Check-In

I am still not dead, but I’ve had a lot going on and I really haven’t had the time I’ve wanted to write a post.

Today was a terrible day, and I still don’t have kittens to make it better.

But there is plenty of good news – that bathroom is finished and the floor works. I just have to touch-up the paint and put the trim back around the door.

Frustration

I’ve always heard that, when doing a renovation, plan for it to take twice as long as you thought and to cost twice as much as you expected. It appears that it’s going to take even more time than that.

We called both the permitting office and an electrician earlier this week (I believe on Monday) to find out if we would need a permit to install the heated floors. We were able to speak to the electrician right away, and he said that we would not need a permit. Given this information, we purchased the heating mat and scheduled the electrician to give us an estimate for the cost of the wiring.

Today, we finally heard back from the permitting office. They say we DO need a permit, but it can be an over the counter permit. There is a permit fee, but it looks like it will be at most $40. The catch is that there have to be 2 inspections, once when everything is roughed in and once after the wiring is done. I am not sure if the inspections are part of the fee or not. I went to the county website to download the permit checklist and the application. I think that the permit checklist is a bit overwhelming.

First on the list – list all your contractors, subcontractors, etc. Well, I can do that. Next, review the plans for the project and get the seal of an architect or engineer. Can this possibly apply to my project? I mean, there is a wiring diagram included in the box. Does this count? Third, get written approval from the appropriate Fire District. OK, what? Why on Earth do I need that? I’m not building a new house, I’m just warming the freaking floors. I thought I would call the office and ask if this really applied to my project, but then I noticed a note on the application that Fire District approval is required for ALL permits. This is getting ridiculous. After all that I have to give them the valuation of the project. What counts here? The cost of the heat mat and the thermostat? The price of the whole renovation (changing from carpet to tile)? The labor? The last 3 items do not apply to me at this point, but there is one bit about making sure no revisions to the plans are needed. 

I have to say, when government makes these things so hard, they are encouraging people to just forgo the whole permitting process and do it under the table. I am not going to do that, but now I do see why people do unpermitted work. It’s ridiculous.

The plan at the moment is to have the electrician come out tomorrow, tell him that we do, in fact, need a permit, and see if he can help us with that. Otherwise, no heated floors for the kittens. That would be a shame, too, because the heated floor solved a problem we were having. You see, the heating vents are in the floor in this house. In order to prevent the kittens from peeing in the vent (hey, it happens) we were going to have to figure out a way to cover the vent and still heat the room. The thought at the moment is to build a small, removable bench over the vent to redirect the airflow. Heated floors can keep the room warm in addition to the floor, so all we would have to do then is to put one of those magnetic covers over the vent, and voila, problem solved.

This makes me want to pull my hair out. It’s not the project that’s difficult, it’s the bureaucracy. I was content for the project to take as long as it takes so long as I was able to work continuously. Now that I have to wait for inspections and all that, I am not feeling so patient. Well, we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Remodeling for Kittens

I haven’t had foster kittens in a long time: I miss them terribly. Buttercup doesn’t miss them at all, but she doesn’t get a vote in this one. The thing that has been holding me up on this one is the fact that my bathrooms, the place where the foster kittens might live, are carpeted. At first you might think, “Well, it’s a soft place for kittens to play. What can be so bad about that?” I have one word for you: ringworm. If any kittens I get ever contract ringworm, it’s over. The carpet will harbor the ringworm until I quit fostering. Additionally, kittens barf on the floor. They miss the litter box on occasion. Their medicine ends up mysteriously turned upside down on the floor. The carpet will become a germ factory in the short time it takes to foster just a single litter of kittens.  Since this isn’t an option I want to pursue, I have chosen to tile the bathroom floor.

The complication is that I have had a lot to do before I could remodel the bathroom floor. I had to unpack. Mostly check. I had to paint a bedroom. Check. My friend Jen was coming for a visit (what a way to spend Spring Break – in the cold!). Check. Let me spend a moment on that one, actually.

Jen is always the first person to visit me after I move. She came to San Francisco to see me shortly after we arrived. I was surprised (and thrilled) to learn that she would want to come see me right away when I moved to Colorado. As a matter of fact, 3 of her last 4 plane rides were to come see me. To make this trip more exciting, she planned to bring her new boyfriend for me to inspect.

*Lane, you no longer have to wonder what he looks like – here you go!*

They got here late Monday night after nearly missing the connection in Atlanta. The next day we went shopping (window shopping, apparently – I actually came home empty handed) for things for my house. On Wednesday, they both got sick – I think the altitude got to them. We spent Wednesday at home playing video games, and Wednesday night a friend of Jen’s boyfriend came over for a barbecue. The next day Jen and her boyfriend were even sicker, so we stayed home again so they could nap and do indoor things. At least we got to spend time together.

The final verdict: the boyfriend passes muster. He’s a good guy.

So, yes, back to the remodeling. I had to crash for a long time after Jen’s plane took off, so I lost Friday. On Saturday, Michael and I went shoppng for the supplies to tile the bathroom. For the record, you need a lot of heavy supplies and a few tools, so don’t shop for this stuff alone! We couldn’t fit the backer board for the tile into the car, so we are waiting for a non-rainy day to pick it up (in a pickup truck) from the hardware store. In the meantime, we started the demolition.

We removed the carpet and the padding underneath.

We pried up the tack strips holding said carpet to the floor.

We trimmed the extra padding away from the threshold.

And finally, we pried the baseboards off (in one piece, thank you very much).

Notice how I use my tongue to help me do any work that involves prying? It’s my secret technique.

Michael removed the toilet all by himself. It turns out to be a pretty easy job if you take precautions like turning the water off and draining as much water as possible before trying to move anything. Yes, we did remember to stick a towel in the hole (soil pipe, technically) to prevent sewer gasses from escaping.

For now, we have a floor-less bathroom. Tomorrow morning we are going to check if we need a permit to install heated floors (my kittens are going to live in luxury!) and if not, we need to call an electrician. If we do need a permit, well, I guess the heated floor just isn’t going to happen. It takes about 3 weeks to get a permit here, and I just don’t want to wait that long for kittens.

The next step is to obtain the backer board and (hopefully) the heating element for the floors and install them. I might also paint the room since there will be no floor to ruin. I plan on this project taking as long as it takes – I’m in no hurry and I want to get it right. If we’re without a bathroom for a few weeks, so be it – we have 2 others. So far everything has gone well – my walls are even perfectly square at the corners! I am not going to jinx this with an inflated sense of confidence – I’ve screwed up enough knitting to know that something can go wrong at any moment, and the knitting is comparatively easy. Keep your fingers crossed that this goes well!