Astoria Reno: Treading Water

Our Astoria Reno correspondent writes:

It’s been more than a month since my last post, and I assumed by now I would have all sorts of fantastic things to talk about.  This did not come to pass.

A book I read before starting this renovation had a chart with the owner’s emotional state in the course of a renovation. During planning, the excitement of first demo, through the revelation of framing, the mood is positive, going up… and later, from sheetrocking onwards, the mood also goes up as the dream comes together.

Between the two is a trough, and the absolute nadir of the process, the lowest and most depressed emotional point, is the installation of the systems: electricity, plumbing, HVAC.  The initial excitement is over, the discernible changes are few, and the finished product still seems ages away. That book’s example was based just on the usual time to install these systems, and it was written in some big square Western state where DOB interference is probably at a minimum.

We have been at this low point for over a month now.

It started off well. Electrical systems were installed quickly, if not as neatly as episodes of “This Old House” had led us to believe (ah, the reality of behind the walls).  HVAC led to various discussions, as it hadn’t been fully planned out, and there were more on-site changes than in anything else we’ve done.  It was slower than we wanted, since everything was fabricated off-site and installed, so changes had to be removed, reworked back in the shop, then come back, but it was clear progress.

I don’t know what the traditional sacrifice is to the plumbing gods (yards of one’s own intestine?) but we obviously failed to deliver and are being punished.  The waste pipes for the bottom level involved digging along the channels left open in the slab (and with some changes, ripping up already-poured slab) so our basement has heaps of dirt, broken concrete, and pieces of wood all over it, and looks more like “after” pictures from a major earthquake or bombing raid than something that is supposed to be on its way to sheltering people.

There were related headaches.  They started plumbing for the sink at the wrong end of the kitchen island.  Various toilets had to be shifted because of beams where the waste pipes were to go.  The pedestal sink — the only thing we had saved from the previous interior — was found to have broken at some point over the winter.  The main water pipe from the street was insufficient for the sprinkler system the DOB insists we install, so it was replaced at Serious Cost with a larger diameter pipe, which involved ripping up the street and angering the neighbors.

None of this had a major effect on the timetable. It was distressing, but deal-able. Then the plumber told us that each space with a washer/dryer (two) needed to have a separate floor drain. We are paying three professionals — architect, expeditor, contractor — but it was a subcontractor who knew this. Suddenly the architects had to draw up a new plumbing plan (time + $), the expeditor needed to get another appointment with the DOB to clear it (time); once the plans were ok’d then the drains were put in (time + $), and only then could the final plumbing inspection be scheduled (significant time).

Until the inspection, the walls cannot be insulated and sheetrocked, or the basement floor filled back in and closed up.  So, at a point where our moving date has been reserved and we’re counting in weeks, we lost about two and a half weeks. A business trip to Southern California luckily got us out of the way for part of it, but coming back after a week of sun and distraction and clean to driving rain, piles of dirt, and no discernible progress was definitely the nadir (to date) of this whole multiyear process.

With nothing that the workmen can do — roughing in the back steps was the best we’ve had — I have been trying to get a feeling of accomplishment by shopping for things for the house, thus keeping the final vision in front of me. Of course, like all serious shopping when you know what you want, there have been disappointments, as I find that no one makes it. Or they do, but not in the size I need, or only for three times the amount budgeted. Still, we finalized the bathroom wall and floor tiling, sinks, toilets, towel bars, bathtub, the kitchen cabinets, counter, backsplash, some appliances, the sunroom floor, and doorknobs.

I have been doing pin-up boards, trying to figure out how this will all fit together — the materials just ordered, the furniture from our current house, the new furniture which was picked out a year ago and is waiting to be delivered, the mantel purchased 18 months ago, and the pieces from my old apartment which have been in storage for over two years.

These boards are what I look at while the rain still comes in around the tarp covering the incomplete back wall  (custom windows; estimated delivery date late June).  In the words of Jerome Kern:

Here in this shell of a house,
This house that is struggling to be,
Hope must have been
The first to move in,
And waited to welcome me.
But hope isn’t easy to see.