Joys of DCRA

Ah, the Dep’t of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs!  Perhaps more notorious in DC than the DMV.  DCRA can make or break your project.  Among other things, DCRA approves building permits.  DCRA is the agency that took five months to approve our original permit application.

Well, I went back to the snake pit for a minor modification:  I was uncomfortable with our backyard design that required us to descend steps to the patio then climb back out again every time we went from the car to the kitchen.  Steps–if your hands are full of groceries.  Steps–if you are hurt and, say, on crutches.  Why not keep the “original” (to us, at least) setup of a “bridge” deck from the kitchen to the parking area.

Darn, wish we had proposed that in our first application.  To do so later cost more than a few dollars in architect fees (the plan had to be redrawn), several trips to DCRA on my part, permit fees, and time.  We started down this road last summer and–good news!–just recently got our modification approved.  (We did not get everything we wanted, however; DCRA insisted that the steps to the patio be centered on the property line to maintain the right “setback”–whereas we wanted the steps close to the bridge to minimize the distance from the kitchen to the patio).

With new building permit in hand, we are taking immediate steps to finish our backyard and patio–namely, we me with three masonry contractors and asked them to bid on our project.  The goal is to have a finished space (garden, patio) for enjoyment this spring, summer, and fall.  The project has several main components:  construct footings and retaining wall for sides and back of yard; build steps; cover patio with bluestone; and build new deck.  Come on by for a beer!

Lea and Gabi

Every house has its story.  Part of ours is Lea and Gabi–the two daughters of the previous tenants.  These young girls must have been raised in the house; their parents lived her for something like 12 years.

Anyway, their names are still in the concrete steps.  Still in crayon on the 3rd floor wall.  Still on the doorjamb and 3rd floor wall, marking their height (must be something taught in parenting school).

It’s going to be tough painting over their names.  A part of the house’s history will be wiped out.  Maybe Lea and Gabi’s giggles and secrets will come back another day.

Selvin Cruz and his drywall guys

To speed up the project, we brought in a professional drywall finishing crew two weeks ago.  First, I cranked all weekend to make sure all was ready:  corner bead in place, all screwheads below the paper, etc. 

Then Monday morning at 7:30 a.m., Selvin shows up with two guys.  These guys probably have been taping and mudding for years.  They had nice jeans on, as if they really weren’t afraid of getting them messed up.  One guy put on his stilts and started flying across the room, taping the ceiling on a run.  Later I saw him walk–limbo–under a doorway with stilts on!  I think they probably mudded the stairwell with stilts on (kids, don’t try this at home!).

They spent nine hours the first day mudding the downstairs parlor, the master bedroom (see photos), the closet, the bathroom and toilet room, the 3rd floor stairwell, and the third floor office.  Two days later, they came back to sand.  Just like that, they’re done!  And it looks good (some minor blemishes to fix, but pretty darn good.  It’s amazing how fun it is to spend money and have other people do good work. 

I’m humbled.  Even though I’m pretty handy with a drywall knife, I’m not in the same league as these guys.  Check out these before and after pix from the master bedroom through the closet.

Sound Wall

One of the unfortunate aspects of living in a row house is that we have common walls with our neighbors.  Luckily, to the east, are Mennonites and Buddhists who evidently chant so quietly we cannot hear them.  To the west, however, is a party room which abuts our bedroom.  To be sure, the current tenants are fairly quiet, unlike their predecessors who made it clear which team they were rooting for.  And it helps that Eva, the house’s owner, moved in the first floor–presumably she would hear and stop any major parties.

All the same, I hate other people’s noise–especially if I’m trying to sleep.  Partial solution:  build a sound wall.  The basic theory is to stop sound wave migration. Do this by a combination of density (2″ of concrete absorbs more sound than, say, 2″ of paper) and various wave-deadening devices.  Oh, and you must make sure that you plug any air holes–sound loves to travel through air.

