feeling you have when you almost tip over (perhaps in a chair, or a ladder) then catch yourself? That's the sense I had last Thursday when the e-mail came in saying the Accessory Dwelling Unit permit was approved.

From then, it took a week before I finally had the permit and revised plans in hand, so just for that yesterday was a very good day. Beyond that, this week has seen some very impressive results. On Tuesday we passed the Electrical, Plumbing, and Natural Gas inspections. Wednesday we passed the Framing inspection and today we have the final insulation going in, yet have already passed the Insulation inspection. Next week: sheet rock and siding!

We'll try to get some pictures either today or tomorrow of the walls now that they're filled in with insulation.

Can You Spot the Difference?

2009-10-18T20:56:00.000-07:00

Work continues on the city inspector's to-do list. Ben has already rebuilt the stairs, which look oddly like the stairs he built originally. See if you can tell what changed.

New stairs:

Original stairs:

Give up? The platform at the top is slightly smaller now, and the turn is a little more gracious on big feet.

Additionally, Sam and I went through the house and shot flame retardant foam into every little hole through every stud. Apparently this buys you a few extra minutes in the event of a fire. Apparently the "very sticky" warnings are also worth following; Sam and I both have a thin but rough layer of this stuff on our hands, which Ben says will stick around for at least a few days.

The last big thing on Ben's list is to finish digging out the basement windows. We finished moving the electrical wires, which used to run just below the bedroom windows. All of the wires connecting to the main floor now sit above the windows, while all of the wires that are strictly for the MIL apartment run a few feet below the windows.

Sam and Ben finished digging out the holes outside the windows this afternoon. As you can see, they basically take up the entire walkway leading to the backyard. We're thinking of rerouting the path to the other side of the porch to compensate.

Ben then rented a concrete saw from Home Depot and started cutting through the foundation. The windows are going to be huge -- 4' x 4' -- probably too big for the MIL bedrooms, but Seattle code necessitates this disproportion. Ben cut through the foundation as far as he could and then took a sledge hammer to it. He managed to get a little bit of the foundation out -- I guess enough to give hope that he's on the right track, but not enough to finish the job today. Ben's hoping he can finish the rest tomorrow, but I guess we'll just have to see how that goes.

Ben and Sam also installed our new front door last week. This wasn't on the inspector's to-do list, but it was time well spent. What a good looking door, eh?

Setback

2009-10-10T18:58:00.000-07:00

Well, we've been thrown off track a bit after the city inspector came on Thursday and found that much of the work was up to Bellingham but not Seattle code. Some of the changes are relatively minor -- for example, we need to fill every hole in every stud with a flame retardant -- while others are a pretty big deal.

Sounds like the two biggest problems are the stairs to the loft and the windows in the MIL bedrooms. Ben needs to rip out the stairs and rebuild them because they are too narrow in parts (where the staircase turns a corner). He also needs to make the bedroom egress windows taller, which means taking out a chunk of the foundation. This, in turn, means moving a bunch of the electrical downstairs, since most of the wires are currently running just under those bedroom windows.

Of course, this pushes all of the other work back. We were planning on having the insulators come in Friday and the sheetrockers start next week. Hopefully these fixes won't set us back more than a week, but I must admit the news is quite daunting.

The Smallest Sink You've Ever Seen (and Other Fixtures)

2009-10-04T21:50:00.000-07:00

Here's the sink we ordered for our half bathroom. Isn't it adorable?

Here's our jetted tub, at home in the master bathroom.

Take a gander:

And here's the tub and surround for the second upstairs bathroom:

More Electrical

2009-10-04T21:45:00.000-07:00

We decided to put a second breaker box in the basement, and all the basement is wired through that. This way, if we decide in the future to separate out power bills from the renters', we can. The breaker box is in one of the bedrooms, next to the closet.

Window Pictures

2009-10-04T21:34:00.000-07:00

Pictures of some of our new windows, which Ben and Sam spent an entire day installing last week.

Picture window next to the main entrance:

Picture window next to the MIL entrance:

The view from the second bedroom upstairs (looks into the backyard; you can see the shed out there):

And the view from the master bedroom (looks toward the townhomes):

The boys also got all the basement windows in, but I don't have any pictures of these yet. They will have pretty deep window sills, which should be nice.

More Basement Framing

2009-10-04T21:24:00.001-07:00

It's kind of hard to see what's what when you're just looking at framing, but here's the basement, basically all framed out. You can see the entrance at the far end of the room (and the new picture window right next to the door). The bedrooms are on the left side of the picture. The closet for the closer bedroom juts out into the common living area because there wasn't quite enough room for it in the room itself.

Here's a picture of the entrance, which now has a little coat closet (on the right in the picture -- sorry, it's dark and blurry):

This picture looks into the doorways for the bathroom (on the left) and one of the bedrooms (on the right). Like I said, it's hard to make out what's what, but I promise it makes sense.

Black Lungs

2009-10-04T21:06:00.000-07:00

It's been another not-so-relaxing weekend for The Bagley Project. Between work work and house work, Sam and I haven't had much time to just unwind. But hey, I suppose we can unwind in November, eh?

Things are really ramping up on the house, though Ben worries that we're a bit behind schedule. We were originally hoping to move in at the end of this month, but now it looks like I'll be keeping my apartment until the end of November. Between now and then, here's what needs to be done: (1) finish electrical (hopefully within the next few days -- almost there), (2) get a city inspector to come look at the plumbing/heating/electrical/framing, (3) insulation (sub-contractors are scheduled to come in next week), (4) get another inspection for insulation, (5) sheet rock (sub-contractors can hopefully start Friday, but that may be optimistic), (6) lots of other crap.

Sam and I spent much of the weekend cleaning the house and breathing in tons of dust. I feel like my nose and throat are coated with a fine layer of soot. We also had to move a lot of crap into the shed to make way for the sheetrockers. Apparently they won't work if there's anything on the floor because -- get this -- they walk around on stilts. Stilts! It's like a circus and a work site all in one. In any case, carrying around box upon box of nails really makes you realize how many stairs are in the house. Also makes you wonder how many boxes of nails one person really needs.

Sam also spent time banging metal plates into the studs so that the sheetrockers don't accidentally pierce our new electrical wires. That would indeed be a bad thing. Meanwhile, Ben is basically done with framing. In fact, I think BJ (the FHA inspector) qualified the framing as 100% done. I believe he also gave Ben the rest of the plumbing/heating money, and $ for the windows. Sorry I can't be more specific; I haven't really been involved in any of that. I honestly don't know what else Ben's been working on, but I'm sure it's something important.

Okay, I'm going to start a new post to get some pictures up, so that's all for now.

Rusted Pokey Things - 3; Sam - 0

2009-09-29T20:51:00.000-07:00

It turns out that, if given the choice between driving a nail through the fleshy part of one's hand or doing the same with a screw, my recommendation would be the nail. This is likely a decision that I could have been able to come to a priori, but I can now - with little satisfaction in the knowing - say with first hand experience (I pause for the collective groan from the bad pun).

I took most of the day off today to work with Ben on the house. My first thought was that I would work this morning at Tully's, then meet Ben around noon to help around the house. After seeing the sunny weather this morning, and given the forecast called for rain, I chose to postpone the work work for house work.

Although we had fairly large plans for the day, we ended an 11 hour workday having installed all the windows both upstairs and down. They look very good. The amount of light that comes into the basement once you take all the boards off is quite amazing. The problem was that all of the holes were different measurements on the outside compared to the inside (in other words, in the 6-10 inches of wall the hole changed size). This caused Ben a lot of consternation and made both of us spend far too much time trying to place the windows. However, in the end we set 8 windows in the MIL basement apartment, 4 windows on the first floor (the others had already been finished), and the three windows at the loft height.

Tomorrow is back to more electrical. We have another draw inspection scheduled for Thursday, and hope to have most of the electrical completed by the end of this weekend.

My hand is in a little too much pain to continue typing, so I'm going to leave it there for the night...

Let There Be Dark - Updated with Pictures

2009-09-21T22:30:00.000-07:00

Blog updates are not coming easily, as I've been finding it very difficult to stare at a computer all day at work only to come home and do it some more. So here's a rush description of what's been happening since I last wrote:

-- Wiring: Over the weekend we shut off the power and ripped out all the old wires and outlet boxes to make way for the new ones. This was much harder than I thought it would be. My stupid, weak forearms couldn't even cut through most of the wires, leaving Sam to do all this work and develop a big finger blister in the process. This weekend, we also got a lot of the new wires strung in the basement and in part of the main house, but there's still lots to do there. Lots and lots.

