Here's a few pics of the progress to having our hot water heater on one side of our #retrorenovation duplex break, flooding BOTH sides. The work was getting done pretty quickly, what with so many in our area having flooded homes from Feb.'s freeze and needing renovation services.
My little helper painting to cover some of the old green #leadpaint
Yay, farmhouse sink!
And then...nothing...and then, all heck broke loose. In just a matter of about four weeks, we got all the duplex flooring/baseboards and the cabinets replaced, and some flooded doors fixed, and had chosen/bought all sinks, faucets, its first-ever dishwasher, a new garbage disposal and tile backsplashes.
Then for 2 weeks nothing happened - we'd already paid for our quartz countertop slabs but just couldn't schedule them. Then, when they did show up, here's how they cut them (hot water heaters were supposed to have a butcher block on top of them).
So here is a list of all that went wrong between then and now: 1. Counters were cut wrong - they were able to re-cut the one cut too large, but just had to add on to the edge of the one cut too small, and put a small seam. I'm happy to get the $500 back we negotiated, but Mike is picky about the seam...
2. Had the electrician out b/c a new electric box we had installed to make the garbage disposal, you know, work (old box no longer worked), stopped working. Meanwhile, he was getting shocked by outlets in our Unit 2 kitchen. He said that whole Unit 2 kitchen needed rewiring because as the codes changed, the updates people made did not follow code.
3. The non-problematic (or so we thought) Unit 2 hot water heater seemed to go out while we had house of 11 people...and when Mike messed with it, smoke came out, plus he got shocked. We had tried not to have to replace this one too for obvious no-time/cash flow (at this point) reasons, plus it would have to be brought up to code - which was an ordeal that included drilling through our concrete walls to put in a drain (which is obviously a good thing to have - see the fact that our whole place got flooded b/c of the lack of one on Unit 1).
4. Mouse. I saw our first-ever mouse inside that house WHILE we had our guests sitting right outside the door. We quietly tried to put out enough traps to kill it after heading to store the next morning (we found a trap and put PB on it the first night...it enjoyed the PB but did not get caught). BUT it went over to the side where ONLY guests were, and were sleeping in the open area connected to the kitchen. So they saw it, and had to sleep terrified all night. However, the next night we caught it...and were even tinkering in the the room where it was...it was not scared of us! Not sure if the various construction made it able to get in easier.
5. Unit 1 kitchen had to be rewired (pic of its look/progress below).
7. Home warranty just expired...we could have gotten the second hot water heater replaced at least, also! But they were kind of a pain to deal with. The first plumber they made us use (and only one they had in system) stopped calling us back and seems he went out of business!) Luckily our homeowners' insurance seems to cover a lot! If we hadn't gotten upgraded counters, sinks, etc. we probably would have come out ahead and maybe even covered these new, fun discoveries of having electric currents going through to the handles in the shower, our computers, lightswitch plates, etc!
NOW all that's left is getting old adhesive off walls in the kitchen on the non-tiled areas - barring other future "discoveries" (oh, and electricity)!!
And...Picking up 850 lbs of tile from the ceramic warehouse - it doesn't look like much, does it!?
