Seriously?!

I decided to hire the general contractor one of the stucco guys suggested to me.  I opted not to sign on for him to do the whole thing, but to have him start with the finishing demo of my bathroom, the final removal of the wall between my kitchen and dining area, framing out the living room ceiling, the removal of the chimney, and the install of my two back doors.

As for the chimney, I had exposed it, and spent several hours in my attic chiseling the top 2.5 ft of it.  The chimney didn't actually go through the roof, so I was able to do it, but my attic is pretty cramped and it was quite a bit of time up there and several trips down the ladder with a few bricks at a time.

 The ceiling in the living room was framed out to be ready for a fan box and drywall.

 Notice the finished out skylight area.  The skylight will be filled in by the roofer, and the drywall and framing will likely remain in my attic indefinitely.  The demo in the bathroom was also completed, toilet moved, tub taken out, floor removed.

After this demo, I figured out why there was a crack in the tile floor.  You can't tell in the picture, but the plywood in the first third of the bathroom floor is actually about 1/4 to 1/2 inch higher than the other floor.  My guess is they tried to level the tiles just by adding more of the compound under the tile, which didn't work for long and caused the crack.

The contractor also framed out the ceiling in the bathroom (it was pretty well termite eaten) so that the electrician could add the light over the shower.

As a side note, my bathroom is going to be the brightest in San Diego.  At only 5'x8' with a light above the sink, a light over the shower, a window and a skylight, it will glow on a sunny day.

So far, so good.  So what's with the title of the post?  Well, it all has to do with the wall between the kitchen and dining.  I had brought in a structural engineer to find out once and for all if the wall was load bearing.  He told me it did not bear the weight of the roof, but the ceiling joists above it were perpendicular and were a pretty long span.  It would be best if I had a header or inserted a beam into the ceiling.  From a distance, it looks great.  There is support on either side of the beam, and the beam looks good.

Up close is another matter.

 This is one of my ceiling joists.  Notice it seems to get narrower.  Yeah, that's because my genius contractor didn't have the proper sized brackets and instead of going out and getting the right size, he decided to shave down the joists.  Significantly.  We're talking a half inch plus.  He did this for nine different brackets.  NINE!!     Seriously, who does that?!  How is that ok?!  I had agreed to have this guy redo my plumbing before I saw this.  Needless to say, I decided it would be best he not do my plumbing.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to confront him the way I wanted to, with an "Are you freaking kidding me with this?!" as he still had to install my doors and I didn't want him to mess with them.  Instead I had to pull the stupid girl card.  "Sorry, but I ran out of money, blah, blah.  Have to talk to my parents/grandparents, blah."  I hated having to do it, but it was better than having him try to do the same sort of "making it work" with my plumbing.