UPDATE: Got more wires out, put some home runs in. Most of the electrical in the basement is done now. Can lights are also in throughout the house. The pix below are about a week old, so things are already looking much different. I promise I will update as soon as I have more time!

Breaker box in the living room:

Wires running along basement wall:

Can lights in the loft:

-- Roof: The roof is finally done! Pictures to come for this and all the updates below. (Check back to this same post. I'll probably just put the pictures up here rather than starting a new post for them. Just don't have the patience to wait for them to upload right now.)

UPDATED WITH PICTURES:

View from below (from the loft):

View from above:

-- Plumbing/heating: These are also done! The poor sub-contractor, Martin, apparently thinks the house is cursed, as anything that could go wrong did. He had to make a bunch of extra trips out to the house -- no small feat, since he lives a couple hours away (up near Bellingham).

UPDATED WITH ONE MORE PICTURE:

Our furnace, which sits in the loft but will be behind a wall:

-- Windows: Our windows came in, and Ben and Sam started installing them on Friday. Unfortunately, part of the order was wrong -- a few windows were frosted when they shouldn't have been. Ben and Sam decided to install a frosted window in the living room, which I think looks odd. So it looks like that one's coming out and we'll have to wait for a new window to be made. A few of the windows -- for the dining and living rooms -- are huge. I didn't really appreciate how huge until I saw them sitting in the basement, waiting to be installed. Luckily, Sam's dad and Uncle Chris were both in town on Sunday and were able to help lift those windows into place. This was a much more laborious process than anyone anticipated because, as it turns out, all the old window frames are parallelograms instead of rectangles. Ben had to do quite a bit of improvising to get them in. But they're in and look great!

UPDATED WITH PICTURES:

One of our huge windows (this one's in the dining room):

Frosted window in the living room (picture quality isn't adequately conveying why I don't like this):

More windows lined up against the wall, waiting to be installed (including our beautiful picture window, at back, that will go at the front of the MIL apartment):

-- Lighting: We had a long discussion about the lights in the living room; because the ceiling is shallower than normal, we can't put in normal can lights. We're checking to see if we can get little LEDs instead. Additionally, we had to figure out where we wanted a TV so that we could figure out where to put sconce lights. Then there was another long discussion about where to put the switches for all those lights. Hard to keep it all straight. In the end, though, I think we decided that there would be seven LEDs lighting the living room and stairs, two sconces over the fireplace (those were there previously), a sconce between the large front window and the entry door, a sconce between the door and the stairs, and a fan/light in the ceiling.

-- Framing: Ben will probably finish framing everything this week. The basement looks like it's about halfway done.

UPDATE: I have a picture posted below, but the basement looks much, much different by now. Biggest change is that Ben has now framed out the two bedrooms. One of the bedrooms' closets will need to stick out into the living room a couple of feet because it wouldn't fit with a queen bed in the bedroom. We could either put in a tiny closet instead (three feet across?) or just steal a little room from the living room. Hope we made the right decision.

Framed out south wall of the MIL:

-- Final dumpster: We filled our fifth -- and hopefully last -- dumpster, which should be hauled off soon. On a somewhat related note, we decided to pull our garbage, yard waste and recycling bins up onto the porch for now, since rude people keep using our garbage cans for their overflow garbage. Not happy about that, but don't want to go into it right now.

Plumbing and Heating Pictures

2009-09-12T10:23:00.001-07:00

UPDATE: Apparently those aren't hoses. They're flexible pipes, which is what all the fancy people are using these days. They expand better than rigid pipes, which means there's a smaller chance of having a pipe burst in the winter.

****

To be honest, I don't really understand all of what the plumbers and heat guys have been doing. Hopefully you've gotten some sense of the progress there from previous posts. This post is just to show you the pretty pictures.

Here's our water heater. It heats water for the entire house. See how tiny it is? I think I've seen burrito platters bigger than that. The water heater sits in the laundry closet upstairs. As you can see, we also have a heat vent going through that closet. This means we need to get a stackable washer and dryer if we want to maintain any storage space at all. Fortunately, it looks like you can get some pretty nice stackers over at Home Depot.

Ben showed us these hoses (is that even the right term?) to explain why we were going to have killer water pressure for our showers. Apparently the vertical hoses in the picture are bigger than normal, while the horizontal hoses coming out of them (and leading to the bathroom) are standard size. This creates a bottleneck of sorts, and increases the water pressure going into the bathroom.

There's really no point to this picture, except to say that it sure is nice to have shiny new things every once in a while.

And this picture isn't really about heating/plumbing, though you can see where we'll have a vent that helps in the whole process of pumping cool air from the basement and putting it into the main floor. (It's not quite air conditioning, but should be nice in the summers.) Instead, this picture is really about showing you our beautiful new stairs leading up to the bonus loft. I realized that I didn't have a very good picture posted of these yet.

Ah, what a feast for the eyes.

MIL Updates

2009-09-12T10:06:00.001-07:00

Ben did most of the demo on the MIL apartment himself, while the rest of us were struggling upstairs. That's right. Sam + Cindy + Patrick + Craig + Sean + Elizabeth = 0.5(Ben). I don't know how to put in a less-than-or-equal-to sign, or that's what I would've used instead.

Picture below looks from the MIL entrance toward the back of the apartment. The living area still looks like one long room (and will remain so). On the right is where the bedrooms will be.

The kitchen (not completely demolished yet in this picture):

And the bathroom ...

Ben had to work quickly to fix up this bathroom, since he's legally required to provide such facilities for any sub-contractors. Plus, Ben needed a bathroom for himself while he's living/working in the unfinished house. We were hoping to use the original fixtures, but found them to be too damaged or stained to use. So we got a new toilet ...

... and a new tub. The sink is not new, but I think we're going to end up getting rid of that one. Originally we were thinking we'd transfer the pedestal sink to the half bathroom upstairs, but as I mentioned in a previous post, we needed to find something MUCH smaller for that space. I still want to get a sink with some storage underneath for the MIL bathroom, so I think it's bye bye pedestal.

There are still no walls around the bathroom. Just a sheet. Not ideal, but it works for now.

Other Main Floor Updates

2009-09-12T09:35:00.000-07:00

The back of the house previously contained a second bedroom (though the walls didn't meet the ceiling, so I don't know if that technically counts as a bedroom), an open washer/dryer area and a big staircase.

Demolition in the second bedroom was a little tricky, as there were a lot of pipes in one of the walls (the wall that previously abutted the washer/dryer area), plus the ceiling is very high. On the plus side, the insulation was much newer and cleaner than in the front part of the house, which made it must less likely to rip apart during removal. Also much less likely to have disgusting crap in it.

We found another hidden window in this room, on the north wall. You can kind of see it through the doorway in the picture below. I thought it would be nice to put that window back in and get a cross-breeze going in the summers, but Ben says it's not framed properly and probably wouldn't pass inspection.

Below you can see the second bedroom after it's been framed out and cleaned up. The room will still have a high, sloped ceiling, and will still have a window opening up into the backyard.The framing on the left side of the picture separates the bedroom from the bathroom. We were originally going to put the bathroom entrance in the bedroom, creating another bed-bath suite. However, we thought it might be nice to make it a public bathroom entrance instead, in case we have company that is not staying in the second bedroom (i.e., staying in the loft instead). The only other shower on this floor is in the master suite.

So Ben created a little hallway in the back of the house, on your right as you're walking out of the kitchen. The picture below looks into the hallway. The bathroom entrance is on the left; the bedroom entrance is in the middle; and the washer/dryer/storage closet is on the right.

I don't have any great pictures of the stairs in the back right now. Below you can see the stairs in the middle of demolition. Most of the remaining drywall has since been removed as well.

Master Bedroom Update

2009-09-12T09:30:00.000-07:00

I'm finding it difficult to keep a clean layout with Blogger, but am hoping that by making a tiny tweak -- centering the pictures instead of using a right justification -- I can at least avoid weird empty spaces. In the words of Tobias Funke, "Let the great experiment begin!"

Sam teamed up with Patrick to take out the green linoleum floor tiles in the master bedroom, which proved to have very sticky undersides. Sam said he scraped out about half of the floor before handing the job off to Patrick. Later, Elizabeth and Sean gladly picked up some hammers and helped tear down the walls. Part of the way through the demolition, we found a window frame in the back of the room, indicating that the master bedroom used to be at the very back of the house. We joked that we could re-insert the window to restore the house to its original glory, but decided it would be very weird to have a window between the master and second bedrooms. We just don't swing that way. Eventually, we got both sides of the walls out, opening up the view from the master bedroom all the way to the backyard. Incidentally, this also really improved the range of Ben's little clock radio, which can be heard throughout the house now that the house is essentially just one big room. Amazing.Ben has since framed out the walk-through closet, the outline of which you can see here. (The photo looks toward the closet and into the master bathroom.) There will be a fold-out door in the center of the closet on the bedroom side, and a regular door in the center of the closet on the bathroom side. Sam and I will each have our own side of the closet (on either side of the doors). Hard to describe, and not a great picture, sorry. More has been framed out since, but I can't find a picture right now. I'll post one later, which will hopefully be more illustrative.

