Flooring Done

We finished 2 weeks ago.  It was a lot tougher to complete than expected.  We thought we could finish it in 4 weeks, with the 2 of us putting in a combined 40 hours a week.  It took us 2 months with 40 hours worth of hired help.

Much of the work is easy.  But the areas that require precision cutting, such as around vents and other obstacles, can be time-consuming.  We probably could've simplified the job by going with the most basic design.  Since we went with a more complicated design, there was a lot more cutting, waste, and thinking involved.

The quality of our work is meh.  Some areas are excellent and others, ugh.  But we learned a lot and would probably do our own flooring again because we think we can do a much better job next time around.

Not sure why this pic came out on its side but anyway, it's a pic of the carpet on stairs connecting main to bedroom floors.  We decided on a mid grade commercial quality carpet for these stairs because bamboo stairs are too slippery if you're only wearing socks.  This creates a hassle because we have to vacuum and steam clean the stairs.  But we *don't think* we'll have to worry about the dog having an accident on them.  We  assume stories of dogs taking a dump on the stairs are urban myths spread by dog-haters who will stop at nothing to eliminate dogs from the world. 

 

View of stairs from living room.  We had someone install it for us.  Very reasonable price and saved us a week of labor (took a professional 12 hours).

 

Free-floating cork in the master bed.  This was very difficult to install because the tongues are easily broken and the pieces are difficult to lock.  We also had to sand the subfloor to make it even so the cork doesn't warp.

Bamboo in the den.


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Lesson learned: We made the mistake of not finishing the stairs first.  Not doing so meant we finished with bullnoses and had to cut each precisely.  Each bullnose is $30 -- costly to mess up.  Starting with the bullnose and working toward the walls instead of the other way around would've saved a lot of time and anxiety.  It's okay to not be precise with cuts along the wall because trim will cover up minor mistakes. 

Carpenter/Handyman Available for HIre

Our carpenter/handyman, who has been working on the house for nearly 3 months, is available for hire. He's helped us with flooring, tiling, building shower pans, deck work, and finish carpentry.  Let us know if you need someone to help out around the house, what you need done, and we'll write a recommendation for a particular job.

Once we have more time, we'll post reviews on our subcontractors. 

You Know You Live in an Asian City When...

* The local high school football team doesn't win a game in 4 years (Mark Kepple HS, Monterey Park CA)
* The local high school orchestra sounds better than the city orchestra
* All your neighbors have a small yappy dog.
* The city spends a disproportionate amount of its budget on a state-of-the-art library that rivals those in cities with 10 times the population (Cerritos, CA)
* There's an abundance of Mercedes, BWS, Lexus, etc., even if you live in a middle-class neighborhood.
* You hear screaming and yelling throughout your neighborhood on the day schools issue report cards. 
* There's non-stop piano and violin sounds from 3-9pm
* The local Banana Republic opens a "petite" store (Bellevue, WA)
* The local high school is mentioned in Newsweek's top high schools (bet you can't name one city that's Asian majority that isn't).
* Your nearest grocery store sells fish heads and chicken feet.  
* The neighborhood smells like fermented something...

Note: Bellevue isn't a good example of an Asian city.  The Asian population in Bellevue, according to a 2007 survey, is only at 25%, nothing like what you'll see in places like Flushing NY, Richmond BC, and Cerritos, San Marino, Monterey Park, Arcadia...CA.

Finish Work

They say that finish work takes 80% of construction time.  An exaggeration, but it feels like forever.  Once major construction work was completed, we expected a quick finish.  That hasn't been the case.

Here are some random pics of what we've been doing:

Tile work in main floor bathroom.  The carpenter built the shower pan because it's precision work.  We installed the membrane and are continuing with tile work.

We purchased some of our tile from Habitat from Humanity.  While they have some high quality tiles, they're expensive.  It's probably better to purchase tiles form a chain because if you run out of Habitat tiles, you may not be able to find more or you'll have to search from them and risk paying much more than expected.  We haven't used any of the tiles we've purchased from Habitat.  They'll probably be used as trim.