In a nutshell, here’s what we did:  1) attached 2×4s on their flat sides to the wall at 16 o.c.; 2) filled the space between the 2×4s with 1″ rigid foam insulation; 3) filled all cracks with expanding foam; 4) drilled holes at 16″ o.c. and shot foam into the joist pockets below the floor and above the ceiling; 5) bought some 6″ quarter-inch sill plate insulation, cut it in half, and stapled it to the 2×4s (to help “isolate” the sheet rock from any vibration coming through the walls); double-layered 5/8″ sheetrock (the “density” mentioned earlier), alternating seams (used minimal screws for first course in attempt to minimize devices that could vibrate and transmit sound).  In an ideal world, we would have built a double-frame, with offset studs, to further minimize sound transmission; see this article for a picture. 

We could’ve done more had we spent the money.  There is some type of “green glue” that is supposed to reduce sound by absorbing the waves and turning them into heat energy; ditto special types of (expensive) sheetrock.  Maybe we’ll just have to get earplugs for those few party nights!  Actually, this is when it is nice to have a large house; we can migrate to other sleeping rooms for the night.

Sheetrock!

Most of you have furniture in your house!  We have sheetrock!  The other week, Jose and I rented a Home Depot truck and maxed it out with 60 sheets of drywall.  The goal was to get it in our house before the massive “blizzard of 2009″ hit.

So for the last few weekends–as holidays allowed–Jose, his friend Julio, and I have been hanging rock.  I’ve been doing some of the more “mental” stuff (designing support walls for an arch above the sinks, etc.) while they have been doing the heavy lifting–literally.  Most of the 60 sheets (plus another 10 that I bought) had to be hand carried, one by one, up to the second and third floors.

To speed things up, I’m going to have professional drywallers finish the taping and “mudding.”  I recall this was a decision that brother Greg made on his Clarkson Street house:  these guys can do it faster and cheaper than you can do it yourself.  I’ll probably use Prodrywall DC, whose references checked out and whose price was a $1000 cheaper than the next competitor.  Interestingly, Selvin, the owner, gave me a bid on the spot; meanwhile, a competitor took a week to get back to me.

Jose and Julio

For the last two Saturdays, while the rest of you were busy shopping, I was hanging sheetrock with Jose and his fellow Guatamalan, Julio.  These guys work four hard hours straight without a break, take a short lunch, then work another four hours–and hanging sheetrock, especially on the ceiling, isn’t easy.  If they complain, I can’t understand them; they hardly speak English.  In fact, after a full day of working with them, I feel like I’m in the wrong clique in high school; nobody speaks to me.  It’s just me and the Latin music blaring on the radio.  At least, I kind of get the radio ads:  blah blah blah (or whatever the Spanish equivalent of blah is) blah blah mp3 blah blah blah Verizon Wireless blah blah etc.

At the end of the day, I pay Jose and Julio each $10/hour cash; $180 for 18 man-hours of WORK!  In contrast, our plumber charges us $300 for 12 feet of PVC pipe.  Seriously!  So any DC readers searching the Internet for reviews of plumbers:  Don’t use HD Johnson–they’re a rip-off.  Ok, other than charging too much, they’re fine.

I’m back!

Sorry to disappear for a month or so; life (and work) got in the way:  trip to Portland to witness niece marry Jake, and lots of work on the house.  Let me bring you up to speed, in bullet format:

*  Bought and installed numerous fixtures for the master bathroom and closet, including one-foot square ones for the ceiling, fan/light/night light combo for the toilet compartment; exhaust fan for the shower, and LED lights (our first foray into this new technology) for the walk-through closet.  Light-emitting diodes last something like 20,000 hours and suck a fraction of the power.  The ultimate test will be if my wife can distinguish the difference between blue, black, and brown socks (and you readers who have gone to work with mismatched socks know what I’m talking about).

*  Bought yet another tool:  a hammer drill.  Wished I had bought it two years ago.  Sends a masonry bit through brick like a hot knife through butter.  Well, maybe a cold knife–but still pretty darn fast.

*  Passed plumbing, structural (framing), mechanical, and insulation inspections.  I think it would be pretty hard to screw up insulation, but DC does have an energy code.  The trick there, actually, was what to do with the unvented roof:  vent it somehow?  spray foam insulation, making it watertight?  You don’t want lots of water condensing, creating mold and eventually rotting your timbers.  After doing hours of research into the issue, and coming so close to ordering spray foam, I went low-tech.  I stuffed R-30 fiberglass insulation into the 8″ cavity, and will line the inner ceiling with a plastic vapor barrier.