Kitchen Update

2009-09-11T16:17:00.000-07:00

I find myself with a free hour, and am going to try to get you up to speed with some more pictures (as promised weeks ago). But first, an update that I forgot to mention this morning:

-- Roof: I believe half the roof has been torn off and re-sheeted (perhaps the whole roof by now). Eventually we're going to have shingles that are darkish brown. Honestly, I didn't give much thought to our shingle choice, as it's not something I'll really have to look at. Same can't be said for the people in the neighboring townhomes. But for them, any change to our roof has got to be an improvement on their view.

Now on to the photos. If I recall, I was working my way back through the house, and had just left off with the dining room. I suppose that brings us to the kitchen.

As in all the other rooms, demolition started with the floor, which proved to be quite difficult (says Sam -- I wouldn't know). As you can see, the flooring had a tendency to tear rather than lift. In the end, we're just going to get it as smooth as possible and then put tile or wood flooring over it.

After the floors we as gone as they were going to get, the cabinets and walls started to come down, followed by the ceiling. I could go into all of the wonders that came out of the kitchen ceiling, but I think I'll save that for a separate post. Yeah, that deserves a post of its own.

The kitchen was looking really scary for a while, after the cabinets had been removed from the walls but before they had been carried out the door. See evidence above.

Eventually, though, we got it all cleaned up, so now the kitchen floor is basically storage space for whatever materials are currently needed for construction (alternately, wood for framing or pipes for plumbing). Otherwise, there's not too much going on with the kitchen right now.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that we chose a cabinet layout at Home Depot. Eventually, we're going to take that design to get bids from some other companies with the hopes of saving a few bucks. Once things start moving on this front, I'll let you know.

Where Does the Time Go?

2009-09-11T06:27:00.000-07:00

It's been really tough finding time to post proper updates here, so I'm going to sneak in a few minutes before I have to get ready for work. Another whirlwind progress report ...

Windows -- Not too much to update here, except that Ben ordered all of our windows. I'd love to provide a link to show you what we're getting, but I don't even know which company we're using. The only slight glitch is that the window for the master bathroom needs to be slightly taller than we were hoping (12" I think), which means it's going to come down into what I was hoping would be mirror space. This is fine for me, but if someone who was, say, Ben's height wanted to use the mirror, he'd have to crouch a bit -- seems weird. I'm tempted to scrap that window altogether, especially since it's also causing some difficulties in deciding where to install vanity lights.

Doors -- Ben also put in a call to find out how much our interior and exterior doors of choice will cost. I believe we're going with textured fiberglass from Codel for all of them, as Ben says wood tends to warp and is probably out of our price range anyways.

For the front entrances (main and MIL), we're looking into two matching craftsman doors. Sadly, I can't remember which ones we picked even though it was just a couple of days ago. But it's either the one at right, or something that looks a lot like it. We'll probably order the door in a wood stain, but if we don't like it we can always put a coat of paint over it, Ben says. I was kind of hoping for a fancy, coordinating sidelight to go with the main entrance door, but Ben had already ordered a window for that space. He notes that the sidelight is something we can install later, if we want it (and have saved up for it).

The third exterior door leads to the backyard, and will probably look like Model TF15 here. As for the interior doors, I guess they're pretty standard. We only had to choose between four and six panels for each interior door -- and went with six (like Model TF6P here).

Heat -- The heat guy was supposed to come in and finish up his work yesterday, but didn't show. He has a good excuse, though, involving a blood infection and a hospital that won't release him. Here's to a speedy recovery, good man.

Jetted tub -- Sam's jetted tub for the master bathroom finally came in the other day. The plumbers didn't even think to pre-order it, since these things are usually in stock. But with the economic downturn and all, apparently jetted tubs have not been in high demand. Thus the slight delay. But it's here now, and Sam and Ben have already climbed in (separately) to check out just how deep the water's going to be. Both seem quite pleased with what we got.

Payments -- Our first mortgage payment went through a week or so ago. Now it really feels official! We'll probably set up automated payments soon enough for everything -- mortgage, electric, gas and water/garbage. Can't wait until we move in and don't have to pay for rent on top of it.

Many Updates

2009-09-04T10:02:00.000-07:00

Things are again moving quickly on the house, and again I'm falling behind on the updates. I don't have a lot of time right now, as I'm trying to get as many chores done as possible before Sam and I head up to Bellingham. So this will just have to be an overview of recent activities.

Plumbing and heating -- The plumbing/heating sub-contractors are not quite done, though they've accomplished quite a bit in the last week. Most notably, they got our fancy new water heater hooked up. Ben took the inaugural shower yesterday, and said the water pressure and heat is quite nice. The plumber estimates he'll be done after another half-day or so, but is out with his family for the holiday weekend, so he'll probably finish up on Tuesday.

First draw inspection -- BJ came over Monday for our first draw inspection. I don't have the numbers with me right now, but I do know that he didn't give us as much as we were hoping for. For example, I think he assessed the plumbing as being just 50 percent complete, though Ben was hoping it would be more (so we could draw more of our renovation money from the loan). I think BJ also determined that we were not as done with demolition ("debris removal") as we had hoped. Perhaps Sam can go into this more in a future post, as I haven't actually seen BJ's inspection documents.

Outside progress -- Ben took off all of the house's siding last week, and will probably start dismantling the roof next week.

Aroma -- Yesterday Ben sprayed the whole house down with KILZ to seal in the cat pee smell. Hard to tell yet if it worked, as it really just smelled like paint when I went over there last night.

Half bathroom -- We found a tiny sink for our half bathroom, which is small enough to give us a legal doorway. We were looking for a sink that was no bigger than 12" front-to-back. The one we ordered from eFaucets.com is just 9.75". You can check it out here.

Lighting -- Additionally, Sam, Ben and I walked through the house yesterday to decide where we wanted lights. We decided on four can lights and two sconces for the living room, a chandelier for the dining room (haven't chosen an actual fixture yet), six can lights in the kitchen, and can lights in pretty much all the other rooms in the house. The only exceptions are the bathrooms, which will have fan/lights, and the staircase leading to the basement, which will be lit with two wall sconces.

Windows -- Finally, we talked a bit about windows. Sam and I decided that we want windows that slide open left-to-right rather than up-and-down, as we don't want any horizontal lines blocking our line of sight through the windows. The exceptions will be in the bonus room, where we want the windows to open up completely so we can access the roof (don't remember what Ben called this kind of window); and a couple of picture windows (which don't open) next to the doors leading outside.

Okay, out of time. We'll try to update again sometime this weekend.

Frustration Is Other People

2009-08-27T22:04:00.000-07:00

Before I launch into this tirade, a quick progress report: Ben says the plumbers are about two-thirds done with the plumbing, and will start on the heating system tomorrow. As I understand it, we are getting (or now have?) some special type of water heater that continuously circulates hot water throughout the house, rather than storing the hot water in a tank. It's fancy stuff. I think it means you don't have to wait for your water to heat up after you turn on the tap. It might also provide other benefits, but someone else would have to explain them to you.

Now onto the rant. There are actually two frustrating things going on with the house right now. First is a situation with our FHA inspector, BJ, who -- to be honest -- has not been on my good side since Day 1. Apparently Ben and Sam have been trying to contact BJ to set up our first draw inspection -- a requirement of our loan, if Ben wants to get paid for any of the work he's done or any of the materials he's bought so far. However, BJ hasn't been returning e-mails or phone calls all week, with no indication as to why. No voicemail recording explaining his absence, no email auto-reply. This is clearly no way to run a business.

So Ben called our bank contact, Patty, to apprise her of the situation, as we need to get a draw inspection done soon. Patty contacted another inspector to do our inspection, and also put out a call to BJ. Lo and behold, BJ miraculously reappeared, returning Patty's call immediately. According to BJ, he's just been on vacation, and doesn't understand why we went and tattled on him. So now BJ's all bent out of shape because we went to the bank; hopefully, this will not somehow affect his inspection.

Now, it's certainly understandable that a man would want to go on vacation every once in a while. But to disappear with no warning and not tell anyone why you're gone and when you'll be back? Not cool.

I mentioned that I haven't like BJ from Day 1. I'll give you the short version of that story: He's SEXIST.