The remaining tiles we purchased from Earthwise, one of many architectural salvage shops in Seattle.  Earthwise isn't cheap -- anything that's old, even if crappy, is expensive in recycling minded Seattle.  But they're currently trying to clear some space and are selling most of their tiles for 5 cents a piece, compared to the 1$ a piece we paid for at Habitat.  It means we can tile each bathroom for under $200 as long as we do most of the labor ourselves.

We had also considered corian shower walls, which are comparable in cost to tiling but a lot less hassle.  We went with tile because of the deal we found at Earthwise.

Crappy picture of our kitchen (we'll come up with a better later).  To the right are off-orange metal tiles we found at Earthwise (1000 count).  The countertops we purchased from IKEA.  The salad sink to the left of the stove we found for free.

This is the waterproof membrane we've spreading in our showers.  They're primarily used in place of shower liners.  According to our GC, they cost more but are just as effective and save on labor costs.

We also spread them along the walls -- blueboard drywall, which is mold and rot resistant -- for added protection.  Our architect, however, thinks all showers need backboard, even if there's blue board and membrane.

Crappy pic of the *corner* toilet on main floor.  Wan's not happy about this.  We got the corner toilet -- toilet that fits in a corner -- off craigslist.  Nice toilet but Andrew decided to place it in an unusual spot.  Toilets are typically placed so that it can't be easily seen when the bathroom door is open.  Since this was a corner toilet, we had no choice but to place it in full view.  Actually, we could've placed it in the bathroom upstairs, but we didn't think of it at the time. 

There are no advantages to placing the toilet in this spot.   The tv in the kitchen is better viewed if we had placed the toilet to the right.  And since the bathroom is small, standard sinks don't fit.  A corner sink would be ideal in a bathroom this size.  Now we have to find an expensive specialized sink. 

This is the sort of mistake that's costly.  Moving the toilet will cost a couple thousand.  But it's not that big of a deal.  We can still watch TV while taking a dump and we have a right hand door that hides the toilet so long as it's not completely open. 

Being able to watch TV while taking a dump is a big deal to us.  You don't want to miss that field goal kick just because of violent bowel movements. 



We'll see how it turns out.

At any rate, we're still trying to finish up.  We received an extension from the bank, so inspection will be in mid February.

List of what we're trying to complete:

Flooring (even though we started 2 months ago)
Trim (almost there)


We're almost there!

Security

We don't have the keys to our house.  We purposely lost them 2 weeks after we moved in in 2005. Andrew keeps his keys in his car (feel free to steal his car, if you can deal with the dog hair in it).  None of our car doors are locked.  Nothing is locked.  Our bikes are left out.  We sometimes forget to close our garage door when we leave. 

We place a high value in not having to worry about home security.  We like keeping all doors open during the warm months so our adopted white kid (Chinook, the dog) can come and go as he pleases.  We don't mind having friends stop by and hang out at our place while we're gone.  Windows are also kept open throughout the day when weather permits so the house is full of fresh air.  We don't like worrying about closing and locking everything before we leave the house.  We consider that a shitty and inefficient way to live life.

We can get away with this life-style because we live in a city that's the safest among the inner rung Seattle suburbs, safer than Medina (Bill Gates and Ichiro) and Mercer Island (Paul Allen and retired NBA players); in a cul-de-sac off a street that dead ends, which prevents those who don't live in our neighborhood to use our streets as shortcut.  There's no commercial traffic and residential traffic is limited to those who live in the neighborhood.  Over 90% of homes are owner occupied and Brier isn't known as a wealthy community, so burglaries are rare.                                                                                                                                                                                         
In short, we feel safe because we live in a city that:

* is known for giving speeding tickets to non-locals.  Don't speed on Brier Rd or 228th st, not even 5 over.  No wonder non-locals hate driving through Brier.

* is full of dead-end streets that prevent non-residents from using its streets as short-cuts.

* limits commercial development.  All businesses in Brier primarily serve Brier residents.  There's no reason for anyone to shop in Brier.

* sends its high school students to Mountlake Terrace High School.  No large gathering of high school students in Brier.

* is solidly middle-class.  Rich folks get burglarized (and poor folks get robbed).  The best a burglar will get in Brier is a bunch of tools and a big screen TV.  Not a bad take actually but we suspect most burglars are too ignorant to realize that they can sell a good 10 year old compressor for a lot more than a 3 year old laptop.  Impression matters.

It also helps that we have a dog that looks like a wolf, even though Siberian Huskies are considered terrible security dogs.  But we advertise our dog enough -- large dog bone here, a kong there -- to ward off some potential burglars.  In truth, we usually don't think that far.  Our neighborhood is safe for reasons stated above and because we feel it's safe.  At least until it isn't.

So we won't invest in security.  No security systems or "beware of dog" signs.

We think that a security system may lower the value of our home, just as bars on windows tend to  lower neighborhood home values.  Too much unnecessary security -- automated announcements each time a door is opened and security cameras -- can give the impression that the neighborhood isn't safe.

A home feels as secure as its homeowner's approach to security.  A homeowner that over-secures her/his home can make guests feel insecure because the security system doesn't match actual need.  A good security system is one that's appropriate for the neighborhood.  An overabundance of security measures makes the homeowner seem neurotic.

A house with window bars is more secure, but that doesn't make it appropriately secure.   Not enough security may be bad, but too much security is worse.

Schools and Real Estate Value

Worried about how your local schools are impacting real estate values?  Did someone at your local high school get caught with drugs and a loaded gun?  Suicides and assaults, sensationalized on TV?  If so, share the following message with your local high school student.  It may turn their life around for the better.  Ah, fuck 'em, who cares if they end up in jail, as long as they don't affect the property values in your area. 

Click on:

Mark Keppel Bad Boys

If this doesn't keep high school students from bringing loaded guns to school and destroying property values, then we need to like get all Angry Asian Parents on our kids.  And if you want to increase the scores at your local high school, either bring in more Asians into your district or get Chinese on your kid.

We're trying to figure out if we should have a designated Timeout (in case White parents ever live in the Brier House) and Knockout area for the kids. 


Note: Mark Keppel High School, located in LA County, was recently locked down after a loaded gun was found on a student.

We Have Music

Our wall speakers are in.  Five in the living room to create theater sound, and 2 in the Great Room.  There's a wall mount volume control for the Great Room speakers. Aside from the center speaker, which is a NuTone MS-626, we don't remember the brand and specs for the speakers.  If want more info on them, we'll ask our electrician. 

They sound great, better than anything we've ever had, and the sound quality and range is appropriate for the size of the rooms.  We got a deal on them from our electrician, who had installed them in a $5 million dollar home that was foreclosed.  He was owed 14k so the bank let him take back the electronic gadgets he installed.  

Pic of a wall speaker. 

The main advantage of a wall speaker is that they're not obstrusive.  The disadvantage is that you can't move them.  This has become a problem in the living room because we recently decided to shift our projector screen from one end of he room to another.  So we're not going to get the ideal home theater sound. 

After the speakers were installed, Andrew tested them using a Harmon Kardon AVR 235 with the following songs (click link for the song):

Leonard Cohen's Everybody Knows
This is a good song to test and contrast the speaker's low and mid-high range. Cohen's deep bass voice sounds crisp and clear at mid and high volume. The bass beats could be tighter at high volume.  We're hoping the subwoofer will take care of that problem. 

Laurie Anderson's Speak My Language
This song uses a wide range of instruments and contains a lot of harmonic dissonance, imperfect consonances, and tonal and volume fluctuations.  We can hear each instrument clearly at high volume.  Deep bass isn't tight at high volume.  Again, a subwoofer may take care of that problem. Movements from dissonance to consonances are smooth sounding.

Joy Division's Transmission
The link above is from a movie about Joy Division, "Control."  (The actor mimes Ian Curtis' mannerisms perfectly).  Picked to test how the speakers handle distortion and feedback.  Speaker didn't pop at high volume.

Wan will test the high range.

At any rate, our electrician still has more of these speakers.  Let us know if you're interested in purchasing them.