We've been without front stairs for a couple of weeks now. In that time, the replacement section in the front of the house and the new foundation have been poured, and the carpenters have done quite a lot of work on replacing framing between the floor joists and the mudsill. They found some termite damage, all of it in places you'd never see unless the house had been taken apart: at the ends of joists and in some of the framing that's parallel to the foundation. One piece was so damaged you could easily crumple the wood by hand.

We have that feeling of having been under construction for a year or two even though it's only been about five and a half weeks. Navigating the side and back yards to get into the house via the back door is getting to be a bit boring.

My contractor will be back tomorrow from a short trip out of town and I will ask him for an update to his schedule. He originally said "eight or nine weeks," which I mentally edited to ten weeks or so, knowing that the unexpected must be expected on any construction job. Here's what I know needs to be finished:

• Complete reframing of the cripple wall
• Installation of shearwall
• Reshingle the skirt of the house
• Frame in the area where the fireplace used to be
• Build new bookcases where the fireplace used to be
• Build the new back porch
• Finish tiling the walls and floor and finish painting the bathroom

The day after Thanksgiving, we were awakened around 8 a.m. by loud noises outside the house. The cement mixer and concrete pump had arrived, and the concrete workers were scurrying all over the front and back yards. And we were stuck stuck stuck in the house for the next couple of hours. We had no stairs in the front of the house and no bridge over the moat in the back. (I think the dog was still on vacation with friends of ours, so she was not desperate to get out.)

By 10:30 the concrete had all been poured, about nine yards' worth. The workers were busily smoothing it out. But they didn't smooth down enough, and when I left in the late afternoon to run an errand, my contractor was further scraping it down and was quietly annoyed at the subcontractor's workers for not doing a good enough job with it.

Full set of photos (about 10 or 12) for the concrete pour here.

There was an inspection today, and evidently it went fine. My guess is that the inspector was examining the forms and rebar for the concrete that will be poured Friday or Monday. There are forms for the back porch foundation, front porch steps, and, presumably, the two corners where the old foundation was ripped out and will be replaced. And, I hope, the area where the chimney and fireplace used to be.

We have to pick out tiles and think about paint colors this weekend. And also start looking for lighting fixtures and maybe doors.

More photos, taken this morning, in the Under Construction collection at Flickr.

Apologies for the long delay between postings. The reasons include 1) being sick off and on for a couple of weeks 2) the small tech writers gathering for which I was the lead organizer 3) work 4) sore back for the last few days 5) forgetting to take photos.

Where are we now?

• The house is still up on blocks and sort of disconnected from the foundation.
• The house is more level than it used to be, though it will never be completely level.
• The concrete piers near the former fireplace and on the side and back of the house have been poured.
• Most of the old shearwall has been removed, inside and out.
• About half the shingles on the house are off, too. They were in pretty good shape but it's extremely expensive and time-consuming to remove and reuse them. So there's a big pile of new shingles in the back yard.
• The front steps have been completely demolished and so have the bolsters that were on either side of the steps. I need to ask my contractor if he will be demolishing the deck of the front porch too.
• The forms and rebar for the new back porch foundation are in place. The concrete should be poured this week.
• They found some termite damage, but not a lot, and it's old.
• They'll be putting completely new studs in the basement because...well, for a number of technical reasons.

 We had some unwanted excitement this morning.

We farmed out Molly B. to friends for the recent work week;. Yesterday morning, Donna picked her up and spent most of the day with Molly and another friend on the coast, while I stayed home reading. They got home around 7:30, with Molly looking weary and draggly. Our friends, you see, have a younger, bigger dog, who presumably ran her ragged. 

This morning, Molly ate her breakfast and then went into the yard. A while later, Donna went out into the front yard and started yelling - because on Friday the workers had left the side yard gate open. I started running around and of course Molly was nowhere to be found. I was on my way to get dressed and run out to start looking for her when she came in the front door: for once, she'd come when called.

And evidently she hadn't gotten very far. My guess is that she around the corner attempting to make the acquaintance of one or the other of the dogs in the neighborhood, a couple of whom spend way too much time in back or front yards. We're incredibly lucky she didn't get lost, although at least 1) she looks well-kempt 2) she has a collar and visible tages 3) she is chipped 4) she is perfectly willing to make friends with strangers.

 A week since my last entry, because it's been a complicated week, between catching cold and many can't-miss meetings at work. But in the last week, the workers have cast the concrete piers that are a significant part of reinforcing the old foundation, demolished quite a bit of the old foundation layer in the left rear quadrant of the house, and laid out the footprint of the new porch.

The layout, done with posts and string, revealed something that my contractor had been concerned about: the footprint impinges on the footings for the entrance to the basement. After consulting with the architect, who has in turn consulted with the structural engineer, it seems that making the porch a few inches narrower will work around this adequately.

The old porch hasn't yet been demolished, which I thought would happen this past week. Well, maybe this coming week, or maybe they'll leave it up while they do other work.

I took some photos toward the end of the week but haven't posted them yet. Maybe tonight.

Wednesday night I got home late, following a performance of Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment at San Francisco Opera. (Details are on my music blog.) I could see that the chimney was half-demolished, above the roofline and down to the hip of the chimney. I didn't take flash photos and I didn't get out of bed Thursday early enough to beat the workmen to the punch. In fact, by the time I was up and dressed, there had been plenty of banging and thumping out there. By the time I emerged, what was left of the chimney was a pile of bricks next to the house.

