It’s going very well indeed. The incredible thing is that the contractor gave us a project plan in August, and here we are in December and as of last week we were slightly ahead of schedule. I told you we hired them because of the project manager. I asked him last week if I could tell the house cleaning service to put us back on their schedule in February and he said yes!
So as of last week: the kitchen and half bath have been dismantled, the windows replaced, the plumbing and electrical work upgraded (plus some structural reinforcement), and the drywall put up, mudded, sanded, and primed. The floor is insulated. (Yay!) The kitchen cabinet install is in process. The upstairs has been rewired, the ceilings drywalled, the closet frame rebuilt, and everything has been patched, mudded, and primed. The bathroom plumbing has been redone, the bathroom window is now double-paned (and with a plastic latch, which will handle all the water much better than the brass one did).
During our weekly conference last Friday, the floor guys were ripping up the second floor, which we have to replace. Since we’re doing this because the wood is too thin to hold the boards during a refinish, all the old nails were sticking up from the subfloor, and as we got there the team was – hammering them all down. There must have been three guys up there, all pounding nails into the subfloor at once; it sounded like an artillery range. We were relieved when the manager went up and asked them to take a short break while we discussed some details.
We’re about halfway through this. It’s hard to believe we’ve been in the condo for two months already, with two more to go. The wood for the second floor has been delivered and is sitting upstairs getting acclimated, we expect that install next week. It’s been quite an experience, and it isn’t done.
Oh, and I saw a goldeneye on Lake Merritt yesterday, along with either a horned or an eared grebe – they’re about the same size. They’re different in detail, but I can’t see that kind of detail against water in the sun, especially when the thing is underwater half the time. I thought it was a juvenile of a larger grebe until I looked in Sibley and saw there are two breeds that are each only about a foot long.