Here's the longer version: BJ showed up to do an inspection before we closed on the house (another loan requirement). And even though Sam and I were very clearly introduced as co-buyers, BJ only saw fit to talk to Sam. From the get go. Before he could possibly have had any indication that Sam was the go-to person for this conversation (which he was not, in any case). In fact, BJ wouldn't even look at me the whole time he was there, except when he had questions about the kitchen. And then he'd turn to me to find out if I was going to have a dishwasher in MY kitchen, or to find out what kind of stove I wanted. Because the kitchen is the only place a woman's opinion matters, right? Man, I've never wanted to shove someone's head in an oven so badly....

I definitely was not imagining things, as Sam and his parents noticed this dynamic as well. I was especially frustrated, as I had already gone through this experience twice before. At Homestreet Bank, our loan officer addressed all his comments and questions to Sam, even though I was sitting right there as well. And our pest inspector acted the same way for most of the time he was there, though he did start talking to me eventually (maybe for the last 10 minutes of his visit).

Okay, now on to Frustration Number Two. This one has to do with Seattle Public Utilities, and with being expected to pay for services not requested nor delivered.

Sam and I got our first water bill in the mail the other day, and were shocked to see that we owed about $160, even though we don't even live in the house yet. We looked over the charges, and saw that over $100 of the bill was for solid waste service on two 32-gallon trash bins. Wait a minute, we thought, we haven't been getting any trash service, and we don't have a trash can, much less two of them.

So yesterday I called up Seattle Public Utilities, who issued the bill, to protest the charges. This is basically how the conversation went:

Me: Why are we being charged for trash service when we're not getting trash service and don't even have trash cans?
SPU: You're a new homeowner? Your trash service automatically starts when you close on the house. If you don't want to be charged for the trash service, you have to call to cancel it.
Me: How was I supposed to know that? I didn't even know we were signed up for trash service since we don't have any trash cans.
SPU: We would've told you about this when you called to turn on the water.
Me: But I never called to turn on the water.
SPU: Yes you did. We have it in our records that Cynthia called to turn on the water back in July.
Me: I did nothing of the sort.
(Rustling paper.)
SPU: Oh, you're right, it was someone named Sharon who works for Wells Fargo.
Me: Okay, so I'll ask you again. How was I supposed to know to call and cancel service on our non-existent trash cans?
SPU: The person who started your water service should've told you.
Me: But we didn't deal with Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo worked for the seller, not us.
SPU: Well Sharon should've told you.
Me: But she didn't. So why do I have to pay for this service when we didn't order it and didn't even know about it?
SPU: Because your trash service starts automatically when you close on the house and call to start up the water.
Me: Again, how was I supposed to know this?

This circular conversation went on for a while, until we eventually got on a different track....

Me: Also, why am I getting charged for two trash cans?
SPU: You don't want service on two trash cans?
Me: No, I don't even want service on one. We don't live there yet.
SPU: It's because the previous tenants had two trash cans.
Me: Well, even when we move I don't want two.
SPU: Okay, then figure out which of your current trash cans you don't want, and we'll come pick it up.
Me: I already told you that we don't have any trash cans.
SPU: You don't have ANY?
Me: That is correct. We don't have any trash cans on our property, nor have there been any on our property since before we closed on the house.
SPU: So you want to order some trash cans?
Me: Eventually, yes, when we move, we'll need a trash can.
SPU: And you want us to deliver two 32-gallon trash cans?
Me: No. I said we want just one trash can.
SPU: Then just decide which one of your two trash cans you don't want so we can take the other one away.

This circular conversation also went on for a while before I was finally transferred to the guy's supervisor.

Supervisor: I understand you have two 60-gallon trash cans and only want service on one?
Me: No! We currently have zero trash cans. We want one. A normal sized trash can. 32 gallons. But right now I'm more concerned about the fact that you're asking us to pay for a service we haven't been receiving and had no way of knowing we were signed up for.
Supervisor: There's nothing we can do.

There was obviously more to the conversation with the supervisor, but you get the general idea. When I reported this all to Sam, he said I wasn't being forceful enough, and would probably have gotten better results had I gone completely ape shit on them. I told Sam he was welcome to try.

So today, Sam called up SPU to try to sort out the situation. However, he was told that SPU couldn't talk to him about the account since it was under my name. Which, of course, raises some questions: If SPU can't even talk to Sam about my account, how was some person named Sharon -- whom I don't even know -- able to set up an account in name? How was she able to promise on my behalf that I would pay for SPU's services? And if she was clever enough to get all that done, WHY THE FUCK COULDN'T SHE PICK UP THE PHONE AND TELL ME THAT I NEEDED TO CANCEL MY GARBAGE SERVICE?

So anyways, Sam and I need to call in to SPU together so that I can give them the okay to talk to him. Sam says they're now a public company, and can therefore be reported to the Better Business Bureau. If this crap keeps up, this may be what happens. Though to be honest, I have little faith that we will win this battle in the end. It's just unfortunate that we don't really have any options but to deal with Seattle Public Utilities. (Or do we? Anyone know if there's a competing service that provides water and trash services in Seattle?)

Dining Room Update

2009-08-26T22:20:00.000-07:00

I guess I'll just keep updating my way from the front to the back of the house, which brings us to the dining room. There's not much to say here, except to post a picture of the monstrous hornets' nest Patrick discovered while tearing out the walls and ceiling. (You can read his post about it here.) Marvel.

I think Ben has a little bit of framing to do in this room, to create a more clear separation between the living and dining rooms. But that's all coming later, as it's not necessary for the sub-contractors' work (until it's time for the sheetrockers).

Bonus Room Update

2009-08-26T21:51:00.000-07:00

I had no part in tearing apart the bonus room, and after seeing the filthy insulation that came out of that room, I'm glad that's how it worked out. The picture at right shows some of the bonus room debris that was blocking the stairs during the initial stages of our demolition. I'm not really sure how Sam got back downstairs after that, but it all seems to have worked out.

The second picture shows about the state the bonus room was in when we decided to leave it as an open loft. After seeing how much bigger the living room looked when the bonus room was all opened out like that, it wasn't a very tough decision.

After building the stairs, Ben spent the next few days framing out the loft. The picture at right looks through the loft, out toward the living room. Sam is standing in a little alcove, where we hope to build in some bookcases. A better view of the alcove is given in the next picture, which is from the vantage point of the stairs. If you're wondering why it looks so fuzzy, it's because we had just swept up the whole house in preparation for the plumbers, so there was quite a bit of dust in the air.

The last picture looks into the back of the bonus room. As Sam mentioned, we've been running into some minor space issues as the framing progresses, particularly when it comes to storage. We wandered about the house a bit yesterday looking for a place to put an extra closet, and decided that the best place was at the back of the bonus room, on either side of the back window. So we'd probably have two closets up there, separated by a bench seat under the window.

Now if only we could find solutions to these other minor issues:

The way the half bathroom is configured, we need to find a very narrow sink in order to avoid obstructing the doorway. Very narrow. Like, one foot deep.
Today we were trying to think of where to put a towel rack in the master bathroom. I imagine it will be pretty easy to put in a towel rack for the tub, but there's really not a great space for towels for the shower. We may need to put them on the shower door, or perhaps on the bathroom door.

Some minor issues

2009-08-25T21:54:00.001-07:00

The past couple days - particularly today - have seen some minor issues crop up to cause some consternation. The plumbers, originally scheduled for last week and pushed out by Ben so that we could prepare more, bailed out on Monday and only ended up working a half day today. Ben thinks we should still be set for our first draw inspection either this Friday or Monday of next week, which will include most of the plumbing, most (if not all) of the framing, and half of the demolition/debris removal.

With the arrival of the plumbers we were able to start getting into the nitty-gritty of how everything is going to go together... which, of course, is where the real headaches begin. Apparently, it is illegal to have your house's hot air from the water heater ejected directly at knee height of anyone walking by. So, it looks like the original dual water heaters called for in the plans aren't going to work. Instead we will get one heater for the whole house. This, however, has the domino effect of causing us to have less room in our laundry room closet, because we now need to put the heater there. Other minor modifications for air ducts and the like have trimmed down other closet space as well. In addition, as we wandered through the house today with Ben to review the progress, Cindy noted that the master bathroom doesn't currently have a place for a mirror above the sink (we are going with one instead of two now to increase counter space and cabinet area), which will need to be figured out.

Excepting those slight catches and inconveniences, everything seems to be coming together, and Ben said that the plumbers all mentioned they really liked the house.

