Week 12

As we mentioned in the prior post, the back doors are in and we are excited about them! We spend saturday chilling in the backyard with the doors open looking at the plants in our backyard.

Gerardo has almost finished all of the electrical work. The city will come out to inspect it next week. On Friday we met with Gerardo and Mario to discuss the sound system. We are installing speakers in the ceilings in every room and that means there is a lot of speaker wire being pulled throughout the house. All of the speaker wire will return to a/v center, which will be on the bottom shelf of the built-in cabinet. The photo below shows some of the black speaker wire hanging near the AV cabinet. There is a white box in the cabinet where all speaker wire will terminate, along with coax cable, RCA cables, HDMI cables, and any other AV related stuff.

I have been researching the proper location for ceiling speakers. In order to get the correct Dolby Digital Surround Sound effect, the speakers have to be a specific distance from the walls and from where our heads will be once we are sitting in the couch. In the photo below you can see Mario measuring the location of our heads within the room. Everything should sound pretty good when it is finished.

Cesar and his team have begun to install the supports for the coving in the kitchen. We can't wait to see what it looks like.

The Jeep finally passed smog and is back home from the mechanic. The Jeep has been gone since June 1st so it's nice to have it back. It's also nice to be able to drive when I want to. Riding the bike was nice but it gets a little old after a while. I decided to wax the jeep today and we took it for a drive down to Cabrillo National Monument. It cost $5 to get in or $15 for a year pass. It's a no brainer, we bought the pass, and spent some time gazing at the views and watching the sailboats enter and exit the bay.

It's a beautiful day in San Diego and we're glad that we live here!

Week 11.1

The back doors are in and we decided its time to show them off. The system can open up as a single door for simple in and out access or they can be folded completely open to create the indoor/outdoor experience. Very exciting!

Week 11

Week 11 and the heating system has been installed. The ducting is in the ceiling and vents have been placed in every room. From the bathroom you can see the ducting above and the room vent on the right side of the photo.

The central return is placed in the ceiling of the main hallway. You can also see one of the ceiling light fixtures and a blue box where the wifi antenna will be located.

The finished plumbing for the bathroom is in. Nailed to the wall is the drawing we made of the counter top and the related dimensions.

The plumbing for the kitchen island is complete as well. This week they pressure tested both the incoming and outgoing water plumbing and no leaks were found. Next week someone from the city is coming in to test the plumbing. Once it passes inspection, its time for drywall.

In preparation for drywall Cesar and his team are starting to create the wooden forms needed to construct the coving in the kitchen/dining room area. The curved blocks below will be used to create a smooth shape.

The excess rubble from the construction has been stacked up next to the back door. Once the city signs off on the plumbing, the sewer pipe will be buried and the forms for the back patio can be put in. I am thinking they will buy pre-mixed concrete since there is a lot of space to cover.

The rubble from construction has been removed which means for the first time this summer we can see part of our back patio. Our construction team set up a shady lunch area with some of our patio chairs.

Michelle and I attended the Quincinera of one of my former students. The mass was held in a church in Linda Vista and the reception was at the Hyatt. The event was very fancy and Larissa looked great in her dress. Michelle and I really enjoyed the event.

We are officially going back to work next week. Last night I woke up around 3:00 AM and was able to see the Orion constellation in the eastern sky. These two facts prove that summer is ending and we are transitioning to the fall. We enjoyed our time off and now we are getting ready to return to work. 

NOTE to anyone thinking about doing a remodel, make sure you have A LOT of time off in order to take care of tasks such as:

• Meeting with architects and designers
• Picking out floor and ceiling tile
• Purchasing major appliances
• Reviewing work and discussing changes/modifications
• Shopping for various items like faucet handles and shower heads
• Designing and reviewing cabinets
• blah blah blah

Basically the house remodel has been a full time job and we are not even swinging the hammer. What a crazy experience!

Week 10

We finished the selection of materials for the bathroom cabinets, walls, and floors. We are sticking with our original Baja theme and have chosen the multi-colored stones for the shower floor. See the photo below for the stones next to our cabinet surfaces, counter top, and floor tile. The multi-colored stones remind us of a beach called Punta Rosario (better known as "The Wall"), one of our favorite surf spots. The walls will be covered in white limestone which reminds us of the sand around The Wall. We will include an abalone colored tile in the niche in the shower as a reminder of the abalone shells we find at The Wall. Below is a photo of one being used to hold my surf wax at our camp site.

The third photo is taken from a trip to Ensenada where we stayed at a place with outdoor showers. Our shower has doors opening to a landing which we call our Ensenada Garden. You can see the doors below. We had them push the entire door frame out a couple of inches in order to allow the doors to swing all the way open (and disappear) after the wall has been finished and stuccoed.

Cesar and his crew are still working on the plumbing. Below you can see them installing the faucet valves and drain pipes in the bathroom. They also installed some of the plumbing for the sink in the kitchen island.

We thought we were going to get away with not installing a second window in the office but we forgot the original window doesn't open. This means we couldn't call our house a two bedroom since to code, a bedroom must have a window that opens. We want to honor the original look of the front of the house (and we had purchased a second window anyway) so the crew is working on installing the window. This means they had to tear out the wall on the inside and remove the stucco from the outside of the house in preparation for the install.

The new electrical box has been installed next to the old one. The old box and conduit was mounted outside of the house. The new box is recessed into the wall and the conduit is internal. This will help create a cleaner look for the side of the house...which is part of our Ensenada Garden.

Gerardo is still pulling wires for the house. I created a six page document for him describing the location of the AV cabling! Its amazing how much wiring is involved in this project.

Michelle and I fried some eggs this morning in our cast iron frying pan. The cast iron cookware has become a valuable asset during our extended camping trip. We are BBQing almost every day and coming up with new recipes on a regular basis. This has been a wonderful experience!

Week 9

Michelle and I went to a store that sold slabs of rock for counter tops. We picked out a couple of our favorites and paid for them. Two men used a fork lift to move the slabs around the warehouse and spin them around so we could examine the surface. Each slab has a unique number. We purchased slab 12 and 13.

We are finalizing the design for the electrical work. We are creating a smart house with internet drops and Wi-Fi and a centralized av system. I was sketching out drawings with locations for special wiring on top of copies of our new layout

We are still working on the dirt jumps in the backyard. There are five rollers now and Benton is enjoying riding around the track.