7B & 9A are now occupied!

We finished everything in 7B except for a few pieces of floor trim in the bathroom and one side of trim around the door. I need to do some fancy cutting since it catches the end of a window frame. I would certainly not have chosen to put the wall so close to the window but there was already a studded area from where a temporary wall used to be. I had two options
1) use the pre-existing studs and cut one piece of trim around it or
2) Remove the old studs, patch up the damaged wall, repaint it. Build the wall 6 inches over, avoiding the window frame, and shrinking the already small bedroom.

(Side note: I was talking about the house with a regular at my bank and came to find out that she lived in this unit in the 1980's. Small world)

I got all of the electric finished for now. Eventually i will add a receptacle for the fridge but i first need to get a new electric panel. So, i'm hoping i can get around to that in the fall.

We have our first tenant! She moved in to apt 9A. Here is what we have done and still have yet to do.

-We ripped up the old kitchen flooring and replaced it with floating laminate tiles. We were up past midnight Wednesday, Thursday, & Friday in order to have it ready for Saturday. We removed two layers of sub flooring and 4 layers of vinyl/tile/other flooring. This brought us to the original hardwood and sub floor. One of the reasons i wanted to rip it all out was to fix a weak spot by the bathroom. We discovered that a section of the hardwood was pretty well rotted out. So i cut it out and replaced it with new plywood. The floor is still not perfectly level, but it is only a gradual slope. Its going to stay that way because i have neither the time, knowledge, nor necessity to fix it.

- I bought some new sink cabinets from a construction company that had leftovers. Now i'm just waiting for Jerica to paint them so we can install them.

-Cleaning and more cleaning. My stepfather helped clean the unit after the last tenants moved out. Then we had to clean it a few more times because tearing up old flooring is quite dirty.

- Eventually we will replace the flooring in the bathroom, paint the kitchen, and replace the medicine cabinet. For now, this will do.

So much has occurred since my last update that i dont know where to begin. I guess i'll just go room by room.

Laundry: It has been put on hold to prepare 9A & 7B for new tenants. Still no floor and half of the walls are gone. Plumbing for the washing machine drainage was more than i anticipated. Since it also needed to be completed with the bathroom sink drainage of 7B, i broke down and hired a pro. I have no desire to mess with 3" copper.

7B: 
-Replaced a bathroom wall: Someone had cut a piece out of the copper vent pipe to make room for a medicine cabinet. That, combined with a poor cover of the vent on the roof, led to water draining back down into the wall. Therefore, a new wall was necessary.

-Removed sink and vanity: This was probably my first costly mistake of this whole project. (i'm sure it wont be the last) There was nothing really wrong with the cabinet and counter top so i should have removed them carefully and just changed out the sink. Instead, i took a sledgehammer to it all and through it away. I found a nice used cabinet and sink combo for $40. Later, Home Depot had a sale on a new combo for only $40. Oh well, this is a learning experience and i am paying the tuition.

-Constructed a new dividing wall: This went fairly well but we did not line up all of the factory edges and the subsequent mudding turned out considerably less than smooth in a few spots. I originally measured it out exactly 8" for the 1st section of wall but did not line up the final stud right because i adjusted it to the new door instead.

-Hung a new door: This was more difficult than i anticipated. But after researching it a bit more, i believe i have it pretty flush.

-Painted the bedroom, bathroom, and the new wall

-Wired 4 receptacles and two light switches

I still need to:
-install the ceiling fans
-replace the trim
-fill in a few spots on the hardwood floor
-make and install two shelves
-install the "new" sink and cabinet
-install the medicine cabinet
-install bathroom light

My vision for the Community Room

Here is my vision of how i want life to go at the Sexplex.
Like the church is a city within a city, i want the sexplex to be a community within a community.
My hope is that we can view the common room more as an extension of our own units rather than simply shared public space. We don't all have to use it daily, but i want us to feel comfortable and free to use it daily. Since we are all a part of the same local church family, Refuge City Church, and since there will only be six people living in the sexplex the atmosphere should be closer to that of a large family rather than a rec room in a large apartment complex.

Also, having lived in many different housing scenarios, a big frustration was the lack of space in which to hang out with friends. When it comes to urban housing, living rooms are the first things to be omitted or reduced to near uselessness. (eg: dorms and small apartments.) The only way to get around that is to live in a large place and either pay out the whazoo or share it with multiple people. This usually provides a large living room but comes with the downside of having to share a kitchen, bathroom, and possibly a bedroom. Also, depending on the people/rules, it can be stressful/overwhelming to the introvert or never allow the extrovert to have friends over. These situations tend to fuel the modern day mindset of unhealthy seclusion and individualism. I personally  have lived in apartment complexes in which i never even met the person whose front door was 3 ft from my own. This is not healthy.

I believe that a shared common room for a group of 3-7 one bedroom apartments has the potential to avoid many of these downsides to urban housing. This set-up will allow each tenant to have their own bathroom, kitchen, and bedroom while still providing a larger and nicer entertainment space. It also allows you to have the living room and appliances of a house or luxury condo for the cost of a one-bedroom apartment. My hope is that this will facilitate community between the sexplex as well as between us and the larger community. We can have our own game/movie nights (impromptu or planned) and we can have a space large enough for inviting friends/neighbors over to join us. Below is a list of things to do in the common room and things you should do in your personal unit. There is some overlap because an ideal space allows you to choose when you want to be social and when you don't.


Things to do in the Community Room:
- Having friends over to play games
- watching tv/movies
- playing video games
- socializing
- eating
- waiting on laundry
- eating with friends
- group bible study
- parties

Things to do in your own unit:
- Studying
- walking around in your underwear
- watching tv/movies
- alone time
- eating
- reading
- cooking
- sleeping

Laundry Room update

      The laundry room is now bottomless. I tore out the bottom half of two of the walls, but left the other two walls untouched. Since there is a drop ceiling (the only one in the house) beneath the LR, i have used it to run PEX tubing to 5 different fixtures and intend to utilize that access to run electric to the washer and dryer. There are other possibilities for other rooms that this access allows, but i'll get to that in another post. Since there was old fire damage, the space was even dirtier than most old in-wall/ceiling spaces (and that's saying something). So, when we had a work day last Saturday we finally got the area clean.
      In my zeal to rip up the laundry room floor last year i unwittingly removed a substantial amount of what was supporting the wall between the laundry room and 7B bathroom. Now i must figure out a way to stabilize it from beneath and fill in the missing pieces of sub floor in the 7B bathroom.

The order of what i must do in the laundry room is as follows:
1) finish the plumbing & stub out fixture lines
2) Run cable for overhead lights & ceiling fan in 9B (i'll explain this later)
3) Stabilize the floor 7B bathroom
4) redo electric in laundry room (vanity light, overhead light, lightswitch, washer&dryer)
5)Remove old plumbing
6) Lay sub floor
7) Install vent
8) drywall
9) flooring
10) paint
11) install appliances, fixtures, & cabinet(s)
12) install mirror, towel rack etc..

And at the moment, most of this is irrelevant because i must first fix up my unit 9B, so we can move out of, and then repair, Sara's unit 7B. Updates to follow.