Master Bathroom Update

2009-08-23T21:07:00.000-07:00

The master bathroom was one of the last rooms we took apart, as it was the only functioning bathroom for a while. We now use the basement bathroom, even though it has no walls. I guess we're all friends here, right?

The top picture shows the demo in progress, looking into the bathroom from the dining room (facing north).

The bottom picture shows the bathroom at the end of today. It's a little hard to tell what's going on in the picture: You're looking into the bathroom through the closet in the master bedroom. You'll enter the bathroom through the closet, with the door in the middle of the wall. The lighter colored wood is the new framing that Ben put in today. To the left of that wood will be a jetted tub, which will be the first thing you see when you enter the bathroom. On the other side of the wood will be a 3'x3' tiled shower. The toilet will face the shower, while the north wall (on the left in the picture) will have two sinks.

Living Room Update

2009-08-23T19:00:00.000-07:00

Ben's next task was to build out the stairs leading from the living room to the bonus room. But first, here are some pictures showing the living room during various stages of demolition.

The first step was to get rid of the carpet...

... and the tile. Sam tells me he had a hell of a time trying to chip the tile out manually before Ben finally let him use a power tool.

Next we started pulling off the drywall, exposing the insulation beneath. In case you're wondering, insulation is some nasty stuff. It'll make your nose bleed if you let it.

I think this was the scariest stage for me, as the house kept looking worse rather than better.

Now, after pulling out the insulation and getting all the extra bits of drywall and nails off the studs, it looks like the mess at least has a purpose.

By the way, we have Patrick to thank for ripping off a lot of the hard-to-reach drywall. I'm so glad I didn't have to get up on that ladder. Plus I'm glad I wasn't the one who had to discover all the wasps' nests hidden behind the walls (don't worry, they weren't live, but if you know me at all you know I would've freaked out and probably fallen off the ladder anyways).

And finally, the stairs, which are awesome. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we were afraid we'd lose one of our windows, depending on how the stairs fell. But as you can see, that didn't end up being an issue.

Fortunately, Ben didn't have to do any other framing to finish out the living room. So for now, that room is done (until it's time to do the electrical).

Half Bath Update

2009-08-23T18:33:00.000-07:00

Ben's first framing task was to extend the bonus room platform into the living room a bit. This essentially created a frame for the half bath, which will sit under the stairs.

You will enter the half bathroom from a hallway off the dining room. Turn right at the hallway for the bathroom, or turn left for the master bedroom. This picture looks into the half bath from the hallway. The toilet will be at the back of the room, and the sink will be on the left as you walk in.

The Great Sweep of 2009

2009-08-23T17:23:00.000-07:00

We worked hard this weekend to get the house clean and obstacle-free enough for the plumbers. Liz and Sean pitched in again yesterday for some clean-up, which I imagine was not quite as satisfying as tearing down walls, but was very helpful nonetheless. Sam and I continued demo and clean-up today, while Ben continued framing out the house, patching holes and reinforcing the floors (apparently there was nothing holding up the bonus room floor except some nails - yikes).

Sam had to crawl under the house today to remove a large vent. He offered to let me help, but I didn't want to detract from his fun. He looked a little woozy after he emerged; Sam says it's because he was breathing in too much CO2, but I think it's because his spelunking expedition was just so exciting. See what a great girlfriend I am?

Sam, Ben and I ended today by sweeping the entire main floor. Despite my dust mask, I'm pretty sure I inhaled about a bucket of dirt, which I plan to cough up over the course of the next week. Good times, good times.

Room-by-room picture updates coming up.

Apology and Quick Updates

2009-08-21T19:55:00.000-07:00

First, the apology. Sorry I have been lax on the posting; I feel especially bad because things are really moving along on the house, and I have yet to put up any progress pictures. I'm going to blame my poor Internet connection here at my apartment. Perhaps sometime this weekend I will grab a connection at a coffee shop and update this properly.

Now, the quick updates:
-- Ben's got a lot of the framing done upstairs, in anticipation of the arrival of the first sub-contractors (plumbing and heating) on Monday.
-- Sam, Ben and I went to Home Depot last night to discuss options for the master bathroom. Although we were originally considering a pre-made shower surround, we're now planning on doing a nicer, tiled shower (despite the extra cost).

Gah, I was going to write a little more, but have to run. 'Til later.

Calm Before the Storm?

2009-08-17T20:45:00.000-07:00

Demo's basically done now, but to pull a bunch of nails out of the studs. Ben finished filling our fourth rented dumpster today, and has headed home to Bellingham to spend a well-deserved night in a bed not surrounded by all the aforementioned horrors of The Bagley Project. I'll update with pictures soon (perhaps tomorrow), including pictures of the lofted bonus room, which Ben spent the last few days framing out. It really looks much bigger now that the bonus room opens out into the living room.

Exciting things are afoot.

No. 41

2009-08-12T23:35:00.000-07:00

Seattle Magazine recently published their annual ranking of Seattle-area neighborhoods, based on affordability, return on investment, good schools, parks, crime rates and commute. Our new neighborhood, Wallingford, came in at #41 out of 60, between Fremont and West Seattle (Central). This seems a bit low to me, but of course I'm biased -- and to be fair, there are a lot of other great neighborhoods on the list (Queen Anne ranked #1, Leschi #60).

I imagine Wallingford loses out mostly on affordability and crime rates (thievery). However, Wallingford has one of the most desirable elementary schools in Seattle (John Stanford International School), is home to Gas Works Park plus a number of smaller neighborhood parks, and has easy bus access to downtown and other fun neighborhoods (e.g. Fremont, Ballard, Greenlake and the University District). Plus, there's tons to do in Wallingford itself -- shops, lots of different types of food, movies, coffee -- all in easy walking distance. You can't really say that about, say, Crown Hill, which ranked #32.

Here's what Seattle Magazine had to say about Wallingford: "This central granola-centric, family-oriented neighborhood with Craftsman homes has it all: movie theaters, shops, casual restaurants and fine dining along 45th."

The magazine also gave the following Wallingford stats:
-- Median Home Price: $492,000
-- % Change in Median, 2007-08: -6%
-- Number of Bedrooms/Baths: 3 Bed/2.0 Bath
-- Crimes Per 1000 Residents: 61
-- % of Fourth Graders Passing WASL: 68%
-- Park Acreage: 122
-- Commute to Downtown Seattle (Min.): 10
-- Commute to Redmond (Min.): 21
-- Population Estimates: 11,362

You can see the full rankings here.

MIL Bathroom - Original

2009-08-12T12:55:00.000-07:00

Finally, we're to the last room of the house. That means you can expect some pictures showing actual progress soon.

The downstairs bathroom, like the rest of the house, was very dirty when we found it. We were hoping to save all of the fixtures from this room, but the toilet was too stained to clean and the bathtub had a large hole in it that couldn't be worked around. The pedestal sink seems to be okay, though we will probably move it to the half bathroom upstairs eventually, replacing it with a model that has some storage space underneath.

This is the room that has seen the most progress so far, as Ben needed to make sure there would be a working bathroom when the subcontractors came through. Right now, this is the only working bathroom in the house. The walls have come down (along with all of the other walls in the house), but Ben has put some sheets up around the bathroom for modesty's sake. Luckily, Ben's really the only one who has to worry about it for now. Here's hoping there will be another bathroom ready by the time Sam and I move in!

MIL Bedroom - Original

2009-08-12T10:45:00.000-07:00

There is currently one large bedroom in the basement, but this will be split into two smaller bedrooms. Like the second bedroom upstairs, the MIL bedrooms won't be huge, but should fit everything they ought to fit. Right now, the bathroom is accessible from both the bedroom and living room, but with two bedrooms it will make more sense to put the access through the living room only.

The current bedroom is pretty nondescript, unless you count the weird Latin scrawlings on all of the walls. If you know Latin, please translate for us, as I'm sure Sam and Dean Winchester will want to know what they're up against when we call them. What's been conjured? Ghost? Demon? Bubba Ho Tep?
-- MORITORI TE SALUTANT
-- PRIMA NOCTICE INFERNO
-- LO QUE IPSO EUNT

I think the picture at right is the closest you'll get to experiencing the smell for yourself. That's Craig, before we started tearing out walls and airing the place out. That's pretty much how he toured the entire house.

MIL Kitchen - Original

2009-08-11T08:57:00.000-07:00

We were originally going to leave this kitchen relatively untouched, just moving a couple of cabinets and doing a deep clean. Ben has decided, however, that the walls need to be torn out (something to do with the plumbing, I think), though we'll still try to save the floors and cabinets.

The kitchen has hookups for a stackable washer/dryer in the corner. We'll need to buy those, as well as a refrigerator. Hopefully the stove can be sufficiently cleaned to keep.

Sam and I are hoping we can add some more cabinet space, perhaps on the wall you see in the bottom picture. Technically they would be in the dining area rather than the kitchen, but I think the extra storage space will be well worth it.

MIL Living Room - Original

2009-08-09T21:36:00.000-07:00

Now we come to the most frightening -- and most foul smelling -- part of the house: the basement. Ben has bravely volunteered to sleep down here while working on the house, despite the ghost cats, rat feces and stale urine aroma.

As mentioned some posts ago, the basement is actually accessed from street level. It looks like it was originally a one-car garage, which the previous owner dug out further but never finished. The basement consists of a long, narrow common area, a kitchen (at the back of the apartment), a large bedroom (at the front) and a full bathroom (between kitchen and bedroom).

As you can see from the pictures, the walls were mostly sheetrocked when we found them, but this has all been torn out now. Apparently there was something wrong with the way the electrical was done, which could be seen where the sheetrock was coming off near the chimney. So, goodbye walls.

We're not going to change much about the living room, other than to change the access points to the bedrooms (there will be two bedrooms) and bathroom and, obviously, to clean and finish everything. It will remain a long, narrow room. I imagine the back should be used as a dining area, as it sits right next to the kitchen; this would relegate the sitting/TV area to the front of the room.

The only thing I really want changed is the window at the entrance (right next to the front door). It's made of glass blocks and, for some reason, reminds me of Saved by the Bell. Not that I have anything against the Bayside gang, but let's be honest: no one wants a house that screams Zack Attack.

The Big Stairs - Original

2009-08-07T19:22:00.001-07:00

These are the stairs that join the main and basement levels. The picture at right looks up the stairs from the basement; the door pictured leads to the backyard. I had big dreams for bookshelves lining the south wall (the left side in the picture), but Ben's going to have to noodle that for a while to see if it's possible and/or advisable.

Not much more to say about the stairs, I guess.

Second Bedroom, Main Floor - Original

2009-08-07T18:32:00.001-07:00

Another room, another series of questionable construction and decorating decisions. In fact, pretty much everything about this room is off.

For one, the walls stop a couple feet short of the ceiling. Perhaps the room -- which was not part of the original house -- was built as an office or some other room that doesn't beg for privacy, though the large clothes closet indicates otherwise.

Additionally, there's a clear skylight that looks directly into the window of one of the townhomes next door. I'm sure the skylight was just fine back when this room was added, but now that there are towering structures next door, it's decidedly weird. We thought about replacing the skylight with a frosted version, but demolition revealed an additional window frame on the north side of the room -- so the skylight may not be necessary at all.

But perhaps the worst part is the "artistic" paint job that the previous occupants left behind: red with what looks to be gold sponge paint. The pictures don't do it justice. People take note: sponge paint is almost never a good decision. Especially if you're too lazy to do it consistently throughout the room.

The room is pretty big right now, but we're going to steal some of that square footage to add a bathroom (accessible only through the bedroom, so it will be another bed-bath suite) and to add a laundry room. As a result, the bedroom won't be huge, but it should still fit everything a bedroom needs to fit.

A Step Forward

2009-08-07T18:21:00.000-07:00

I'm excited to report that we've moved out the demolition and into the construction phase of The Bagley Project. Kind of. There's actually still a lot of demo to do, but Ben's been building us a new staircase and, says Sam, has been making good progress. In other good news, it looks like the stairs will fall in such a way that we will not lose the north window in our living room. Huzzah!

I feel bad that I'm still playing catch-up with this blog. Here we are, making actual progress on the house, and we haven't even managed to get all of our 'before' pictures up. But I'm taking a week-long vacation from work, effective immediately, so perhaps I will catch up sooner rather than later. In fact, I'm going to work on some more updates right now, before heading up to Bellingham to spend some time with Sam's clan.

Bonus Room - Original

2009-08-06T22:14:00.000-07:00

This is the half-story bonus room, which Ben says was not part of the original house. (Don't know when it was added.) As you can see, it is far from a finished room, with random pipes sticking out everywhere (including many pipes that aren't attached to anything) and cardboard rather than sheetrock adorning the ceiling/walls.

There is a large window at the back of the room, which lets out onto the roof. This could be handy come Fourth of July; the neighbors in the townhomes next door insist that the best view of the Lake Union fireworks is from our roof.

The front of the room faces out to the living room. Although this is currently a closed-off room, we're planning on turning it into an open loft (my aforementioned epiphany), lining the front of the room with rails that echo the banister, rather than full walls.

Part of the bonus room will be cut off in the final version, where the roof meets the room's floor. On the other hand, Ben is currently in the process of extending the platform at the top of the stairs a little more into the living room. This will enable us to fit a half-bath under the stairs, and will also add some square footage upstairs.

All in all, the room is quite large. It includes a second window that is nestled into the south wall (on the left if you're walking up the stairs). Ben says we can cut back the wood surrounding this window to create a little alcove, perhaps for a desk or a little sitting area. We can't do the same on the other side (pictured above). I still don't really get why, but I assume it's a good reason. I think we were originally planning on sticking a water heater in that corner, but those plans may have changed when we decided to do an open loft.

Master Bathroom - Original

2009-08-06T21:55:00.000-07:00

Okay, things are moving again on the house, so I'm going to try to post the rest of the 'before' pictures as fast as possible (shaky Internet connection willing). Here you see the first-floor bathroom, which is currently accessed through a hallway off the dining room but will eventually become part of the master suite, accessed via walk-through closet.

I don't know what the previous occupants were thinking with those lights, which look like they would be better suited outdoors or, say, in a landfill.

As you can see, the bathroom was really dirty, and also sported some ... interesting ... wax art. It kind of looked like a peace sign, but given that the culprit was likely the same one who spray painted demon chants on the basement walls (those pictures to come), I'm going to guess that they were going for something else. Maybe an anarchy symbol, or something else that conjures up dark alleys and broken promises rather than rainbows shots with unicorn chasers.

We're hoping to salvage the tub from this bathroom, moving it into the second full bathroom on the main floor. Ben has already moved the toilet into the downstairs bathroom. As of today, Ben has also gotten rid of most of the bathroom walls in order to start building new stairs leading from the living room up to our bonus room/loft.

Ben thinks we'll be able to fit a tub, shower, toilet and two sinks into the finished master bathroom. I guess we'll see....

Master Bedroom - Original

2009-08-01T09:59:00.001-07:00

While I'm waiting for this day to get going, I may as well get some more pictures up (while I have the time). I don't have a lot of pictures of the original master bedroom, but it can pretty much be summed up with one word: green. Dark green linoleum floors, medium green closet doors, light green walls. Green, green, green. (Sam and I went to see Catch Me If You Can at Seattle's musical theater last night; I bet all this green would've been considered excessive even in Frank Abagnale Jr's time.)

The room is about 14'x10', or maybe bigger. I'm no good at estimating and don't have the plans with me right now. It has a window that faces north to the townhomes next door. This is one of the few windows in the house that actually opens. Right now, the bedroom is down the hall from the bathroom, but those will be combined into a master suite, with a walk-through closet separating bed and bath. I imagine this will make the bedroom itself a little smaller, but there's room to spare in there.

Kitchen - Original

2009-08-01T09:09:00.000-07:00

We haven't touched the house since Tuesday, mostly due to the heat. But Ben is coming back to Seattle this morning, and we're all going to do a little work before heading down to Portland for an overnight trip. The lumber was delivered into our driveway yesterday, so we need to move that all to the back to make room for another dumpster.

Since there's not more progress to report, for now I'll just walk you through another room of the house, as it was when we found it. Pictured at right is the kitchen, taken from the vantage point of the dining room. The door you see in the picture leads to the stairs, second bedroom and backyard (and will lead to the laundry room as well, once we put that in, yay!).

As you can see, it's not a huge kitchen, but it's not tiny either. Although I had originally hoped for a separate dining room, I've grown fond of the house's open layout, flowing from living room to dining room to kitchen without any pesky doorways in between. Every time I do laundry at my current apartment, I am reminded that doorways are the bane of my existence, as I have to navigate out a door, down two flights of stairs, around parked cars and through two more doors -- one of which is always locked -- all while carrying a basket full of clothes. (Did I already say 'yay' to having a laundry room in-house?) Ben may build a little lip of wall between the living and dining rooms, just so the spaces are more defined, but we're going to keep it pretty open.

The kitchen has good light, both from a window above the sink and from a window in the dining room. The fluorescent lights you see in the picture are awful, and will be replaced with something less institutional. The "original" floor was also awful, consisting of layers and layers of linoleum. I put "original" in quotation marks because the floors we saw when we first walked into the house were obviously not the original floors; the much linoluem must be inflicted over time. Weeks ago, Ben and Sam tried to remove all of the linoleum but with little luck -- this is one matrushka doll that can't be opened -- so it looks like we'll just be laying new tile or wood flooring on top.

