Bird Ave Remodel Kickoff!

Day 1 of remodeling

After a couple months of delay due tree removal application process, we've finally started the remodeling now that the trees have been removed.

The list of things we're having the contractor (Mr. Chen) take care of include the following:

• complete redoing of 2 bathrooms
• replacing 2 windows
• replacing the carpet
• removing wall paper and repainting the entire house
• repair wall and roof eave area damaged by the redwood trees.

Mr. Chen was recommended by a couple different people and have done work for several of my relatives before. His price is very reasonable but there has been some mixed review of the quality of work. I think it really depends on the experience of the particular crew working on the job at the time and whether there are any custom work that requires special attention. As my remodeling should be fairly simple, being a single story with no custom or special finishing involved, I'm hoping it will turn out just fine. There's also no assurance the more expensive contractor will do a perfect job either. Chatting with my friends, it seems that often times there will be some details that are not perfect after the job is done, so for now, we're going with the low cost approach as we're treating this as an investment (intending to rent it out afterwards, and costly improvement may not translate to too much extra in rent and would be hard to recoup). Perhaps I can tell him that I'm writing about this job and posting it on the internet so that he'll make sure to pay extra attention and do a really good job, hehe..

So far, I'm pretty happy with the progress, it's day 1 and they already gutted the bathrooms and tore down all the wall papers.. But I guess it's really how it looks like when it gets all put back together that matters, so I'm holding my breath.