What's Next

the front path

There's still plenty of bits and pieces to finish up, to say nothing of the floor, but K and I decided that it'd be nice to have a proper front walk with the rainy season coming on. When I bought the house, there was a poorly done path with bricks. It was lined on one side with wood that had long since rotted away, and they hadn't put down a proper bed of gravel, so it had grown very uneven and rather treacherous when wet. Some years back I removed the bricks (some of which are now part of a retaining wall by the disused spa) and regraded it, and we've lived with a nice pine needle-covered path since then.

There's also the matter of the porch area in front of the new front door. Drainage has always been problematic on this side of the house, and you may recall that bad grading led to rot and termites in the old front porch (and on in to the kitchen floor joists and subfloor). The new porch will be graded for proper drainage, of course, but also have spot for a rain barrel.

So last week I started grading the path and building forms for the porch. I plan to have a concrete curb on one side of the path, and pave the path with permeable pavers. I got the forms for the porch built, and started on the forms for the path. Then, like most good home improvement projects, the project got bigger. Since the porch is going to come up to the level of the existing bottom step at the end of the path, and the pavers were going to come all the way to the top step, it'd be a great time to tear our the steps and rebuild them because they're a bit sloped, and it'd be an odd transition of materials. Even with the added work, I was expecting to pour concrete by the end of this week.

But it's probably not going to happen, as the forecast is for lots of rain this week. The first storm to come through is a cold one, so there's even a chance of snow in the higher hills of the Bay Area. So today after church I cleaned off the roof, recovered the path with pine needles so it won't turn to mud, and to watch football and wait for the rain.

Thanksgiving

getting the fish ready for the oven

The kitchen and dining room got their first big test for Thanksgiving. We had K's brother and his family and K's mom over for Thanksgiving. It would have been a struggle to do in the old kitchen because it had so little counterspace. Cooking a meal requires some scheduling so everything is ready at the same time, but the logistics of trying to schedule with no storage space for dishes in progress makes it extra hard.

We were helped in no small part by our sister-in-law bringing lots of side dishes to accompany the plank-baked trout, pumpkin gnocchi, and rolls we made, and K's mom bringing more than enough dessert.

seating for 8 or more

The old dining room would have presented similar challenges. We'd have had to set up an extra table in the living room to have seat 8 people. With the addition and remodel, Uncle Al's table not only fits easily in the dining room, it fit easily with 2 of the leaves in it. If we'd needed it, it would have fit with all 3 leaves.

In short, the kitchen was a joy to work in, and overall the new space passed with flying colors.

Fun with Rain Barrels

the Labradane

Yesterday K and I visited some fellow housebloggers at City Homestead. They live not far from Lake Merritt here in Oakland, and had lamented not knowing how to make a platform for some rain barrels they bought a while back. I'm not 100% done with the insanity here, but I knew that was something I could help with. So while I showed them how to build a sturdy platform, K headed off to the Y.

The work went pretty quickly since they'd already bought the necessary materials. The most time-consuming was leveling the ground to put the concrete piers, and that was pretty easy because the soil had been dug up before to remove plants. It was nice to get to put faces to the names behind the blog, and both K and I enjoyed meeting their dog, Augie, who's got a lab personality but closer to great dane size. He's rescue dog, and a large bundle of energy.

finished platform and barrels

Final Inspection Passed!!!

Ican hardly believe it, but the final inspection was passed. The inspector left a little while ago. After all my anxiety about there being some punchlist items to do (or worse) before we got finaled, it was actually a little anticlimactic. He reacquainted himself with the plans (it's been a while since the last building inspection) and asked some questions. He took a look around, and made sure I had access to under the floor and above the ceiling, there were fluorescent lights where needed for Title 24, et al, then took a brief look at the electrical panel. GFCI breakers for the two small appliance circuits, AFCI breaker for the bedroom, and we were good to go.

Woohoo!

Now to finish the trim, figure out the flooring, etc. But woohoo!

Ready...Set...D'oh!

ladder to nowhere

I've been slowly working towards getting ready for the final inspections. I called Tuesday to schedule them. I anxiously awaited the call this morning between 8AM and 10AM to find out when they'd come. The inspector asked if I'd had my zoning inspection yet. Huh? Oh, yeah. I'd had to go through a design review way back when when I'd first submitted the plans. Not because the addition is very big (~350 sq. ft.) but because the percentage of the addition versus the existing house was above 30%. But it turns out that any addition has to get a zoning inspection before the final building inspection. So now I'm somewhat less anxiously awaiting a call from the zoning inspector so I can set that up.

In the mean time I'll work on all those things that aren't quite done yet, like the bit of trim outside near the kitchen windows, the corner trim (I still have to figure out how to mill that or build it up from parts), and figure out what we're going to do for flooring in the kitchen and dining room. Staining didn't work because the wood filler, while stainable, took stain very differently than the rest of the wood (even with pre-stain treatment applied), so right now it's a choice between painting it and real linoleum (tradename Marmoleum).