<p>I have everyone screaming at me for kitchen and bath layouts - electrician, plumbing, framing. My head is swimming. Off to project for new garage door installation this morning.</p>
<p>Good luck, coralbrook!
You are not going to get any yelling from me. 
My issue with permits: the skill and knowledge of the person doing the job trumps the paper, IMO. Take our neighbor - he did some outdoor lighting work and ran an electrical line along the driveway. Fully permitted, to code. The code said bury the ground contact wire x inches in the ground, no conduit needed. Ok. IMO, to have a wire without conduit buried under shrubbery and plants where digging will absolutely happen is “to code” but against common sense. Someone is going to cut the wire with a shovel, and good luck finding the place where it needs to be repaired! You can guess what happened after the neighbor had sold the house to a new family. :)</p>
<p>I think your decision re the shed is excellent.</p>
<p>I just love the inside of this house. It is so charming. And the views are gorgeous. </p>
<p>I hope you are able to preserve its vintage character. BTW, what did you do with the crystal chandelier from the living room? It’s a nice one. (It actually looks like it <em>could</em> be Waterford…although they tend to be a bit more complex.)</p>
<p>The crystal chandelier was in the Estate Sale and I tagged it as original 1936. I have no idea what make it is but my electrician was very adamant that it was old and real glass. It did not sell. So, we hung it up in garage for safekeeping and then that same electrician bumped something into it while re-wiring the garage and broke one of the lamp holder things. Story of my life, I sure hope it wasn’t Waterford It’s still hanging in the garage.</p>
<p>I am focused on Napoleon and Josephine because I posted some crummy pictures on an eBay porcelain discussion group and they are all in a frenzy. I need to clean them up and get better pictures (an entire afternoon of delicate cleaning is ahead of me). There was one set (without accompanying guard figurines) sold on eBay in 2012 for $995!!! They provided a link to the sold auction item. And, these porcelain experts were quick to point out that my piece has superior workmanship and appears to be much older. My problem is that I find this is all new and exciting and I’m getting distracted from the big project.</p>
<p>I have found someone very interested in the Nazi bookends and they aren’t a White Supremist luckily. I found a collector on Craigslist advertising ‘WWII Artifacts Wanted’. I sent pictures via email and he has a large historical collection. Of course his question was “How much do you want”. I have no idea how much I want!!! I cannot find anything remotely close on Internet. I have no idea whether these are $25 souvenir or $2,500 historical artifacts </p>
<p>The whole Flickr thing is completely broken. I guess it is forcing you to have a Yahoo account now to use Flickr. I created a new Yahoo account (my old one is evidently expired) and now it is telling me that the email address is same email address as already exists in Flickr (duhhh!!) and is forcing me to ‘merge’ the two accounts. Takes me to a Flickr page that either a) puts up error message and says that the merge feature is broken or b)keeps forcing me to log in with my Flickr account. I can’t seem to pull up my Flickr account. Don’t know if it is because I forgot the password or whatever.</p>
<p>So, I click on ‘Forgot Password’ and for two days have never received the email to reset the original Flickr password. </p>
<p>I guess I am going to have to go somewhere else and set up a new place to view CC Flip Project #3 photos. Does anyone have a recommendation for a location where I can store and organize the photos, allow public viewing access without requiring logins for you all AND protect my privacy???</p>
<p>ROBBERY SUNDAY NIGHT</p>
<p>Been a very busy week. When we finished the Estate Sale on Saturday afternoon we had a lot of stuff that was really just trash. So we bagged up at least 6 large hefty bags of trash and set them up on the ledge to wait for dumpster on Monday. And… here’s the mistake… put the large heavy pieces of furniture on curb with a FREE sign. </p>
<p>I drove back by Sunday morning and all the bags of trash had been emptied out everywhere on the sidewalk. Most of large furniture gone. Someone had opened up the bags, kept the bags and just threw stuff everywhere that they did not want and went off with the majority of stuff. I had to pick everything up and pile it onto ledge, but without any bags. Went into house to make sure no one had tried to get inside. We had all the power tools stashed inside a closet, but there was one circular saw on the kitchen floor. Windows were boarded up or screwed shut and a little back gate had a lock on it, doors closed and locked.</p>
<p>Drove by again on Sunday afternoon and someone had now taken our City trash cans and dumped them out on the sidewalk to go through them. There were old bottles of vinegar and crap smashed everywhere. It was a horrible gooey mess and I had to clean it all up again. Glamorous Job!!! Did another walk around to make sure everything was intact.</p>
<p>Monday morning the electrician started at 6:30am, two other guys started at 8am. I was at Home Depot loading huge beams with my lead into my truck and didn’t arrive until 9am. I walk in and immediately can tell that we were robbed. These three guys were just working along without a clue, probably because all the tools are the lead’s and not their tools. After much questioning the electrician said that one of the doors was open but he didn’t think much of it. Someone had kicked in back tall gate and pushed open one of the old doors in back courtyard. They took brand new chain saw, drill guns (and forgot the battery charger stations - bunch of idiots), rotary impact drill, skill saw and the circular saw on the kitchen floor. They could not get the large power washer out of there for which I am very grateful because I was borrowing it from a friend. Obviously local homeless or punk druggies. </p>
<p>But here’s the most heart breaking thing. The WWII medals (which I have found out were not really worth anything, just sentimental) were in a box marked ‘Not for Sale’ on a shelf. Evidently these guys needed a box so they dumped everything out of this one box and they stole the medals - nothing else from the box. It was full of brand new batteries!!! What a bunch of knuckleheads. We are all assuming that there is now a homeless person wandering Ocean Beach proudly displaying their new rack of medals on their T shirt.</p>
