Braddock Journey

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Today we had our first experience with someone breaking into the house and stealing something.

Before we moved in all of the pipes were ripped out of the house. The woman who lives in the house behind ours said she was yelling at the kids who were breaking windows and trying to keep an eye on the place when it was empty. Being abandoned for years, it wasn’t surprising that the place had been used.

But to walk up to the house today and see a ladder propped against the porch window and the last remaining boarded window knocked open was shocking. It looks like whoever broke in rummaged through everything, but only took the two most expensive tools: a compressor and drywall stilts. This halts work, adding to the annoyance. The compressor usually resided in the trunk of my car, but the trunk has been full of other boxes lately.

Our first stop was at the pawn shop, but our compressor wasn’t there. Mayor John suggested stopping in to the two scrap metal places in town as well. While we don’t expect that they would admit to taking a brand new compressor without a single scratch on it, since anyone scrapping it would have to be desperate and not aware of its actual value, we may stop in daily just to get a point across. Dana’s bike was also stolen recently, and she visits the scrap yards every day to check for it. If a bunch of people start showing up daily on the lookout for their stolen goods, it might make them think twice about accepting stolen items without taking names. Or maybe that’s too idealistic.

We’re also considering that a contractor who came into our house for an estimate that we never received may be linked to the break in.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Friday, September 19, 2008

It’s amazing what a difference framed in walls and some light bulbs make!

Nicholas Electric finished the rough in last week, a day ahead of schedule, and we have switches with working overhead lights for the first time in the house! We can see the basement.

Having outlets, switches, and light really makes the place look like it’s coming together. We can see the final steps ... heat, insulation, drywall. When we had the latest materials delivered from Lowe’s the delivery guy took a tour of the house and left us with some reassuring thoughts. He did the same thing to his place, but one room at a time while he lived in it. In the end, he said, it’s worth all of the hard work.

Around the same time that the electric was being isntalled, Dun-Rite came in and repaired and replaced the windows. The new subfloors are mostly done. Maybe some day we will actually have a livable house.

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Our house is finally progressing again!

Kevin met with the heating installation neighbor and they measured the whole place and made a list of what to buy.

We also got an estimate today on repairing and replacing all the windows in the house. Windows make it insurable, and having screens against the wretched Pittsburgh mosquitoes would be wonderful bliss. The only window that’s an issue is the rounded one broken out on the side that the window guy doesn’t know how to replace ... weird.

Also took a serious look at our floors and some are so badly damaged from the leaks that they can’t be sanded, they just crumble when you touch them. We’ve determined that about half needs to have a new subfloor laid and the other half is salvageable. Kevin’s all into covering it with OSB and using vinyl tiles everywhere ... we’ve made a compromise to cover the kitchen, bathrooms and hallways and try to restore the front two rooms on each level where the leaks weren’t as bad. The bedroom is still a problem, that has serious floor damage and will need to have the support installed but I don’t want vinyl tiles, no matter how cool the colors are, in my bedroom. And I hate the idea of installing wood over a subfloor that is over real wood ... argh. Any brilliant insight on that one?

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

New things we need to do just keep popping up. We knew the electrical, roof, and plumbing needed to be overhauled. We thought we could salvage the heating system, the floors, and most of the windows. 

The projects are even more complicated because getting contractors to do a job is a hassle all on its own. They all want the other contractors to do their jobs first, which is impossible. We cannot have the electrical and gas and plumbing hooked up to test the boiler and radiators when the electrician wants the heating system completed before starting to install the electric.

Heating is becoming a learning experience that seems to be changing all of our other plans. We discovered that the boiler never worked well for the previous owner and most of the radiators have visible cracks in them. Our initial options were replacing the boiler and trying to salvage some of the radiators, or running radiant heat. We’ve been interested in radiant heat for a while, but it’s not very practical with the set up we have now. Plans were to leave exposed brick on the exterior walls and refinish the hardwood floors. Installing radiant heat from below the floor requires more work, insulation, and potential to lose the heat. And having un-insulated walls and 10-foot ceilings reduces the efficiency of any heating system.