We've already ripped out all of the cabinets, which will be replaced and augmented for more storage space. The sink will still be under the window, but we're moving the oven and range to the other side of the kitchen (you can see the current hood on the left in the picture) so we can put a dishwasher next to the sink. We'll also move the fridge out to the end of the counters (toward the dining room).

Unfortunately, I neglected to take a picture of the original dining area, but there's not much to see there anyways. On the south side of the room (left in the picture) is a bay window. On the opposite wall is a doorway that currently leads to the master bedroom and to the floor's only bathroom.

Epiphany

2009-07-28T23:25:00.000-07:00

Since we're in the midst of a heatwave, we all figured now was as good a time as any to leave the house alone for a few days. Ben is back in Bellingham until Friday, when the lumber will be delivered. Sam and I may stop by the house sometime between now and then to pull some more nails out of the studs and to clean up the downstairs kitchen, but for now we're really just playing it by ear. Did I mention how hot it is? The thought of exerting effort -- it's making me sweat just thinking about it. (Of course, that could also be from my apartment, which is ungodly hot right now and will probably prevent me from getting any sleep tonight. Guh.) Ben said he split his time today between working on the house and trying to dry off in front of the fan. I'm impressed he did any work at all.

Anyways, about that epiphany.... I was looking at the living room and upstairs bonus room the other day when I realized that it would be really cool to leave the bonus room as an open loft, rather than closing it off as a third bedroom. That way, we would be able to see into the loft/library from the living room, and vice versa. Sam and Ben also liked this idea, and Ben said it should be doable, so that may be our new plan for that space. Sounds like we will still have to close off part of the room to hide the furnace and water heater, but otherwise we would just enclose the loft using the same style rails as on the stairs.

Speaking of grand plans, we're also wondering if we can set up a projector to play movies on the wall of the shed. But that comes much, much later.

Lazy Summer Days

2009-07-27T23:13:00.001-07:00

UPDATE: I forgot to mention a few days ago that Ben successfully installed a new bathtub and shower head in the basement bathroom. It sounds like there were some frustrations along the way -- something to do with leaky plumbing -- but all is well now, and it looks great (though there are no walls yet, so bathing could be a bit awkward). Ben also re-installed the pedestal sink that had been in that bathroom previously. It looks good, but we're thinking we might move the sink to the half bathroom upstairs so that the basement bathroom can have a sink with some storage room underneath.

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Sam and I have taken a little unplanned hiatus from The Bagley Project due to an illness known as Stupid Sunburn. We headed with Ben over to Greenlake Sunday morning for what was supposed to be a quick cooldown; we had every intention of going back to the house for some more demolition after a couple of hours. But after paddle boating for a few hours -- including a trip across the lake to pick up Craig -- we found we were too scorched and tired to do any work on the house. Sam's dad also came into town from Bellingham to check on our progress, giving us a good excuse not to work.

Today, Sam, Ben and I still find ourselves sun-sore from the lake. Although Ben was working at the house all day -- he said demo in the basement is now basically done -- we decided not to do any more demo after-hours. Instead, our evening has been filled with groaning, alternately, about sunburn and 95-degree weather. I have been in a bit of a foul mood about the weather since last night, when my apartment manager gave me a note saying I have to keep my windows shut from 9-5 all week so they can powerwash the building, despite a record heat wave in Seattle. (I'm not exaggerating; the word "record" actually applies.) As Ben rightly points out, this is exactly the type of crap I won't have to deal with after I move.

We may do some more demo tomorrow if the mood strikes. However, Ben says the second dumpster is mostly full now, so the timing is right for a little break if we want it.

Nails and tiles and...bees?

2009-07-27T16:08:00.000-07:00

So, Sam and Cindy never told me the cool add-on features that this house came with! Last weekend, we took most of the ceilings down, exposing the studs, insulation (arms are still slightly itchy), and an amazing array of miscellaneous items. These items included:

Some tiles that clobbered Sam's head.
More Christmas ornaments.
The nastiest plastic bowl you've ever seen
Some kind of metal duct part. Not connected to anything, mind you. Just the part.
Four hornet's nests.

That's right, I did not mistype. Four of them. One of these was about 18 inches in diameter, and when I took it down, a bunch of insulation came down with it. We concluded that it was structural, and should be replaced immediately. I will recommend to Sam/Cindy that a more robust, up-to-code, hornet's nest be placed in its stead.

As far as physical labor is concerned, this is one of the safer jobs I have worked at. Mainly, because one person takes all the injuries for the rest of us. His name is Sam. So far the tally is:

Nail puncture wound in his left foot
Nail puncture wound in his right foot.
Bruises from a pile of ceramic tiles landing on him from above the ceiling. Yes, from above the ceiling. Once again, I did not mistype.

Cheer up Sam! Nothing Hydrogen Peroxide and beer can't fix. We're almost done with the demo. Soldiering on...

Living Room - Original

2009-07-26T08:35:00.001-07:00

You thought I was going to tease you forever with the promise of pictures, but here, finally, are some images of the living room as it was when we found it. Fortunately for you, we can't make these scratch-n-sniff.

As you can see, the living room has a great fireplace and vaulted ceilings with exposed beams. I love the beams, but am not so crazy about the decorative tiles on the fireplace. You can't tell from these pictures, but it looks like someone has drawn trees on the tiles with a Sharpie. Fail one for etch art.

There are also two large windows at ground level and a smaller one up top. These let in plenty of light, though one of the ground-level windows may end up going during the renovation.

The room has a beautiful wood staircase. Unfortunately, that probably has to go too, as it is dangerous as is. Sam's grandmother came by to check out the house and tried to argue for keeping the staircase. I agree that we should try to keep a similar look for the new staircase, but am not a huge fan of falling through wobbly planks. For some reason, the previous occupants had a long, wooden plank nailed into the banister. No one can really figure out why.

The living room had a mix of grey carpet (original color unknown) and slate tile. We've since ripped all of this out, with much improvement to the aroma. Underneath we found wood floors, but there are a couple of areas that were patched really poorly, so we don't think we'll be able to keep them. We're trying to decide if we want to put in wood or tile floors instead.

House Stats

2009-07-25T10:46:00.001-07:00

It occurs to me that we haven't given you the most basic details about the house yet, so here goes....

The house is in a Seattle neighborhood called Wallingford, about a mile west of the University of Washington, three quarters of a mile east of the Fremont neighborhood, a mile north of Lake Union and a mile south of Greenlake and Woodland Park. (According to MapMyRun.com, the house is just three quarters of a mile from my current apartment -- so it's not going to be a huge move.) We'll have access to plenty of bus routes, which run on both 45th Street and 40th Street (we're on 44th Street).

Wallingford's main attractions are Gas Works Park (on Lake Union) and the main drag on 45th Street, where there is food and drink aplenty (including at least five places to get sushi). Most of the houses there are WAY out of Sam and my price range. In fact, Sam and I didn't really figure we had a chance with The Bagley Project; although the listing price was in our range, we assumed that we would be outbid (as had happened a half dozen times already). The neighborhood blog, wallyhood.org, has even been lightheartedly poking fun at Wallingford's exhorbitant home prices by trying to find the cheapest Wallingford house on the market ($350K, last they checked).

As for The Bagley Project, it currently has two bedrooms and one bathroom on the main floor, and an additional bedroom and bathroom (and kitchen) in the basement. After the renovation, we will have two bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms and a finished bonus room upstairs, and two bedrooms/two bathrooms downstairs (still with a kitchen). We figure the finished square footage will be about 2400 sq ft. The house also has a decent backyard -- bigger than the yards at most of the surrounding houses -- and a large shed.

Okay, I have to run again, but will post again soon with pictures (this time I mean it) and another list of the interesting things we found during demo today (turns out the best place to hide things is in the ceiling).

Half the House It Used to Be

2009-07-21T22:41:00.000-07:00

The demolition continues, and now there is definitely more sheetrock on the floor than on the walls. Ben decided that we should rent a dumpster after all (rather than taking the rubble out to the city dump truckload by truckload), so we're hoping to have all the demo done by the end of the weekend. The house is looking kind of scary right now ... basically each room is just studs and a pile of garbage. Once we're through with demo, the sub-contractors can come in and work on the electrical and plumbing. Ben says it'll be another month or so before the place even starts resembling a home again. Oof.