<p>Never a dull moment </p>
<p>In honesty, we probably needed to replace one of the drills anyway, my lead is ecstatic that he has a new circular saw and we have two spare skill saws, so it’s not the end of the world. Our work with the Chain Saw is done and we’ll just have to live without one for awhile.</p>
<p>But I have been filing police reports, buying new tools, etc.</p>
<p>coralbrook, do you have insurance to cover the theft or is your lead insured for the loss?</p>
<p>HaHa… lead covered by insurance! I don’t think so. I am covered for theft and he is my full time employee, but I’m not going to bother submitting a claim because it is very difficult to get property insurance for ‘vacant homes’. I have to insure with Lloyd’s of London and then they get really mad when I cancel the insurance in 3-4 months. They just don’t like to write those types of policies. I’m sure my deductible is $2,000 and the loss was really just about $600 or so. </p>
<p>Police keep asking for serial numbers on the tools. Who the heck has the serial number off their drill gun? I guess someone that is much more organized than I am </p>
<p>Regarding the shed: I think turning it into an office/bonus room is a great idea, but I think you are suggesting not getting it permitted? As some one who always follows the rules that makes me a little nervous. What’s the worst thing that could happen? The city gets wind of it and forces you to undo whatever work you do? </p>
<p>And if you’re going to enclose the walkway between the house and the shed I would assume that requires a permit.</p>
<p>Did I misunderstand??</p>
<p>So sorry to hear about the theft, coralbrook. I guess you should write down the serial numbers of the replacement tools, but hope you never need them!
Love the shed to office idea!</p>
<p>Omg, this is turning into quite a story. So sorry to hear about the added problems. </p>
<p>We will not be pulling permits to turn it into liveable space - we are not changing the footprint of the shed, just putting new roof on (like the rest of main house), insulating really good and drywalling. Oh, and adding some windows to take advantage of the view!! It already has electrical and plumbing, we are just replacing those to new standards. Enclosing the walkway to create a laundry room would require a permit but we are not going to get one.</p>
<p>We will fully disclose to potential buyers that the enclosed useable square footage is not permitted. We are allowed to put it in the MLS as 1,300 sq ft home “Per the Seller” with disclosure that office is not permitted.</p>
<p>If the City gets wind of it they will issue a Stop Work Notice. That requires me to go into City and pull all of the required permits and pay a small penalty. Then they come out and inspect from that point on. I’ve never been clear on whether we would have to open up drywall to show new electrical, insulation or plumbing.</p>
<p>On the La Mesa house I ended up having to go in and get a permit for the gas lines in order to get SDGE to turn gas back on. The guy inspected the gas lines under the house and it was really obvious that we had put in new sewer and water lines. We didn’t get in trouble, but he did note on the permit that the copper lines should have some insulation between the copper pipes and the copper straps we used. </p>
<p>That’s sickening. I wonder if you could put up some kind of temporary, loud alarm. Stealing tools from job sites seems all too common, unfortunately. I’m sort of surprised that none of the neighbors noticed people throwing trash all over the street…</p>
<p>I hate to even bring this up, but do you think the estate sale brought attention to your project? Are the nasty people urking around places where there might be undiscovered treasures, or just tools…<br>
So sorry this happened. </p>
<p>Star Trek moment, my typing of "so sorry " originally showed up as “So Scotty”. </p>
<p>From now on, all tools and expensive materials are carried down those steep stairs and locked in the little garage every night. It’s a pain in the butt, but we have to do it for a couple of weeks until we get new windows. Every window gets screwed shut at the end of the day.</p>
<p>Even scarier is that there was a big set of keys that prior owner left. We didn’t know what all the keys were but we found one key that worked for the deadbolt on the back kitchen door. We had them just sitting on the shelf right next to kitchen door so we could use it to open up the door from inside every day. They stole that ring of keys and I just panicked because that meant that they had intentions to come back and we also didn’t know if there was a front door key on that ring. It’s a really creepy feeling. We had to buy cheap deadbolts and install on all of the doors so those old keys are useless now.</p>
<p>Our new garage door finally got installed - whole other frustrating story. The garage is very secure now with a code keypad to open it (in addition to the car remote controls). It was supposed to be installed a week ago. I almost killed myself when we were cleaning up for estate sale with that old heavy garage door with the bump out.</p>
<p>“If the City gets wind of it they will issue a Stop Work Notice.”</p>
<p>While I would like to believe that no one on CC would turn you in… It might be best to not post things such as not getting a permit that could potentially cause yourself problems. Remember this stuff stays out here forever and someone could track down who you are with the address you listed.</p>
<p>Thank you Michigan Georgia, very good point. No more discussion on the subject </p>
<p>And yes, I believe the Estate Sale, and the ‘free’ stuff in front of the house, caused the problem. It was just an invitation for low lifes to snoop around looking for stuff. I knew we had a problem the minute the trash was spread everywhere. I kept trying to drive by and check things, but didn’t have help to get the house secured better or move all the tools myself.</p>
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<p>But the horse has already left the gate. </p>
<p>Gate? What gate? No gates around here. </p>
<p>I also wonder about temporary alarms. I know that HD and other places have ones that you can hang on door knobs inside or double stick tape on windows and run off 9v so you could reuse. Might not keep things from being broken into but maybe cause neighbors to call 911.</p>