Today, though, Kevin came back saying that the floors are too thin and too badly damaged from the old, leaking roof to be refinished. And he wants to frame in and insulate the exterior walls. I’m all for insulation, but it’s a complete change of course. We had settled on forced air for heat with a/c vents installed so we have the option later of installing an air conditioner. Covering over the old wood floors brings up the option of radiant heat again since we would need to add a subfloor beneath whatever flooring we decide upon. Insulating makes radiant heat more practical too. But it was the forced air installation that brought all of this up in the first place.

The fun part is going to be putting a black and white checked floor in the kitchen if we do need to redo everything. It will be much more durable to potential kitchen crashes and traffic than the wood would have been. We had one in Juneau, but I think when we set it up ourselves we may try angling the tiles or altering the pattern a bit. I’m excited to test out different options. 

Thursday, July 17, 2008

We kept thinking the demo was done. Almost done. But then something would happen. Like taking down a ceiling to put in a dryer vent revealing a giant rat’s nest encompassing the entire utility room.

Kevin was chatting and ripping out the ceiling when he started to see popcorn and wondered why it would be in the ceiling. Then there was the cloth and bits of things that formed what seemed to be many many bird nests pulled apart and combined into one. The abandoned nest covered the floor of the entire room once it was down.

After that, we decided the first floor walls that were being spared now had to go. So off with the walls ...

Now Kevin is coming back a little less dirty every day. Only a day or two left of filling contractor bags with lathe and plaster and soot.

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

The story of our plumbing is the worst story with a contractor I could imagine. Unfortunately, I didn’t imagine it.

I’ve been dreading writing this. It has been so stressful to work with Lamont Panfil that if I didn’t think others needed to be warned, I would just celebrate that he is out of my life now.

We started our journey with Lamont by signing a contract and putting money down on the job. I did this because I am a contractor, in communications design, and when we start a long-term project we also ask for a percentage up front. It seemed normal to me. Unfortunately I did not realize that no one else in Braddock pays up front. It’s a bad move here. He was the second contractor we worked with, and no other contractor has asked for any money up front.

After signing the contract—which to my delight included separating the gray water (for later of course, Allegheny County)—he told us he would be back on Saturday to start, May 31. On Saturday he called us to say he couldn’t come, for some reason or other. We were fine with that at the time, it was hot and we didn’t want to be at the house all day either. He showed up Monday to tell us that the county inspector had required him to run a sewer scope. We were cool with that. We had had two sewer scopes done on houses we considered buying in Portland. They cost $99 and were really fun to watch. The guy in Portland told us the weirdest thing he ever saw when sending that video camera down through the sewer pipes was a glass eyeball. Bad ass! But this sewer scope ... either because it’s Pittsburgh or this specific plumber’s contact ... was $299 and used VHS! What the hell. Now we have to pay to convert it.

The sewer scope portended struggle ahead. There was no house trap, a J-trap on the outside of the house to keep that rank sewer smell from filling your home. It also showed a rotting, nasty pipe. For sure, this was something that needed to be addressed. But Lamont told us it would cost more to fix this than the entire initial contracted price, and without it he could not complete the work we had agreed to. This was the first instance when he yelled. I told him that if he could not complete his contracted work, then we would need to cancel the agreement and we would find another plumber to do the work. He insisted that he had already purchased the supplies and had time invested, we could not cancel the contract now. He also yelled about a number of other things, we were on the phone for quite some time.

Nick, of Nicholas Electric, had recommended Lamont to us. Lamont must have called him, because Nick called me soon after my argument with Lamont to tell me he too would be shocked by this change in pricing. He gave me contact information for three more plumbers to find out their opinions. Lamont’s plan included digging up our backyard with a back ho and putting a house trap into the ground. No other plumber was willing to take this on. Sketchy. Then Lamont called back, after hearing from Nick that his actions were questionable, and said the inspector would allow him to put the trap in our basement to avoid the excessive work of excavating the yard. This made the cost more reasonable, though still a 50% increase from the initial agreement. We signed on. At the time it seemed the thing to do ...

The next day he and his brother showed up to start work on the house trap. While working a yelling match started with the neighbor that nearly turned into a fight, with everyone threatening to call in their boys. Kevin’s experience as a bouncer paid off here, he was able to settle the dispute and calm down most parties involved.

After getting back to work and jack hammering away at our cement floor in the back room, formerly a laundry room, the window broke. Then when they were about halfway through digging down to the pipe they left for lunch. They asked Kevin to stick around to watch their tools. Kevin heads to the house early to avoid the heat, working from some time before 6am to noon and taking a siesta. He agreed to wait while they went for lunch. Two hours later, they had still not returned. We tried calling and kept getting voicemail. Finally, Fred shows up and tells us that Lamont was arrested. He says the bail should only be $600 and they will be back tomorrow.

Tomorrow they don’t show. The next day, Thursday, Lamont comes to ask Kevin for the “upon completion” portion of the contracted payment so that they can start. They again state that the work will be done in one week once they start. When Kevin brings this news to me, my response is Fuck No! Later that night Lamont calls me and talks for a very long time, while I was working and Ryan was looking at me like “is he still talking?” At this point Lamont tried to convince me that he is honest and not going to run away with my money. My first thought is that if you are honest, you don’t have to say it. The second thought is that he already did run off with my money since he didn’t buy the supplies (that he told me he bought on Monday) and has none of my down payment left. I tell him I cannot give him the rest. He tells me he cannot begin the plumbing work in the foreseeable future if I do not. I tell him I’ll call him back the next day.

We went out on the porch to talk and Mayor John showed up in the parking lot. He asked how things were going, and I told him he really didn’t want to know. It turns out he did. His solution was that he would take Lamont to the plumbing supply store and pay for the materials so that he could start. This alleviated us from giving any more money to someone who already spent half of the fee without buying any supplies, while still allowing the job to begin. Mayor John called Lamont to make this offer, and while met with some resistance at first they finally agreed to go shopping the next day.

It’s Friday and Lamont called to postpone his trip with Mayor John, he had a meeting. Then he called to cancel, he found a place that would supply the plumbing materials. We were getting Pex in our house, the supplies can’t cost that much. It’s not copper. This change in plans left us the weekend to sit around thinking that we needed to find a new plumber.

On Monday, he surprisingly showed up with piping and started to work. All seemed well for a day or two, but then they disappeared for the rest of the week. All in all, they worked two to three half days a week, dragging on the job that was supposed to take one week to over four weeks.

Then it came to a week that we were out of town, planned long before all of this mess, so we left a check with Mayor John in case the plumbing was completed. The plan was that when the inspector came to review the job Mayor John would be present to hear the review and get his credentials. Instead, Lamont had the inspector come without notifying anyone. Then he called us on the Fourth of July to tell us he was finished and wanted to be paid. At this point it was a holiday weekend, he was weeks past his finish date, and we hadn’t seen the completed work. We told him we needed to wait until Monday after we had a chance to look at the work and meet with him. This started yet another argument. Finally we agreed to meet Monday.

Kevin and I were able to go into the house on Sunday and look at the work. All was well until we reached the attic. Somehow Lamont had managed to cut a hole in our brand new roof after the roofers had finished and leave it gaping for all the rain to fall through. He was there for over a month. The roofers were there for one week, the final week he was working. We had heard them discussing the vent and how it would be fitted. Yet he cut the hole in the two days after they had finished, before his inspection. This led to another argument. I found this unacceptable. He blamed it on the roofers. I called them to give him a chance, but they said they had worked with Lamont before and although he was a master plumber who knew what he was doing, he had not been prepared. He didn’t have it ready for them before they were done with their job. Brian Whitney looked at the hole in the roof and immediately sent someone out to fix it. Within an hour of talking to him, it was repaired. However, there was an additional fee because their work had been completed a week earlier. Lamont agreed to take this fee out of his final payment.

All in all it was a terrible experience, and we are glad to be done with it. The arguments, late completion, extra charges, and personal problems were too much. The hole in the brand new roof was just the cherry on top.

We’ve been aiming to have the demo complete by this week so the electrical could be put in. The electrical was postponed, and after a week out of town we’re feeling a bit out of our own loop.

The new plan is to put in the bathrooms this week. We can tile the floors without too much worry of drywall dust ... it’s just tile right? And once the tile is in we can install the toilets and sinks. Oh what a joy that will be when working on the house!

Other than that ... we’re measuring walls and ordering drywall. Thinking about things. Humdrumming about? We have this unexpected week of waiting. We can’t work on the wood floors, they need to be finished after the drywall. The drywall can’t go up until the electrical is in the walls. The roof is done! The plumbing is done, we think. We can’t move anything ... so we plan. And wait.

Jeb has been calling our roof the Miracle Roof. That’s the optimistic way of looking at shingles attached to rafters without a subroof in between. The miraculous part is that the house survived the many years between its last occupant and us. The roof part is what was missing ...

When we first started looking for roofers I used an online service that was recommended in a Pittsburgh forum. They sent out three companies to give us estimates. One did not show up at all. One called from just outside of Braddock to say he was almost here, then didn’t show and stopped answering or returning my calls. The third, Northstar, gave us a quote that made us want to run away from our house as fast as we could. Luckily we held out.

After this horrifying experience we called any and every roofer we could find. Our plumber recommended a couple roofers, but “oddly” they always came in just a couple hundred dollars lower than the most recent estimate we had received that the plumber knew about. After our experience with him there was no chance we would hire someone he sent to us. I must have spoken to more than 10 roofing companies before Mayor John sent over Brian Whitney. Brian met with Kevin and talked about the roof, and it was weeks before we heard his price. We had just about given up on the roof ... we can funnel all of the rain with tarps into buckets forever right? And then Mayor John called with the price ... and it was reasonable! And it was a reliable contractor who had worked on the convent! And they could start this week!

It turned out that we were not ready for them to start immediately because we had masons scheduled to work on the chimneys that week, and the chimneys needed to be complete before the roof. Whitney Construction was flexible and started the following week. The mason was agreeable and hurried. There were people all over our roof, the mason and the enthusiastic roofers overlapped. Our flapping shingles and bulging chimneys were being replaced by solid materials that would keep the rain out.

Simply getting the roof on was an amazing transformation. It brightened up the exterior and made the interior feel more solid. But looking at this photo makes me realize we really need to get the exterior bricks pressure washed. This house needs a bath!

Friday, June 27, 2008

There is a lot of major work going on at the house now, but sometimes it’s the little things that make a huge difference. Yesterday one of the guys working on plumbing brought a red rose in a water bottle to cheer things up. It got me thinking about what we were doing on the front porch in a different way.

My parents came to town to visit, and they wanted to scrape and paint the gingerbread on the front porch. Kevin and I are so focused on getting into the house that we hadn’t planned to spend any substantial time outside until next year. I dug up some rows and planted sunflower seeds a few weeks ago so that we would have some bright flowers with little effort ... but then the roofers threw all of the shingles directly on top of the sunflower row by the fence. It was amazing how they chose that exact spot.

For the first few days we convinced my parents to work inside the house. Moving the clawfoot tub downstairs, priming and painting it, taking out hallway walls where the plumbing for a washer needed to go ... but they kept going back to the gingerbread painting. We finally gave in and started on it with them, and for two days they scraped away old crumbling gray paint and then we tried to cover it with bright white paint. It seemed a futile effort from up close. The white was not covering the gray very well and looking at the gingerbread up close only served as a reminder of how much work we will have outside when we finally get there.

But then people walking by on the street started saying “Good job” and “Looking nice.” Finally I stepped back myself and viewed the work from the sidewalk. And wow—it really did look better.

With the few sunflowers that survived, a newly planted nectarine tree in the side yard, a new maple out back, two hanging baskets of flowers on the front porch, and some white paint on the trim the house looks like we’re doing more than just knocking down walls, which is almost done!

We even had people stopping by asking about renting the place. Sorry ... but we’re doing all this work so we have a place to live in, not to rent. We look forward to the day we can sit and do nothing inside our revamped house, that’s what keeps us going.