In the Flickr set called Demolition, you can see both the rubble outside and the disorder in the house. Boxes and other things we had in the basement are now in the dining room and front bedroom. Most of what's in the living room is covered with sheets, to keep the dust off. Above the hole where the chimney used to be, you can see the original narrow siding that the house started with. It's now covered with green cement shingles, probably put on in the '40s or '50s. And, who knew? Under the white paint, the fireplace was made of white brick.

I like the look of the mantelpiece without crap all over it. Maybe we can keep things a bit more spare after we put the house back together.

 I took the photosets called The Undercroft I and The Undercoft II on Tuesday and Wednesday, meaning they reflect work done on Monday and Tuesday. The shear paneling came off and the subcontractor started to put the blocks and beams in place that will support the house while it's being made level. You can see a representative photo here. The long beam runs parallel to the long side of the house. It's supported by a metal gadget that in turn rests on the short blocks. I believe the metal gadget has a giant screw inside it so that it can be slightly expanded or contracted during the leveling process. This process evidently includes more or less separating the house from its foundation. Yes, you could say I find the prospect a bit unnerving.

My contractor came over early this morning, walked us through the upcoming work, and answered questions. We added a couple of things to the list of what needs to be done: repair the ceiling in the dining room as well as repair whatever will need to be repaired when the chimney and fireplace come out. Replace the fence between the house and our neighbor to the east. Repair the front gate. Repair the front steps, where there's at least one rotten board.

Then the crew from Vallejo arrived. Mr. Jefferson has been working with these folks for 20-odd years and he called them the concrete crew. The subcontractor has six cats, so he is a soft touch of some kind. What they did today made them the wood crew, not the concrete crew. We heard a lot of banging and whirring coming from the basement. I took a look downstairs before I went to work, and when I came back, most of the shear paneling was gone. For the first time, I could see the crawl space in the front of the house, because the center shear panels were gone. There's the fireplace footing, there's the floor furnace, there's the former stove chimney.

I'll take photos tomorrow before I head for work.

So we came home on Friday and found that our contractor had come by to do some planning. One of the subcontractors had also moved in a huge collection of wooden blocks and beams. None of these will be incorporated into the work to be done. They're all for the what my contractor calls "leveling the house," which my partner prefers us to call "making the house more level." This is one of the more risky processes in the work to be done, because it involves disconnecting the house from its foundation - which needs to be done for some of the foundation work anyway - and shifting it around a bit, just a matter of inches, to get the floors more level. Accidents can happen (and I've heard a harrowing story or two), plus there's the risk of damage to the house itself. Windows might crack; the soaking tub or its tiled-in surround might be damaged. I suspect it is likely that there will be more cracks in the lathe and plaster.

There's plenty of plaster damage in the house anyway. Leakage before the roof was replaced damaged the dining room ceiling; there is a lot of cracking where the chimney is attached to the house. All of this will be fixed at the end of the process; unfortunately, it'll all be fixed with sheetrock because lathe & plaster is so expensive to repair.

What I'm most curious about might be the effects on the floors themselves. It's not just the lack of level surface. One area has a pronounced hump; another has a bit of a slump, and in the basement you can see why - a jury-rigged beam composed of two smaller beams that is being replaced with a properly-sized beam as part of the work in progress.

New photoset here.

We have major, long-anticipated, house renovations starting (gulp) tomorrow. The house in question is a small but charming 1918 Craftsman bungalow. I will be chronicling the process here and at my Flickr account.

The high-level overview:

• Demolish chimney and fireplace
• Demolish crumbling back porch (presumably original but who knows)
• Replace remaining portions of original (c. 1918 foundation). These areas are at diagonally opposite corners of the house
• Install reinforcements to newer portions of foundation, which previous owners had installed without permits and not to code (groan)
• Additional earthquake work
• Make house more level than it is now
•  Repair front porch. This will include replacing some rotted wood and putting in a to-code handrail
• Frame in the hole resulting from the chimney/fireplace demolition and build in new bookshelves
• Build new back porch, which is room-sized and was designed by an architect.
• Complete renovations to bathroom that were started in 2006 (complete the floor and wall tiling, which had to wait for the foundation work to be complete, and paint the walls)

Of possible interest to some: I am blogging about the Stanford music symposium Reactions to the Record II at http://irontongue.blogspot.com. Search for Reactions to find all of the postings.

Earl Grey tea is the perfect accompaniment to the New Orleans Chocolate Bourbon Cake at Crixa Cakes, which is, in turn, the best chocolate cake I have ever had.

I have a very tiny side career as a music writer and reviewer. Yesterday, New Music Box, the online journal of the American Music Center, published an article of mine about the current status of women composers in the United States. It came in at 3,000 words, quite the longest piece I've written for publication. The editor, Molly Sheridan, was a joy to work with throughout a fairly protracted process, and she gave the piece the marvelous title Lend Me a Pick Ax: The Slow Dismantling of the Compositional Gender Divide.

I have a LiveJournal account mostly so I can post to LiveJournals that require an LJ login. My real blog is Iron Tongue of Midnight, a classical music blog.