Here are some more things we found in drawers and walls throughout the house:
-- a marble and a spool of black thread, both in the wall of the master bedroom
-- a full set of silverware, tucked in one of the kitchen drawers
-- a packet of Ritz crackers, unopened
-- a box of Nilla wafers, opened
-- a huge pile of rat poop, in a basement wall (Ben was the lucky prospector for that one)

Again, I am promising pictures in a future post. It's getting late and, frankly, I'm exhausted.

A good Sunday

2009-07-20T05:10:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how much damage 4 people hell-bent on destruction can do to a house in a day. Pat, Cindy, Craig, and I went to town ripping out walls most of the day. The best part of tearing apart a room, I must say, comes once you've pulled off one side of the drywall. You then get to kick (or punch) through the other side. This led to some skinned nuckles, but was definitely one of the highlights of the day for me.

Cindy, Ben, and I also went out in the morning and picked up a free fridge. When we got to the guy's place in Renton to pick it up it was already outside with the doors open. A little boy who lived at the house blurted out that it stunk like fish - and proceeded to get yelled at by a person I presume to be his dad and hauled off inside. We didn't pay too much attention to it though - it was free, right? And so loaded it on Ben's truck and brought it back home. While moving it inside, Ben and Craig accidentally opened the door and found that it did indeed stink. Ben claims worse than the house did when we initially found it; although, I find that hard to believe. We brought it out to the backyard and sprayed it out with bleach water a couple times, and it cleaned up quite nicely. So we now have a fridge for the shed.

After working on the house until 4:30 or so, we had managed to rip out all the walls from the master and second bedroom on the main level and nearly all of the 14 feet high walls in the living room. Ben is still working on the bathroom downstairs; it turns out the bathtub isn't going as smoothly as he had thought it would.

After BBQing with everyone and a brief nap, I came in to work early (midnight or so) to get caught up since I was having issues getting online from offsite. I'm hoping that my extra 8 hours this morning will result in getting enough done that I can leave early to help out some more today...

Gotta work up an appetite - All you can eat ribs tonight!!!

A Life In Objects

2009-07-19T08:45:00.000-07:00

So far, here are some of the left-behinds we've found (a peek into the lives of those who occupied the house before us):
-- Two plastic army men, behind the walls in the master bedroom
-- A Garfield air freshener, also behind those walls
-- A Garfield baking sheet still in its original packaging, on top of the kitchen cabinets
-- An arrow, shot into the ceiling in the basement
-- A picture of Jimi Hendrix, resting on a ledge in the basement

Sam and I are lying around my apartment right now, mustering the energy for what promises to be a busy day. Both Sam and I have some work we'd like to get done today (as in, for our real jobs), plus there are normal life chores that we must attend to (the most pressing of which is laundry). Sam's dad is also swinging through town on his way back from a business trip, so we'll probably see him and take him out to dinner in the evening. Besides that, I gather there are more walls to be torn down at the house. We may also take the base cabinets out of the upstairs kitchen; the top cabinets came down yesterday.

Finally, a little blog housekeeping. ... I'm new to Blogger and wasn't sure if this blog was syndicated. It turns out it is, so if you want to keep up with us via feed reader, you can find the subscription at the very bottom of the page.

Let the walls come down...

2009-07-19T07:37:00.000-07:00

Friday and Saturday saw substantial progress on the house.

Friday started with me stripping the downstairs bathroom of tiles and beginning - with limited success - to take out the flooring from the back rooms on the main level. This took up the better part of two hours. I then moved on to the nearby Tully's to get some work done, but my VPN connection has been acting up, so I ended up going back to the house and working on the floors until Ben returned from Bellingham.

Once he arrived, Ben and I went to Lowe's and bought 760 sqft of the tile that Cindy and I had picked out Thursday evening. We plan to use it to cover all the floors downstairs excluding the kitchen. Lugging 69 boxes of tile took up most of the afternoon Friday and, with the heat, we didn't want to do much afterward. Ben also got in touch with a couple roofing companies to come out and give bids, and he spoke with the inspector and got the go ahead to begin tearing stuff apart in full.

Later Friday evening, my roommate Pat came by and began work ripping out sheet rock in the master bedroom. Meanwhile, Cindy, Ben, and I went to Home Depot to design a kitchen. It's amazing how many ways one can use the same 10-15 foot wall space. Cindy and I both really like cherry wood with dark stained finishes, so chose the "Peppercorn" finish for our Home Depot design.

Saturday morning we got off to a late start, having spent much of the morning eating breakfast and watching Cindy's brother, Craig, in his valiant effort to win the 12 egg omelete eating competition at Beth's. He failed, however, apparently so did the guy from Man-vs.-Food, so that should lessen the shame somewhat.

Once we started though things started flying - quite literally. Our friends Liz and Sean came over to help and the four of us ripped out most of the rest of the walls in the master bedroom and living room while Ben tore up the downstairs bathroom. He also took out a couple of walls from the bathroom by chainsaw; after which we went and bought a new tub with surround and materials to extend the bathroom and change the doorway location.

A Picture to Satisfy Your Initial Curiosity

2009-07-16T21:04:00.000-07:00

Okay, here's your first glimpse of the house. The windows have been unboarded now, and it's amazing what a difference that makes, both from the street and the inside.

The main entrance is up the stairs. There's a separate entrance for a mother-in-law apartment on the ground level. The front porch is a decent size. We'll probably have to build up a higher rail so that our tipsy friends don't ... tip ... but the view to the street should still be just fine. Eventually, we'll probably put a little table and some chairs out there. Or a hammock. Mimosas at sunrise, anyone?

For the record, I'm sitting on the steps in this picture. I'm not two feet tall. (Though at my last doctor's visit, I found out that I may be shrinking. Lost a half inch in the last year alone. Sam says one data point is not sufficient to indicate a trend, but I don't have much height to lose in the first place....)

We'll post pictures of the inside and backyard in subsequent posts.

And So It Begins

2009-07-15T23:30:00.000-07:00

Sam and Ben made good progress today, unboarding most of the rest of the windows, ripping out the living room carpet and scraping off at least one layer of linoleum and tile in the main part of the house. They also painted part of the living room in colors we had considered the night before. It turns out that paint swatches do not necessarily translate well into bigger areas, so it's back to the drawing board on those. Who knew that two very different shades of green could both look like toothpaste when put up on a wall?

Unfortunately I couldn't take off work to pitch in, but the boys seem to be doing fine without me. Plus, Ben promises there's still lots of "fun stuff" left to be done over the weekend.

A lot of our new neighbors have been swinging by to see what's going on with the house. In fact, we met quite a few of them during inspections, before the house was even ours. From them, we got a little of the back story of the house: The previous owners lived there for over 40 years, and the husband/father made "improvements" to the house as time and money permitted. However, the family must have been borrowing against the house, as they faced foreclosure after the husband/father passed away last year. When they finally moved out, they could only find eight of their nine cats, which helps explain part of the house's stench. Our pest inspector confirmed this story when he found the remains of a cat under the porch; curiously, it seems that someone went and stole the cat's body sometime in the last few weeks. (Not that we're going to press charges or anything.)

After the family moved out, a vagrant friend of theirs decided to stay and conduct satanic rituals in the basement (as evidenced by the morbid Latin scrawlings adorning the basement walls). Eventually, he was evicted and the windows were boarded up, leaving the house -- dead cat, vomit-stained walls, oyster-filled sink and all -- to fester for months on end. We were the first happy house hunters to unlock that magic concoction.

Sam said he met a few more neighbors from the townhomes next door. It turns out that they actually built those townhomes, and had similar aspirations for our dear ole Bagley Project. Luckily, they weren't paying attention when our house went on the market. ... In any case, I think we're scoring plenty of points with the other neighbors just by promising not to tear the house down and build more townhomes.

Sadly, I have to push off posting pictures for another day. It's late again and, again, I have some work and sleep to catch up on. I would've checked in earlier, but just as I was coming home to my apartment my neighbor grabbed me to be an extra in his movie. I'm no actor, but it was pretty fun getting up into the camera like that. I'm sure I'll miss Fremont when I move, but I know Wallingford is full of characters and adventures as well.

Welcome

2009-07-14T22:52:00.001-07:00

Hi folks, and welcome to The Bagley Project. The last few days have been a whirlwind, rushing to pull together last-minute loan documents, signing a ream of documents with a really-high-on-life escrow officer and, finally, getting the keys to our old-but-new-to-us home in Wallingford. Both Sam and I are really excited about the months to come; we're going to see the house through a complete transformation.

Sometime soon one of us will fill you in on our story to date, and will post pictures of the work in progress. For now, it's getting late and there are other aspects of life that need some attention (namely, work and sleep).

Stay tuned.