Framing has begun!
Stopped by the site last weekend and got to see the beginning of the framing process!
Here’s the driveway (above) with a bunch of framing material waiting to be nailed into place, and beyond you can see our new bedroom and bathroom addition! The window opening on the left will be the bathroom (small toilet room area), and the two windows on the right are our bedroom.
At the corners you can see our Simpson Stongwalls - structural steel used to stiffen the north façade framing that is mostly window openings. You can also see that only 1 top plate has been added so far. Once they add the second top plate the top of the wall will align with the top of the large header over the center window and everything will be strapped together.
You can see the hold downs bolted through the strongwall base and the sill plate framing. The sill plates (bottom pieces of wood on the concrete slab) are pressure treated wood (looks green) to avoid water and rot issues where the wood framing is most susceptible to water intrusion.
Here you have Brett (and I) critiquing the less than stellar concrete skills of our contractor. Not to mention his sweet tall socks with the shorts (LOL), yes I married him for his keen eye for fashion... ahem I mean construction errors. The concrete edge of our slab bows out toward the driveway and at the center point is about 1/2 inch proud of the sill plate, but it aligns at the corners. Yes we are perfectionists in our work... but even more so when it’s our house! Meanwhile I am also wondering how the hell we are going to be able to plant anything between our addition and the driveway?? Our design left room for an approximately 30″ wide planting strip between the addition and the driveway. BUT the contractor poured the large footings for the strongwall at this corner (that thing he’s standing on) just about level with the top of the driveway! Last time I checked, you can’t grow anything in a concrete footing. And we didn’t construct this addition to allow a raised planter against the wall... I guess I’ll be stuck with potted plants here and I’m not pleased. I also don’t know how they are going to pour the new walkway up to our porch when this blob of footing concrete is about level with where that walk needs to be. The contractor is likely going to have to chip some of this concrete out of there to do it right... ugh!
Here’s the back addition (above) - they had not started framing that area yet when we visited, but they have taken the back wall and part of the roof off. The rest of that roof on the right side needs to be removed to get rid of the dutch-gable and will be re-framed with a standard gable to facilitate our vaulted ceiling in the great room.
Above you can see the recess in the new slab where it meets our existing slab. This recess is for the new sliding door track!
Here’s a sample piece of that track in the recess. Once all the flooring is installed, all you will see will be less than a 1/4-inch tall section of the top silver part of the track, and the base will be buried below. They better set that track more level than they poured that recess... We paid $250 for this recess as a part of change order #2... Looking at how uneven it is, I’m thinking we were overcharged!
We did argue with our contractor about some items in change order #2: he was trying to double charge us for structural items that were in our permit set and the plans showing those items were sent to him prior to his first bid. It was super annoying to argue this with him... lots of #rantsbybrett were endured by all! During our meeting with the contractor I had to shush the ranting husband so that I could talk reasonably with contractor about how he was completely wrong... but you know, in a professional way. Then we had to send a bunch more emails proving our case which was totally BS because the structural items were in the bid set and the permit set! If this change order went to court, 10 times out of 10 we would have been declared right! I even got personally offended that the contractor tried to sick his admin lady on me to try to get me to back down... as if I’m a push over - think again! HA! Their only argument was, “none of our other home owners contest our change orders.” Uhhh... then your other home owners are idiots! We are architects AND it’s our money we’re talking about here so he better bring a better excuse than that if you want us to pay. He finally agreed to revise the change order after I bitched that we are paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars and they are trying to argue about a couple grand, and furthermore, we are spending far too much of our valuable time even arguing about this item that seems pretty clear. Very frustrating.
Above you can see where they demolished the front door wall that had that funky plumbing pipe that was going at a 45-degree angle through the framing of the wall. Our new front door will be in the same location, but we are raising the header over the door all the way up to the underside of the rafters and that will allow us to have an 8′ tall front door! The door will be centered on the front porch with an operable side light on either side. The roof over the porch is getting removed and re-framed for a 10′ tall ceiling above the porch. So that beam with the white paint being supported by a another piece of wood, sitting on another scrap block of wood on the ground is all going away!
It was admittedly a little scary to walk around the house in this condition because structurally some items are not really braced at the moment in their temp condition... we were very cautious not to touch anything and I mentioned that if I felt an earthquake I was going to run for it!
We are both really disappointed that our contractor is trying to charge us for ticky-tacky shit that we have to argue against! We didn’t think we hired the “Change Order Contractor” but it’s starting to look that way... ugh! We are already arguing about change order #3 as well.
He’s trying to charge us an extra $4,270.50 to replace our 60 year old sewer line from the front porch to the street. This scope of work was clearly requested by us in our first bid addendum that we sent the contractor a month before his final bid. In the final project budget there is even a $4,400 line item #1300 that verbatim states, “Replace Main Water Line and Sewer Line Will be going as far as we can to the city hookup.” Again we argued that he is trying to double charge us for this scope that was clearly requested in the bid documents and shown in the budget! I asked for him to tell us what the budget line item #1300 is for if it’s not the sewer and water line replacement and he tried to tell us some horseshit that it’s for replacing the sewer and water lines inside the house. I called BS on that immediately and reminded him that the plumbing scope inside the house is covered in the $21,000 line item for rough plumbing!! We are still waiting on his revised argument for why he needs to double the cost to replace the sewer line? I know we are getting all heated about this... but if he had come to us and said that he forgot to bid the excavation for the new sewer line, or that he needs a change order because the sewer line is deeper than he though we would be able to agree or meet him in the middle. I mean we are not unreasonable. But don’t lie to me that sewer replacement isn’t in your bid... you will not win that argument and instead he’s just pissing us both off! Not to mention, who the hell bids replacement of a sewer pipe and doesn’t include the cost to dig it up? If this was a commercial construction project the contractor would have to eat that cost he “forgot” to bid. How would we even know that it wasn’t included when we reviewed his bid? Brett already just wants to hire another contractor to replace our sewer line after our contractor is done so he doesn’t have to pay our contractor another dime over our budget. If the contractor keeps being a prick this might happen, but I’m not willing to burn that bridge yet... I’m still hoping that the contractor comes to his senses.
Then there’s the lovely change order #4! Apparently our contractor only bid the removal and re-sheeting of half of our roof?!?! Did he know we were planning to re-roof the whole thing... yes! Did his bid state he was planning to leave half the existing roof in place... no! BUT since we are having Brett’s Dad, who has owned his own roofing business for the past 40 years, install our new roof we agreed to the change order just because we don’t want to do the tear off ourselves. Cha-ching... extra $4,130 there... smh!
We don’t like arguing. It’s not a fun or comfortable thing to be doing with a contractor that still has 80% of the project to finish. Maybe we won the argument for change order #2 (which isn’t really a win when those structural items should never have been a change order in the first place), but now we are concerned that the contractor is going to try to make that money back on future changes or cut corners to make up the perceived “difference.” We are already 2+ weeks behind schedule and our contract doesn’t have a lot of teeth to compel our contractor to finish by a certain date. Not to mention that we still don’t even have a fucking schedule for the duration of the project! Here we are 2 months into a supposedly 6 month project and all he can give us is a 4-week look ahead... ugh! Lots of stress and frustration happening in our house these last couple weeks. Time for a drink!