More later.

My poor car

Ah, my beloved ‘88 Tracer Wagon–which I bought new 21 years ago.  It has been a wonderful car, transporting me around the country.  Dozens of times I have slept diagonally in the back, for lack of better camping options.

Now, alas, my Tracer has been relegated to a role of “dump truck,” ferrying dozens of loads of construction debris to the nearby Ft. Totten Transfer Station.

All this hauling has been tough on my dear old friend.  The interior roof lining, for example, is shredded.  But the engine works great, and I still have many months of trips to Home Depot–so you can imagine why I was sad when it failed its biannual safety inspection (minor stuff, to be sure).

Since the car has had a good life, and I really couldn’t justify another $800+ for new shocks and stuff that I’ll never use, I was all prepared to donate my baby to charity.  Donating your trusty vehicle after two decades felt a little like putting your pet “to sleep.”  At least I tried to assuage my guilt by choosing an environmental charity; the Washington Area Bicyclists Association.  Fitting for a car, don’t you think? 

But I couldn’t easily find the title and the charity middleman wouldn’t take the car without one.  Weeks passed and, unexpectedly, the District changed its regulations in order to save $400,000:  safety inspections are no longer necessary for private vehicles (they still need to pass an emissions test, however).   So yesterday I bought a new gas cap (which was one area my car flunked) and aced the emissions test.  

Now I’m street legal again.  The Tracer lives on.  Bury me in it, ok?

Silt fence

The problem with living next to me is that I’ll make sure you are following the environmental laws.  The neighbor two doors down found this out (see the prior post on the gutted rowhouse).  I’m not really ratting on a neighbor; I’m making sure a professional real estate investor and his hired crew stop coating the alley with dirt from their foundation underpinning project.  The dirt washes into the Potomac, which drains to the Chesapeake Bay, which is struggling because of all the water pollution.

Hmmm, I work at the Dep’t of the Environment and happen to know the water quality inspectors who make sure construction sites follow proper erosion control procedures.  Guess who has a silt fence now?

All work and no play…

My new 9-5 government job is really getting in the way of my blogging!

So, the big news is:  electrical and plumbing rough-in are complete (except for 4 recessed lights); inspector has already signed off on plumbing.

What this means is, soon we will be sheetrocking and finishing our new master bedroom and bathroom and third floor office!

Here are some pictures of the work in progress:

3rd floor:  notice how area on left where diagonal brace was (see a previous post) is now a door:

Here’s a picture from the master bedroom, looking through our walk-in closet toward the new shower:

This was the most framing I’ve ever done in life.  Really wished I had a nail gun but, after seeing the $300 price tag, decided to treat myself to a $16 framing hammer.  I like its longer handle and rough hammer face (to help prevent a blow from slipping off the nail head).  Give me a few more years to master the tw0-hit set-and-sink technique.

Emily has been hard at work selecting tile (e.g., river rock for the shower base), a vanity (made out of brown-stained maple), and Grohe shower valves.  Growing up on one shower valve that controlled everything–on/off/volume, temperature–I didn’t know you now get two valves:  one to mix the hot and cold water (see following photo, lower valve); and one to control volume.   This is the plumbing rough-in after the plumber corrected his work (contractors:  please read my detailed notes!):

For our custom shower, I prepared the “pre-pan” myself.  First I laid tarpaper over the subfloor (which I had beefed up with 1/4″ cement board mortared to the wood then screwed in with special alkali-resistant, coated screws), then stapled wire mesh

 

on which I sloped a bed of “floor mud” (4 parts sand, 1 part cement, mixed with a latex additive to harden the mix).  It turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself!  The plumber put in the heavy-duty rubber lining and tested it.

The plumber also put in an expansion tank (our new hot water tank started leaking the other day; the pressure relief valve couldn’t take the city pressure and/or didn’t have any room for the hot water to expand because of a backflow preventer).  Pablo, the plumber, also rerouted some radiator lines from the middle of our new closet (they were previously enclosed in the wall), and replaced one radiator with a shorter one.  This replacement was so I could build a bench on top for my wife to sit near the bay windows.  If she sits on this 1000 times, it will come to $1/sit.  Note the lovely green from a previous owner: