I'm baaaaacckkkk.

[JERRY2KONE]

OK well we just arrived home here in Korea from my 6 week remodeling adventure in San Francisco. It is midnight here now so I will have to post up some pictures of my efforts tomorrow . I managed to squeeze about 4 months of contractor work into 6 weeks, and saved about $50K in contractor fees.

My first project upon arrival was to remove the old electrical distribution panel and install a new one along with all new breakers. That was quite a challenge since I had never done that before. Once I had that all done it was on to relocating the hot water heater and getting it hooked up so I could have hot water for taking showers. The old one was a gas heater and it was stuffed into a closet in the kitchen. I moved it into the garage and installed an electrical one. I also installed a digital timer unit to limit the hot warer heater to using power about 5 hours a day, which should help keep the PG&E bill down.

Once those two jobs were done then it was time to get into the real projects. I gutted the entire kitchen, tiled the floor, and installed custom cabinets, and a granite countertop. I put in all new GE appliances and also built a laundryroom and a custom pantry into the kitchen area for a brand new washer and dryer pair. I finished that project off with a one off custom hanging pot rack and the wife loves the way it turned out.

Then I removed four huge 40 year old aluminum sliding glass doors and repaced three of them with windows, while installing a brand new heavy duty security sliding door for entry onto the back deck. Every window, and every door was replaced. Every piece of molding and floor trim was removed and new updated trims was installed. The toughest project was removing all of the crap off of the outside of the house. The two front walls had fibergalss siding, and fake flagstone cemented there, which was UGLY as hell. The rest of the house had steel siding, which yeilded about $100 at the recycling plant. Finally the house is being stuco'd to finish off the project. We did everything for right about $20K. We had two estimates which were both totally rediculous ($70K to $80K) and I just could not go that direction knowing that I could do it all for nothing, plus we just could not afford spending nearly $100K.