3/15/2007 Inpection time!

For those who followed this blog (oh all 2 of us), the basement project did not die! It did slow down. It's been 2 years now hahah and finally it's time for inspection. I hired a HVAC guy to install the ducts. Cost me $1500 or so to install 7 vents and 1 air vent for the bathroom. Not a bad price but the bastard didn't have 1 boot for the last event so I had to go buy one myself.
All I can say is he enjoyed the easist 1500 I seen. Took him 2 hours. That it so easy it's not funny. I guess I"m paying for his code expertise which I'll get to later.

So the inpection:

Electrical - Fail.

Apparently, you need to have a wire nut or crimped Ground connections. I just twisted them up and left them. Also leaf all the switches/outlets out of the box. You have to leave them out for the drywall anways. Another issue is the subpanel. I hired someone to install a subpanel for $250. Not only did those bastards installed the wrong wire size (#6) which resulted in only allowing 55 amps, they doubled the charge on the wire because I found out the true cost when I saw it at home depot. So I'm screwed because I have 5 circuits already and
it's too much load now and #6 romex will only carry 55 amps so I can't even add more circuits for my beloved Aquarium (sponsored by the Yung family). So now I have to go out and buy
#2 Aluminum wire so it can handle 100 amps and wire it myself which should be an simple job considering it's just like wiring any other thing. There were also a few other minor issues but
I should be able to get it fixed.

Plumbing - Failed

OK, so I found out from a guy at Home Depot that in Loudoun County, you can't use purple primer on CPVC. Oops, I did 1 freak T section. I even tried to fooled the focker by highlighting it. Guess what, it got busted. I also had to vent the Laundry Tub and cap the overflow. A few other issues but overall, not bad.

Mechanical - Passed

Whadda you know? Bastards.


Well.. guess I got some stuff to do this weekend.

Framing completed!

Week late but oh wells, the return of Simon this week and we finished the
the framing. There's some touch up here and there and 1 particular spot
I have figure out how to do firestopping here to conform to code. Otherwise,
it's practically done and we can move on to electrical.

The "Soffit from hell"

Does anyone know how to firestop this section? The water pipe (not the drain pipe)
is preventing me from sealing the gap from the joist to the sill plate. Can I just firestop the wall on the right so that no fire from the wall from the right can enter?

A closer look and at a different angle.

Month of May

Well, despite our best intentions and Simon's slacking ways, we missed the Month of May deadline. I did get a chance to finish up the Mother-In-Law suite this Memorial weekend. The only things left is the media room door/wall and the soffit from hell.

After that, it's on to electric and plumbing.

05-07-2006 Mother In-Law room shaping up!

After a long 4 month sabatical, we rededicated ourselves to finish the framing in the month of May. In 2 weeks (yes I was too lazy to do a log last week), we managed to finish the Poker room and moved on to the Mother In-law suite. I estimate that we have 2 more full days of work before we finish the framing and move on to electrical and plumbing which shouldn't be too bad. At least we'll do better then those morons who laid the drain pipe from hell on one of the walls. This will cause us to do some creative framing but nothing 2 guys from VT can't do that a day labor can.

Here's some pics so far. Check out the progress we made!

Here is the picture of the Drain of Hell. See how the 2nd pipe feeds back
to the main stack? If you go look closer up in the joist, you will see
that either the guy is an idiot or he was on crack. The guy could of easily
did all that stuff in the joist without even the 2nd pipe. Because of this
piece of art work, we have to do some creative framing. Yes I know, I could of
redone the drain but hell it's got sh*t flowing thru it now . Mental note for you guys to check your home during construction to see if they do stupid stuff like this. They don't care when they know the basement is not going to be finished during build.

Poker Room continued

December was a bad month for the basement. With my vacation to Hawaii and the holidays and plus I was sick half the time, I only managed to put in the door frame for the mini unfinished storage closet and the window framing for the last window.

Simon came over today to finish up the final wall for the poker room. When we were prepping for the soffit for the I-Beam, I realized that we will have a problem with the soffit because the wall on the right side was about 1.5 inches longer then the one on the left. We could no control the left wall because it was laid that way with the door frame. The executive decision was made to F'it and go with the flow. It shouldn't be that bad. The side by the door will have a little bump sticking out.
Hopefully it should not be too noticable.

Here are the pics to the almost finished Poker Room.

Poker room 11/27/05

I did manage to go get the building permit during the Thanksgiving break. I might as well get it and have the electrical and mechanical permits verified by an inspector even though I plan on doing my electric work and letting a contractor do the mechanical part.

The powers of 2 finally got together after a month of hiatus and work the next part of the house, the poker room! This will not be too shabby but we do have 2 windows, 1 door and a soffit to create. With only 5 hours, we managed to finish 1 wall and a window wall. That window wall
too too damm long to do but we got it up and it was pretty accurate but it took awhile to level.

Here is what the room looks like so far.









I found some pics on my nikon from back in the beggining of the project.
So let's get nastalgic!


Simon and I getting ready to Jack hammer!

Media Room 11/12/05

After a 2 week hiatus, I picked up the slack a little bit but without Simon because he was busy.

Let me tell you, things are slower when you have to do it yourself.
Amazingly, I put up a 12 foot wall section myself without a whole lot of effort. I managed to catch all my mistakes before nailing the wall together. It's amazing how smooth the wall went up when you calculate correctly and catch all the mistakes before assembling the wall. I also hit a milestone today in that I emptied my first box of those 2 3/8 bostich framing gun nails. Damm, that's alot of nails.

Here's what the media room looks like so far:



Oh another tip. As you can see in the picture above, never buy 16ft lumber. they suck because they tend to warp. Either that or Home Depot sent me warped boards thinking that since I had it delivered, I would have no means to bring it back. Those Fockers.

So after one wall, it was around 3pm so I got lazy. I decided to finish up all the little things we missed earlier that were required for drywall. This like this little ad-hoc framing job for the framing:

Hey cool, the stupid double spacing went away!

Well, that's it. Next week Simon promised to help me out so hopefully we we can knock out the media room and move on to the "poker room". That will once again require a soffit.

At this rate, I'm hoping to finish the Framing by end of the year.