Down with walls

You may remember that there is a wall dividing my tiny kitchen from my small dining area.  My plan was to remove it.  See it here on the left.

The plan was to remove the back half of it, from the doorway back.  Here's a view from in the kitchen.

With all the back and forth I was doing with the contractors, I just figured I'd start the wall demo myself.  Dad took a day off work and we brought the tools to take the wall down.

The wall is make of plaster and a knotted backer board and it weighs a ton.  A 2ft by 2ft section probably weighs 15 pounds.  We had to take it down in small sections and had to be careful not to let it slam on the hardwood floors.

You might notice all the cardboard in the foreground (though it is buried pretty well under plaster).  The finished product looked pretty good.  We left a bit of it because we weren't 100% sure that it was not load bearing.

Here's hoping it's not, because if it is we probably should have left the door frame in.  I have a structural engineer coming out soon to let me know for certain.

I also decided to open the window back up into the bathroom.

 

It didn't take too long but it did leave a big mess in the tub.

We brought some plywood from home and screwed it on the outside of the house to block the giant hole we had reopened.

The fun story of the day regards this tiny little thing.

When we got there, it was a one foot section of copper pipe that had been folded over onto the floor.  In the process of taking the wall, a chunk of plaster fell on it an dented it further, right at the floor level.  While cleaning, Dad bent it back and being thin copper, it immediately broke and started spraying water into the kitchen.  I ran and turned the water off to the house and we decided it was a good time to break for lunch.  We stopped by Home Depot on our way back and spent 15 minutes trying to secure this on the end of the pipe, that was now deformed and level with the floor.  That whole time my job was to hold the tiny bit of pipe above the floor, because if I let go it would pop under the floor and the only way to get to it would be to crawl under the house.  Good times!  Fortunately it didn't come to that and after stretching the cramp out of my hand I was able to get back to work.

ATTC, Episode 5: The Phone Call

Ok, so I know that it has been way too long since I have updated my blog.  If there is anyone left that actually checks it, I am sorry for that.  In the next few posts I'm going to try to sum up the last couple months and get you all back up to speed.

One morning, about a week after my last meeting with the different contractors, I received a phone call.  It was a man from a company whose name I didn't recognize, but that seemed to know all about what I needed done on my house.  He listed them off for "your house in La Mesa" and wanted to set up a time for someone to come down and take a look at the projects.  Sitting at the table, listing to the man list off my projects, I got confused.  I asked, "Wait, when did I call you?"
"Oh, we contacted you about a month ago," was the response.
Well that doesn't sound right.  I really didn't think I would have listed off all the projects to some random cold call.  I sat there trying to figure out when they had talked to my dad.  He'll talk to mortgage offer guys for 30 min, so he might have talked about the work I needed to try to get some information about the company.  But the call came to my cell, so they wouldn't have talked to Dad.  As I had the next day off and was going to the house anyway, I agreed to meet with someone.  I set up a time for 11:30am.

Later that day (literally about 2 hours later) I got a call from a woman at the company to confirm my meeting for 11am.  I didn't mentioning that I had set it up for 11:30 because I figured she had misread it, and to be honest I just couldn't be bothered.  I had only been 2 hours, the reminder call seemed ridiculous.  I wondered if she felt as dumb as felt she must.  I don't think she did.

I met with the guy the next day and new instantly where he had gotten my information from.  He looked like he could be the older cousin of the Italian-Israeli.  He even had some of the same stuff to say.  There were a couple times I had to hold in a laugh because it just seemed so obvious that he learned of the project from the first guy.  The best part of the meeting was when he told me that he would guarantee the price he gave me if I signed with him right then.  Yeah, I'll pass thanks.

When I got home I Googled him and looked him up on the CA contractors board website.  According to Google he was involved with a company that had it's contractors license revoked for stealing from clients.  Awesome! Also, he was currently listed as an employee for a couple different companies on the contractors board site, most of which had the same list of employees.  The company the Italian-Israeli worked for was one of those that had all the same staff!

There were even two more run-ins.  I inadvertantly set up a meeting with a third of the group for about a week later.  They called about my heating and at that time the Pete's were talking about that as well, so I thought the caller might be the Petes' guy.  When he got there, he appeared to be the older uncle Italian-Israeli.  I walked him around for a bit, but was over it fast.  His plan seemed to be just to stay in the house until I signed.  I basically had to push him out after 45 min, when my walking around, closing windows and locking doors didn't seem enough of a cue.

After that meeting, I was done.  When I got a call a few weeks later from another company whose name sounded familiar, I was not interested.  He tried to tell me I had called two months before (long enough that I might not remember) and he just didn't want to seem pushy, so he hadn't called before then.  I was short and to the point, telling him I did not need a contractor.  When I got home I looked up the company name, and sure enough it was one that shared staff with the others, including the fraud guy.