Day 5 - 2/22/21- Bedroom Wall Demolition

The crew showed up this morning and I got so excited that I would feel like I accomplished something today! Or that something would get accomplished by people I had hired, anyway. Today got louder. And walls came down.

 

Angelina and I took a drive to Burbank to get some Krispy Kreme donuts for the crew (and a couple dozen for us, of course.) Today the rest of the bathroom came down, the roof peeled back, the floors came up in the bedroom, the old closet peaced out and the bedroom wall peeled back to the dining room. Whew! That was a big day.

Unfortunately, we are still waiting for the temporary power pole to go in, so I think work is going to slow down for a while. It's hard to concentrate when walls are coming down. Not because it's loud but because it's my home coming apart and that is exciting and scary and I want to watch all the steps of that process!

Now we are in a holding pattern because we were told the Power company had to set up a temporary power pole for us and we paid for that to happen but NOW they say they can only MOVE the power to a new temporary pole after WE get it installed AND is passes a proper inspection. Sounds like a two week delay to me. Let's hope it can happen faster because my house is pretty open to nature at the moment.

 But this is cute:

 

Day 4 - 2/18/21 - Demolition of Laundry Room and More

The crew arrived at 7:15 this morning to continue demolition on the old laundry room. Roof first, then walls. The demo noise level is not nearly so bad as I had feared. Yet. I'll give them time to really ramp up, though. We remembered to put out a cooler of drinks for the crew today. Martin was on a work call, while simultaneously in the back yard, front yard and wandering around. I guess this is a major upside to pandemic working from home!

Had a bit of internal panic when a worker needed to use our restroom. I've got to remember we are all masked and not sharing air for that long that it needs to be any different from grocery shopping in the early days of the pandemic. Also, that won't be a problem anymore, thanks to this:

We have an Andy Gump porta-potty people! How lucky can you get? This is a top of the line luxury temp-crapper in mud brown and deep moss mold! AND? It's going to go ahead and live where I used to park my car! The honor is ALL mine! I already have an urge to wipe that thing down with bleach every couple of days...just in case I end up needing to use it for some terrible reason.

I'm very impressed by our demo crew. They sure leave the place clean when they are done!

 I'm extremely amused by our outdoor toilet. I'll be sad to see it go.

 

 

Day 3 - 2/17/21 - Greenlight Demolition

The Quaran-struction-palooza is really heating up here on Day 3. We cleared the backyard and scattered our stuff everywhere.

 

At 7:30am the dumpster arrived.

Just as demolition was about to get started, Martin needed to leave for a dentist appointment. He has, of course, barely left the house in months and right at the moment when we are unclear about how much of the house is about to get tore up, he has to go. Luckily they started nice and slow since the power connection to the house has not yet been moved. I couldn't concentrate on anything. I wanted to watch the process closely to prevent errors, but I didn't want to appear to be staring daggers at the workers, either. So I milled about, drank a lot of tea and did some crosswords. Martin got back to see the results.

Before:

During:

 

After:

Before:

During:

After:

We now have a gutted laundry room, a roof partially peeled back and, my favorite, a new window in the old bathroom. Looking in:

 And looking out:

It was difficult to watch the demolition start. I've washed my last load of laundry in the old laundry room, taken my final...bow...in the old bathroom. Martin had to say good bye to some of his state of the art roof. It is real now. We are in it. Let's see what tomorrow brings!

Day 2 - 2/13//21 - Temporary Plumbing Hook ups

So the process begins slowly. Day 1 was eight days ago, but officially today will be Day 2. The plumber came and set up a new washer tap hook up. Again, we did not fully understand that the work began at 8am with a plumber needing to get into the crawl space under the house. So it was another hurried wake up and whisk out to the car for the children. More car school. More hiding from the workers. More double masking. We really should get better at this. 

We also got to rush through emptying the whole closet because that is how you access the crawl space. Luckily we recently cleaned out that closet and it wasn't too terrible to remove everything. 

But the new "temp laundry patio" is partially ready to go!

 

By the power of the universe's hilarious coincidence machine, the same morning that the plumber showed up to effectively cancel the current laundry room, the hot water heater in that space dramatically peaced out in the night.

 

While the timing of this freaks me out, I'm calling it a win. I am grateful to the water heater for holding on for us right up until it knew it was no longer needed. Rest in power, water heater. I have also decided that lucky and fortuitous magic will whimsically bless us through this entire process! Yay!

Soon the power company will come to install a temporary power...pole? site? hook-up? And then the demolition of part of my home will commence. Here's their super official placeholder for that future installation.

It's the little rock in the foreground with an orange sticker on it. So long, hammock space. Hello, chaos!

 

Day 1 - 2/3/21 - Asbestos Removal

 

Two and a half years ago we started talking to an architect about adding on to our home. It is unbelievable how long the process was to get a design nailed down and then wait through two permitting queues. It is just our own good forutune that we are finally fully approved in the middle of a global pandemic! Bad news: it feels risky to have a bunch of strangers at our house and it's not possible to use hotels as a get-away, or sit and work in a coffee shop or escape to the movies or you know, anywhere. Also, we now don't have enough rooms available to cover all of the zoom calls that are supposed to happen here. Good news: kids can attend school from anywhere, so we may just end up at my mom's house for a while!

Today marked the first official day of our Quaran-struction-palooza 2021! Step one was asbestos abatement in the main bedroom and it felt like a rocky start. The crew arrived at 8am ready to work without proper PPEs, as far as I was concerned. I thought the bedroom and dining room would be sealed off from the house but they only sealed the bedroom so we basically had workers going in and out of our house and sharing our precious air space.

After a brief panic attack, I got myself mostly under control and bravely told Martin to tell them they had to wear KN95s while inside our house. Luckily we had bought a bag of them and when we provided them, they happily complied. 

Viviana had to attend zoom school from the back of our Highlander and Angelina and I hung out in the Audi, while Martin worked in the house with the door closed and two masks on. When the computer battery was at critical mass, the kids moved back into their room and wore masks for the last bit of work. 

I was super happy when they finished before noon. So were the cats.

 

Avi was here to remind us that we are already behind schedule for getting the power moved. We also need windows and doors ASAP. We have packed up the entire bedroom and bathroom. The dining room, laundry and backyard still need to be packed and prepped. So much to do, so every day ends in exhaustion. 

 

At least our temp bedroom looks really nice!