The Hiccups
Let’s start with some good news. Since the last post, the flooring from PID arrived on site, as did the new ventilation hood.
The new hood is exciting for very mundane reasons. Namely, it’s really hard to get appliances right now. While there’s still quite a few to go — my oven probably won’t be here until August — progress is progress, and should be appreciated.
The flooring is more of a relief. It was only ever possible for me to see photos of finished floors and a couple of small samples. That I still liked the choice when I plucked out a few full planks to look at was reassuring. I can’t wait to see it all installed.
Now to the bad news.
Living in a well-established historical neighborhood has its benefits. Mature trees. Nice architecture. Streets designed for people, not cars. Unfortunately it also means old buildings with old building quirks.
In my case, that turned out to be asbestos.
It’s a great insulator and fire retardant. It’s also a serious danger to human health, and has to be very delicately removed when it’s found. In my case, that’s around the main hot water line.
From talking to the remediation company, the pipe insulation in my plumbing stack isn’t that big of a deal. They said it could probably be removed and certified in a single day. But it’s not going to be cheap. Among other things, I have to pay $350 just for the independent verification and certification after the material has been removed. People will be wearing serious respirators. Plastic wall barriers will be set up. And industrial-grade HEPA filters will be running.
I feel like I really lucked out that I happen to have domestic-scale HEPA filters running as a matter of course and I have a vacuum cleaner with a HEPA filter I’ve been using to do extra cleanup. At least some asbestos has been disturbed as part of the work so far; it’s nice to know I’ve been protected. A very bare silver lining of the pandemic. I decided to buy them to assuage my guilt in having (a very small and select number of) people over during the height of pandemic in 2020.
Other forces conspired to throw a wrench in one of the parts of my project I had been most excited about. It looks like I can’t have my in-unit laundry after all. Perhaps I should get a Costco membership and start buying breakfast cereal in bulk. I’m going to have a lot more closet space than I had anticipated.
My contractor still hasn’t been able to provide a full schedule, so it’s hard to say exactly what comes next. Probably asbestos remediation, if I had to guess. That may also take care of the remaining demolition that needed to happen before the final framing.
Once the framing is done and the asbestos is gone, my guess is that they’ll move to finish first fix plumbing and electric, including the high-stakes feeder wire replacement project.