{"id":5014,"date":"2011-02-14T13:57:11","date_gmt":"2011-02-14T18:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=5014"},"modified":"2011-02-14T14:57:40","modified_gmt":"2011-02-14T19:57:40","slug":"adventures-in-hiring-a-contractor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2011\/02\/14\/adventures-in-hiring-a-contractor\/","title":{"rendered":"Adventures in hiring a contractor and other housey updates"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/span> dashed off this post on the weekend, and then I thought it was rather pointless and whiny and took it back down again, but apparently feedburner launched it into your feed-readers because a few of you took the time to e-mail me and commiserate and offer basement renovation advice and support — so I’ve reworked it to mitigate the whininess. A bit. Here’s the revised version!<\/p>\n

I tell you, I’ve learned more about houses, structural issues, home repair and contractors in the last six months than I learned in the previous forty-one years! And this post has gotten so ridiculously long that I’ve tucked it beneath the fold. Settle in and grab a coffee if you want to stick around for the whole saga to date!<\/p>\n

We’re in the process of hiring a contractor to rebuild the drywall in the basement bedroom that got torn out during the mould remediation in December. It’s about as satisfying as banging your head against a brick wall. Our original handyman totally flaked out on us, which was disappointing because I’d really come to trust him. Over the course of the last week, we had three different contractors come in to scope the job. <\/p>\n

One seemed very mom-and-pop but his estimate came in about 50 per cent higher than we were expecting. One seemed very professional in that he showed me a handful of code violations like upside down junction boxes and places where there should be vapour barrier between the frame and the floor, and he had some professional-sounding suggestions for spray insulation. But, in a 15 minute consultation he also told me about his troubles with the tax department, made two vaguely inappropriate jokes and basically creeped me out. And when I asked for an estimate, he was distressingly vague except it was still in the neighbourhood of 2\/3 of the price of the first guy. And the last guy seemed like a pretty good guy, but he too wouldn’t really come up with a firm estimate and was in fact so laid back that I thought I might have to check him for a pulse. He pretty much looked around and said, “Yep, I can do this.” No advice, no insight, no value-added, a flat rate of $30\/hour and I pay for the materials. <\/p>\n

The last guy seemed like an okay choice, but now I’m waffling all over the place about some of the things the other guys mentioned. Spray versus batting insulation? Vapour barrier on the cold and warm walls or just the cold wall? Should we use regular gypsum or special waterproof stuff? How the hell should I know?<\/p>\n

I hate this stuff. Hate it! I don’t want to overpay, I don’t want to be fleeced, I don’t want to cut corners but I don’t want to sell the farm. I also don’t want to spend six or 10 hours in the house with someone who wigs me out, and I further don’t want to drag this out any further. Poor Tristan has been without a bedroom since November, and his own bedroom was supposed to be the big incentive for us to move to this house in the first place.<\/p>\n

Since I first published this and revoked it, I’ve gotten a few more recommendations for contractors, so I’ll check them out this weekend. I also got a fabulous e-mail from Holly with all sorts of insight from her basement renovation, including the fact that spray insulation is more expensive but is also better in a potential moisture situation — which is exactly what we have.<\/p>\n

Did I ever even tell you about the moisture issues in the house? Really, they’re at the heart of our house troubles. Tristan’s bedroom was originally a garage under the house. Somewhere back 10+ years ago, they bricked up the opening with cinderblock and finished the entire basement. The previous owner had some moisture issues and hired a company do install a basement drainage system <\/a>that included putting a moisture barrier 2\/3 of the way up the wall to the level of the grade. Unfortunately, the moisture was getting on the warm side of the moisture barrier, running down the inside and pooling in the frame — thus the mould. So they came back and ran the barrier all the way up the wall, except I just read in a CMHC guide that in fact you’re supposed to stop it at grade level after all. Gah! <\/p>\n

I wish this were just a straight drywalling job, but we need someone we can trust to give us advice about the insulation and moisture issues. The last thing I want is to be worrying about this again in six months!<\/p>\n

The house has some other moisture-related quirks as well. (Who would have guessed it, living on an island and everything? *eyeball roll*) The laundry machines currently empty into the sump pit, which is workable but not ideal and occasionally causes the sump pit to get skunky because of the grey water from the machine. We had a plumber come in, and he recommended we move the laundry machines entirely and hook them up to the septic tank, which we’ll likely do within the year. That takes care of the swampy smelling sump pit, but adds stress to our 40 year old septic system. (And it also entails cutting a new door to provide access to the former furnace room, which isn’t an entirely bad thing because it lets light into an otherwise closed basement family room — but it’s still not cheap!)<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the plumber is also reversing a stress we introduced into the septic system by diverting our reverse-osmosis filter from the septic system to the sump pit. Apparently for every gallon of water our reverse-osmosis filter produces for drinking (RO reduces the salination of the water, which is already naturally salty and even more so with the water softening system) another gallon and a half of wastewater is produced and dumped into the septic system. It’s clean wastewater, though, so we can divert *that* to the sump pit at little cost.<\/p>\n

And just yesterday I bought a new dishwasher to replace the circa 2005 one that has been slowly dying since the day we moved in. A new dishwasher ought to be more water and energy efficient, right?<\/p>\n

Oh, and the basement toilet is acting up and I’m pretty sure it needs to be replaced. And the connection to the basement shower is leaking. And there’s a ring in the sewage tank connector that needs to be replaced. So yes, we have a *few* moisture issues. All of these are fairly straight forward home maintenance jobs that one might expect to encounter over the years — just not all in the first six months!<\/p>\n

The good news is that by the time we’re done, our house will be as perfect on the inside as the light pouring in from the outside. It’s a big investment now that we’ll reap for years to come. At least, that’s what we keep telling ourselves…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I dashed off this post on the weekend, and then I thought it was rather pointless and whiny and took it back down again, but apparently feedburner launched it into your feed-readers because a few of you took the time to e-mail me and commiserate and offer basement renovation advice and support — so I’ve … Continue reading “Adventures in hiring a contractor and other housey updates”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-ongoing-saga-of-the-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5014"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5024,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5014\/revisions\/5024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}