More considerations

Written by Barry Warsaw in house on Thu 22 January 2009.

We thought about a couple of extras today:

Since the front wall where the bay window is was torn out, we noticed that the existing house is basically uninsulated. One of the things we're considering is tearing out the few outside walls we aren't touching, insulating, and re-drywalling them. It's tricky though because we've got some weird 1930's pre-drywall covering on the studs. There's only a few walls we're talking about, but it's still probably more work than we want to pay for. We've asked for an estimate and will get it from the builder soon.

There's another issue with the existing bathroom that we're not touching. There's a question about how the support for the new stairs is going to tie into the perimeter wall. This beam runs under the existing bathroom, but the plumbing is essentially in the way. We've asked for an estimate to tear the bathroom out and rebuild it, but it will probably be cost prohibitive. We're looking into other options, and are consulting the structural engineer to see if we can just drop a post down into the basement.

I also walked the site with one of the electricians, looking at what we want (especially with some kind of X10 setup, the network cabling and the additional outlets in the office and computer closet. We'll review his bid when it comes in and probably get a second bid as well.

Good news! The plumber's come in and verified that we will not need an ejector pump. I'm really glad we won't have to worry about that gross little addition.

The framing out of the ground floor is continuing apace.